[Congressional Record Volume 140, Number 139 (Thursday, September 29, 1994)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Printing Office [www.gpo.gov]


[Congressional Record: September 29, 1994]
From the Congressional Record Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]

 
                SELECTIVE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

                                 ______


                          HON. PHILIP M. CRANE

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, September 29, 1994

  Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, at the same time Democrats visciously 
attacked Christian Republicans, apparently fearing a breach in the 
infamous wall separating church and state, President Clinton attended a 
church service and called passage of his boondoggie crime bill ``the 
will of God.'' It is just another example of the misunderstanding of 
that overused remark made by Thomas Jefferson.
  The Founding Fathers did not advocate a federally run church in the 
United States. In fact, the wall to which Mr. Jefferson refers is 
designed to protect churches from the government, not vice versa. At 
the time of this Nation's founding, States ensured that their Christian 
population would be well represented as Members of Congress were 
required to sign pledges affirming their Christianity.
  While much has changed in the more than 200 years since then, America 
undoubtedly remains a theistic society. Although some Members of 
Congress cringe when children have a moment of silence to pray or 
reflect in public school, we still start our legislative days with a 
prayer. Although Democrats fight for the rights of atheists, the leader 
of their party can call on a Christian God to help pass his 
legislation. Although Democrats can accuse Christians of radicalism, 
their leader speaks about the need for family--that is Christian--
values.
  A recent article by nationally syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran 
addresses this convenient use of religion by the Democrats and I 
commend it to the attention of my colleagues.

                 Selective Separation of Church, State

       ``The will of God,'' as Mr. Clinton called his crime bill 
     in an unexpected seizure of piety, has been accomplished. If 
     I may be allowed a little pun, it was an arresting phrase.
       The crime bill will do for the crime problem exactly what 
     the war on drugs has done for the drug problem. But never 
     mind that for the moment.
       My keen-eyed colleague Cal Thomas has remarked that the 
     liberal media found nothing amiss in Mr. Clinton's stepping 
     into a pulpit to equate his agenda with the purposes of the 
     Almighty. Usually the media are on the qui vive for breaches 
     of the separation of church and state, but not this time.
       As a matter of fact, the liberal Democrats always have used 
     the churches when it has served their purpose. The civil 
     rights and antiwar movements have featured many clergymen who 
     used their stature and charisma to advance political causes: 
     Martin Luther King, the Berrigan brothers, William Sloane 
     Coffin, Ralph Abernathy, Robert Drinan, Jesse Jackson. This 
     is fine with me, and it was fine with the media.
       But when ``reactionary'' clergymen get into politics--Jerry 
     Falwell, Pat Robertson, the Religious Right in general--we 
     hear dark media murmurs about the danger to the American 
     tradition of separationism.
       You can gauge how deeply the media care about religious 
     freedom by the extent of their coverage of the oppression and 
     persecution of Christians under communism: just about zero. 
     Christians have never made the liberal honor roll of 
     accredited victims.
       And it isn't just the news media. Education is now assumed 
     to mean exclusively secular subjects, even though throughout 
     most of Western history religion was the central subject of 
     education (as it still is in the Islamic world), most of our 
     great universities were founded as Christian institutions, 
     and most of our greatest art and music is Christian.
       The Canadian writer John Muggeridge recalled in a recent 
     speech that he had once taken a course in French literature 
     that included no religious writing at all. And he was 
     astonished, when he read on his own the same writers he had 
     read in his courses, to find that many of them had written 
     religious and devotional works. It was as if he'd taken a 
     course in English literature without learning that Chaucer, 
     Spenser, Milton, Donne, Bunyan, Swift, Dr. Johnson and T.S. 
     Eliot were devout Christians.
       We talk about ``multiculturalism'' at the same time we are 
     systematically ignoring the core of our own culture. An 
     Italian priest observed to me recently that America has ``In 
     God we trust'' on its coins, and even chaplains in Congress 
     yet won't provide for a moment of prayer in its public 
     schools.
       Nobody can claim to be fully educated without some 
     awareness of religious experience. Not everyone can have 
     faith, but no mind can be well informed without an inkling of 
     it. Christianity is still at the center of many if not most 
     Americans' lives.
       Yet the majority of journalists show little interest and 
     less sympathy for it. They seem to feel no obligation to 
     become acquainted with it before reporting on it. No wonder 
     their reporting shows a tin ear for the inner life of faith. 
     Christians, when they are not simply ignored, are usually 
     portrayed as hypocrites and fanatics--unless they are 
     liberals. The churches are portrayed as tyrannical for trying 
     to maintain their own traditions, but the Democratic Party is 
     permitted to escape criticism when it won't allow anti-
     abortion speakers like Gov. Robert Casey of Philadelphia to 
     speak at its national convention.
       Jacques Barzun has said that if you don't know baseball, 
     you don't know America. He has a point. But the point applies 
     even more strongly to religion. No newspaper would send a 
     reporter who was ignorant of baseball to cover the World 
     Series. Why do they send ignorant and even hostile skeptics 
     to cover the activities of Christians?

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