Hey stupid. Did you get that from your super-secret, classified government sources that no one else has access to?
A New American Holy War
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Take this nation back for Christ: the phrase echoes the language of Jerry Falwell, who was against ministers' mixing in politics when the subject was civil rights but changed his mind after the Roe decision in 1973. In a Moral Majority report, Falwell's organization urged "an old-fashioned, God-honoring, Christ-exalting revival to turn America back to God." Such talk was precisely what the Founders had hoped to avoid.
In truth, the separation of church and state—including a constitutional prohibition against a religious test for federal office—was essential to them, but they also understood that religion and politics were always going to be mixed up together. The critical thing was to manage this human reality, to minimize its ill effects and make the most of the possible good it could do. Led by Madison, the Founders were determined to make religion one of the many contending forces in the republican arena—forces that would check and balance one another.
The alternatives were—and are—bleak. To try to banish faith altogether would fail, for the religious would become martyrs, and religious belief is a perennial force in human affairs. ("All men," said Homer, "need the gods.") And to give faith a dominant role risked repeating the gloomy experience of the Old World and the worst parts of our Colonial history, a history checkered by theocracy and persecution from Jamestown to Massachusetts Bay.
Taken all in all, religion, like commerce and nationalism and so much else in history, has had its bright and dark hours. In 1808, Jacob Henry, a Jewish-American, was elected to the state legislature of North Carolina, which refused to seat him unless he was (a) a Protestant and (b) conceded the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. Here is what Henry said to them: "Governments only concern the actions and conduct of man, and not his speculative notions. Who among us feels himself so exalted above his fellows as to have a right to dictate to them any mode of belief?"
Too many people do feel so exalted, which is why religious believers, who far outnumber those who do not believe, have a special obligation to be humble and gracious and respectful. John Jay, the chief justice and a warden of Trinity Church Wall Street in New York, was a devout Anglican, but he firmly understood what America was to be about: "Real Christians," he said, "will abstain from violating the rights of others." Or better yet, real Americans will abstain from violating those rights.
Last Thursday morning, his speech done, Romney and his family had a short visit with the Bushes, and then took their leave. The governor had closed his remarks with the image of the Continental Congress at prayer in Carpenters' Hall in Philadelphia amid what John Adams called "the horrible rumor of the cannonade of Boston." The delegates had argued over whether those of different denominations could pray together, but they were brought together when Sam Adams announced that he was "no bigot, and could hear a prayer from a gentleman of piety and virtue who was at the same time a friend to his country." An Episcopal priest was summoned, and read the psalm assigned for the day: "Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me; fight against them that fight against me." Back in Iowa, at war, one suspects it is a prayer that resonates with Romney.
With Sarah Kliff
© 2007
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