We are a nation of laws, not religion

LETTERLETTERLETTER

Editor,  

Regarding the recent mass-murder in Aurora, Colorado, Former Mayor Bob Edwards opines that America should be “looking to define the decay of our culture that allows this type of action to take place on an all too frequent basis.” His solution?—a return to Judeo-Christian values. “America was created as a Christian nation based on a Judeo-Christian foundation,” writes Edwards. Our American Biblical foundation is “under attack” from church/state separatists who misinterpret the Constitution.

While I’m certain the former Mayor is well meaning; this is claptrap—and offensive. There are plenty of non-Christians in this country and they do not constitute what is wrong with it—any more or less than Christians do.

This is what the Constitution actually says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The words “God,” “Jesus,” “Judeo-Christian” or even “Bible” aren’t found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. Religion is only mentioned twice in the entire document and both are exclusionary in nature (i.e. what you can’t do with regard to religion). The first was mentioned above (from the First Amendment) and the second from article VI: “No religious test shall be required as a qualification to any office or public trust.” Does this sound like something written by the founders of a Christian nation?  

I do agree with Mr. Edwards that our forefathers designed an exceptional nation but it is very clear that they—quite deliberately in fact—did not design a Christian one.

In 2009, President Obama said, “One of the great strengths of the United States is (we have a very large Christian population) we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”  Another president, Thomas Jefferson wrote, in a letter to Thomas Cooper, “Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.” More noteworthy perhaps were Jefferson’s words to the Danbury Baptists:

“Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship , that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘Make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

To his credit, Mr. Edwards did hedge a bit with this: “However, before Christian churches look for others to blame for the America’s moral decay they need to look inward and ask if they are leading or following.” This would prevent us from pointing out how “Judeo-Christian values” served a few Catholic priests during the last few decades.

According to Mr. Edwards, our collective moral lapse is responsible for all this horrific violence and is due to the supplanting of Christian values by “Situation ethics.” There is some irony here. Situational ethics is actually a Christian ethical theory that came on the scene in the 1960s. It was developed by an Episcopal priest; Joseph Fletcher. At its very core, this ethical theory holds that above all, one must base actions on a universal, unchanging and unconditional love for all people. So what Mr. Edwards is saying is that our societal problems are due to the replacement of Judeo-Christian principles with a universal, unchanging and unconditional love for all people. Well, Mr. Mayor, I will actually have some of that!     

So, in defense of Situational Ethics, consider the following:

A man stands at the front of a crowded movie theater with several loaded weapons, a gas mask and wearing a Batman costume. What does Situational Ethics tell him to do? I will hazard a guess: “Go home.”

What does the Judeo-Christian Bible tell him to do?  Well, lots of things but one could quote 1st Samuel 15:3, where the Judeo-Christian God says, “Now go and strike Amalek and devote to destruction all that they have. Do not spare them, but kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. "

We have some serious social problems in this country, but we are a nation of laws, not of men, and certainly not religion. There is nothing more American than the Constitution and now that we are clear on what it actually says, blaming our societal ills on non-Christians is simply un-American. Perhaps there are some laws that we can enact to spare lives by preventing a sociopath like James Holmes from gaining access to that many rounds in those types of weapons.     

Alan R. Hudson