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Fine Prints: January, 2008 Religion and Politics January 5 Making Lemonade January 9 The Indispensable Opposition January 19 A Proverb in Action January 26
[The following is adapted from
an online post by J. Brent Walker––executive director of the Baptist
Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. Walker is both a member of the
Supreme Court Bar and an ordained minister.] "The [U.S.] Constitution is a decidedly secular document. Yes, many
of the Founders were men of faith and mostly Christian, but they opted
to ensure religious liberty for all, not ensconce their own religious
views in the nation’s founding document. . . . [Our] Constitution is not
a religious document but a religious-freedom document.
The U.S. may be a Christian nation sociologically, but not
constitutionally. That fact is easy to demonstrate. Living up to the
religious-freedom values embodied in the Constitution and not giving
preference to the Christian majority is more difficult. "Article VI of the Constitution bans any religious test for public
office. . . . Citizens can and do vote for whom they wish and take
religion into account in making that decision. The fact is, many people
are comfortable with people who wear labels like their own. But the
spirit of Article VI reflects an important American value––rights of
citizenship are not dependent on ‘right’ religious affiliations.
Moreover, assumptions about how someone will lead, based on their
religious affiliation, are risky at best. "The fundamental inquiry for our leaders should be who can best lead
and uphold our Constitution—not who is the most devout Christian or
devotee of any other religion, for that matter. The best candidate may
be a person of no faith but of strong commitment to our nation’s
principles, including religious freedom for all. Wasn’t it Martin Luther
who said [it is] better to be ruled by a smart Turk than a dumb
Christian? "Religion may be relevant to evaluating a candidate. To the extent a
candidate’s religion bears on his or her commitment to constitutional
principles or affects positions on policy issues, a candidate’s religion
may be a valid consideration. A candidate’s religious commitments or
practices may also tell us something about the person’s character. How .
. . one’s religion influences or dictates one’s value system, leadership
style, policy outcomes is useful information. "For example, Candidate A’s extreme pacifism and Candidate B’s
militant fundamentalism could result in drastically different policy
outcomes on issues of peace and war. Candidate C, whose religion says
that abortion amounts to murder, and Candidate D, whose religion
requires an abortion to save the life of a mother, may come out at
different places on Roe v. Wade. Candidate E, whose
premillennial eschatology says that God is going to end it all on God’s
timetable, and Candidate F, whose understanding of stewardship demands
meticulous care of God’s creation, probably are going to come out
differently on environmental issues. ""In sum, religion may be relevant to evaluating a candidate’s
fitness for office, but only to the extent it is tied tightly to how the
candidate will perform the job he or she is being elected to do. At the
same time, we should use great care to honor our country’s tradition of
religious freedom for all by guarding against any assumption that one’s
religion determines one’s right or fitness . . . to lead."
You’ve heard the saying: "When handed a lemon, make lemonade." It’s good advice. Why not turn life’s negatives into positives? You might even have a little fun in the process. Let me tell you a story. Twenty years ago this past June, when our oldest son, James, was nine, I took him to the annual Coffin Cousins Reunion in <st1:City w:st="on">Des Moines , <st1:State w:st="on">Iowa . Jared, five at the time, went with Leonie to Washington , D.C. , to be with her family. (Josh was still just an abdominal bulge.) I enjoyed the reunion, but James declared it "the most boring day of my life." He didn’t particularly relish being oohed and aahed over by elderly people he’d never met. (The Coffin Cousins were the grandchildren of Nathan Dix Coffin, born May 1, 1833 (just to give you a little idea of how old many of the attendees were!) After the reunion, James and I went to our motel, expecting to get a good night’s sleep. But things didn’t work out quite as planned. To make an outside call, motel phone users needed to first dial a 9. Failure to do so would send the call to the room with the number corresponding to the first three digits dialed. Our room just happened to match the quick-dial number for Time and Temperature. When a room occupant felt the need to know just how hot and humid it really was, but forgot to dial the requisite 9, the call came to us. And that night a lot of people either didn’t have watches or were obsessed with the weather. After being woken repeatedly, my temperature was well above what callers would have heard had they actually reached Time and Temperature. What was I to do? Then I remembered: When handed a lemon, make lemonade. I plotted how to do it. When the next call woke me, I quickly shook the cobwebs of sleep from my brain. In my most professional voice I said, "Good evening, you’ve reached Time and Temperature. The time at the tone is 11:49 pm. The temperature at Des Moines airport is 98 degrees. However, within the next two hours an unseasonable cold front will be sweeping Iowa . Snow will begin falling about 4:00 am, with strong winds and considerable drifting. Temperatures will be in the low teens by mid-morning. Iowa Highway Patrol officials are urging everyone to stay off the road except for emergencies." As I waxed eloquent, I heard the caller gasp. The moment I stopped talking, he shouted to the rowdy group I could hear in the background, "This guy says it’s going to SNOW!" The others, equally incredulous, asked who he had dialed. "I just dialed Time and Temperature!" he shot back defensively. "And the guy said the forecast was SNOW for Iowa ." "Let me have that phone!" someone said. But I had quit talking and was just listening to the caller who was having both his hearing and his sanity seriously questioned. I hung up, lay back and waited for the next lemon I could turn into lemonade. But, wouldn’t you know, the phone never rang again the entire night! Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor
[The following, extracted from an article by Walter Lippmann that appeared in The Atlantic Monthly of August 1939 and was reprinted in the book Voices of Liberty (1941), shares observations about political expression that may equally apply to theological/spiritual expression.] Most men would probably confess that . . . the right to speak freely and to act in opposition . . . is a noble ideal rather than a practical necessity. . . . Whereas each man claims his freedom as a matter of right, the freedom he accords to other men is a matter of toleration. . . . It is all very well to say with Voltaire, "I wholly disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it," but as a matter of fact most men will not defend to the death the rights of other men: If they disapprove sufficiently [of] what other men say, they will somehow suppress those men if they can. . . . If this is the best that can be said for liberty of opinion––that a man must tolerate his opponents because every one has a "right" to say what he pleases––then we shall find that liberty of opinion is a luxury, safe only in pleasant times when men can be tolerant because they are not deeply and vitally concerned. Yet . . . there is a much stronger foundation for the great constitutional right of freedom of speech . . . why, if liberty of opinion did not exist, we should have to invent it. . . . We miss the whole point when we . . . tolerate the freedom of our . . . opponents as we tolerate a howling baby next door. . . . If this were all there is to freedom of opinion––that we are too good-natured or too timid to do anything about our opponents and our critics except to let them talk––it would be difficult to say whether we are tolerant because we are magnanimous or because we are lazy. . . . If we truly wish to understand why freedom is necessary in a civilized society, we must begin by realizing that, because freedom of discussion improves our own opinions, the liberties of other men are our own vital necessity. We are much closer to the essence of the matter, not when we quote Voltaire, but when . . . . we go to the doctor and pay him to ask us the most embarrassing questions and to prescribe the most disagreeable diet. . . . When we pay the doctor to exercise complete freedom of speech about the cause and cure of our stomachache, we do not look upon ourselves as tolerant and magnanimous. . . . Even the most ferocious dictator would rather be treated by a doctor who was free to think and speak the truth than by his own Minister of Propaganda. For there is a point––the point at which things really matter––where the freedom of others is no longer a question of their right but of our own need. . . . This is the creative principle of freedom of speech. . . . If the
truth can be found, there is no other system which will normally and
habitually find so much truth. Until we have thoroughly understood this
principle, we shall not know why we must value our liberty, or how we
can protect and develop it.
Ecclesiastes 4: 9, 10 shares an astute proverb: "Two are better than one . . . : If one falls down, his friend can help him up. But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up!" As my parents aged, I saw the truth of this proverb dramatically demonstrated. My father had respiratory difficulties throughout much of his adult life. Had he been less-driven, he would have gone on disability. But he wasn’t the kind to cut himself any slack. He couldn’t move quickly, but, like the Energizer Bunny, he kept moving. And he could keep moving long after the younger men who worked for him were ready to quit. In later years, my father also had Alzheimer's. Or it may have been a series of mini-strokes that left him with short-term memory problems. Or it may have been the cumulative effect of the bronchial dilators he’d inhaled for years to combat his respiratory difficulties. Or maybe it was merely old age. It was never formally diagnosed, but whatever the cause, his memory was shot. Before going to the basement to retrieve something from the pantry, my mother would write a note for him stating his mission. Otherwise, by the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he’d forget why he was there. My mother, on the other hand, faced a different set of challenges. While she was in her late 50s, a hole developed in one retina, leaving her with no focal vision in that eye and only minimal peripheral vision. A couple of years later, the other eye followed suit. For all practical purposes she was blind during the last twenty years of her life. In addition, she had unwittingly received a hepatitis-tainted blood transfusion back in the mid 1960s. The disease remained asymptomatic for a couple of decades or more. By the time it was discovered, her liver was all but destroyed. The doctor said that, had she not lived such an abstemious life, she would have been dead long before. To their amazement, she lived another ten years or so. Given these adverse circumstances, my parents found life complicated—blindness and no energy for my mother, difficulty breathing and rampant forgetfulness for my father. Figuratively, they had both fallen down. But figuratively, they also helped each other up. As they drove along in the car, my father would describe the local landmarks they were passing, and my mother could keep him focused on the destination and how to get there. Without her, he not only wouldn’t have remembered where he was going but would have become hopelessly lost. In turn, my father could read to my mother. Two or three minutes after he’d read something, he couldn’t remember what he’d read. But she could. And she could remind him (using the information he had read to her) how to proceed with whatever task they were undertaking. He was her eyes; she was his mind. It was bitter-sweet to watch. Bitter because of the ravages of age
and disease, and sweet because of their loving, complementary
relationship. "But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him
up." Jim Coffin, Senior Pastor
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