Secular Government: One of God`s Greatest Gifts
By Franklin H. Littell
[Dr. Franklin H. Littell, a Methodist minister, college professor, Holocaust expert, scholar, and world citizen is a frequent contributor to Christian Ethics Today.]
By a curious coincidence, two symbiotic items reached my desk the same day. One was an interview with Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua which was featured–with a fine front page photo–in a newsletter from Liberty University (Lynchburg, VA). The other was a newspaper story about Rabbi Hertz Frankel in Williamsburg–Brooklyn (NY).
What do a Roman Catholic prelate, a Hasidic rabbi, and the PR instrument of a Protestant Fundamentalist (Jerry Falwell) have in common? How do they represent a clear religious and political alliance, very real although rarely visible?
The news item about Cardinal Bevilacqua is older. He was giving an extensive interview in criticism of the public schools, in praise of the "sense of community" in the Roman Catholic parochial schools, and in hope of tax support of the latter. One of his more memorable statements was this: "Public schools are a kind of socialism, one of the last vestiges of socialism!"
Equally memorable was his response to the interviewer`s expressed hope that Pennsylvania might "succeed with vouchers." The Roman Catholic leader responded, "We`re going to try again this year and if it doesn`t work we`re going to try again and again and again; and we`re going to keep working and gradually, slowly build up a culture that this is the obvious thing to do, that this is the sensible thing to do."
Rabbi Frankel of the Satmer sect has had less patience. During the period 1973-94 he managed a scheme that siphoned off more than six million dollars ($6,000,000) from the public school district. The money went to support a sectarian religious school, before, as one witness said, the public authorities even "decided whether they were going to be able to rehire all their teachers or buy new books." Controlling a critical Hasidic bloc in the electorate, Rabbi Frankel was able to corrupt public officials; as he said when interviewed after pleading guilty to one count of "conspiracy," he believed, "The end justifies the means." The court sentenced him to three (3) years of probation and payment of one million ($1,000,000) in restitution (of tax-payers` money).
What, then, do a Protestant Fundamentalist, a Roman Catholic prelate and a Hasidic rabbi have in common? The Protestant Fundamentalist in the case has said that he believes America is a "Christian nation;" that is, he does not believe in the American experiment in Religious Liberty with "separation of church and state." The Roman Catholic prelate, assuming he follows the official statement of the Ecumenical Council: Vatican II, believes in religious toleration rather than Religious Liberty. (In its finished form, "toleration" means that the publicly supported church does not persecute lesser religious societies.) The Hasidic rabbi is less shifty: he has no use for the goyishe velt except as it can be used in the interest of his own sect.
One wonders how, after the 20th century`s record of mass murder by regimes hag-ridden by religious or ideological furies, there are still American leaders unable to affirm one of the Lord`s greatest gifts: secular government. Secular, limited, checked and balanced government can carry on the everyday, pedestrian business of public affairs, leaving ultimate commitments to guidance by the churches or synagogues. In contrast to the facade that is about all that is left of "Christendom," in the climate and practice of American Religious Liberty both "church" and "state" have prospered, each in benevolent independence of the other, neither in subservience to the other.
Looking at the disasters, including genocide, that have accompanied 20th century combinations of organized belief systems and organized political systems, most of them professing perfectionist or utopian purposes, we do well to remember David Hume. Hume, a Scottish philosopher and public servant who died in the year of our Declaration of Independence,
never saw the launching of the American experiment. But he knew a truth that is a corner stone of our liberties: "To reach for perfection, to seek an ideal, is noble but dangerous, and is therefore an activity that individuals or voluntary groups may pursue, but governments certainly should not." And let us all say, "Amen!"
Let the public schools, as institutions serving all children of the citizens, receive energetic support, both spiritual and financial. And let those who want their children to have an education of special ideological or religious flavor do so without civic disabilities, disabilities they exact of others in countries where they are dominant. And let them do it at their own expense.
