A cause for celebration

By J. Brent Walker

Reflections
July-August 2006

When an editor of a national news magazine and a high ranking American politician get it right when it comes to church and state, it's a cause for celebration—and fodder for a column!

Jon Meacham, author and managing editor of Newsweek, has written a much-ballyhooed book titled American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation. It's a must-read if you have not read it already. Meacham's prose is elegant and his observations trenchant. Rejecting the "tyranny of the present," he traces our history from the founding era with special emphasis on our thinking about the proper relationship between church and state and religion and politics. Although we always have had deep splits and disagreement and bouts with extremism on both sides, Meacham brings a word of good news about America—the "American Gospel"—that "religion shapes the life of the nation without strangling it." He goes on to opine: "Belief in God is central to the country's experience, yet for the broad center, faith is a matter of choice, not coercion and the legacy of the Founding is that the sensible center holds." Meacham concludes that "the balance between the promise of the Declaration of Independence, with its evocation of divine origins and destiny, and the practicalities of the Constitution, with its checks on extremism, remains perhaps the most brilliant American success." (emphasis added) For Meacham, therefore, the American Gospel tolerates what Benjamin Franklin called a "public religion," without privileging any religious tradition, including Christianity. In the final analysis, the Founders wanted to ensure religious liberty for all, not ensconce the religious views of a few.

Buddy Shurden might be right in his observation that Meacham is a little too sanguine in his confidence that the sensible center will hold (theocratic forces are formidable foes) and a bit too dualistic in his pitting religion against secularism (ignoring an awaking progressive religious agenda). However, Meacham's work, and his public interpretation of it on radio, television and newsprint, sheds much light on the contemporary playing out of our church-state heritage.

In July Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., delivered a speech in Washington, D.C., that may have been, in the estimation of columnist E.J. Dionne, "the most important pronouncement by a Democrat on faith and politics since John F. Kennedy's Houston speech in 1960 declaring his independence from the Vatican." (You may read the speech at www.obama.senate.gov/speech under "Call to Renewal" keynote address.)

Sen. Obama argued forcefully that religious ethics may inform public policy, as long as the "religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values." He calls on both sides of the debate to come together and to accept some ground rules for collaboration. He challenges leaders of the religious right "to understand the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving ... the robustness of our religious practice. ... [T]hat during our founding, it wasn't the atheists ... who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland ... who did not want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith ... . Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers. And even if we did have only Christians ... , whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson's, or Al Sharpton's? Which passage of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shell fish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick with the Sermon on the Mount—a passage so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application?"

Sen. Obama concluded by calling for common sense in reconciling our differences, particularly on Establishment Clause matters. As I also have often argued, Obama says "a sense of proportion should guide those who police the boundaries between church and state." Along with Meacham, Sen. Obama would allow a measure "public religion" or "civil religion," noting that "not every mention of God in public is a breech of the wall of separation. Context matters."

I spend a lot time criticizing misbegotten views of others on church and state. It feels good to be able to pat on the back two important voices in our national debate who essentially get it right. Mr. Meacham is an Episcopalian; Sen. Obama is a member of the United Church of Christ. But they think and talk in a way that shows a close kinship with Baptists in the Roger Williams-John Leland-Baptist Joint Committee tradition. A cause for celebration, indeed.