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 Editorials | At Issue | April 2005 
US Constitution, not Religion, Under Attack
 Kit Kincade - The Louisville Courier-Journal
The religious right is demanding a unique and special privilege in its battle to support President Bush. They want to challenge civil policy from behind the cloak of religious freedom.
The advertising for today's television show at Highview Baptist Church claims that some of the President's judicial nominees are being persecuted for their religious beliefs. It is a clever strategy to advance their cause vigorously, all the while claiming to be the victim of aggression.
Conservative Christians have some very specific ideas on how our civil society should work. Most of us do. Unfortunately, they have developed the hard position that their ideas spring from the sole religious truth and that anyone who disagrees is persecuting them.
Is religion under attack or is the Constitution?
In our age of religious fervor, it is popular to extol the religious faith of our nation's Founding Fathers, but the framers of the Constitution left God out of that document. There is no mention of a deity or a creator, divine providence or anything similar.
In the original document, the framers did write a prohibition of "religious tests" for government office. They had in mind a 1673 law passed by the British Parliament, the Test Act, which said that no person could serve in public office who refused to take the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, who refused to receive the communion according to the rites of the Church of England, or who refused to renounce belief in the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation. Although directed primarily against Roman Catholics, it also excluded Protestant nonconformists, most of them Puritans, many of whom had already fled to North America.
Note the reference to specific religious belief and practice. The denominational descendants of those who would have failed the Test Act would include all Catholics and nearly all Protestants in America today, not to mention all non-Christians.
As the U.S. Constitution was ratified, many complained that the additional restrictions were necessary to keep the government off the people. The first Congress promptly approved the Bill of Rights in 10 amendments, the first of which said, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . ."
Eleven of the 13 original colonies had official, state-supported churches, mainly the Church of England, and the framers debated whether the United States needed an official religion.
Baptists and Presbyterians in particular argued against it. Patriot Patrick Henry proposed a broadly inclusive, generalized form of Christianity. The answer was firmly, no. None. Keenly aware of the century of religious warfare behind them, the framers decided Americans would live without an official religion and be free to make up their own minds on religious belief and practice.
Historians have often said the United States now has the most vibrant and diverse religious culture in the world because of its broad religious freedom. The power of that religious vibrancy has been an enormous force in shaping our society. Great reform movements such as abolition of slavery, women's rights, prohibition, civil rights, antiwar activism, have been driven by persons of strong religious convictions.
Our greatest national conflict was a bloody Civil War, appropriately named because the fight was about ending the civil government's support of slavery. Strong moral feelings drove both sides as Christians, Jews and others in the North fought their religious counterparts in the South. Religious denominations were torn asunder over the issue, but we have never seen it as a religious war.
The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., was not jailed in Birmingham in 1963 because he believed in the insufficiency of infant baptism. He was jailed for challenging civil laws of Alabama which his religious beliefs persuaded him were unjust and oppressive.
The Rev. Philip Berrigan did not spend 11 years in jails and prisons to protest oppression as a Roman Catholic priest. Beginning with a bonfire of draft cards at Catonsville, Md., in 1968, Berrigan constantly protested for peace and against the nation's defense and foreign policies.
Both fought vigorously against the laws and policies of the civil government, and both understood the consequences of their civil disobedience. Neither complained of religious persecution.
The radical right tries to position itself as being in the nation's long line of religiously driven reform movements. Wise to the ways of Republican political strategists, however, they also seek the cover of religious freedom. They seek to change civil policies all the while complaining that anyone who opposes them is persecuting them for their religious beliefs. This is a try for political power and should be seen as such.
Much in modern medicine offends them -- abortion, birth control, stem-cell research and withdrawing life-support technology from persons near death, to name a few. These are all issues of civil public policy, whether or not there may be profound moral or religious reasons for supporting or opposing them. Should the civil government ignore, permit or prohibit them? Should the government support them with tax dollars?
All citizens have a stake in them. The religious right may claim to know the divine truth in deciding these issues, but it cannot have a special position in the public debate on them. The framers of the Constitution specifically rejected that. The traditions and political values that have grown from that great document support that rejection.
Conservatives consider themselves tough-minded, looking sternly on a dangerous world. In the battle over federal judgeships, they should be made of sterner stuff and should look to the likes of King and Berrigan.
They should stand up and face the debate without their religious vestments.
The writer, a certified financial planner, is a former chief of the Associated Press Kentucky bureau. |
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