A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on September 3rd, 2008 in General

Mike Zemack was kind enough to post a thoughtful commentary on one of my posts at NJ Voices. Though his answer is almost two months old, I’d like to respond to it here – because, like all too many bloggers, he uses blogspot and won’t allow anonymous commenting (the only reason the anonymous commenting is necessary is because I really can’t remember my blogspot password and such and don’t really feel like going through the trouble to have it sent to me again).

My original post took a State Senator to task for trying to sneak Creationism in through requiring a fraction of the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence to be quoted by schoolchildren every day. I suggested the entire Preamble be used, instead of the sentence or two that refers to “Creator” and “Created”.

Mike writes:

However, I couldn’t disagree more concerning Mr. Hart’s assertion that the highlighted part of the preamble is “the truly revolutionary part of the document.” Not to diminish this part’s historical importance, but the first, un-highlighted lines are the core of the American Revolution. Never before had a nation been founded on the moral premise of the supreme value of the individual possessing inalienable rights, with the government’s role as protector of those rights, as opposed to being his ruler. It is the first part that validates the second.

It is certainly true that the Declaration marks out the first time in human history that a nation was created specifically by calling upon innate rights of all human beings to do so. Sort of. The Magna Carta is a document that creates a new country of England where the subjects of the King shall have rights that not even the King can violate. The Declaration is a natural progression in moving beyond the need to have the King’s permission to claim rights – so Mike Zemack is right about that revolutionary nature of the Declaration.

But the fact is that the colonists had already claimed the rights granted by the Magna Carta as Englishmen. They had been rebuffed. The King’s position, buttressed by a willing Parliament, was that the rights of the Magna Carta simply did not reach to the colonies. Since the colonies were a subservient political entity of England, so the citizens of the colonies could not claim full English rights. So while the source of the claimed rights is revolutionary – they are inherent, not granted by a King – that these rights were granted to individuals is not revolutionary, nor even the idea that the government’s primary responsibility was to protect these rights.

This statement of rights would have raised eyebrows – who says they must not go through the King to claim these rights? But the existence of the rights is simply stated so it can be shown that the King has not lived up to his part of the bargain. The revolutionary part of the document begins with the bold assertion that the colonists need not bide their time and hope for a more charitable monarch, but that the claim of their rights gives them a further right – the right to create a new government and sever the bonds that bind them to the English monarch. It is not so much that the first part validates the second as that the second part provides an application for the first.

As far as the separation of church and state go, however, I think we are in full agreement – and I think that is more important that quibbling over which part of the Declaration means what. Even if I love to do things like that.

Mike goes on to take to task one of the commenters on the original piece. He does a good job answering this tripe:

Didn’t the veterans’ bill after WWII smash this separation of church and state concept to smithereens?

Massive federal money went from the feds to every religious college that wanted it, and is still going there.

Mike does a bang-up job on this:

The “wall” does not, however, mean atheistic government. The intellectual package-deal implied in that idea sets up a false alternative. And this goes straight to the heart of those words in the Declaration that the senator wants recited in schools. The choice is not between atheistic government and religious (Christian, Islamic, or any other) government. The choice is between either a government with the power to impose a particular set of beliefs on its people, or a government that protects the right of its individual citizens to hold and act upon his own beliefs and judgements, free from coercive interference by others.

Veterans earn their educational benefits with their service. It is their right to use those benefits as they see fit – even if it means studying anarchist philosophy to justify destroying the government they once served. Even if it means studying the Bible, the Koran, or whatever scripture they want to study. Is the government promoting religion by allowing a veteran to study religion? No, they are promoting higher education. The veteran is choosing the field. That’s the end of that. Think of it the other way around – if a veteran wants to use his or her benefits to study religion, would a neutral government stop it? It hardly seems so.

There is one thing later in another response that I will always take exception at:

The Constitution guarantees everyone freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.

I really hate this statement. It’s pretty well non-sensical. It’s as non-sensical as saying “You have freedom OF speech, not freedom FROM speech.” A better statement is that you have the right to exercise your faith so long as it doesn’t interfere with my right to exercise mine – or to not exercise mine. That’s the same thing as any other right. George Washington, by all accounts, was very careful not to leave written records of his thoughts on religion. Thomas Jefferson was downright hostile to it at times.

The commenter then gives bad information:

A particularly repugnant example of statist destruction of a religion is the New York Court’s decision to force Catholic hospitals to pay for abortion coverage for their employees

This is not technically true. The New York Court said that if Catholic hospitals bought insurance in the state of New York then they had to abide by the state mandated guidelines. However, Catholic hospitals are free to escape those state mandates by paying for health benefits entirely out of their own pocket – to eschew an insurance company and simply pay medical expenses. This is not a violation of the Constitution but rather a correct interpretation of it – churches are not above the law. Of course, this does not change even if the church doctrine says the law is wrong. It only puts adherents in a moral bind.

Zemack centers his argument on the status of the Declaration as a foundational document, even if it does not carry the weight of law. Again, I find myself agreeing more than disagreeing.

Anyway, I appreciate the time and effort Mike Zemack put into his writing. I hope he views this as encouragement for more of the same. I don’t always agree with him, but that’s why America is great, and strong.

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