September/October 2000

Play it Again, Sam

The young woman walks down a sidewalk toward the downtown abortion clinic. Her head is down, her eyes are focused on the pavement, and her heart is pounding with apprehension. Then, as she approaches the clinic entrance, a grandmotherly woman steps forward and says, "I know why you came here, but you don't have to do it. Your baby wants to live."

Is this counseling? Or is it harassment?

"If people who claim to follow Jesus are to act as rocks in the midst of swirling change--if they are to bring eternal perspectives to shifting debates--they must be sure of their identity, which is not rooted in politics or the power games of this world. And, by the way, that identity is not only about knowing who they are, but what the wider culture thinks when looking at them. Are they known for "loving one another" and obeying the commands of Jesus, or are they known as petitioners in the corridors of power, standing no higher than others with grievances they seek to have addressed by the state?

We live in an era of change. So many of the assumptions of the past have been swept away, and it is increasingly easy to question such once-settled principles as the separation of church and state. After all, some reason, if we are to remain more than a nominally Christian society, it might be necessary to use the power of the state to reinforce morality. Liberty magazine has not changed in its principled enunciation of the separation of powers, as this excerpt from April 1906 shows. Editors, 2000.

The maturing of a religiopolitical movement.

The cable television talk show featured a heated debate over vouchers for religious schools. Cohost Pat Buchanan, an aggressive voucher advocate, was insisting that taxpayer- financed tuition at private religious schools would be the ideal solution for everyone involved in the process of reforming the educational system--kids would be exposed to religion and get a better education, families would feel safer, and public schools would improve because of the increased competition.

To cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality toward belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude foreign intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender our own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves, and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the Union of the States as the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the Constitution, which is the cement of the Union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the States and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and essential to the success of, the general system; to avoid the slightest interference with the right of conscience or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy the other salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press.
-James Madison, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1809.

"I thought he was a good Christian man," said one woman.

"I knew him through church," explained a man who lost his $119,000 IRA. "He seemed honest and smart, and had lots of assets and a happy family."

"He was a pillar in the church and the community," agreed the woman, who with her husband lost $123,000, 80 percent of their retirement funds. "He was a success."

"If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the constitution framed in the convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it; and, if I could now conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution."

--George Washington, in a letter sent in response to an address of the General Committee of the United Baptist Churches in Virginia, May 1789.