Category Archives: religion

Postscript

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Who among those standing at a large window looking at a room filled with newborn children will wonder which of those children will become less entitled to God’s grace than their own child will be?  Or which of those standing at the large window looking at a room filled with newborn children wonder if their child will be the one later judged to be less entitled to God’s grace?

Which children among those inside that hospital room has anything but inborn faith that the world values their presence as much as the others with them?  Which of these children will grow to be taught that some of those with them at this moment, who also can only trust in the love of those outside the window, will someday be declared unworthy of that universal adoration they are now receiving just because they are alive?

Which of those standing at the window will someday look in the window of a business by now run by one of those small, blanketed miracles and decide God now no longer loves those inside the business as much as God still loves the ones who were looking through the hospital window today?

What hardens the hearts of those outside the window who now see only miracles before them?  What will harden the now-tiny hearts inside the room toward others who are united with them by this new thing called “life.”

There have been some who have disagreed with some written assessments of political events recently made in this space.

Some who disagree with concerns here and elsewhere have cited favored segments of the Scriptures to condemn those words and suggest the writer of them will be on the wrong side of eternity.

I shall not debate those with definitive scriptural definitions of who will burn in Hell for holding erroneous positions on social or political issues.  Their expressions of their erudition are guaranteed by the First Amendment and I am confident they feel sincerely driven by their religion as they encourage others to abandon perceived foolish ways.

I shall not pass judgment on those who judge me and my words.  It is not my place to judge whether they are so significantly saved that they can speak with assurance about those they see who clearly are not.  I do not believe the ultimate decision on who will achieve Heaven’s reward is ours to make, anyway.  It is something we can hope for and strive for but whether we do so according to one person’s choice to adhere to chosen parts of the Scriptures is our personal decision.  And ultimately, I believe, a much higher power than those who admonish us will make that decision.

Criticize me if you will.  Admonish me if you would like.  Damn me if you must. It is your right as a citizen to do so within the law.

Some people rely on the scriptures to define why many of us, perhaps most of us, are beyond redemption, seeking through those references to believe we are at our worst. I prefer to seek in the scriptures those words that encourage us to be our best and to hope and trust that most others seek the same thing.

It is not my place to judge where you and I will spend eternity. I acknowledge some feel a wisdom giving them the certainty of their statements. But I seek comfort and guidance from different chapters of the same book, looking to find from those words the strength to look up to people rather than to look down at them.

It is the difference between faith and religion.  Faith is what we are born with, original, pure and knowing no limits.  Religion is that artificial structure we create to define and confine faith. I live in faith.  Others live within religion.  Let them say what they will of me and what I write.  I believe a higher authority holds the judgment that will count and I have faith in that authority.

I have looked through that hospital window twice at the innocence in that room. I hope the two children who came home with us have grown up not fearing or despising the others who were with them there and have since become no danger to society merely by growing into whatever they have become.  They remain now as they were then, children of God.

As are we all.

 

The dangers of definition-III

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The final chapter.

Defining “sincere religious belief” is a potato too hot to touch.  That’s a fact of political life. The lack of definition is the phrase’s ultimate flaw at the same time it is its greatest strength.

By not defining the phrase, citizens are free to apply it however they wish.  But courts have held the arbitrary use of a law violates equal protection standards that are intended to apply to everybody.  That’s the dual nature of “sincere religious belief.”

There are those who think the Hobby Lobby ruling by the U. S. Supreme Court resolves the issue.  Actually it resolves only the specific issue raised by Hobby Lobby. There has been no broad blanket ruling covering all of the issues raised by religious freedom protection laws, which vary from state to state.

You and I might be able to write a definition of our personal sincere religious beliefs but trying to write them into law is pretty nearly impossible because it quickly becomes an issue of constitutional violation.  If the state adopts a definition of “sincere religious belief,” it is likely to face a lawsuit based on the Establishment and Exercise Clauses of the U. S. Constitution—a sentence that is often split for partisan purposes.

Congressman Fisher Ames of Massachusetts, a Federalist who defeated Sam Adams for a seat in the First United States Congress, wrote the Establishment Clause. He also wrote the Free Exercise Clause.

The Establishment Clause says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”   The Free Exercise Clause comes after the comma, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  Government will not show favoritism for one religion over another.  In addition, government will not prohibit people from exercising their religion.

SJR39 exposes a tension between these two clauses.  On one hand, it can be interpreted as the state expressing a preference for one religious creed, principle or dogma over another.  Backers of the resolution will argue from the second point—government will not limit an individual’s exercise of their religion.

The arguments for this resolution have been presented as if there are no limits on either point when, in truth, courts repeatedly have found limits to all constitutional rights are necessary to maintain order in society.

That’s why the legislature is not defining “sincere religious belief.”  Doing so would clearly violate the establishment clause.  Instead, the majority is relying on the Exercise Clause while diminishing the importance of the first half of that sentence, the Establishment Clause.

What you wrote earlier defining your “sincere religious beliefs” undoubtedly differs from what other readers of this post wrote in at least some degree.  Are your “sincere religious beliefs” more valid than theirs, so much more valid that they should be in the Missouri Constitution?  Are they so valid that you should be able to exclude others from your social or business circle becaue of them?  Is your definition so valid that the second half of the sentence in the Bill of Rights should prevail over the first?  And what legal argument can you make that it should be?

Perhaps this exercise suggests religious beliefs should remain the province of the person, not the policies of government.  In the more perfect union dreamed of in the Preamble to the Constitution, perhaps that would be enough.  But in the imperfect union that is the real world, where religion has become a political issue—perhaps to the detriment of religion as the increasing “nones” might indicate—it is not.

And that is where other parts of the constitution enter the discussion and could tip that balance.  That is assuming, of course, that majority interests care to listen to that discussion.  So far, it appears they do not because doing so would not curry favor with an important political base of support that has decided the exercise clause is the only thing that counts in that sentence.

But would the different people and different organizations within that political base all have the same definitions of “sincere religious belief?”  Would the legislators supporting this proposal be alike in their heart of hearts? Does freedom of religion within religion argue against one faction of religion imposing its position through the law?

Sponsors who have referred to opponents as “radical activists who perceive their agenda of greater value than protecting the religious freedom of Missourians” might have a point. But it’s the wrong point because many opponents of this idea ARE protecting the religious freedom of Missourians.  ALL Missourians. 

We have found from years of experience covering politics that if you cannot intellectually defend your position from those who see flaws in it, you can always call your critics names—such as “radical activists.” We cannot count the number of times that “radical activists” have been blamed for all kinds of things—many of which ultimately expanded, not limited, the rights of the general population.

The issue deserves something more to justify it than a vague phrase and a bumper-sticker slogan from those pushing it and from those behind them. And the general public deserves something more from their lawmakers than a piece of campaign-year legislation that the courts will have to deal with later but which pleases for now an ideological base that the lawmakers want to please.

We began this series with a scripture from Fisher Ames.  We conclude it with a verse from U. S. Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun:

“When the government puts its imprimatur on a particular religion it conveys a message of exclusion to all those who do not adhere to the favored beliefs.  A government cannot be premised on the belief that all persons are created equal when it asserts that God prefers some.”

The dangers of definition–II

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Within the lifetimes of many who read these entries, government-sanctioned entities existed in this nation that judged the sincerity and validity of individual religious beliefs.  Thousands of people were summoned to appear before them.  These agencies consisting of fellow citizens in communities bored into the basis of the claimed beliefs and ultimately determined if the sincerely held beliefs were legitimate. They were called draft boards.

They might ask, “Do you pray every day,” or “Do you read the Bible every day?”  Or the Talmud or the Book of Mormon, the Quran, the Vedas, the Pali Canon, or other sacred books of the religion you claim?  “Do you read those words as inerrant sacred texts do you believe you are free to interpret them as you please?”

Is your “religion” built on ideas from non-Biblical writings such as those from Soren Kierkegaard or Martin Heidegger, Mortimer Adler, Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, Umberto Eco, Mahmoud Khatani, Reinhold Niebuhr, Black Elk, Paul Tillich, Mahatma Ghandi, Billy Graham, Joel Osteen or The Pope or the Ecumenical Patriarch?

Would YOU be comfortable having a government board decide if your religion justifies your actions or the sincerity of your claimed sincere religious beliefs? Thousands of people, comfortable or not, put themselves in that position years ago.

Actually, we do have something of that system still before us although we don’t think of it in the manners we are discussing here.  Our criminal justice system often has to deal with those who claim they were driven to their actions by the Devil or by the Voice of God.  But that is sufficiently different from our issue today that we will put it aside.

Let’s take this one more step.   Having now written your personal definition of “sincere religious belief,” (you HAVE written it, haven’t you?) would you be willing to stand in front of the leaders of your religion and read it, knowing that they would decide if your definition is good enough for you to remain a member of that religion?  This would not be a panel of your peers drawn from the diversity of a broader community.  This would be a panel of those whose religion you profess to share. Why not—if you think your definition should be behind a part of the state constitution?

There are some religious organizations that do have such test.  There are probably a lot more that members are very glad do not.  Freedom of religion within religion, however, is not at all uniform.

Freedom of religion within religion has been an issue in this country from our earliest days.  Your correspondent has been reading Eve LaPlante’s American Jezebel, the story of Anne Hutchinson, whom you might remember from school as one of founders, with Roger Williams, of the colony of Rhode Island. Beyond that, most of us don’t remember much about her.  It might be instructive to recall this story that should be uncomfortable to those who assert this country was founded as a “Christian nation” as well as those who are asserting that sincere religious belief is justification for considering some people less that complete citizens.

Anne Hutchinson was a midwife living in the Massachusetts Colony, expecting her sixteenth child when she was forty-six years old in 1637.  The colony was controlled by the Puritan clergy and was a society that severely limited women’s role in society.  Anne began to attract a following among women and eventually several men as she began discussing her own version of the Puritan religion and critiquing sermons she had heard.  Among those attracted to her discussions was the colony’s governor, Henry Vane.  She believed salvation was a matter of God’s grace and accused the colony’s ministers of preaching the misleading idea that salvation could be gained through works.

In a short time, the Puritan ministers grew alarmed that her growing following was weakening their control of the colony and hauled her before a court of forty male judges dominated by Puritan “works’ preachers.  LaPlante’s book delves heavily into the trial transcript to illustrate the charges and Anne’s defense that often confounded the judges.  In the end, though, the forty judges convicted her and banished her from the colony.  A few months later she was excommunicated from the church.

The reach of the Puritan religion was so extensive and oppressive in those times that the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations was safe for her and her followers for only a few years. When Massachusetts threatened to take over Rhode Island, she moved to the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, settling in an area that is now The Bronx borough of New York City, where she and five of the children who had moved there with her were killed in an Indian attack in 1643.

As Anne Hutchinson’s husband and about a dozen other men prepared to leave Boston for Providence Plantation, they signed a compact that they would honor as the proprietors of Rhode Island.  The compact, in the wording of the day, pledged the new colony would follow Jesus Christ’s “most perfect and most absolute laws of His given in his Holy Word of Truth.” While that proclamation might be seen as a Seventeenth Century antecedent for supporters of today’s Senate resolution, it would be good for those quick to use it to remember one of the first written rules composed under that compact after the group arrived in Rhode Island: “No person within said colony, at any time hereafter, shall be in any wise molested, punished, disquieted or called into question on matter of religion—so long as he keeps the peace.”   Some see that rule as the beginning of the religious freedom statement in the First Amendment and the first statement in our country’s history that church and state are separate. No questions will be raised about a citizen’s religion UNLESS it disturbs the peace of the community. Believe what you wish but respect the secular interaction necessary for an orderly society.

Today, in the Capitol of the state from which she was banished for behavior “not comely for (her) sex,” Anne Hutchinson is memorialized as a “courageous exponent of civil liberty and religious toleration.” In a time when we speak often of the values of our Founding Fathers, it is time to remember that there was a Founding Mother, the co-founder of Rhode Island, and the persecution she suffered at the hands of the righteous who countenanced no difference from their religion.

Who decides if your “sincere religious belief” is sincere enough to justify something a proposed state amendment would let you do?  And what right does the target of your actions have to force you to defend that belief before some kind of panel of peers?  Or even a panel of ministers of your own denomination? How is anyone to know that your actions are just not arbitrary unless there is a mechanism to test their foundation?

These are hard questions in a time when surveys are showing that more and more people are finding religious creeds, dogmas, or standards unwelcome.  The percentage of Americans who respond “none” to census questions about their religion is growing.  Some analysts are theorizing that religious demands for public laws and policies that fit a narrow concept are actually harming organized religion, especially among millennials.   Whether one agrees with that analysis is a personal, often political, choice.

And in Missouri today, the phrase “sincere religious belief” presents public and personal policy challenges that raise the personal comfort levels of many to levels of discomfort and could further justify the feelings of “nones.” Banishment and excommunication from the social fabric of America, in whatever form, is still alive, though, as we are seeing proposed in Missouri.

Some critics say there is less sincerity than there is politics in this effort, that it is really less a protection of religion than it is an effort to get more conservative voters to the polls in November, which means discussing the issue at a spiritual level is useless.

Nonetheless, we’ll discuss what might be done and why it can’t be done, next.

 

The dangers of definition–I

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Our scripture for this series  is from Congressman Fisher Ames: “Popular reason does not always know how to act right, nor does it always act right when it knows.”

——

One of the trickier parts of writing a new law is defining who or what is the topic and who or what the target for relief or for limits is.  Our lawmakers have recognized from the beginning that specific language is necessary to avoid the infamous “unintended consequences.”   They—or, more appropriately these days, the legislative staff—recognize that danger and usually are able to tailor legislation to fit a specific circumstance.   When they are even a little off the mark, the consequences sometimes generate headlines that obscure the difficulty of making sure the application of a law is as narrow as required.

It’s a difficult job that the public seldom realizes is so much a part of developing the laws that govern our lives every second of every day. But the last thing participants in the process want to do is produce an adverse impact on those not intended to be the subject of the legislation.

Sometimes it is best for the supporters of legislation to leave some things vague. There are a lot of reasons for that.  One is that getting more specific weakens the intended broad effects of some  legislation.  Another reason is that lack of definition allows wider interpretations of the law, sometimes in the authority a law grants governmental subdivisions to enact their own policies within the law’s general framework—a latitude that sometimes exposes those subdivisions to criticism of government over-reach.

It’s a balancing act.  For those who believe in balance in the laws, it’s a tough act.

We have been seeing a phrase used increasingly in legislation in the last few years that cries for definition.  Defining it, however, is a minefield.

The phrase is “sincere religious belief,” now most prominently being the center of Senate Joint Resolution 39, the Wesboro Amendment or, for supporters, the Religious Freedom Amendment.

How do YOU define “sincere religious belief?”  Most properly, how do you define “sincere?” In fact, why don’t you stop reading and write your definitions, AND write what you consider your sincere religious belief, then come back.  Do not read ahead before you do this.

(PAUSE while you write)

Thank you for doing that.  Do you have the courage to put these statements before the public?   If you are a public official passing legislation making “sincere religious belief” part of the law for the general public, don’t you owe it to the general public to state your definition of the term and let the public whose behavior you seek to approve or disapprove and regulate know what your sincere religious beliefs are? You cannot dodge the issue by saying religion is a private matter—because you have made it a general-public issue.

Most people probably never define their belief.  “Whatever my church says is good enough for me,” many will think.  Do you really know what your church says as a condition of being a member?  And have you ever wondered if you really do believe its creed or its dogma or its principles?   Or have the lessons of life moved you in a different direction?  Have you become less religious in terms of what your church’s standards for religion are? And who is to judge the sufficiency within the law of your belief and the sincerity of it?   We’ll talk about that in our next entry.

A shield, not a sword

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Backers of the Wesboro Amendment, Senate Joint Resolution 39, defend it as “a shield, not a sword,” a protection of religious freedom rather than an attack on a segment of our population. But bumper sticker mottos such as “a shield, not a sword” are often purely political efforts to avoid having to intelligently address an issue and personally justify a position.  And the symbolism behind such mottos has a tendency to undermine the cause the motto purports to defend. 

Hiding behind a shield enables one to avoid seeing the other person.  All the other person might see is the sword that is being pointed at him from behind that shield.  The shield/sword analogy, therefore, emphasizes the greatest weakness of the proposal.  Hiding behind a shield does not mean the other side will or should go away.  The desire not to see the other side does not mean it does not deserve to exist.  And if the only thing the other side perceives is a sword pointed its way, it is increasingly likely to press its case even harder.

So it is that legislation using the shield and sword analogy weakens, not strengthens, the argument for the legislation and increases the skepticism of those who see no reason to hide behind one and wave the other.   

Defining the key words of a public policy that is this important and this divisive deserves more thought than is embodied in a slogan.  In the next few entries in this series (we haven’t decided how many), let’s explore the dangers of definition.

Equality: an inconvenient concept

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One of our state lawmakers has argued that “our First Amendment rights to religion, speech, assembly, and association, endowed by our Creator, are not subject to government approval.  The First Amendment is designed not just to protect popular or politically correct religious beliefs or speech. It is designed to protect all religious beliefs and speech—even repulsive ones.”

This lawmaker buttressed his idea that our First Amendment rights are “endowed by our Creator” by citing the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Combining statements made in two distinctly separate documents written for two distinctly separate purposes in this way can lead to mental and political mischief of the kind we have seen in our legislature for several sessions.

Missouri spends tens of millions of dollars every year so people like this lawmaker and his colleagues can, indeed, determine what our rights are.  Missouri has volume after volume of books that define our rights, some of which were favored by lawmakers such as this one who has argued that “Our country was founded on the belief that there are some areas into which government must not intrude.”

Anybody want to read through twenty volumes of Missouri statutes (plus the sixteen annual supplements published since the last statute books were put between hard covers) to find some areas in which the legislature has NOT passed some kind of intrusive law?

The unfortunately biggest flaw in the lawmaker’s reasoning comes from his citation of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence (which, by the way, does NOT establish Freedom of Speech, Religion, Press, and Peaceful Assembly): “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men…are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The same lawmaker who once accused opponents of the campus religious freedom bill of pretzeling the debate to say the bill sanctions discrimination didn’t do such a bad job of pretzel-making himself by leaving out a critical qualification in that sentence. You remember from school, don’t you, that the sentence really begins: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men ARE CREATED EQUAL, AND THAT THEY are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights…”

Equality.  What an inconvenient concept. It’s so much more convenient to leave out that part of the sentence to make this argument.

Equality gets in the way of so many things. Recognizing the idea that everybody is equally entitled to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness could cause massive problems for those who are well-paid to make sure their clients enjoy those rights more than others or to those who think government-sanctioned privilege is something for them to buy for their own purposes. Government would be so much easier and so much more convenient to some people if it were not for that troublesome requirement that equality be part of the equation.  But ignoring it is easy.

And there’s another flaw in the use of the quotation in this discussion.  It stops with “happiness.”   Let’s look at the entire sentence:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”

There’s a comma after “happiness,” not a period. But look at what the Declaration really says: that “to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…”   The founding fathers sanctioned government as the means to balance those natural rights.  Our lawmaker correctly says the Declaration does not say certain rights are “afforded” us by government.  What the Declaration says is that governments are created to SECURE those rights in which all have an equal opportunity to share.

Gosh, this document is a whole lot more inconvenient than some would like us to think, isn’t it?

After that, the second sentence says, “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”

There’s a lot more after the first “happiness.”   But it’s more convenient to discuss only the first part, and certainly more convenient to be selective in what part of the sentence is used to justify a position. But it’s time to think about what the Declaration of Independence says.  Really says.  All of it.

Professor Danielle Allen of Princeton’s Institute of Advanced Study has a book out called Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence on Defense of Equality.   In the prologue, she wrote, “The Declaration of Independence matters because it helps us see that we cannot have freedom without equality.  It is out of an egalitarian commitment that a people grows—a people that is capable of protecting us all collectively, and each of us individually, from domination.  If the Declaration can stake a claim to freedom, it is only because it is so clear-eyed about the fact that the people’s strength resides in its equality.”

There it is.  The inconvenient concept.   Equality.

“Political philosophers have generated the view that equality and freedom are necessarily in tension with each other, “she wrote. “As a public we have swallowed this argument whole.  We think we are required to choose between freedom and equality.  Our choice in recent years has tipped toward freedom…Such a choice is dangerous. If we abandon equality, we lose the single bond that makes us a community, that makes us a people with the capacity to be free collectively and individually in the first place.”

Professor Allen spends 282 highly-readable pages taking the Declaration sentence by sentence and sometimes wordy by word to emphasize the care with which it was written and the purposes for each element.  It’s not just something to read quickly on July 4tth.

From its beginning when it states that the time has come for the colonies to be considered an independent nation of equal standing with other nations to the last sentence that says the signers who come from a variety of economic, social, and religious backgrounds “mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor,” the Declaration is about equality.

It was signed by wealthy delegates such as John Hancock and Charles Carroll as well as by Button Gwinnett, whose life is described by one source as “one of economic and political disappointment,”  and James Wilson, who later spent time in a debtor’s prison. They were equals as delegates. They were equals in what they dreamed of.  They were equals in the risk they knew they were taking.

The Declaration of Independence is so important it should be studied carefully by voters and those they elect.  Only by doing that, Professor Allen argues, can its true importance be understood and the descendants of those who risked everything by writing it, adopting it, and signing it be free.

And freedom is not freedom if it is not equally shared and is not an equally-borne responsibility.

A matter of degrees

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Forgive us—or don’t; we don’t care—if we return to this matter from time to time, for it is so troubling.  Some of these thoughts came to us while we were in church and if they are antagonistic to you, too bad. We do not profess to have the certainty in our faith journey that others seem to have.  And in that, we are unrepentant.

Senate Joint Resolution 39, sent to the House by the Senate, provides—if voters approve the proposed constitutional amendment—protection from state penalties for any religious organization that refuses to perform same sex marriages or allow same sex marriages to be performed on its property.  It also protects individuals such as florists and cake-makers who refuse to provide flowers or cakes for same sex weddings or same sex wedding receptions if they have sincere religious beliefs about same sex marriage.

Surprisingly, though, this bill protecting religious liberty does not rule out the imposition of the mysterious “state penalties” against religious organizations that refuse to allow homosexuals to be members of their congregations.

Backers say it’s a “religious liberty” bill.  Whose “religious liberty?”

Suppose I am a florist, a follower of the Christ, as you can tell that I am by the decal of the icthys, the Christian fish symbol, on the front door of my shop. And suppose I am a homosexual florist.  And suppose a straight couple asks me to provide flowers for their wedding and weddings of other people like them.  And I tell them I have a sincere religious belief that allows me to refuse to serve them.  And further, my partner who runs the local bakery, shares my sincere religious belief and will refuse to provide their cake, or cakes to others, like them.

Where is my protection, our protection, under this amendment?   Why doesn’t this protection of religion cut both ways?  Or does this profession of religion only protect the straight segment of the population and by inference proclaim that members of the LGBT community aren’t religious enough to merit those special protections, too?  Do they not deserve protection for their religious liberty?

To the degree that this proposition lets you set me apart from others, you persecute me by making me less of a person than you and they are.

To the degree that this proposition lets you deny me the protections under the law you reserve for yourself, you diminish my status as a citizen of this country.

To the degree you do not allow me to do unto you what you do unto me—

To the degree that you exempt yourself from following the commandment that you love your neighbor as you love yourself—

To the degree that your legislation dismisses Paul’s admonition that “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ”—

You are not Christian.

The Wesboro Amendment

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Anger and disgust can provoke competing and counterproductive emotions.

One leaves an observer of events rendered speechless.   The other leaves the observer spewing heated words that tumble over themselves and become so tangled that their value is lost.

So it is with the accounts of last week’s Missouri Senate passage of a proposed constitutional amendment under the guise of protecting religious freedom.  Perhaps through the discipline of writing and editing, thoughts will have some order.

Thank God, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was not discovered in, say, 1953, before Brown v. the Board of Education and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Millions of Americans and thousands of Missourians might today still be denied equal access to housing, education, jobs, bathrooms, and drinking fountains if RFRA allowed them to be targeted for exclusion from equality under law by those who claimed to be motivated by a “sincere religious belief.”  Unfortunately, sexual orientation was not a high enough profile issue fifty or sixty years ago when civil rights, public accommodations, and fair housing laws were enacted with protections for various citizen groups that had suffered discrimination for decades, which is why bigotry in the guise of religious freedom is today able to attack a segment of our citizenry that was far less visible in 1964.

Only a few hours after Senate leader Ron Richard threatened reprisals against fellow senators who did not respect the traditions of the Senate, he was one of 21 Republican senators who signed a Previous Question motion that immediately stopped the Democrat’s filibuster against Senate Joint Resolution 39. So much for the Senate tradition of respecting the right of the minority to try to keep the majority from steamrolling legislation opponents think detrimental to the general population. We have observed the Republicans being quite reluctant to move the PQ when a filibuster is led by their own members.

Two, and sometimes three, Republicans voted with the Democrats who wanted the official record of the proceedings to reflect some of the things that happened during that filibuster.  Three Republican Senators, Bob Dixon, Ryan Silvey, and Rob Schaaf, voted with the Democrats against the move to stop the debate.

But Dixon and Silvey voted for the bill.

Schaaf was the only Republican to split with his party and join all of the Democrats who voted “no” on final approval of the proposed constitutional amendment.

Dixon and Silvey supported Democrats’ unsuccessful effort to amend the official record of the filibuster to show that the sponsor of the bill, Bob Onder, had suggested summoning the Highway Patrol to get two absent senators back into the chamber.

Dixon was furious when his fellow Republicans refused to let the amendments to the record be adopted.  The normally soft-spoken Dixon was uncharacteristically loud in his attack: “I am a senator, and I am disgusted at the slope and the speed with which this body is descending. When one member is disrespected, when any member has their rights disregarded in such a dastardly way, every Senator loses.  And not only that, our constituents are disrespected, the people are disrespected!”

But Dixon, who was concerned about disrespect for his constituents and for “the people” generally, voted for the bill.

Silvey also was angry about the rejection of the wording explaining what had happened during the debate.  “To say this did not happen is ridiculous,” he told his colleagues on the senate floor. And he continued, “What happened yesterday at the end of the debate was disturbing at best.  The fact we had members seeking recognition and ignored regardless of party should offend everyone in this room…What this debate is about is the soul of the Senate.”

But Silvey voted for the bill.

Senator Rob Schaaf, who has been part of Republican-led filibusters that were not stopped with PQs was the only one who continued to stand with Democrats.  “The beauty of the Senate design is destroyed…by not following our rules,” he said.  He called his party’s treatment of filibustering Democrats “disrespectful.”

Schaaf would have voted for the bill.

But he did not because he thought his party’s forced shutdown of debate raised “the stink of tyranny.”

This bill—which might be on our ballots later this year, thus presenting voters with the opportunity to further define Missouri’s narrowness or reject it (both, we suspect, in the name of religion)—and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act seem to spring from those who want to enforce the idea that this always-pluralistic country has always been some kind of “Christian nation.”

They want to be the ones who define “Christian.”

And that should strike a chord of fear in all of us.

You know who probably is cheering for our legislature as it works on SJR39?  The folks at the Wesboro Baptist Church in Topeka. This is their kind of religion.  The kind of people who show up at military funerals with signs reading “God Hates Fags,” whose web site says it stands against “the fag lifestyle of soul-damning nation-destroying filth,” love the kind of politics behind this kind of legislation.

So let’s just call this bill “The Wesboro Amendment.”

Interestingly, the Wesboro Baptist Church hasn’t needed RFRA to protect its religious freedoms.  It has the First Amendment, as we all do. Is the Missouri legislature so craven in its desire to appeal to the voting bloc known as “Evangelicals” that it advocates making the theology of the Wesboro Baptist Church part of our state constitution?  The actions last week are an answer to the prayers of the Wesboro faithful.

In Christian worship centers for the hundreds of denominations and non-denominational believers, a faith that advocates love for others is preached.  We wonder how many of those who voted for this bill have opened their hymnals on Sunday mornings and have sung Peter Scholtes hymn:

We are one in the spirit; we are one in the Lord, and we pray that all unity may one day be restored.

We will walk with each other; we will walk hand-in-hand, and together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land.

All praise to the Father from whom all things come and all praise to the spirit who makes us one.

(chorus):  And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love. Yes, they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Or the words from the thirteenth chapter of the New Testament book of Paul’s letter to the Christians at Corinth that are familiar and often used in marriage ceremonies—of all kinds– perhaps some of the ceremonies involving some of those who voted for the Wesboro Amendment:

If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn’t love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God’s secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn’t love others, I would be nothing.  If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it, but if I didn’t love others, I would have gained nothing…”

Three things last forever—faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love. 

In a matter of hours last week, the State Senate and its leaders demonstrated that talk of respect for tradition is cynical babbling in the face of partisan narrowness and they demonstrated how religion used for political purposes ignores the basic tenant of the teachings of the its founders.

Some of us, in observing recent events in the Senate, have heard the noisy gongs and the clanging cymbals.  And the noise and the clanging played a tune called “riffra” as the Wesboro Amendment moved closer to a ballot in Missouri this year.

The spirit of the St. Louis

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There’s always somebody. Somebody not good enough for us no matter their circumstances. Somebody we can always tell, “Go back where you came from.”  Some of the campaign rhetoric this year reminds us of the story of a ship named for our second-largest city.

Let’s go back to Germany, 1938, where the Nazi government’s increasing persecution of Jews caused many to try to flee. Representatives of several western nations met at Evian, France in July, 1938, to discuss the worsening situation. Major nations such as the United States, France, and Britain refused to loosen their immigration laws to allow more refugees from Germany, even as Germany was tightening its laws against Jews wanting to flee. German policies against Jews broke into violence with the Kristallnacht on November 9-10 and in ensuing months, thousands of Jews were arrested.

Nine-hundred-thirty-seven Jewish passengers were aboard the S. S. St. Louis when it left Hamburg, Germany on May 13, 1939, hoping to find safety in Cuba or the United States.  But Cuba allowed fewer than thirty to disembark.

The St. Louis headed north, hoping to dock in the United States.  But this country had enacted a restrictive immigration law in 1924.  The state department worried that the Jews would be security risks or be dependent on government handouts if they were allowed in.  Passengers could not get tourist visas because they had no home address.  And there were a lot of other German immigrants waiting for entry.

After more than a month the St. Louis headed back to Europe, although not to Germany.  Britain agreed to take 288 of the passengers.  The remaining 620 went to Belgium, France, and the Netherlands, countries still at peace.

It was while the St. Louis was still at sea, its passengers still hoping to find asylum or at least safety in the United States that Heywood Broun, one of the great newspaper columnists of the time, wrote “There is a Ship” for the New York World-Telegram. It was published June 9, 1939.

——-

There is a ship. It is called the St. Louis.  If suddenly the vessel flashed an SOS to indicate that the crew and the 900 passengers were in danger every other steamer within call would be hurrying to the rescue. That is the rule of the sea.

And no vessel which got the flash would pause to inquire the economic, political, religious or national position of those in distress.  It would want no more than the position of the ship.

And the captain on the bridge, according to the prevailing tradition, would ask the engineer to put on all speed so that the work of rescue could be completed as expeditiously as possible.  And this would be true of the skipper of a totalitarian merchantman, one from a democratic nation or a ship flying under the flag of a monarchy, liberal or otherwise.

But there is a ship.  It carries 900 passengers—men, women and small children.  This is a group of God-fearing people guilty of no crime whatsoever.  And they are in peril.

They are in peril which threatens not only their lives but their very souls and spiritual freedom.  It would be better for them by far if the St. Louis has ripped its plates in a collision with some other craft, or if an impersonal iceberg had slashed the hull below the water line.

Then there would be not the slightest hesitation in a movement of all the allied fleets to save these members of the human race in deep and immediate distress.

But this is not an iceberg or a plate which has been ripped away.  The passengers—men, women and children—are Jewish. It is not an accident of nature but an inhuman equation which has put them in deadly peril.  It is quite true that when the St. Louis gets back to Hamburg these 900, with possibly a few exceptions, will not die immediately.  They will starve slowly, since they have already spent their all.  Or they will linger in concentration camps—I refer to the men and women.  God knows what will happen to the children.

And so the whole world stuffs its ears and pays no attention to any wireless.

There is a ship. And almost two thousand years have elapsed since the message of universal brotherhood was brought to earth.

What have we done with that message?  After so many years we have not yet put into practice those principles to which we pay lip service.  Nine hundred are to suffer a crucifixion while the world passes by on the other side.

At any luncheon, banquet or public meeting the orator of the occasion can draw cheers if he raises his right hand in the air and pledges himself, his heart and soul to the declaration that he is for peace and amity and that all men are brothers.  He means it, generally, and so do the diners who pound the table until the coffee cups and the cream dishes rattle into a symphony of good feeling and international sympathy.

But there is a ship. If one were to look upon it with cold logic it would be better for every one of the 900 if the vessel suddenly buckled and went down in forty fathoms.  That would be more merciful.

Against the palpable threat of death we can muster brotherhood.  But against the even more plain sentence of life in death we pretend to be helpless.

Our answer is, “We must look after ourselves.  What can we do about it?  Life is greater than death.”  We agree.  Here is our test.  What price civilization?  There is a ship.  Who will take up an oar to save 900 men, women and children?

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Heywood Broun died at 51 years of age on December 18, 1939. About the time he wrote this column, he had forsaken his professed agnosticism after extensive discussions with Bishop Fulton J. Sheen and had become a member of the Catholic faith.

Germany invaded the safe countries of Western Europe on May 10, 1940. The Netherlands surrendered five days later. Belgium gave up May 28.  And France fell June 22.   The Holocaust Museum in Washington estimates 254 former passengers on the St. Louis died during the holocaust, most of them at Sobibor and Auschwitz.  Fewer than one-hundred eventually made it to the United States.

The St. Louis was a German naval accommodation ship until it was damaged by the bombing of Kiel in August, 1944.  She was fixed and was a hotel ship in Hamburg for a while before being scrapped in 1952.

But the ghost of the spirit of the ship still hangs over us.

Jews in 1939.  Mexicans and Syrians in 2016.

There’s always somebody.

Reading hymns

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It occurred to us a few years ago as we were singing a Christmas hymn in church, reading lyrics without music that were on the screens at the front of the sanctuary, that the hymns—beautiful as they are at Christmas—are sometimes not as good as the poetry or the prose behind them.

We become so accustomed to the pace and structure of the music that the words come from us unthinkingly.   If we remove the music and the false structure it imposes on the lyrics, we might find some of our Christmas hymns have different meanings and many of them could be sung year-around.  In fact, many could be sung year-around by removing one verse.

If we read hymns instead of singing them, we might find ourselves asking questions about the story that is told in the lyrics and sometimes even wondering about the origins of those lyrics. We’re not much of a student of music but we love it, especially at this time of year, but it seems that the lyrics come first and then somebody writes music for them.

Here’s a f’rinstance.  One of the nicest, lightest, Christmas hymns begins with the words, “Bring a torch….”   I bet you hear it in your mind right now, just because of those three words.  But who is “Jeanette Isabella?”

This is an example of how singing the lyrics changes the lyrics.   In this case, the music eliminates a comma.  If you read the lyrics of the poem, which goes back about seven centuries to the Provence region of France, you see that it is about TWO girls, not one.   The original title was Un Flambeau, Jeanette, Isabelle. (We appear to have Anglicized the names of the girls.)  Various sources we’ve checked say it originally was a dance tune for the nobility and didn’t show up as a Christmas tune until 1553 and an English version of the hymn wasn’t published until the middle of the eighteenth century.

One interpretation of the lyrics links this Christmas song to the Jewish celebration of Chanukah, the eight-day festival of lights that celebrates, as Chabad.com, puts it “the triumph of light over darkness, of purity over adulteration, of spirituality over materiality,” a theme with which many Christians identify as they celebrate the birth of Jesus.  The website makingmusicisfun.net tells us, “The torches, or candles, of ancient Hanukkah’s Festival of Lights played an important part in Christmas celebrations in Provence and southern Europe,” and calls this song, “a wonderful example of the torch songs of that time.”

The New-born *oil on canvas *76 × 91 cm *1600-1652

(Musee des Beaux Arts de Rennes)

“Bring a Torch” is one of those songs that draws the participant into the beauty of the music to the extent that the words are sung but the story they tell is not appreciated.   So let’s look at the lyrics (which might be slightly different depending on your faith traditions).   We’re going to change some punctuation and some of the structure of the poem for reading-out-loud purposes.

“Bring a torch! Jeanette, Isabelle! Bring a torch!

Come swiftly– and run! Christ is born!

Tell the folk of the village (that) Jesus is sleeping in His cradle!

Then we change from excitedly telling these two young girls to grab their torches on this night and dash into the village telling the villagers to approach in haste—but quietly.  Adore the child but do not create a disturbance.  He is sleeping the sleep of the newborn.  And although the song does not refer to his mother, she also probably is resting after the strain of childbirth.

Hasten now, good folk of the village. Hasten now, the Christ Child to see. You will find Him asleep in a manger. Quietly come and whisper softly.

Ah, ah, beautiful is the mother, Ah, ah, beautiful is her Son.

Hush, hush, peacefully now He slumbers. Hush, hush, peacefully now He sleeps.

We have seen a translation of the early French lyrics that places heavier emphasis on urging villagers to not disrupt the rest of the child and his mother.  They’re harsher than the more familiar lines of the hymn.  We don’t recall singing or hearing these words but this part of the poem begins with noise and disruption.  Perhaps it is Joseph who asks, or maybe an angel–the wording is not clear.

Who is that, knocking on the door?

Who is it, knocking like that?

 

And someone in the crowd gathered outside answers:

 

Open up!

We’ve arranged on a platter lovely cakes that we have brought here!

Knock! Knock! Knock! Open the door for us!

Knock! Knock! Knock! Let’s celebrate!

 

We can envision Joseph cracking the door open and slipping out to confront the crowd.  Speaking in a loud whisper, he tells the villagers:

 

It is wrong when the child is sleeping.  It is wrong to talk so loud. Silence, now as you gather around lest your noise should waken Jesus.

 

And as the crowd heeds his wishes, he opens the door and reminds them as they go in:

 

Hush! Hush! see how he slumbers.

Hush! Hush! see how fast he sleeps!

Softly now unto the stable,

Softly for a moment come!

Look and see how charming is Jesus,

Look at him there, His cheeks are rosy!

 

And we hear the whispered voices of the people as they file through the room:

Hush! Hush! see how the Child is sleeping;

Hush! Hush! see how he smiles in dreams!

We still don’t know who these two girls are or were.  Perhaps the names were plucked out of the air by the original writer of the poem to fit the meter of the poem.  But the more popular version seems to rely on a painting by Georges de La Tour (1593-1652), a French Baroque artist who did a lot of religious scenes lit by candlelight.  The story behind his painting is that Jeanette and Isabella (Isabelle in the French lyrics) are milk maids who have gone to the stable to milk the cows and find Jesus has been born there.  We don’t know who tells them to light the torches and spread the good news in the village.  But we are told the custom remains in France for children to dress up as farm folks and as they go to midnight mass, they sing the song that begins, “Bring a torch….”

If you want to take the time today—if you have the time today—and you have a hymnal in your home, you might want to read some other hymns.  It might be hard because there will be the tendency to read them the way the music has them sung.  But you might find reading hymns as poetry or prose is interesting and might even add a new dimension to this day for you.

Take a look particularly at “Joy to the World” and ask yourself after reading it why this song could not be the opening hymn in worship at any time of the year.

We hope we have not spoiled your enjoyment of the music of Christmas with this little excursion that began by wondering who Jeanette Isabella was.  Remember that our word Psalms comes from a Greek word that means “instrumental music” and the words that go with it.

Let all of us, regardless of our faith tradition, hope on this day that light will prevail.