(Return to my home page) : Blog Home : January 2007
Congressman violates oath
January 8, 2007 09:37
Recently we have had a clear case of one congressman opposing another and, in protesting the way his new colleague took his oath, actually violated the same oath that he himself had taken. I am referring, of course, to the views expressed by Virgil Goode about the use of the Qur'an by Keith Ellison in taking his oath as a newly-elected member of the House of Representatives. The oath that each man took begins:
"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same..."
Yet Rep. Goode must be judged to be bad (or would it be badde?) as far as upholding this oath is concerned. Goode is clearly unwilling to uphold both the first amendment, which guarantees freedom of religion, and article VI, which prohibits a requirement with respect to religion for holders of elected office. Goode claims to be upholding the 'Judeo-Christian values' on which this country is based. Alas, like so many Americans, Goode has clearly read little of the Founding Fathers, or only knows them through selective citations provided by D. James Kennedy or others who maintain against all the evidence to the contrary that the Founding Fathers intended our nation to be a Christian one.
For all such people, I recommend that they read Brooke Allen's book Moral Minority. It provides detailed discussion and extensive quotations from the Founding Fathers in their original context (both literary and historical). What they show is that, while certainly many were Christians, they were all different sorts of Christians, and many others were either Deists or Unitarians or held other views that modern proponents of the "Christian Nation" myth would adamantly oppose and would outright deny to be Christian views. George Washington (who did not make his views at all obvious through his public statements) certainly was no religious exclusivist: he wrote in a letter to the Cherokees "I now send my best wishes to the Cherokees, and pray the Great spirit to preserve them".
Christians in our time like Rep. Goode have lost sight of the significance of the response of Christians in early America who were sick of being persecuted by other Christians. They preferred a Deist like Thomas Jefferson who was happy to leave them alone, to someone who had a particular religious axe to grind and would try to impose his views on them. Here is how Thomas Paine described what he heard from some Baptist ministers:
"When I was in Connecticut the summer before last, I fell in company with some Baptists among whom were three ministers. The conversation turned on the election for President, and one of them who appeared to be a leading man said, 'They cry out against Mr. Jefferson because they say he is a Deist. Well, a Deist may be a good man, and if he think it right, it is right to him. For my own part,' said he, 'I had rather vote for a Deist than for a blue-skin Presbyterian.'"
Because this issue is so important for the preservation of the freedoms we hold dear as Americans, I sent a letter to my own representative in order to encourage her to speak up on this issue:
Dear Rep. Carson,
I am writing as one of your constituents to encourage you to respond to the recent remarks of Rep. Virgil Goode of Virginia, which I believe show him to have violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. The Constitution of our nation was carefully crafted by the Founding Fathers not (as Goode claims) to uphold what he calls "Judeo-Christian values", but precisely to prevent those with one particular form or another of those values from imposing them on others. Goode has shown himself unwilling to uphold both article VI (which prohibits a religious test for office holders) and the First Amendment (which guarantees freedom of religion, and not just freedom for the "Judeo-Christian tradition"). It seems to me personally that, in violating his oath, he has forfeited his position as a member of the House of Representatives and (assuming an ethics inquiry reaches the same conclusion) should be required to step down. At the very least, however, I hope that you will speak up courageously against Rep. Goode, and thereby uphold the Constitution which, precisely be not imposing "Judeo-Christian values" on everyone, has upheld the right of our diverse nation's religious believers (including first and foremost its majority of Christians) to worship in their different ways in freedom.
Sincerely,
Dr. James F. McGrath
Assistant Professor of Religion
Butler University
I can hardly conclude this entry without pointing out that Goode, in addition to violating his oath, also spouts absolute nonsense. What does the issue of immigration have to do with the election of an American-born convert to Islam? Let me, however, appropriately give the last word to John Adams, whose response to the rise of fundamentalism in the early 19th century was to express his concern that America, instead of being the most enlightened people, "I fear we Americans shall soon have the character of the silliest people under Heaven." Considering that Adams like most Founding Fathers had serious doubts about the idea of divine revelation, I find his words remarkably prophetic.
Evangelicalism and Environmentalism
January 19, 2007 15:42
It is great to see the tide of Evangelical opinion turning towards a greater openness to the scientific data raising concerns about our environment. I remember as a teenager being influenced by the attitude "there is no use polishing the brass on the Titanic", the analogy being that the world will soon end and is thus a sinking ship. The problem with this approach is, of course, that apocalyptic short-termism might have undermined many valuable Christian projects over the past two millenia. Even for those who maintain that "the end is nigh", this still does not work well as an excuse for squandering resources on the present generation at the expense of future ones. Which do you think God would be more pleased with: Someone who, to be safe, showed concern for future generations that in the end never existed, or someone who presumed the world would end and ignored environmental and other concerns, so that future generations suffered as a result? Someone who cut down a tree on the assumption there would be no future generations and was wrong about it, or someone who planted a tree to benefit future generations and was wrong about it? I hope that even those Evangelicals who are as yet unconvinced by the scientific arguments will nonetheless see the appropriate Christian attitude and apply it to these matters. Christians, I would hope we would all agree, should err on the side of generosity and concern for others rather than on the side of selfishness.