[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 147 (Thursday, October 15, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2179-E2181]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                      TRIBUTE TO AUSTIN CUNNINGHAM

                                 ______
                                 

                           HON. FLOYD SPENCE

                           of south carolina

                    in the house of representatives

                       Thursday, October 15, 1998

  Mr. SPENCE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recognize an outstanding 
South Carolinian, Austin Cunningham. This retired business executive 
has dedicated himself to the community of Orangeburg and to the State 
of South Carolina.
  As a young man, Austin Cunningham, went to work to help support his 
family when his father died. He worked during the day and went to both 
high school and college at night, earning a law degree from the 
University of Virginia in 1940. During his business career, Mr. 
Cunningham has been the president of five companies and he has owned 
two manufacturing plants in South Carolina. President Reagan recognized 
Mr. Cunningham for his work with the Jobs Tax Credit Program and he has 
been involved with the administrations of former Governor Carroll 
Campbell and Governor David Beasley in improving race relations in our 
State. He has also contributed his time and efforts in the Orangeburg 
area on behalf of: Crime Watch, Crime Stoppers, the People's Assault on 
Drugs (PAD), as well as the collaboration between South Carolina State 
University and the South Carolina Philharmonic, which has resulted in 
an annual three concert satellite series.
  Due to his impressive civic contributions, Mr. Cunningham has been 
named as an `Outstanding Older South Carolinian,'' by the Lower 
Savannah Region Aging Advisory Committee, representing a six-country 
region. He is now a nominee for the State title, which will be 
determined in November. Also, Mr. Cunningham was recently recognized as 
the Orangeburg, South Carolina ``Citizen of the Year'' for 1998.
  I have known Austin Cunningham for many years. In addition to his 
civic involvement, I

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have been impressed by his insight into issues affecting our Country. 
He regularly submits articles that reflect his opinions on timely 
topics to local newspapers in South Carolina. Following is an article 
that Mr. Cunningham authored concerning the issue of Church and State, 
that I would like to include with this tribute to Austin Cunningham. It 
is with pleasure that I commend Austin Cunningham on his achievements 
and wish him much continued success.

      [From the Times and Democrat, Orangeburg, SC, Nov. 23, 1998]

 Church and/or State--In the Name of Freedom, Court Takes Away Religion

                         (By Austin Cunningham)

       There's a private day school in New York where the tuition 
     is $14,000 a year. A parent who felt that he and his wife 
     weren't doing a good enough job wanted the school to step 
     into the moral vacuum and teach his teenager values. The 
     answer he got was that the school had its hands full 
     preparing students for Ivy League colleges. ``So much of 
     ethics and morality are tied up with religions that we don't 
     dare touch it.''
       In recent decades the U.S. Supreme Court has carved out a 
     whole new body of law. Religion may no longer be preferred to 
     irreligion, prayer is not permitted in publicly funded 
     ceremonies and schools, not Bible readings, nor officially 
     sanctioned silent moments. Localities are trying to get 
     around these strictures but at some risk. You can advocate 
     communism or genocide but religious observations cannot be 
     tolerated. No religious symbols on public property, no 
     crosses, no menorahs, no Ten Commandments. In areas as 
     diverse as criminal justice, federalism, pornography, 
     educational policy we've been caught up in a downward 
     spinning moral whirlpool.
       This year we celebrate the 210th anniversary of the 
     American Constitution and the 206th of the Bill of Rights.
       When the U.S. Congress passed the first 10 amendments to 
     the Constitution (the Bill of Rights) early in George 
     Washington's first term, the members were crystal clear in 
     their minds about what they meant and wanted. This is 
     quintessentially true of the First Amendment, a single 
     sentence, the first two clauses of which (the Establishment 
     Clause and the Free Exercise Clause) are my subjects. They 
     fascinate me. I hope you'll feel the same.
       ``Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of 
     religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.'' That 
     amendment has played a crucial role in protecting our right 
     to govern ourselves. But it has been amended drastically by a 
     new breed of federal judge who jumps through hoops and piles 
     on sophistry to prove the amendment says what it plainly 
     doesn't say.
       The writers of the Constitution (Thomas Jefferson, who 
     wasn't there, called them demigods) descended from immigrants 
     who came here to escape religious persecution or suppression 
     and were looking for opportunities in a new world. They were 
     overwhelmingly Christian, Protestant and devout. 
     ``Establishment religions'' had been left behind but six of 
     the 13 colonies set up established religions of their own, 
     religions financially or legally government-supported. In New 
     England the Congregationalists were favored; from Maryland 
     south the Episcopal Church got the nod with a strongly 
     Catholic population in southern Maryland. Presbyterians and 
     Baptists were active but weren't part of an 
     ``establishment.'' Even so, all religions thrived which 
     certainly included those of the Catholic and Jewish 
     persuasions.
       The crystal clarity I've referred to in the First Amendment 
     involved the intention of Congress to protect all religion 
     from the central government and give the states free rein.
       In 1770 in South Carolina the law read ``The Christian 
     Protestant religion shall be the established religion in the 
     state.'' (My emphasis.) The law forbade a religious society 
     calling itself a church unless it agreed ``there is one 
     eternal God . . . and the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New 
     Testament were of divine inspiration.'' To remark that our 
     country started as a Christian nation should be as 
     commonplace as saying we are an English-speaking one.
       Years later (1868) the 14th Amendment effectively abolished 
     the right of states to have established religions (none was 
     left, anyway).
       I'm writing about a volatile subject here, one that raises 
     hackles. Let me set the record straight historically by 
     quoting our first four presidents (Washington, Adams, 
     Jefferson, Madison) directly:
       George Washington: In one place he referred to the ``divine 
     author of our beloved Religion (meaning Christ).'' A few 
     months after taking office: ``It is the duty of all nations 
     to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his 
     will, to be grateful for his benefits and humbly to implore 
     his protection.'' Later: ``There never was a people who had 
     more reason to acknowledge a divine interposition in their 
     affairs than those of the United States.''
       John Adams: ``The greatest glory of the American Revolution 
     was this, it connected in one indissoluble bond the 
     principles of civil government and Christianity.'' And: ``Our 
     Constitution was designed for a moral and religious people 
     only.''
       Thomas Jefferson: In 1802: ``That free exercise of religion 
     is placed by the Constitution, independent of the powers of 
     the general government. . . . I consider the federal 
     government interdicted from intermeddling with religious 
     institutions, their doctrines, discipline or exercises.'' 
     Thomas Jefferson believed ``moral philosophy was necessary in 
     public education, it must be made available through 
     legislative appropriations.'' At his on beloved University of 
     Virginia, a public school, he required that each student take 
     a course in religion.
       James Madison: ``We have staked the whole future of 
     American civilization not on the power of government . . . on 
     capacity of everyone to govern themselves according to the 
     Ten Commandments.'' (In 1980 our courts held that it was 
     unconstitutional to put the Ten Commandments on school walls 
     thus protecting our young people from aphorisms like Honor 
     thy father and thy mother . . . Thou shalt not kill . . . 
     Thou shalt not commit adultery . . . Thou shalt not steal.'') 
     As the Father of the Constitution, Madison's whole idea was 
     to prevent Congress from establishing a national religion 
     that would threaten the religious diversity of the states.
       Permit me to add Tocqueville (in the 1830s): ``Americans 
     combine the notions of religion and liberty so intimately in 
     their minds it is impossible to make them conceive of one 
     without the other.''
       In 1781 Congress appropriated funds for a special printing 
     and distribution of the Bible. ``The Congress approves and 
     recommends to the people the Holy Bible for use in schools.''
       From the outset we've had ``In God We Trust'' on our money. 
     In our national anthem, ``. . . and this is our motto, in God 
     is our Trust.'' Here's Abraham Lincoln: ``With firmness in 
     the right as God gives us to see the right.'' Each day the 
     Supreme Court is introduced with the words, ``God save the 
     United States and this honorable court.'' On the Sunday in 
     October before the annual session starts, the full court 
     attends a religious service.
       In 1892 the U.S. Supreme Court stated, ``Our institutions 
     are emphatically Christian.'' In 1911 the same court said, 
     ``We are a Christian people.'' In 1954, Chief Justice Warren: 
     ``The Good Book and the spirit of our Savior from the 
     beginning have been our guiding geniuses. Our Constitution 
     was the work of people who believed in God, and who expressed 
     their faith as a matter of course in public prayer.'' Our 
     first public schools were founded by clergymen. Our first 
     colleges were divinity schools.
       Before we approach the subject of church and state, we have 
     to know the historical absolutes so that we can judge how 
     ridiculous modern interpretation has been and how our 
     national consciousness has been warped as a result.
       The fact that kids can't pray before a game that no one 
     gets hurt is grotesque. The very English Common Law which 
     became our legal code is infused with Christianity. To quote 
     Stanton Evans: ``The court's position in these religious 
     cases is an intellectual shambles, result oriented 
     jurisprudence at its most flagrant.'' Even though our first 
     four presidents had their own inner-directed beliefs, the 
     quotations above demonstrate clearly that their executive 
     actions fly in the face of modern judicial reading of the 
     First Amendment.
       Starting around 1952 the Supreme Court has sometimes relied 
     on ``pop psychology'' as a source. The predilections of 
     individual judges have wreaked havoc. Father Richard Neuhaus 
     tells us, ``The courts have presumed to declare that the 
     separation of church and state means the separation of 
     religion and religiously grounded morality from public life 
     which means the separation of the deepest convictions of the 
     people from politics which means the end of democracy and, in 
     fact, the end of politics.''
       My personal villain is the late ``loveable'' Justice 
     William Brennan, whose persuasive power and ramshackle 
     thought processes carried the majority of the Supreme Court 
     through a long series of decisions which form the body of 
     today's law and swerve away from the moral and religious 
     precepts that undergirded us for 167 years. Justice Brennan, 
     a ``jurisprudential dervish,'' once attributed his thought 
     processes to a ``range of emotional and intuitive responses 
     in contrast to lumbering syllogisms of reason.'' Someone has 
     said, ``Today it's more his Constitution than Madison's.''
       There is simply nothing in our Constitution that justifies 
     abolishing anyone's right to pray or mediate anywhere, 
     anytime. In light of what I've quoted, such a nullification 
     is bizarre. I'm emphasizing prayer only because of its 
     symbolism as a cornerstone of the whole distorted 
     jurisprudential attack. A lot of good people don't pray. 
     Nobody wants to force them. Their private thoughts are 
     precious under our law.
       Many young people have paid a terrible price for these 
     court-ordained deviations from religious roots, Christian, 
     Jewish, the others. Thrown out the window alongside prayer 
     has been the rigor of daily memorization and recitation 
     (Biblical or otherwise) from which follows the dire loss of 
     exposure to lofty, sublime, spiritual language and thought. 
     It's hard to suppress anger as one writes.
       Permit me to quote in full the sinister prayer that set off 
     this portentous severance from our roots, the whole First 
     Amendment controversy: ``Almighty God, we acknowledge our 
     dependence on thee, and we beg thy blessings upon us, our 
     parents, our teachers and our country.'' That's it!
       The very day after the Congress passed the First Amendment 
     (Sept. 24, 1791) that same body passed a resolution calling 
     for a day of national prayer and thanksgiving plus another 
     setting up a system of chaplains for

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     itself. In light of current distortions, do you suppose the 
     passage of 24 hours made them forget what they'd done? When 
     pressed on this matter the ACLU once said, ``They were 
     confused.'' Confused? Not those guys.
       As Andrew Cord writes, ``If we accept the present view of 
     the court, then both Congress and George Washington violated 
     the Constitution from its inception.''
       Since the Supreme Court has succeeded in erecting a WALL 
     between church and state, crime rates, although recently 
     abated, have skyrocketed; hard drug use is higher; emotional 
     disorders are up; divorce rates have soared; we've got 
     abortion ``on demand''; more suicides; more children 
     clinically depressed and inclined to engage in crime; and 
     venereal disease, including AIDS, has proliferated. The ACLU 
     would have you believe these trends are coincidental.
       Well, where did all this urban decay, racial polarization, 
     deterioration in public schools and loss of community spirit 
     come from? It took just 30 years! There's nothing comparable 
     in our history. Why?
       No individual judge or court can be solely blamed for such 
     an appalling divergence from core beliefs but our cumulative 
     supine acceptance of evil has created in certain influential 
     classes of academics and among leaders in print journalism 
     and show business an inclination to create great mischief. 
     The sudden decay of moral and ethical standards in current 
     highest political circles has built up an active antipathy to 
     all rigorous standards whether in religion, education or 
     moral ethics. Relativism is taking a fearsome toll. 
     ``Everybody does it. It's all relative, anyway.''
       John DiLulio sums it up, ``Accumulating evidence confirms 
     the efficacy of faith-based approaches to social problems.'' 
     We're a society that's slipped its old moorings. We must get 
     them back.
       We're accepting decadence passively, rambling through a 
     moral nine field. We're assaulted daily through eyes and ears 
     with outrages that once would have been unimaginable. We've 
     had entering the workplace a generation of people whose moral 
     development has been arrested.
       Up to now my comments have been Christianity-centered. The 
     spiritual insights of our Founders made that our heritage. 
     But, due to those same insights, we've honored, respected and 
     protected the religiosity and nonreligiosity of all citizens.
       America from day one has been a haven for Jews. When we set 
     out on our ``great experiment'' in 1789 there were about 
     2,500 Jews in the 13 colonies (1,000, or 40 percent, in South 
     Carolina). They'd come in sailing ships and brought with them 
     an understandable apprehension that this new country might 
     evolve into a hell similar to the ones they'd left behind.
       As was frequently the case, President George Washington set 
     the standard. Writing to the Jewish congregation in Newport, 
     he said, ``The government of the United States gives bigotry 
     no sanction, to persecution no assistance. Everyone shall sit 
     in safety under his own vine and fig trees.'' (1 Kings 4:25). 
     In other correspondence he always referred to America's 
     Jewish population with respect and good will. Jewish 
     financiers helped underwrite the eight-year American 
     Revolution and no one knew that better than he. He referred 
     to them in his ornate way as ``the sons of Abraham.''
       None of us can forget that in the 20th century a great and 
     Christian nation followed evil leadership, turned on its 
     Jews; bankrupted them; ran them off and killed the rest. The 
     Jewish people have earned the right to stay alert, but I do 
     feel that in America they sometimes overdo it. What we call 
     Western Civilization is really Judeo-Christian civilization.
       As to the Catholics of all descriptions, their roots go 
     just as deep. There were times and places in our early 
     history when neither Catholics nor Jews could be elected to 
     state level office. In my lifetime, intermarriage between 
     Catholic and Protestant young people could cause a crisis, in 
     both families. This was even truer of Christians and Jews. 
     Today, intermarriage is almost commonplace.
       My subject is the First Amendment and religion, not race. 
     Everything I've said about recent court decisions applies 
     equally to our 30 million black citizens. In some ways these 
     trends have hurt some of them most. When we concentrate on 
     all the bad news we overlook the galvanic progress of our 
     black fellow citizens. But the shift in judicial emphasis 
     away from values and religion has hurt those on their bottom 
     rung the most.
       In its 2,000-year history Christianity has had its dark 
     sides--times of torture, trials, inquisitions. I find it 
     unacceptable when some Christians preach that unbaptized 
     babies or most of the world's non-Christian multitudes are 
     doomed to eternal punishment. Hard-edged Christianity is a 
     contradiction in terms. Some of our mainline churches are 
     roiled in their own controversies.
       America is the most spiritual of nations. Over 90 percent 
     of us believe in God. We have never been in danger of 
     becoming a theocracy, a government dominated by a God belief 
     as prescribed by one church. Not ever tempted.
       Any prayer offends militant athesists, some of whom sit in 
     our pews every Sabbath. At one time in life many of us have 
     been atheists or agnostics. People who remain seated during 
     national anthems, or don't pray, or pray differently, should 
     feel free but not enough to trample on the majority or 
     intimidate educators as they sometimes do. A very small tail 
     has been wagging a very large, friendly dog.
       Our most effective dispenser of deeprooted goodness is 
     firmly religious and Christian-based, The Salvation Army. 
     Nobody has yet diverted it from its mission although there've 
     been efforts. Here's part of their credo, ``We have been 
     called and ordained by God to serve in the trenches of human 
     warfare, to be a compassionate arm of the militant church, to 
     bring light to those in darkness and hope to the hopeless.'' 
     Christianity's 2,000-year-old uniqueness is its gospel 
     outreach, its energy.
       I've been discussing the heated argument going on in this 
     country between the religious and groups with different 
     viewpoints. Transcendental movements are vulnerable and make 
     mistakes. But the glorious truth cannot be gainsaid and 
     that's the overwhelming good that our organized religionists 
     do. Governments pale in comparison. Members of religious 
     organizations give twice as much to charity as non-members. 
     Scientific double-blind tests prove that sick people recover 
     sooner and more often when fervently prayed for. The immense 
     opening up of outer space continues to make believers of our 
     most sophisticated scientists.
       Every single day an immense flood of food, money, books, 
     medical healing and pure goodness pours out of American 
     churches, temples and synagogues due to the boundless, 
     borderless love religions generate. There's even evidence 
     that our Brennan-less Supreme Court is having second thoughts 
     about the havoc it's wreaked. Surely through all this we've 
     learned that any prayer to a multi-religious assemblage 
     should not be hurtful or mean-spirited. But, to paraphrase a 
     recent president, ``Tear down this wall!'' The wall exists 
     due to a gross misreading of history and law followed by 
     execrable legal conclusions.
       The American Revoluion was the final flowering of the 
     ``Enlightenment.'' Those Founders of ours, brilliant and 
     prescient as they were, could hardly have grasped the fact 
     that they were creating a whole new world.
       This tiny 18th century nation hanging on for dear life on 
     the outer edge of a raw continent was unstoppable. It took a 
     mere hundred years for it to become ``the light of the 
     world.''
       We're got to stop the rot that has poisoned and weakened 
     our society. Ultra-liberals with their soggy convictions have 
     way overreached. Authentic faith is an act of freedom.

     

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