Last weekend, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) gave a little sermon on church-state relations at an unusual church – TV preacher Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).
In an email Q & A with CBN senior correspondent David Brody, Obama addressed the role of faith in politics and the relationship between religion and government. The Democratic presidential candidate challenged progressives to recognize the potential of faith in addressing social problems, and he challenged evangelicals to respect American religious diversity.
“For my friends on the right,” he said in remarks posted at CBN’s Brody File, “I think it would be helpful to remember the critical role that the separation of church and state has played in preserving not only our democracy but also our religious practice. Folks tend to forget that during our founding, it wasn’t the atheists or the civil libertarians who were the most effective champions of the First Amendment. It was the persecuted minorities, it was Baptists like John Leland who didn’t want the established churches to impose their views on folks who were getting happy out in the fields and teaching the scripture to slaves.
“It was the forbearers of Evangelicals,” he continued, “who were the most adamant about not mingling government with religious, because they didn’t want state-sponsored religion hindering their ability to practice their faith as they understood it. Given this fact, I think that the right might worry a bit more about the dangers of sectarianism.
“Whatever we once were,” he concluded, “we’re no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of non-believers. We should acknowledge this and realize that when we’re formulating policies from the state house to the Senate floor to the White House, we’ve got to work to translate our reasoning into values that are accessible to every one of our citizens, not just members of our own faith community.”
Obama’s homily, as you might expect, did not get an amen from CBN honcho Robertson. On the contrary, the TV preacher launched into a diatribe when the Obama comments were mentioned on Robertson’s “700 Club” show on Monday.
“I think what he says is dangerous,” Robertson blustered. “I think that it has a veneer of sophistication and it has a veneer of moderation, a veneer of intelligence, but underneath it he basically is selling out, well, the origins of our nation.
“America wasn’t built on Hinduism,” Robertson continued. “America wasn’t built on Islam. America wasn’t built on Buddhism. America and our democratic institutions were built on the Christian faith. There is no question about it.
“Sure, I think we’re no longer a Christian nation,” Robertson conceded, “He’s right there. But at the same time, we have to acknowledge where the source of our freedoms come from. It comes from belief in the Judeo-Christian God of the Bible, Jehovah God, not one of the 300 million gods of some other faith. And I think to put Christianity on a par with Hinduism, Buddhism, etc., I believe this man is doing a grave disservice to our nation.”
Robertson is, of course, wrong as usual. Christianity has, indeed, played an important role in American history, but our Constitution was intentionally designed to protect persons of all faiths and none. James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, said he had always “regarded the freedom of religious opinion and worship as equally belonging to every sect.”
Perhaps the TV preacher, who claims to be a Baptist, was stung by Obama’s reminder that Robertson’s own theological predecessors played a key role in bringing about the separation of church and state. Leland and other colonial-era Baptist dissenters were ardent supporters of separation, in part because they had suffered from the excesses of state-established religion.
Baptists were few in number back then. Today, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, thanks in no small measure to the First Amendment’s religious liberty safeguards that allowed it to grow. Robertson also sits atop a religious broadcasting empire that the protections of the Constitution permitted him to build. Unfortunately, the now-fundamentalist-dominated SBC and the Virginia Beach televangelist regularly assail the wall of separation between church and state.
Robertson and the SBC would be wise to read a little American history and express their eternal gratitude for the principle of church-state separation. We won’t, however, hold our breath til that happens.
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