Walker: Beware of the top 10
http://www.baptiststandard.com/postnuke/index.php?module=htmlpages&func=display&pid=4803
Dallas Baptist Standard - Dallas,TX,USA
By Marv Knox
Editor
ABILENE—Americans are besieged by lies about the relationship of church and
state, Brent Walker insisted during the Maston Christian Ethics Lectures at
Hardin-Simmons University’s Logsdon School of Theology, April 10-11.
“The lies I want to talk about are particularly insidious, because … most
of them have at least a grain of truth in them,” said Walker, executive
director of the Washington-based Baptist Joint Committee on Religious
Liberty. “That’s what makes them so hard to answer with a sound bite or a
clever slogan.”
Two kinds of people perpetuate the lies, he said. “People who should know
better” sometimes spread them intentionally, and “well-intentioned souls
who simply have been misled” sometimes repeat them “with a pure heart and
the best of motives.”
Walker cited the “Top 10 lies that we hear about church and state”:
• “Our nation’s founders were born-again, Bible-believing evangelical
Christians, or our founders were Enlightenment rationalists who worshipped
the ‘goddess of reason,’ or our founders were Deists who posited a
watch-maker God and were suspicious of religious ‘enthusiasms.’”
Generalizing about the founding fathers is difficult and dangerous, Walker
said.
“Some were orthodox Christians, some were rationalists, yes, some were
deists, and even an atheist or two thrown in,” he said. “We must
acknowledge that, although most of them came out of a Christian heritage
and tradition, our founders were a mixed lot when it came to their
religion. But we can say with confidence that they were committed to
ensuring religious liberty rather than enshrining their own particular
religious opinions.”
• “We don’t have a separation of church and state in America because those
words are not in the Constitution.”
“True, the words are not there, but the principle surely is,” he said.
Similarly, the words “federalism,” “separation of powers” and “right to a
fair trial” are not in Constitution, but those ideas are represented there.
Some critics have played down Thomas Jefferson’s use of the phrase “wall of
separation” to describe the appropriate relationship of church and state.
But Walker pointed out that James Madison, “the father of our
Constitution,” wrote, “The number, the industry and the morality of the
priesthood and the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by
the total separation of church and state.”
• “The separation of church and state comes from mid-19th century
anti-Catholic bigotry and 20th century secularism.”
“This is simply not the case,” Walker insisted.
He acknowledged some separationists may have take up the cause “with
less-than-honorable motives,” but the rationale of most separationists has
“nothing to do with anti-Catholicism.”
“The concept of church-state separation preceded the 19th century,” he
said, adding, “Many—including my Baptist ancestors—insisted upon separation
to protect religion, all religions, from the coercive and corrosive
influences of government.”
• “The United States is a Christian nation.”
“This is a whopper!” he contended. “The United States of America is not a
Christian nation—in law or in fact.”
Although no one can deny the nature of Americans as a religious people, the
Constitution is a secular document, he said.
“We do not have a Christian theocracy,” Walker explained. “We have a
constitutional democracy in which all religious beliefs are protected.
“And that’s good. The same Constitution that refuses to privilege any
religion, including Christianity, protects the rights of Christians to
proclaim the gospel to all who will listen. As a result, paradoxically
enough, we are a nation of Christians because we are not a Christian
nation.”
• “Church-state separation only keeps the government from setting up a
single national church or showing preference among denominations or faith
groups, but not from aiding all religions on a nonpreferential basis.”
Although an early draft of the First Amendment singled out the banning of a
national religion, Congress repeatedly declined to narrow the scope of the
amendment, he said.
“The founders adopted a much more expansive amendment to keep the new
federal government from making laws even ‘respecting an establishment of
religion,’” he added. “They did not merely want to keep the federal
government from setting up an official national church or to ban
denominational discrimination.”
• “The First Amendment only applies to the federal government, not to the
states.”
While the Bill of Rights—of which the First Amendment is a part—originally
applied only to the federal government, the 14th Amendment has been
interpreted “to ‘incorporate’ most of the Bill of Rights and apply those
provisions to the states,” Walker said.
• “The Ten Commandments form the basis of our legal system.”
Only three Commandments—prohibitions against killing, stealing and bearing
false witness—“are the proper subjects of secular law,” he observed, noting
the other seven are religious.
“Remember, American law is based on the common law of England,” he added.
“But these prohibitions were already a part of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence
before England was Christianized.”
Also, numerous documents that influenced the U.S. legal system “say very
little about religion and nothing about the Ten Commandments,” he said.
• “God has been kicked out of the public schools.”
“What a thing to say—to presume that Almighty God can be kicked out of
anywhere,” Walker retorted. “No, as James Dunn (former executive director
of the Baptist Joint Committee) is wont to say, ‘God has a perfect
attendance record.’
“It is only state-sponsored religion that has been banned from the public
schools. Voluntary student religious expression is not only not prohibited,
it is protected—as long as it does not disrupt the educational process and
respects other students’ rights not to participate.”
Numerous religious activities are permitted in public schools “from
voluntary prayer, to teaching about religion, to studying religious
holidays, to Bible clubs before and after school, to religious attire,” he
reported.
• “God has been kicked out of the public square.”
“This is also a big lie,” Walker stressed. “The institutional separation of
church and state does not mean a segregation of religion from politics or
God from government or the right of people of faith to speak forcefully in
the public square.”
In fact, “religious speech in public places is commonplace,” he said,
citing a litany of places and occasions where religion is practiced or
displayed in public.
“Candidates for (political) office can and do talk freely about their
religious beliefs and allow them to influence their stance on public
policy, as long as the policy outcomes or government regulations have some
secular justification,” he said. “… No, we do not have a ‘naked public
square,’ as some have suggested. I’d say it’s dressed to the nines.”
• “The Baptist Joint Committee cares more about ‘No Establishment’ than it
does ‘Free Exercise,’” the two religion clauses of the First Amendment.
“This is not true,” Walker said, buttressing his claim with several
examples of how the Baptist Joint committee has supported the free exercise
of religion.
“For 70 years, the Baptist Joint Committee has pursued what most think is a
balanced, sensibly centrist position on church-state issues, affirming both
clauses in the Fist Amendment as essential to guarantee our God-given
religious freedom. …
“Full-blown, well-rounded religious liberty depends on the enforcement of
both of these clauses, and that’s what we try to do every day.”
News of religion, faith, missions, Bible study and Christian ministry among
Texas Baptist churches, in the BGCT, the Southern Baptist Convention ( SBC
) and around the world.
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You are invited to check out the following:
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 US 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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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
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THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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