American Voices: Christianity and Public Life

Modern social-welfare liberalism embodies an ethic of moral pluralism and favors the separation of church and state. Conservative Christians challenge the legitimacy of pluralism and secularism and seek, through political agitation and legal action, to make religion an integral part of public life.

President Ronald Reagan

“The Rule of Law Under God”

Reagan’s candidacy was strongly supported by Christian conservatives. He delivered these remarks to the National Association of American Evangelicals in 1983.

I want you to know that this administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities — the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God.

Now, I don’t have to tell you that this puts us in opposition to, or at least out of step with, a prevailing attitude of many who have turned to a modern-day secularism, discarding the tried and time-tested values upon which our very civilization is based. No matter how well intentioned, their value system is radically different from that of most Americans. And while they proclaim that they’re freeing us from superstitions of the past, they’ve taken upon themselves the job of superintending us by government rule and regulation. Sometimes their voices are louder than ours, but they are not yet a majority. …

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged. When our Founding Fathers passed the First Amendment, they sought to protect churches from government interference. They never intended to construct a wall of hostility between government and the concept of religious belief itself.

Last year, I sent the Congress a constitutional amendment to restore prayer to public schools. Already this session, there’s growing bipartisan support for the amendment, and I am calling on the Congress to act speedily to pass it and to let our children pray.

Source: Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. from Speaking My Mind by Ronald Reagan. Copyright © 1989 Ronald W. Reagan.

Donald E. Wildmon

Network Television as a Moral Danger

Wildmon was a Christian minister, a grassroots religious activist, and the founder of the American Family Association.

One night during the Christmas holidays of 1976, I decided to watch television with my family. … Not far into the program was a scene of adultery. I reacted to the situation in the manner as I had been taught. I asked one of the children to change channels. Getting involved in the second program, we were shocked with some crude profanity. …

As I sat in my den that night, I became angry. I had been disturbed by the deterioration of morals I had witnessed in the media and society during the previous twenty-five years.

This was accompanied by a dramatic rise in crime, a proliferation of pornography, increasingly explicit sexual lyrics in music, increasing numbers of broken homes, a rise in drug and alcohol use among the youth, and various other negative factors. …

Realizing that these changes were being brought into the sanctity of my home, I decided I could and would no longer remain silent. …

This great struggle is one of values, particularly which ones will be the standard for our society and a base for our system of justice in the years to come. For 200 years our country has based its morals, its sense of right and wrong, on the Christian view of man. The Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount have been our solid foundation. …

Television is the most pervasive and persuasive medium we have. At times it is larger than life. It is our only true national medium. Network television is the greatest educator we have. …

It is teaching that adultery is an acceptable and approved lifestyle. … It is teaching that hardly anyone goes to church, that very few people in our society are Christian or live by Christian principles. How? By simply censoring Christian characters, Christian values, and Christian culture from the programs.

Source: From Donald E. Wildmon, Home Invaders (Elgin, IL: Victor Books, 1985). Copyright © 1985. Reprinted by permission of the author.

A. Bartlett Giamatti

The Moral Majority as a Threat to Liberty

A. Bartlett Giamatti was the president of Yale University (1978–1986) and subsequently commissioner of Major League Baseball. He offered these remarks to the entering class of Yale undergraduates in 1981.

A self-proclaimed “Moral Majority,” and its satellite or client groups, cunning in the use of a native blend of old intimidation and new technology, threaten the values [of pluralism and freedom]. …

From the maw of this “morality” come those who presume to know what justice for all is; come those who presume to know which books are fit to read, which television programs are fit to watch. … From the maw of this “morality” rise the tax-exempt Savonarolas who believe they, and they alone, possess the “truth.” There is no debate, no discussion, no dissent. They know. … What nonsense.

What dangerous, malicious nonsense. …

We should be concerned that so much of our political and religious leadership acts intimidated for the moment and will not say with clarity that this most recent denial of the legitimacy of differentness is a radical assault on the very pluralism of peoples, political beliefs, values, forms of merit and systems of religion our country was founded to welcome and foster.

Liberty protects the person from unwarranted government intrusions into a dwelling or other private places. In our tradition the State is not omnipresent in the home. And there are other spheres of our lives and existence, outside the home, where the State should not be a dominant presence.

Freedom extends beyond spatial bounds. Liberty presumes an autonomy of self that includes freedom of thought, belief, expression, and certain intimate conduct.

Source: From Speeches and Articles by and about Presidents of Yale University (RU 65). Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library. Used by permission of Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.

Anthony Kennedy

The Constitution Protects Privacy

Kennedy, a Roman Catholic, was named to the Supreme Court by Ronald Reagan in 1988. In Lawrence v. Texas (2003), which challenged a state antisodomy law, he wrote the opinion for five of the six justices in the majority; Sandra Day O’Connor wrote a concurring opinion.

The question before the Court is the validity of a Texas statute making it a crime for two persons of the same sex to engage in certain intimate sexual conduct.

In Houston, Texas, officers of the Harris County Police Department were dispatched to a private residence in response to a reported weapons disturbance. They entered an apartment where one of the petitioners, John Geddes Lawrence, resided. … The officers observed Lawrence and another man, Tyron Garner, engaging in a sexual act. The two petitioners were arrested, held in custody over night, and charged and convicted before a Justice of the Peace.

The complaints described their crime as “deviate sexual intercourse, namely [ … ] sex, with a member of the same sex (man).” …

We conclude the case should be resolved by determining whether the petitioners were free as adults to engage in the private conduct in the exercise of their liberty under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution.

[The Texas statute in question seeks] to control a personal relationship that, whether or not entitled to formal recognition in the law, is within the liberty of persons to choose without being punished as criminals. … The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice. …

… The petitioners are entitled to respect for their private lives. The State cannot demean their existence or control their destiny by making their private sexual conduct a crime. Their right to liberty under the Due Process Clause gives them the full right to engage in their conduct without intervention of the government. “It is a promise of the Constitution that there is a realm of personal liberty which the government may not enter.”

Source: Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 562–563, 567, 571, 579 (2003).

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