http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2005/005/15.07.html
[excerpt]
The Bible in American Public Life, 1860-2005
Dilemmas at the center, insights from the margins.
by Mark Noll
This country is, as everybody knows, a creation of the Bible, … and the
Bible is still holding its own, exercising enormous influence as a real
spiritual power, in spite of all the destructive tendencies … "1 These
words, spoken 102 years ago, came from an unexpected source. Yet as part of
an address delivered by Solomon Schechter at the dedication of the main
building of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, they echoed
what was then a common assertion about the biblical character of the United
States. Much more frequently, of course, similar words came from Christian
commentators and with specific reference to the Christian character of the
Scriptures.
Thus, only a few years after Schechter's address, the governor of New
Jersey addressed a crowd of about 12,000 in Denver on the subject, "The
Bible and Progress." The occasion was the 300th anniversary of the
publication of the King James Version. In his speech, Woodrow Wilson called
Scripture "the 'Magna Carta' of the human soul," and he summarized the
burden of his remarks like this: "The Bible (with its individual value of
the human soul) is undoubtedly the book that has made democracy and been
the source of all progress."2 What Schechter and Wilson wanted to say is
that without full consideration of the Bible, no adequate account of
American national history or of American national ideals was possible.
A century and more later, much has changed. Political, social, legal, and
cultural developments have altered the practice of religion, and of
everything else, in American life. Yet despite manifold changes, reading of
the Bible, reverence for the Bible, reference to the Bible, and debate over
whether and how to use the Bible continue as constant features in American
public life—evident most recently in the Supreme Court decisions regarding
whether and how to display the Ten Commandments in courthouses and other
public spaces.
In this ongoing negotiation, two notable Americans provide examples of
perhaps the most effective use of the Bible ever in our nation's public
history: Martin Luther King, Jr., in the speech he delivered from the east
steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28, 1963, during the March on
Washington for Civil Rights, and Abraham Lincoln in his Second Inaugural
Address, which he delivered from the east side of the Capital Building on
March 4, 1865.3 Beyond cavil, the extraordinary force of these addresses
owed much to their anchorage in Scripture. Yet the two speeches were quite
different and so serve to illustrate the various ways that the Bible has
been put to use in American public life.4
First, we can see in them a rhetorical or stylistic echoing of Scripture,
where speakers, in order to increase the gravity of their words, employ a
phraseology, cadence, or tone that parallels the classic phrasing of the
King James Version. The most dramatic example in our entire history of such
a biblical tone may in fact be King's speech in August 1963, which was
filled with biblical-sounding phrases: "the Negro … finds himself in exile
in his own land … ; now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate
valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice … ; Let us not
seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of
bitterness and hatred … "; and more.
A second usage of the Bible may be called evocative, where speakers put
actual Bible phrases to use, but as fragments and jerked out of original
context in order to heighten the persuasive power of what they are trying
to say for their own purposes. Lincoln used the Bible in this way during
his Second Inaugural when he took a phrase from Genesis 3:19 to say it was
"strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in
wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces."
Third, in political deployment of Scripture the Bible is quoted or
paraphrased to make a direct assertion about how public life should be
ordered. The difference from merely rhetorical or evocative use is the
speaker's implicit claim that Scripture is not just supplying a conceptual
universe from which to extract morally freighted phrases, but that it
positively sanctions the speaker's vision for how public life should be
ordered. Thus, King, toward the end of his great speech, quoted Isaiah 40:4
in order to enlist a divine sanction for his vision of a society free of
racial discrimination: "I have a dream that one day every valley shall be
exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places shall
be made plain, the crooked places shall be made straight and the glory of
the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together."
In his Second Inaugural, Lincoln did something similar when he combined
resignation before the workings of providence with an indictment of the
ones who had asked God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat
of other men's faces. For that combination of opinions a quotation from
Matthew 18:7 was Lincoln's clincher: "The prayers of both [sides] could not
be answered; that of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His
own purposes. 'Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be
that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!'"
Political use of Scripture is at once more dangerous and more effective
than the rhetorical or evocative. It is more dangerous because it risks the
sanctified polarization that has so often attended the identification of a
particular political position with the specific will of God. It can also be
dangerous for religion. In the telling words of Leon Wieseltier, "the
surest way to steal the meaning, and therefore the power, from religion is
to deliver it to politics, to enslave it to public life."
Yet political use of Scripture can also be remarkably effective. When a
specific political position is successfully identified with the purposes of
God, that position can be advanced with tremendous moral energy. With these
two speeches, strategic quoting from the Bible played a significant part in
reassuring many Americans that Lincoln's opposition to slavery and King's
opposition to racial discrimination really did embody a divine imperative.
Finally, after rhetorical, evocative, and political usages, there is the
theological deployment of Scripture, where the Bible is quoted or
paraphrased to make an assertion about God and the meaning of his acts or
providential control of the world. In American public life, this use of the
Bible is by far the most rare. Lincoln's Second Inaugural may represent its
only instance. What he said pertained not primarily to the fate of the
nation, and not even to a defense of his own political actions, but to the
sovereign character and mysterious purposes of God. For that statement, a
quotation from Psalm 19:9 provided the last word:
[end of excerpt]
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Posting and reading from alt.politics.usa.constitution OR alt.education
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Hampton Roads [Virginia] SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
[Its not just Hampton Roads folks who are members, there are members from
all over the U.S. and a couple from overseas as well]
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.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why "a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v. Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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