[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 127 (Tuesday, September 22, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S10730-S10731]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         BISHOP LEE'S SERMON ON ``FAITH, FREEDOM, AND VIRTUE''

 Mr. WARNER. Mr. President, on Sunday, September 20, I joined 
Members of the Virginia Congressional delegation--Senator Robb, 
Congressman Bliley, Congressman Scott, and Virginia's Lieutenant 
Governor Hager, and many other Virginians at ``Virginia Day'' at the 
Washington National Cathedral. I was privileged, together with Senator 
Robb, to read the scripture lessons.
  My family and I have had a long association with this great Cathedral 
which stands on the highest promontory in the Nation's Capital and 
serves as living symbol of religious freedom the world over. Over 70 
years ago, I was baptized, later confirmed, and then served on the 
governing chapter of the Cathedral. My uncle, the Reverend Charles T. 
Warner started his career in the ministry here with Bishop Freeman and 
then worked with the Cathedral in his capacity as Rector of nearby St. 
Alban's Parish for 40 years.
  The Right Reverend Peter James Lee, the 12th Episcopal Bishop of 
Virginia, delivered an inspiring sermon. As the Senate, and indeed all 
Americans, look to the difficult decisions facing us, we should examine 
Bishop Lee's important reflections on ``Faith, Freedom, and Virtue.'' I 
ask that it be printed in the Record.
  The sermon follows:

                       Faith, Freedom and Virtue

(A sermon preached by the Rt. Rev. Peter James Lee, Bishop of Virginia, 
on Virginia Day at the Washington National Cathedral, Sunday, September 
                               20, 1998)

       It takes less than a minute, except during rush hour, to 
     cross from Washington into Virginia. The Potomac River is not 
     much of a barrier. But over the centuries, the distance 
     between the national capital and the Commonwealth of Virginia 
     has varied dramatically. In the earliest days, there was 
     hardly any distance at all since Virginia was a primary 
     leader of the intellectual and political ferment that led to 
     the birth of the nation. But contemporary with the 
     establishment of the capital on the Potomac, the tension 
     between Virginia and the nation began to increase, until it 
     led to open rebellion in the Civil War. The Potomac became a 
     hostile boundary. Virginia has shaped our nation's history, 
     rebelled against national authority, in this century resisted 
     the movement for racial justice, and yet has contributed so 
     very much to the making of America. Today, Virginia is a 
     beneficiary of many federal dollars, thanks in no small 
     measure to the energy and leadership of our two lay readers 
     today, the distinguished United States Senators from 
     Virginia.
       Virginia's ambivalent relationship with the nation, 
     sometimes formative and leading, sometimes hostile and 
     resistant, has been matched on occasion by Washington's 
     dismissal of its historic neighbor across the river.
       I experienced that shortsighted Washington view not many 
     years ago. My first assignment as a new priest was on the 
     staff of St. John's Church, Lafayette Square, across from the 
     White House. Twenty years later, as the Bishop of Virginia, I 
     was asked back to St. John's to speak to a dinner of former 
     lay leaders. A distinguished Washington lawyer whom I had 
     known when I was a young priest came up to me, and with 
     generosity and unintended Washington arrogance, said, 
     ``Peter, we are very proud of you. You are a bishop somewhere 
     now, aren't you?''
       When the Potomac is a great divide, from Virginia--and the 
     rest of the nation--everyone suffers.
       In just a few years, Virginia will mark 400 years since the 
     first English settlers brought to these shores their version 
     of the Christian faith. The religious life of Virginia across 
     these centuries has been dominated by a tension between faith 
     and freedom, a tension defined in the decades of the 
     eighteenth century when a few well-educated Virginians were 
     influenced by the European enlightenment and thousands of 
     Virginians were swayed by evangelical revivals across the 
     Commonwealth. In the 1730's, the majority Christian group in 
     Virginia was Episcopalian. By the 1790's, the majority was 
     Baptist. Ever since, Virginia Christian life has been marked 
     by a tension between the spiritual descendants of Thomas 
     Jefferson and the spiritual descendants of the great 
     evangelical revivals of the same era. Thomas Jefferson was 
     derided by his opponents as godless and dangerous. 
     Evangelical preachers were dismissed by the followers of 
     Jefferson as ignorant and prejudiced.
       Today, in this well-ordered cathedral that speaks 
     eloquently of rationality and mystery both joined in the 
     service of God, it is difficult for us to grasp the 
     significance of the break between the Jeffersonian and the 
     evangelical traditions. And yet, the failure of Virginia to 
     bridge the gap between the two traditions is one of the great 
     and tragic might-have-beens of history. In England, in about 
     those same years, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth 
     centuries, personal, evangelical piety, stirred by John and 
     Charles Wesley, contributed mightily to the movement for the 
     abolition of slavery. In Virginia at the time, voices against 
     slavery were rare. Thomas Jefferson wrote persuasively about 
     inalienable human rights, but he held on to his slaves. What 
     might have happened in Virginia if the humanist sense of 
     enlightenment had been nourished by a Christian conversion 
     experience that led to a passion against slavery? It didn't 
     happen, or at least it happened among so few that it made 
     little difference in Virginia. What might have been.
       Even to this day, two communities exist side-by-side in 
     Virginia--one of independent, Bible-centered congregations 
     with inherited suspicion of cities, universities, and 
     contemporary culture. And the Jeffersonian tradition in 
     Virginia, while admirably zealous for

[[Page S10731]]

     the separation of church and state, often treats religion as 
     so much a private matter that it should have little to say in 
     the public realm. It is an overstatement, but not much of 
     one, to say that one community, the Jeffersonian tradition, 
     holds as an unexamined doctrine that religion is entirely a 
     private matter, while the other tradition of evangelical 
     piety, affirms that America is a Christian nation whose 
     values should be those of the Bible, interpreted in the most 
     conservative light.
       Both traditions have held on to one dimension of personal 
     values shaped by Judeo-Christian standards. Virginia has a 
     powerful and priceless tradition of expecting high standards 
     of personal honor among its leaders. When Robert E. Lee was 
     President of Washington College in Lexington, the institution 
     that now bears his name along with Washington's, General Lee 
     was asked by a student for a book of rules. He responded, 
     famously, ``We have but one rule: our students are gentlemen 
     and a gentleman does not lie, cheat or steal.'' That rule, 
     adapted to the happy reality of coeducation, and spread from 
     a 19th Century elite to the whole of the Commonwealth, 
     reflects the heritage of personal honor that is still a 
     cherished value of all Virginians.
       Contemporary Virginia needs to offer the rest of the nation 
     an example of joining its twin legacies of faith and freedom, 
     which includes its respect for personal honor and public 
     virtue.
       Faith is nurtured in a climate of freedom. We have learned 
     that faith imposed by state authority is corrupting and 
     oppressive. The French philosopher Pascal once wrote that 
     ``people never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when 
     they do it from religious conviction.'' Religious zealots 
     from the great religions of the world who deny the freedom of 
     others betray the highest values of their own creeds. Faith 
     and freedom may be in tension but they need not be in 
     conflict.
       We are in danger in America, and even across the world, of 
     dismissing serious commitment to religious faith as 
     irrelevant to public virtue or even dangerous to civic peace. 
     The crisis surrounding the President of the United States is 
     in part the inevitable result of the rupture between personal 
     faith and public life, between faith and freedom, the break 
     between personal honor and political values.
       As this most violent century draws to an end, as race and 
     ethnicity and religion continue to divide people and to lead 
     to their slaughter, the world needs people of faith who honor 
     freedom; people committed to freedom who respect the 
     integrity of faith, people who can build societies that value 
     personal honor and public virtue.
       The great religions of the world have much to say about our 
     life together. They cannot be relegated simply to the realm 
     of private preference. In the lesson from the Hebrew 
     scriptures today,\1\ the prophet Amos condemns those who take 
     shortcuts with the law that forbids commerce on the Sabbath. 
     The behavior condemned by the prophet may be ``legally 
     accurate,'' but those who engage in behavior that oppresses 
     the poor are corrupt. Paul, in his first letter to 
     Timothy,\1\ insists that the Christians hold their rulers in 
     their prayers--assuming that the public good requires leaders 
     of personal honor but since they are flawed human beings like 
     the rest of us, they need the support of our prayers. And in 
     the parable of the dishonest steward,\1\ Jesus warns that the 
     distinction between private and public virtue is artificial. 
     The one who is dishonest in very little things will also be 
     dishonest in much. The ancient Bible stories are right on 
     target for the issues of today.
       This cathedral stands on the highest hill in the District 
     of Columbia. Its towers dominate the Washington skyline, not 
     with the power to oppress, but with the powers to inspire and 
     to call a people to personal integrity and public virtue. 
     That does not mean our leaders must be saints. Many of us 
     know our senators, other leaders, and our bishops well enough 
     to know that sainthood has eluded all of us. We are all 
     flawed, fallible persons, but that does not suggest that our 
     quest for private and public virtue is in vain. We need to 
     reaffirm the integrity of faith, faith in God who empowers 
     each one of us to become the person God intends us to be; the 
     God who lifts us up when we fall, and who redeems our 
     failures with new hope. We need to recover a personal 
     faith that sustains both private honor and public virtue. 
     We need to bridge the gap between the sacred and the 
     secular, not by a diminution of freedom, but with an 
     expansion of faith that respects freedom and the freedom 
     that protects the nurture of faith and the privacy of 
     individuals.
       This nation is engaged in a great public conversation about 
     the crisis in the Presidency. President Clinton's moral 
     authority is severely compromised. Whether this crisis ends 
     with resignation, impeachment, or censure and a crippled 
     presidency for the remaining two years of the term, it is 
     important for the well being of the nation to consider what 
     we can learn about ourselves in this crisis. That in no way 
     absolves the President from his responsibility. But have we 
     separated personal, private morality from public life so 
     extensively that this was a crisis waiting to happen? Do we 
     have a system of raising up leaders in public life that 
     encourages and rewards honor, integrity, and personal 
     commitment to our shared values? Or, do we separate faith and 
     freedom, personal honor and public virtue, so extensively 
     that our moral life together is imperiled? Our moral life is 
     now endangered by excessive public intrusion into private 
     life and dishonorable private behavior that erodes public 
     trust. With our traditions, Virginians can make a difference 
     in the national conversation.
       Virginia is a Commonwealth where faith and freedom have 
     competed but have flourished; we are a commonwealth that 
     demands of our leaders personal honor and service to public 
     virtue. Let those great traditions come together again in a 
     new and mutually respectfully union so that our people may be 
     strengthened.
       In his farewell address in 1796, our first President, 
     George Washington, said, ``Of all the dispositions and habits 
     which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are 
     indispensable supports . . . a volume could not trace all 
     their connections with private and public felicity . . . let 
     us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be 
     maintained without religion . . . reason and experience both 
     forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in 
     exclusion of religious principle.''
       Virginia is the birthplace of English speaking Christian 
     faith in America. Virginia is the birthplace of Thomas 
     Jefferson's statute for religious freedom. We are a community 
     that offers to a nation the union of personal honor serving 
     public virtue, of personal faith in a climate of freedom that 
     restricts intrusive government.
       In New Testament Greek, the word ``crisis'' means a time of 
     judgment, a time of separation, a time of clarification. A 
     crisis in the view of the Bible is often created by the word 
     of God, proclaimed by the prophets, exposing the gap between 
     where people are and where they ought to be. We are living at 
     such a time and that time, the Bible teaches us, can be one 
     of hope and of new beginning. May the traditions of Virginia, 
     of faith and freedom, of private piety and public virtue, of 
     personal honor and public service, come together again in 
     this great nation so that future generations will look back 
     on our day as a time of moral renewal and refreshing new 
     hope, a time when God called this nation to a rebirth of our 
     spiritual strength.

     \1\ Amos 8:4-7, I Timothy 2:1-8, and Luke 16:1-13.

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