John Whitehead's Commentary
The Ten Commandments: The Role of Religion in Modern Society
The United States Supreme Court will soon be deciding two cases, one in Kentucky and the other in Texas, on whether it is a violation of the U.S. Constitution for the government to post the Ten Commandments on public property. While the courts and academics will be embroiled in the various arguments concerning this issue, these cases are about much more than mere legal theories. The real issue is the role of religion in American public life. Indeed, as reflected in the last presidential election, it is one of the most pressing issues of the day.
In terms of the Constitution, religious people have a right to take positions and to express them in politics or anywhere else. They have a right to use the electoral process to seek political change. As a matter of government structure, religious groups and influences should be given the same opportunities and access as any other group or influence.
Through the First Amendment, people are guaranteed religious freedom in the United States, irrespective of creed or denomination. This includes not only the free exercise of religion but also the freedom of religious speech, the right to religious assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of infringements of these freedoms--on the same basis as everyone else. And the First Amendment just as clearly provides for freedom from a state-imposed religion or creed as well as from being compelled to support a state religion or creed.
This means that religious viewpoints are guaranteed full participation in public life, including the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property if it is done in the context of other historical documents that have influenced American law and history--a central issue in the Texas and Kentucky cases.
Religious persons, along with their views, thus, have every right to participate equally in the American system and to try to convince others to support their views. They also have every right to implement such views, as do those who oppose them. This is the genius of the democratic system. However, everyone must operate within constitutional constraints or the American political system will fail.
Religion, it must be remembered, once helped inspire and fuel important American social movements and reforms such as the abolition of slavery, temperance, the advancement of and movements against civil rights, war, nuclear weapons and abortion. However, today there is less agreement about the spiritual contours for modern-day solutions. Presently, there is a spiritual vacuum in the United States--a vacuum which is partially the result of history. The religiously homogenous America of some 200 plus years ago simply no longer exists.
History records that, from those who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower to the modern televangelists, traditional Protestant Christianity has been the dominant religious stream flowing through the American consciousness. Indeed, as historian G. K. Chesterton remarked in 1922, America is "a nation with the soul of a church...the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence."
The "self-evident" truths, as described in the Declaration of Independence, were understood by the Framers of America's founding documents as stemming from traditional Judeo-Christian principles. At the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the American people lived under laws that were either taken directly from the Bible or influenced by it.
Despite some differences in theology, the Framers generally agreed that just laws were God-given, absolute and revealed to human beings through Scripture (such as the Ten Commandments), nature and conscience. Religion, they believed, must be assured access to public processes, as religion was thought to be a requirement for the proper functioning of a nation's political institutions. With these presuppositions, the Framers created institutions they hoped would guarantee freedom as well as justice in America--defined, of course, in Protestant Christian terms.
Today, however, such a consensus no longer reflects what might be called an "American consensus." There are few truths today that are "self-evident" to everyone. A new kind of religious pluralism has replaced them. This pluralism is not composed of divisions along the lines of denomination such as Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc. It is composed of the orthodox, the neo-orthodox and the secularist.
Essentially, "orthodox" believers are the Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who believe that moral authority and meaning transcend humankind and exist prior to and apart from humankind and its understandings. For those believers, moral authority and meaning must, therefore, be revealed by a Creator.
"Neo-orthodoxy" encompasses the idea that contemporary social conditions and institutions--not spiritual or religious shortcomings--have caused modern humanity's problems. This view replaced the idea of an unchanging moral authority with the idea that truth is constantly unfolding and that it may only be discerned through human experience and scientific and expert knowledge. Human good became the best measure of truth and moral authority. Justice no longer meant applying traditional moral principles. It meant economic equity and universal ethical principles derived from universal human experience.
Finally, a third American religious constituency emerged: the secularists, who claim no belief in the supernatural at all. Secularists generally claim human happiness as the sole measure by which to make moral, and thus religious, judgments.
So where does the breakdown of a religiously homogenous nation leave us? It leaves us in the midst of a spiritual vacuum, which the various religious perspectives today seek to fill by trying to dominate the cultural and political processes. In turn, each religious view, with its respective organizations, perceives this struggle for dominance by competing religious views as an all-out assault on its constitutional freedoms in general and on its freedom of religion in particular.
In the end, the question is not whether religion should be permitted a role in politics and culture. The question is what role it should play and why.
The most appropriate role of religion in politics lies in its ability to define moral issues and to provide the transcendent authority for their solutions. Religion provides the moral vision--the moral compass--for society. Whatever its tenets, religion explains the moral significance of social institutions such as family and law and, indeed, government itself. Religion provides the imperative for obedience or resistance to what the state accomplishes and what it orders. Religion can do this most effectively through the individual--and most durably apart from the power of the state.
The individual believer can, as history illustrates, become the moral conscience of a nation at important junctures. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is a good example. King had no political action committee or television show proclaiming that God was demanding submission to his will. Instead, the power of Dr. King's commitment to nonviolence and essential human dignity forever changed the American culture. It was Dr. King's moral conscience that was later reflected in American society through its laws and mores.
While Dr. King the man was entitled by the Constitution to run for office and use the electoral process to seek political victories, Dr. King the reverend understood that only by appealing to a higher law--a moral law--a law beyond the power of the state, would there be any hope of ending racial segregation in this country.
King, and many others, changed history--not through the processes of the state but through the force of supernatural and transcendent moral authority.
The voice of moral authority raised without dependence upon the legitimacy of the state will always be the highest expression of true freedom. Such a voice denies the ultimate authority of the government to create or define right or wrong by its own power. The authority to raise the standards of moral right or wrong is defined by religion and, if consistently practiced, will eventually be reflected in government policies.
As history has shown, state religions are also fatal for the state and its citizens. And statements by evangelical leaders implying that the solution to the perceived problems of modern America is to eliminate, or at least politically suppress, the opposition do little to alleviate concerns about the government establishing a state religion. For example, after labeling Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy "the most dangerous man in America" in a January 2005 fundraising letter, the increasingly politically powerful James Dobson of Focus on the Family proclaims: "If Democrats in the Senate try again to usurp the President's constitutional authority by filibustering...there will be a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea.... Christian and conservative Americans had won a battle, not a war. The enemies of morality will not stop and will not back off."
In light of these statements, it is clear why other competing religious groups have voiced concerns over the merging of the government in the form of the Bush Administration and the power of evangelical religion.
However, demonizing statements like these, although made for political purposes, reduce religion's moral authority to nothing more than manipulation for the sake of political power. Religion no longer serves its true purpose; it becomes just another tool in the politician's toolbox.
In terms of the Constitution, religious people have a right to take positions and to express them in politics or anywhere else. They have a right to use the electoral process to seek political change. As a matter of government structure, religious groups and influences should be given the same opportunities and access as any other group or influence.
Through the First Amendment, people are guaranteed religious freedom in the United States, irrespective of creed or denomination. This includes not only the free exercise of religion but also the freedom of religious speech, the right to religious assembly and the right to petition the government for redress of infringements of these freedoms--on the same basis as everyone else. And the First Amendment just as clearly provides for freedom from a state-imposed religion or creed as well as from being compelled to support a state religion or creed.
This means that religious viewpoints are guaranteed full participation in public life, including the posting of the Ten Commandments on public property if it is done in the context of other historical documents that have influenced American law and history--a central issue in the Texas and Kentucky cases.
Religious persons, along with their views, thus, have every right to participate equally in the American system and to try to convince others to support their views. They also have every right to implement such views, as do those who oppose them. This is the genius of the democratic system. However, everyone must operate within constitutional constraints or the American political system will fail.
Religion, it must be remembered, once helped inspire and fuel important American social movements and reforms such as the abolition of slavery, temperance, the advancement of and movements against civil rights, war, nuclear weapons and abortion. However, today there is less agreement about the spiritual contours for modern-day solutions. Presently, there is a spiritual vacuum in the United States--a vacuum which is partially the result of history. The religiously homogenous America of some 200 plus years ago simply no longer exists.
History records that, from those who crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower to the modern televangelists, traditional Protestant Christianity has been the dominant religious stream flowing through the American consciousness. Indeed, as historian G. K. Chesterton remarked in 1922, America is "a nation with the soul of a church...the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence."
The "self-evident" truths, as described in the Declaration of Independence, were understood by the Framers of America's founding documents as stemming from traditional Judeo-Christian principles. At the time of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the American people lived under laws that were either taken directly from the Bible or influenced by it.
Despite some differences in theology, the Framers generally agreed that just laws were God-given, absolute and revealed to human beings through Scripture (such as the Ten Commandments), nature and conscience. Religion, they believed, must be assured access to public processes, as religion was thought to be a requirement for the proper functioning of a nation's political institutions. With these presuppositions, the Framers created institutions they hoped would guarantee freedom as well as justice in America--defined, of course, in Protestant Christian terms.
Today, however, such a consensus no longer reflects what might be called an "American consensus." There are few truths today that are "self-evident" to everyone. A new kind of religious pluralism has replaced them. This pluralism is not composed of divisions along the lines of denomination such as Protestant, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, etc. It is composed of the orthodox, the neo-orthodox and the secularist.
Essentially, "orthodox" believers are the Christians, Jews, Muslims and others who believe that moral authority and meaning transcend humankind and exist prior to and apart from humankind and its understandings. For those believers, moral authority and meaning must, therefore, be revealed by a Creator.
"Neo-orthodoxy" encompasses the idea that contemporary social conditions and institutions--not spiritual or religious shortcomings--have caused modern humanity's problems. This view replaced the idea of an unchanging moral authority with the idea that truth is constantly unfolding and that it may only be discerned through human experience and scientific and expert knowledge. Human good became the best measure of truth and moral authority. Justice no longer meant applying traditional moral principles. It meant economic equity and universal ethical principles derived from universal human experience.
Finally, a third American religious constituency emerged: the secularists, who claim no belief in the supernatural at all. Secularists generally claim human happiness as the sole measure by which to make moral, and thus religious, judgments.
So where does the breakdown of a religiously homogenous nation leave us? It leaves us in the midst of a spiritual vacuum, which the various religious perspectives today seek to fill by trying to dominate the cultural and political processes. In turn, each religious view, with its respective organizations, perceives this struggle for dominance by competing religious views as an all-out assault on its constitutional freedoms in general and on its freedom of religion in particular.
In the end, the question is not whether religion should be permitted a role in politics and culture. The question is what role it should play and why.
The most appropriate role of religion in politics lies in its ability to define moral issues and to provide the transcendent authority for their solutions. Religion provides the moral vision--the moral compass--for society. Whatever its tenets, religion explains the moral significance of social institutions such as family and law and, indeed, government itself. Religion provides the imperative for obedience or resistance to what the state accomplishes and what it orders. Religion can do this most effectively through the individual--and most durably apart from the power of the state.
The individual believer can, as history illustrates, become the moral conscience of a nation at important junctures. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is a good example. King had no political action committee or television show proclaiming that God was demanding submission to his will. Instead, the power of Dr. King's commitment to nonviolence and essential human dignity forever changed the American culture. It was Dr. King's moral conscience that was later reflected in American society through its laws and mores.
While Dr. King the man was entitled by the Constitution to run for office and use the electoral process to seek political victories, Dr. King the reverend understood that only by appealing to a higher law--a moral law--a law beyond the power of the state, would there be any hope of ending racial segregation in this country.
King, and many others, changed history--not through the processes of the state but through the force of supernatural and transcendent moral authority.
The voice of moral authority raised without dependence upon the legitimacy of the state will always be the highest expression of true freedom. Such a voice denies the ultimate authority of the government to create or define right or wrong by its own power. The authority to raise the standards of moral right or wrong is defined by religion and, if consistently practiced, will eventually be reflected in government policies.
As history has shown, state religions are also fatal for the state and its citizens. And statements by evangelical leaders implying that the solution to the perceived problems of modern America is to eliminate, or at least politically suppress, the opposition do little to alleviate concerns about the government establishing a state religion. For example, after labeling Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy "the most dangerous man in America" in a January 2005 fundraising letter, the increasingly politically powerful James Dobson of Focus on the Family proclaims: "If Democrats in the Senate try again to usurp the President's constitutional authority by filibustering...there will be a battle of enormous proportions from sea to shining sea.... Christian and conservative Americans had won a battle, not a war. The enemies of morality will not stop and will not back off."
In light of these statements, it is clear why other competing religious groups have voiced concerns over the merging of the government in the form of the Bush Administration and the power of evangelical religion.
However, demonizing statements like these, although made for political purposes, reduce religion's moral authority to nothing more than manipulation for the sake of political power. Religion no longer serves its true purpose; it becomes just another tool in the politician's toolbox.
ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at staff@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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