Proclaim Liberty

Proclaim Liberty
Bill Moyers

Last summer America`s oldest human rights institution, the American Jewish Committee, gave its first Religious Liberty Award to one of America`s best known and most widely respected journalists, Bill Moyers. Mr. Moyers` response is reproduced in this issue of Christian Ethics Today with his permission. James Dunn wrote a fine word about this address in his "Reflections" column in the September 19, 1995 edition of Report From the Capital; but the entire statement printed here deserves a careful reading.

Thank you for those generous words of introduction, Mr. Leonard Greenberg. And thanks to all of you for this award. As honesty compels me to confess, it was as unexpected as it is unwarranted by any special merit on my part. No one can spend his adult life in politics and journalism and not be compromised. Even as you were making that extravagant introduction, Mr. Greenberg, I was thinking of the time a young woman came up to me after I had delivered the speech at her college graduation. "Mr. Moyers," she said, "you have been in both journalism and government; that makes everything you say twice as hard to believe."

Nor can I forget on such occasions as this the story I once heard the writer James Michener tell about a true experience in his life. A woman called him and said, "Mr. Michener, our organization would like to honor you as America`s greatest living author." And she went on to give him the time and date for the ceremony. Michener looked at his calendar and then told his caller: "I`m terribly sorry. Sounds like a wonderful award and I`m extremely flattered, but I`ll be in Japan at that time fulfilling a long-standing commitment." There was a pause on the other end of the line. Finally the woman said, "Well, can you think of anyone else who could be the greatest living author?" And Michener told her indeed he could, reeling off the names of Norman Mailer, Reynolds Price, Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and William Styron. "Oh," the woman said, "we know they would be wonderful, but we have already tried them and they couldn`t make it either."

I`m glad I could make it today. But as much as I prize the honor of your recognition, I especially welcome this chance to tell you how important it is that America`s oldest human rights organization has instituted this award in behalf of religious liberty. There could not be a more timely moment for the American Jewish Committee to proclaim once again the rights of conscience as the well-spring of freedom. Your own Jim Rudin is a visionary on these matters, and he sounded the alert two years ago when he predicted that religious liberty would be "the most fevered issue of the 1990s."

Surely no one questions this who heard Patrick Buchanan declare "a holy war" in America or heard the Christian Coalition`s Ralph Reed say that Christians "have got to…take back this country one precinct at a time" until it is "once again governed by Christians and Christian values." The same Ralph Reed whose surrogate in Oklahoma said this spring that "Only [Christians] can restore this nation….Only Christian believers doing their work…in the thick of battle." The same Ralph Reed who has talked of putting his opponents in "body bags."

Holy war. Body bags. Thick of battle. This militant rhetoric has all the earmarks of the crusades launched ten centuries ago in Europe. Those, too, were feverish days when the spirit of religion was infused with toxic zeal aroused by persecuting priests and pious princes, and armed hosts rode forth to rout the "accursed race" of Turks and Arabs whose numbers stretched from Jerusalem to Constantinople. Summoned to war "against the infidels" for the defense of Christ, the crowds responded: "Dieu lo vult! God wills it." In their passion, God rode at the head of their warring columns and Jesus–the teacher Jesus who had talked of loving one`s neighbor and forgiving one`s enemy, who had looked with compassion on the wounded and sick; the shepherd Jesus who had gathered to him the outcast and stranger, the despised and forsaken;

the healing Jesus who had welcomed into his embrace the frightened prostitute, forlorn leper, and hungry beggar; the cosmopolitan Jesus who had called even the tax collector to fellowship–this same Jesus was now yoked to the cause of politics and conquest, of flashing shield and slashing sword.

But that, you say, was an epoch long ago unique to its age, and the fever of militancy in religion has been cooled by time and tolerance, at least in America. Tell it to Charles Schumer. The New York Representative held a special hearing this summer on violence and harassment by militia groups, and his office was deluged with hate calls and faxes, many stamped with the hot fury of religious bigotry. One of those messages came from The United Federation of Aryan Nations. It warned Charles Schumer: "You should make no mistake that you are a conceited, arrogant kike son of a bitch. You will suffer physical pain and mental anguish before we transform you into something a bit more useful….a lamp shade or wallets or perhaps soap."

Tell Arlen Specter these are tame and tolerant times. The moderate Republican Senator from Pennsylvania is running for his party`s nomination for President, with the avowed purpose of saving the Party of Lincoln from extremism. He describes (and I am quoting) "A continuum from Pat Buchanan`s `holy war` to Pat Robertson saying there`s no separation of church and state, to Ralph Reed saying pro-choice candidates can`t be on the Republican ticket, to Randall Terry saying `let a wave of hatred wash over you,` to the guy at Robertson`s law school who says murdering an abortion doctor is justifiable homicide, to the guys who are pulling the triggers." When Senator Specter spoke out against the radical agenda of the religious right at the state Republican convention of Iowa, he was roundly booed and jeered.

So was Thomas Kean when he tried to warn his fellow Republicans against giving control to the ultra-right. The former governor of New Jersey is also an endangered species in his party, a moderate. He announced last week that he would not run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Bill Bradley. His reason was two-fold: the meanness of Washington and the control of the Senate by the radical religious right. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become the parish of Pat Robertson–the same Pat Robertson who said Jews are "spiritually deaf" and "spiritually blind," the same Pat Robertson who compared non-Christians to termites "destroying institutions that have been built by Christians," the same Pat Robertson who called the separation of church and state "a lie of the left" and vowed to dismantle it.

Now I must pause to remind you that Pat Robertson is a Baptist. And so am I. Newt Gingrich is a Baptist. So is Richard Gephardt. So are Bill Clinton and Al Gore Baptists. Jesse Jackson is a Baptist. So is Jesse Helms. At last count there were more than two dozen varieties of Baptists in America. One of my seminary professors compared Baptists to jalapeno peppers; one or two make for a tasty dish, but a whole bunch of them together in one place brings tears to your eyes. What accounts for the great differences among all of us is what we call "the priesthood of the believer." Baptists believe that each and every one of us is free to read and interpret the Bible for ourselves. Study, commentary, cultural conditioning, teacher, preacher, and prayer–these feed the springs of our interpretation, but in the end each of us is left to decode the sacred text according to our own lights. This accounts for the theological chaos that prompted my father, then a deacon in our local church, to say that Cain and Abel must have been the first Baptists, because their rivalry ended in fratricide.

But it is not only in the reading of the Bible that Baptists differ so profoundly. We don`t read history the same, either. Take this notion of the separation of church and state. The Robertson, Reed, and Gingrich crowd lays the moral decline of America at the doorstep of that principle, as if it had kept God waiting offshore like some quarantied refugee denied a visa. Listening to their speeches–and I have listened to scores of them through the years–you realize that they are serious in their belief that we could stop America`s backward slide into barbaric degeneration and moral relativism if we could only bring back the Puritans, who once ruled New England as a theocracy. Newt Gingrich writes admiringly that "the Puritan experience is at the heart of the American cultural tradition." Central to this experience was the notion of a personal commitment and connection to God and a conformity of spirit that would bind all members of the community into a religion and a civic society based on the Bible–as interpreted by themselves Morrison, Leuchtenburg: The Growth of the American Republic]. The Puritans had grown disgusted with the frivolity, extravagance, and moral corruption that pervaded English society and they came to the New World to lead something approaching a New Testament life. "We have entered into a covenant with God `for this work`," their leader John Winthrop told them, "and the Lord will expect a strict performance." Men like Winthrop were disturbed by the prospect of egalitarianism because they believed that God had ordained a hierarchy of classes. When a Puritan synod met in 1679, church leaders expressed their concern not only about the rise of bastard children and the displaying of "abominable, naked breasts," but above all, about the spirit of insubordination of inferiors toward their betters. In particular, the church leaders noted, "Day-Laborers and Mechanics are unreasonable in their demands."

In other words, the "City on a Hill" envisioned by John Winthrop–and often invoked by Ronald Reagan–would be a one-party town, in matters of religion and politics. And the Puritans would be King of the Hill.

Well, I, too, take seriously the notion of a personal commitment and connection to God, and mother warned me early on about "abominable, naked breasts," and I agree that America ought to be a shining example to the world. But let me tell you, my branch of Baptists believes in a free church in a free state, and my spiritual forbears didn`t take kindly to living under a bunch of theocrats who embraced religious liberty for themselves and no one else. "Forced worship stinks in God`s nostrils," said the dissenter Roger Williams as he was banished by the Puritans from Massachusetts for denying their authority over his conscience. Baptists there were only a "pitiful negligible minority" but they drove the Puritans nuts. They were denounced as "the incendiaries of the commonwealth and the infectors of persons in main matters of religion." For refusing tribute to state religion Baptists were fined, flogged, and exiled. In 1651 the Baptist Obadiah Holmes was given thirty stripes with a three-corded whip after he violated the law by taking communion with an elderly and blind Baptist in Lynn, Massachusetts. Holmes refused the offer of friends to pay his fine so that he could be released. They offered him strong drink to anesthetize the pain, but he wouldn`t take it. Sober, he endured the ordeal; sober still, he would one day write: "It is the love of liberty that must free the soul."

So what Robertson, Reed, and Gingrich find as a stumbling block–the constitutional separation of church and state–I see as a touchstone of freedom. Over time and not without struggle, that idea has made of America "a haven for the cause of conscience." It finally checked what Thomas Jefferson called "the loathsome combination of church and state" which had been enforced in the old and new world alike by "weapons of wrath and blood," as human beings were put on the rack or in the stocks and their bodies tormented for failing the salute of orthodoxy. It put an end to the subpoena of conscience by magistrates who ordered citizens to support churches they did not attend and recite creeds they did not believe in.

So the Constitution of the new nation would take no sides in the religious free-for-all that liberty would make possible and human nature would make inevitable. It would neither inculcate nor inoculate against religion. For Baptists of my stripe, this separation of church and state encourages neither atheism nor animosity to religion. No American need be hostile to God to be loyal to the Constitution.

As for Baptists of the other stripe, I find their attitude toward the separation of church and state shot full of contradictions.

They invoke it to protect themselves against encroachment from others but denounce it when it protects others against encroachment from them.

They use it to shelter their own revenues and assets from taxation, but then insist that taxes be paid by others to support private sectarian instruction in pervasively religious schools.

They loathe any government intrusion into their sphere, but are laboring mightily to change federal tax laws so that churches may more easily influence government.

They deplore the coercive powers of the state, except when they would use those very powers to force others to do "the right and moral thing" as they define it.

They stand foursquare behind the First Amendment when they exercise their own right to criticize others–sometimes with a vengeance and often with vitriol, as when Jerry Falwell circulated videos implicating the President of the United States in murder; but when they in turn are challenged or criticized, they whine and complain that they are being attacked as "people of faith." There was Newt Gingrich recently rousing the Christian Coalition to a fever pitch of paranoia by telling them they are victims of "Christian-phobia."

They want it both ways. In the pursuit of power they take no prisoners and give no quarter. But confronted and contradicted, they take refuge in piety and self-pity. They control the Republican Party, the House of Representatives, and the Senate, yet from no corridor of power in their grasp comes the faintest sound of Christian love or mercy, nor a single refrain of healing.

So make no mistake. The language of religion has been placed at the service of a reactionary agenda. As the chairman of the Interfaith Alliance recently warned, God is being invoked to undermine safeguards for public health and the environment…to attack politicians…to censor classroom textbooks…to cut back school breakfast programs, special care for low birth-weight babies and legal aid for indigent defendants…to promote discrimination…and to mislead voters. "Dieu lo vult! God wills it!"

Jonathan Swift got it right:

"But mark me well; Religion is my name;
An angel once; but now a fury grown,
Too often talked of, but too little known."

You will see then the importance of the document: "A Shared Vision." Inspired by Jim Rudin and by his dear friend and mine, James Dunn of the Baptist Joint Committee, this statement of principles on church-state relations offers an alternative to the Christian Coalition`s pinched and dogmatic opinions. More than 80 individuals and six religious and civil liberties organizations–including the American Jewish Committee–have signed on. They are saying in concert: We, too, share a vision of America. We believe religious values and religious speech play critical roles in public life. But we recognize the need for institutional and functional separation of church and state. To us, the First Amendment`s Free Exercise and Establishment clause carry equal weight. They exist side by side in the service of religious liberty. And we say "No!" to those who want to enforce either clause to the detriment of the other or to compromise both clauses to promote their majoritarian values.

We are talking here about the rights of conscience–nothing new to you. The vocation of conscience is one of Judaism`s great gifts. It is to the Hebrew Prophets more than to any others that Western civilization owes its conviction that the future of any people depends in large part on the justice of its social order, and that the social order depends in turn on the free exercise of conscience by people responsible for their decisions and actions. For those prophets, justice was the surest sign of God`s presence. In the midst of a moral desert they spoke words humanity can never forget. They adorn our Liberty Bell in Philadelphia: "Proclaim liberty through the land." They permeate our social compact with visions of "justice rolled down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream." They imprinted in the bedrock of Western civilization the conviction that to be made in the image of God is to be endowed with the moral freedom to choose our own destiny through decisions freely made: "I have set before you life and death. Therefore, choose life." Choice is the first right of conscience.

But of all peoples, Jews know that freedom doesn`t always win. It must be defended by every generation. Baptists, too–some Baptists–also know from experience that the road to freedom has not been open, straight or smooth, and the destination is always elusive. So we are together on this road, you and I. And this was never more real to me than just recently when I was visiting my mother in my home town of Marshall, Texas. On my last evening there I was finishing some errands and wholly by coincidence I drove down Burleson Street and stopped to make a right turn on Fulton.

My eye caught a historical marker standing there, and immediately I remembered: While I was growing up in Marshall there stood on this corner the Temple Moses Montefiore, organized by Jewish residents of the area late in the last century. It was a striking building featuring an elaborate Middle Eastern architecture. But more significant than the building was the witness of the community who worshipped there.

At their height the Jewish citizens of Marshall numbered close to 150 out of a population of 20,000 or more. But they exerted a profound impact on our town through their civic, business, and cultural life. Louis Kariel, Sr., had been practically the only mayor we had during my youth there. One of his grandfathers had gained passage from the old world through a lottery, but he was the only one of his family to leave, and now Louis Kariel, Sr. was to lose all his kin in the Holocaust. His daughter Audrey, who lives a few doors from my mother, is the first woman mayor ever to serve our town. She led the drive to build the new library at which dedication I was privileged to speak. The old library had been segregated; blacks had to ask their white friends to check books out for them. But Audrey agreed to champion a new library only if it were open to all. And it was.

So many of the Jews nurtured civility in that town. The Kahns built our first modern hospital. The Hirches were roundly criticized during the depression for seeing to it that poor blacks got their fair share of social services delivered by the New Deal. My friend Raymond Hall is one of our leading African-American sociologists. The death of his parents left him destitute as a boy, and under the circumstances he was a child who should not have succeeded. But mowing lawns to make ends meet, Raymond Hall was taken under wing by Joe Hirsch, one of his customers. Joe loaned the young man books, insisted that he not only read them but return to talk about the ideas in them. Raymond Hall was hooked, went on to a lifetime of scholarship, and has been teaching for years at Dartmouth College. Raymond is a Baptist; Joe was a Jew. Emerson, too, got it right: "We measure all religions by their civilizing power."

I walked a block down the street to another historical marker. Until recently a mighty oak tree spread its majesty in a wide arc there. A lot of us mourned when disease finally brought it down a few years ago for under that tree Sam Houston stood in 1857 during his first race for governor. He had come to one of the hotbeds of secession to give a thundering speech for the Union. Sam Houston was a rough man and flawed. But on the question of union he would not flag, and this day he gave such a speech that although he lost the election he almost carried this East Texas county of slaveholders and rebellion. The wrong side of the issue then was, nonetheless, the right side of history. And that`s where conscience often lands you. Sam Houston was a Baptist. I used to walk this street when I was a kid. That oak tree and that temple are both gone now. And yet…they exist, as surely as the still, small voice of the soul.

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