Op. Cit.

January/February 1998 Mystery Passage

I found your article "Justice Kennedy's Mystery Passage" (July/August), to be quite fascinating. It was at least as fascinating as those various excursions in the past when, as you put it, jurisprudence gives way to metaphysics.
To me, the stand-out example was Judge Brevard Hand's ruling that, in essence, declared "secular humanism" to be the equivalent of a religious belief. It may be commonplace to say that a belief in evolution is as much an act of faith as a belief in creation, but before Hand's ruling I don't know of any judge who tried to get away with saying (in effect): "A lack of religion constitutes religion."
Robert Bork's criticism of Justice Kennedy's quote, referring to it as "New Age jurisprudence," is particularly telling. One wonders what he would make of the following statement: "Belief does not mean any formula of faith one utters but the notions one has in one's mind, and the conviction that reality corresponds to those particular notions."
It would be inaccurate to describe the passage as being New Age because it's really rather old. It's from The Guide of the Perplexed by Maimonides, Book I, chapter 50, which was published more than 800 years ago.
DANIEL J. DRAZEN
via the INTERNET

More Mystery Passages

Recent articles in Liberty on the issue of separation of church and state have only served to generate conflict instead of understanding. At times, hostility has overturned the subject to transcend the author's intent. And no author has addressed the polarization of thought surrounding church and state as a subject itself.
All spiritual debate is fueled by an anxiety that our whole existence, identity, and character are being threatened passions run deep. Small wonder this nation is drowning in unreconciled divided opinion, unable to solve real problems, unable to reach agreement, both sides claiming that the other should "do it my way," while supporting their arguments with the ideal of separation of church and state.
We need to remember the wisdom of Solomon who wrote: "A wise man who speaks his mind calmly is more to be heeded than a commander shouting orders among fools" (Ecclesiastes 9:16, NEB).

Law Review

In your July/August issue a law professor wrote an excellent article about the free exercise of religion: whether bigamy, animal sacrifice, the use of peyote, and such are constitutionally protected against legislation enacted to regulate public safety and morals. The author had a hard time trying to make sense of the judicial decisions, and so would anybody who had studied what the courts have said or tried to say on these things.
It is absolutely clear that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment was designed to express the thought in the sixteenth article of the Virginia Bill of Rights of 1776, in the same way that the Establishment Clause reflects the principles of the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom.
The sixteenth article declares "That religion, or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other."
Now, who will say that this important guarantee of civil liberty establishes a purely secular government for the United States? And where, in all our judicial pronouncements on free exercise of religion, is there a consistent and conscientious effort to apply the foregoing principle so beautifully expressed?
JOHN REMINGTON GRAHAM, Attorney
Brainerd, Minnesota

More Persecution

I don't know where you found the ostrich who wrote the Iambs and Pentameters on pages 4 and 5 of your July/August issue. Whoever it is should get their head out of the sand and stop to reflect on what's happening in this country.
I just read a letter from the wife of a Christian minister who is being persecuted and probably will be fired from his job as a firefighter because he dared to say that homosexuals were violating God's law. This is not an unusual situation in today's society.
All the First Amendment guarantees is the right of people to speak about religious matters on an equal footing. The question is, do you believe in the right of free expression for all persons or do you believe that this right should be limited only to those who conform to the government's view of what is politically correct. If the latter is the criteria, which it now seems to be, then the First Amendment's constitutional rights of free expression are limited only to those who speak what the government wants to hear and the rest of us, including Christians who dare to speak out, have lost not only their right to speak freely, but the right to proselyte others. Both rights are fundamental and protected by the Constitution, if properly interpreted. If the Constitution is not going to be properly interpreted, then it would seem that the proposed amendment is necessary.
Your limited view of the right of free speech seems to favor the humanist view of things, which in the end will deprive us not only of free speech, but of liberty, which the title of your magazine, but not your rhetoric, seems to suggest is important.
RALPH J. GINES, Attorney
Boise, Idaho

School Prayer Legislation

The school prayer movement presents a challenge for our Christian faith. On the surface, it does not seem like a bad idea, but can any of us really make someone pray or tell them that they must pray? Are Pat Robertson and other Christian, right-wing, political advocates telling me that I have a duty to force prayer on other people? Training children in Christian prayer is the responsibility of parents and church elders, not the state.
Historically, government and school officials set an example by public prayer. Many of us were raised as children and taught to admire school officials as examples of Christian character. School officials and teachers were expected to be knowledgeable in moral conduct and what constituted Christian character, and were held up to us as exemplars. We now live in a society where permissive behavior, promiscuous behavior, and immoral conduct by school officials and teachers is tolerated, as long as it does not occur while on school time. How can we make someone who does not uphold Christian values lead our children in prayer?
Finally, mandatory prayer may create schools that become temples, like the Roman Pantheon. Early Christians were drawn together by the threat of persecution, and the separated by the pagan compromise of Pantheism. Insisting that everyone of multiple religions, with multiple names for God, join together in prayer, is pantheism. Participation in pantheism will not improve a child's Christian faith.
SCOTT L. MITZNER, Attorney
Westmont, Illinois

"How Soon We Forget"

It is sad that Americans like Pat Buchanan display ignorance on the history of religious liberty in the United States (Iambs and Pentameters, July/August). Buchanan's apparent unawareness that there are different versions of the Ten Commandments as he boldly supports Etowah County circuit court judge Roy Moore (who insists on posting the Ten Commandments in his courtroom), only reflect his lack of understanding the Constitution's clear statements on the separation of church and state.
It should be remembered that in 1981, the Supreme Court of Kentucky ruled against a Kentucky law requiring posting of the Decalogue in the public school classrooms. After the law was passed, the state found that Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish leaders could not agree on a common wording or even numbering of the Commandments.
Judge Moore's defenders, besides Buchanan, include Ralph Reed, executive director of the Christian Coalition, and Alan Keyes of the Declaration Foundation, who like Buchanan, is a devout Roman Catholic.
The Protestant Bible's second commandment condemns the making of images and bowing down to them whereas the Catholic catechism omits the second commandment and splits the Protestant tenth commandment into (9) "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife," and (10) "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's goods."
Pat Buchanan is correct in saying that the Ten Commandments is a religious document and undoubtedly "they served as the basis upon which we built much of our early civil code and public life." But when he asks, "Who is to tell us they cannot serve so again," how would such a theological controversy be settled? Should the state be allowed to decide? Should it be the decision of the majority (i.e., Catholics in Massachusetts, Protestants in South Carolina)? Would Buchanan, Reed, and Keyes agree to such a ruling?
Buchanan has forgotten that Jefferson's 1786 Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom says that "no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever." Surely the majority of Americans, and no doubt Buchanan, who during his involvement in the Reagan administration advocated less government intervention in the lives of the American people, do not want the government involved in settling theological disputes of any kind. This is exactly why the United States Supreme Court was right, during the 1960s, in declaring prayer in the public schools as unconstitutional. Surely no American who believes in religious freedom wants government-mandated, government-sponsored, government-regimented group prayer.
I pray that the supreme court of Alabama will rule against Judge Roy Moore and force him to remove the Protestant version of the Ten Commandments an affront to Jews and Catholics from his courtroom wall.
JOHN CLUBINE
Ontario, Canada