Faith + Values Forum: Why not cite Bible in making laws?
http://www.startribune.com/614/story/414428.html
Minneapolis Star Tribune (subscription) - MN,USA

Many Americans' moral basis is the Bible; where would we be if we did not
use that basis for making the laws of our land?

Rob Braun
I am amazed that a Christian minister (Faith+Values Forum, April 22)
doesn't think that the Bible should be used as a basis for civil law. If we
took his position to heart, where would we be as a society today?

Think of how many laws are on the books today that parallel biblical
teaching or were motivated by it. As an example: Shouldn't we support the
legal concept of due process under the law (which is directly derived from
the Law of Moses), or because it could be construed as a biblical teaching
should we see it as a law that is in conflict with the separation of church
and state? Should we see any lawmaker appealing to biblical passages that
tell us to take care of the poor, the orphan, the widow, the elderly and
the helpless

as a potential conflict between church and state? Or the
abolitionists in the 18th and 19th centuries who based their rejection of
human slavery on passages from the Bible?

Or child labor laws that were
spearheaded by churchmen spouting scriptural passages in the early 20th
century? Or the civil rights movement led by African-American ministers who
regularly quoted the scriptures and wore their faith on their shirtsleeves
when arguing that all men should be seen as equals in the eyes of God under
the law of the land and the way they are treated in society?

Or laws against human sacrifice in civil or religious functions; also a
Judeo-Christian religious concept? What about the 10 commandments --
particularly those concerning stealing, murder, bearing a false witness --
are these also potentially a conflict of church and state?

Any law that is made in a democratic process and asks for a moral decision
is, in the end, asking a citizen for the moral basis of his or her
thinking. For many Americans, that moral basis is the Bible.

This doesn't necessarily mean that we are a theocracy or should be a
theocracy, but this means that we are a nation of many kinds of people with
many ways of taking a position on what's right and what's wrong.
Undeniably, the Bible is the foundation of many Americans' ethical and
moral understanding of life.

To ask people to separate their spiritual
views of life from their moral views is asking them to do the impossible.

Our democracy has always had a combination of secular morality mixed with
religious belief. It's in the language of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence.

This is part and parcel how our society has
always been.

Consequently, with our own civic history in mind, we shouldn't deny any
citizen or group of citizens an appeal to a religious text in justifying
its view of a civil law.

We may not all agree with the hermeneutics for the
passage, but we can agree that it is fair grounds for debate in the public
square.

Rob Braun is a minister at Princeton (Minn.) Community Church and a
salesman.