Regarding Law – In What Respect?

 

As befits, I suppose, a minister on vacation, I want to blog just briefly about something that, at least as I begin, seems to have little relevance to a blog on Interfaith.  The rule of law.  The idea that none of us should be above it.

 

Perhaps I can quote one of my favorite plays, “A Man for All Seasons.”  In the play, Sir Thomas More believes in the law.  He believes in it every bit as much as he believes in his need to act in good conscience. 

 

Thomas is accused by his son-in-law, Roper, of being too partial to the law

 

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

 

Thomas: Yes.  What would you do?  Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

 

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

 

Thomas: Oh?  And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?  This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?  Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.

 

What scares, shocks and frankly depresses me, is that our own country has cut a great road through the law to get at what it sees as the Devil: terrorists.  Many people blame the president and his supporters and perhaps even the Republicans as a whole.  But what about the Democrats who either stood meekly by and did nothing, or actually voted to enable this cutting of “a great road through the law to get after the Devil”?

 

Torture is redefined so it isn’t torture and is therefore somehow legal.  People are kept in endless imprisonment without trial.  People’s privacy is invaded and then a bipartisan group of Senators and Congressional Representatives grant immunity to those who participated.

 

I have long believed and stated out loud that our Constitution, in and of itself, is meaningless.  If a piece of paper were all it took, the people of the Soviet Union would have been among the freest in the world.  It is NOT the piece of paper that protects us.  It is our willingness to be bound by it.  Bound by it even when we disagree.  Bound by it even when we’d much rather do something else.

 

I had little expectation that John McCain, war hero and patriot though he is, would ever stand up and commit himself to the rule of law.  But I had hoped that Barack Obama would.  After his vote to give immunity to the telecoms for possibly breaking the law, I begin to doubt.

 

The current administration has broken both the spirit and the letter of the law so many times.  I leave it to others to quibble about motivations.  Here I will take the administration at its word: that the motivation was to “get at the Devil.”  What are we to do about it?  Don’t we realize that the very foundation stones of this country are being eroded?

 

But there is still time.  I would ask BOTH Senator McCain and Senator Obama to make a major and defining speech about the rule of law.

 

I want to hear from both of them, or at least one of them, that cutting a great swath through our laws to get at the Devil does NOT protect us.  Indeed, it will leave us defenseless.

 

I would beg anyone who reads this to ask of both candidates, “Where do you stand on the rule of law?”  And please don’t accept simple bromides.  I’d also ask that you spread this blog as far as you can. 

 

We can’t pretend that the damage hasn’t been done.  If we just “move on,” the laws that have been flattened will remain flattened.  And the path to our destruction will be that much easier for man or Devil to walk.

 

(edited for two typos from the first posting)

Gone Fishing

 

It had to happen.  My mind seems to have gone on vacation.  So here’s the thing.  For the next month I’ve graciously given myself permission to kick back a little.  I may write a blog on Fridays.  I may not.  Feel free to check back and see. 

 

I will be back to writing regularly come August 8^th and thereafter. 

 

May that which keeps you on the path of love and compassion cradle you with warmth and fulfillment. 

Of Faith and Freedom

 

On this Fourth of July, allow me to become ever so slightly political.   I once chaired a symposium on the separation of church and state and gave a paper on the subject.  There are plenty of arguments about the issue.  For me, one key is that we are talking about a separation of church and state, not faith and state.  What concerned the founders, particularly Madison and Jefferson, was not that a person of faith would hold office, but rather that one particular faith, a church, would become dominant.  Against this threat, Jefferson hoped that a “wall of separation” had been placed between church and state.

 

The Bill of Rights is often quoted as the foundation of this “wall of separation."  But in truth it is only a part of it.  The so-called “establishment clause” is one attempt to guarantee separation.  The other is Article VI, Section 3.  “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”  Indeed there was great outrage from some, who argued against adopting the Constitution for the very reason that this Article would allow Catholics and Jews to hold office!  At that time several states had laws prohibiting any but a Protestant from holding office. What the Bill of Rights did was broaden the “no religious test” for holding office specified by Article Six to say not only will there be no test for holding office, but that the government will take no part in the “establishment” of any one particular religion over another. 

 

So today, the idea of bringing various religions (the plural here is crucial) into the conversation and partnership with government regarding feeding the hungry, as example, is in my mind in no way foreign to what the founders both envisioned and acted upon in their own lives.  It is when a preference is shown by government, and by extension by any faith based organization that receives government support, that a problem arises.  Therefore, I personally have no quarrel with government support of a faith based program that address issues such as hunger, or homelessness, as long as it includes the demand of an absence of proselytizing and any religious test to receive aid.

 

Indeed, I would go a step further.  I believe we are all informed by whatever faith we hold and that it is helpful for all politicians to be up front with who they are, and that includes how their faiths inform them.

 

But I would like to get passed that and to what is to me the core question.  If your faith, whatever it may be, says that people should not go hungry, what do you intend to do about it?  If your faith, whatever it may be, says that no one should go without proper health care, what do you intend to do about it?

 

This is what we ought to be talking about.  I really don’t care if a candidate is Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Atheist, Buddhist or of any other spiritual path.  What I do want to know is, how does that candidate interpret her/his faith’s response to hunger, to illness, to protecting our children and our seniors?  And once the candidate articulates that response, what is the candidate going to do about it?

 

Are we aware, as a people, that we are only now starting a real national conversation on health care?  Do we realize that, for all the “wars” on poverty, there has been no national conversation on hunger?  Do we understand that there has been no national conversation on homelessness?  Whatever our faith, how do we justify the existence of what John Edwards has rightly called “the Two Americas”?

 

Personally, I want to know what a candidate’s faith teaches him/her about these issues.  And then, based on those teachings, I want to know what is the candidate going to do about it.  And if a candidate professes a particular faith, and if that candidate then is perfectly happy to ignore the teachings of her/his faith, I want to know that too.

 

Faith not only has a role in politics, it has a crucial role.  But that role is NOT which faith a candidate practices.  It is rather how that candidate practices the faith of his/her choice.  I hope to hear more about faith in politics, not less.  But I want to hear the substance of it.  And it seems to me we get far too easily sidetracked with simply the labels.  Is he a “Muslim” or “Christian”?  Is she a “Buddhist” or “Jew”?  Labels are diversions.  We ought to demand more than that.

 

Happy Fourth of July, whatever your spiritual path may be.