The Murfreesboro Mosque

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty is taking the case of a Islamic Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, whose efforts to build a new mosque have been met with opposition, vandalism, and arson. As a Christian who believes in religious liberty, I find this attack on the Islamic Center reprehensible, and so I attached my name to a letter put out by the Becket Fund in support of the Islamic Center's right to build the mosque. Christians are often accused of being for religious liberty for ourselves but no one else. Unfortunately, sometimes the charge is true. I would encourage my fellow Christian believers to take seriously the idea of religious liberty and support the right of other religions to worship in peace without threat of violence or vandalism.

New Article: Robert Boyle

The next article in the series Christians who Changed their World is up. Continuing with the theme of science, this one covers Robert Boyle, the father of modern chemistry.

In honor of Independence Day

This is an excerpt from my book Why You Think the Way You Do dealing with the worldview of the Founding Fathers, the Declaration of Independence, and the first part of my discussion of the Constitution. If you want the rest, you'll need to get the book!

The American Revolution

The second revolution was in the British colonies in America in 1776. The causes of the American Revolution are many and varied, and historians and politicians argue about them constantly. Although taxation without representation is usually cited as the main reason for the revolution, that issue actually is number seventeen in the Declaration of Independence. One critical element was royal interference with the colonies’ right to govern their own affairs. For example, several colonies had passed laws abolishing slavery, but the monarchy had vetoed them. In some cases, the monarchy changed the terms of government within the colonies to place them under governors appointed by London.

The leaders of the revolution saw these and other actions by the government as violations of their liberty and, in some cases, their property; following the logic of the Glorious Revolution, they therefore had a right to end their allegiance to Britain. In fact, in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson indirectly refers to Locke with his appeal to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Locke had property as the third inalienable right, but to Jefferson, the pursuit of the good life, by which he meant a life of virtue, was even more fundamental. Of course, property enabled one to pursue this kind of life and so was also important, but Jefferson wanted the focus to be on virtue. In any event, after the Revolution and a brief period under the Articles of Confederation, the new country adopted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as the fundamental law of the land.

Enlightenment, Christianity, and the Constitution

The origins of the Constitution and Bill of Rights are also debated hotly, and the issue has become highly politicized. The key point for present purposes is the worldview of the framers. One side argues that they were deists, rationalists, and secularists in the mold of the Enlightenment; the other claims they were orthodox Christians.

There is no question that Enlightenment thought influenced the founders, particularly John Locke’s political thought. And some of the founders were heavily influenced by deism. Probably the most consistent of these was Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson went so far as to take a pair of scissors and cut out of the Bible everything he found unreasonable, including all cases of supernatural intervention; he then read the rest for inspiration. At the same time, however, he considered himself a Christian and expressed concerns about divine judgment on the nation—something a consistent deist would not do since God does not intervene in the world. Over, however, in terms of worldview, there is little question Jefferson leaned heavily toward deism. On the other hand, though he penned the Declaration of Independence, he was in Europe during the Constitutional Convention and the passing of the Bill of Rights, so his views are hardly relevant to those documents.

Benjamin Franklin, who is rightly viewed by all sides as one of the least religious of the founders, strongly advocated prayer at the Constitutional Convention: he said that prayer in the Continental Congress during the Revolution had resulted in the protection and guidance of Providence, and urged the Convention to follow that precedent in their own deliberations. (As it turns out, the motion failed because the Convention did not have enough money to hire a minister to lead the prayers.) Franklin thus had some kind of religious belief, and was not a pure deist because he believed that Providence intervened in the world in answer to prayer. The same can be said of George Washington. Several people reported walking in on him when he was on his knees fervently praying. In fact, only a very small minority of the 200 or so people considered Founding Fathers in America could be fairly described as deists or free thinkers.

The rest belonged to a variety of orthodox churches, Congregational, Presbyterian, Anglican, Baptist, and others (though some of the founders who were members of these churches had somewhat unorthodox views). Many were ministers or had divinity degrees. And if you take the time to read what they wrote, both for public and private audiences, it is clear that they thought they were establishing a government based on biblical principles. These include the idea of inalienable rights enshrined in both the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights, which as we have seen had roots in medieval theology, limitations on the reach of the federal government to the enumerated powers in the Constitution, checks and balances within the government to prevent human sinfulness from corrupting the government, even representative government, which they saw coming from Jethro’s advice to Moses in Exodus 18. To be sure, they very rarely cited chapter and verse from Scripture in their political discussions, but their priorities and overall approach to government was firmly grounded in a Christian worldview.

In fact, a ten year study from the University of Houston examined 15,000 documents (many unrelated to politics) from the founders and determined that 34% of the quotations came from the Bible, the highest of any source. The next highest was Montesquieu at 8.3%, then Blackstone at 7.9%. Locke came in at 2.9%.[1] (Blackstone’s commentaries on the law, which guided even the Supreme Court for over a century, also include a great deal of Scripture and argue that the Bible is the foundation for all law.) Whatever else can be said, it is clear from this study that the intellectual world of the founders was very heavily influenced by Scripture.

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[1] Donald Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism (Louisiana State University Press, 1988), 136-49.

The Question of Immigration

Illegal immigration in the U.S. is a thorny problem. On the one hand, we need to uphold the rule of law and not reward people who flout it—the administration seems to forget that deporting only illegals who are guilty of a crime means deporting all of them. On the other hand, as Christians we need to recognize that God’s Law demands that we welcome aliens and treat them well, though how exactly that applies outside of ancient Israel is another difficult question.

There is a third hand, however, one that is usually ignored in discussions of immigration reform.

I had a student whom I will call E.  She came to me in my office one day very upset. Her family had come here as asylum seekers from a country that I will not name. They plugged into the community, both her parents got jobs, they were involved in service organizations, and they were in all ways exemplary citizens, the kind you want to have in the community.

Then, after they had lived here for years and E had gone through the public school system and started college, the Immigration and Naturalization Service decided they did not meet the qualifications for asylum. They began deportation proceedings; her father was taken into custody and sent into a camp in Florida in preparation for returning him to his home country. Her mother was to follow him later, though E could stay while she was in school.

This whole process took quite a bit of time, and E came to see me on several occasions while it was happening. When her father was sent out of state in preparation for deportation, she said to me: “This wouldn’t be happening if we were Mexicans.”

I don’t like reporting that. It makes me very uncomfortable because it can be seen as anti-Hispanic. That isn’t my intent, but I have to say that she had a point. We tend to see immigration as a Hispanic issue, and there’s no question the majority of illegal immigrants are from Mexico and Latin America. And they have advocates in high places, probably because Hispanics are an important voting bloc in this country, so they don’t get deported.

But I wonder where E’s advocates are. Who is speaking for all those who tried to do the right thing, who followed all the rules and been active in their communities, but for whatever reason have been rejected by the INS? Or for those trying to get visas in the first place who cannot? How do we handle those people with fairness and justice? If we really believe in equal protection under law, why are the advocates of immigration reform silent about these people?

I don’t know what happened to E or to her family. I fear that they are gone.

I don’t have any ideas about how to fix the mess we’ve made of the immigration situation. But I do wish someone would start speaking up for those who are being left out of the discussion.

New article on Johannes Kepler

The next article in the series "Christians who Changed their World" is up at the Colson Center. It's on Johannes Kepler.

Scott Sonnon's Recuper8

I posted a while back on the importance of joint mobility work for health. Most of what I know about that subject I learned from Scott Sonnon. Lately, Scott's been doing a lot of work with the tactical community--first responders, military personnel, etc.--on the specific types of fitness that they need. He's come up with a program called Recuper8 that's designed to help them relieve stress after action. It's a simple joint mobility style program that is good for anyone. And what's more, he's giving it away free. I do not get anything from this, and I don't endorse everything Scott says, but this is a great opportunity to get hold of a free downloadable program that can help release tension in the parts of the body where we tend to hold it. There are also a few free bonuses he's giving with it, including a complete book on joint mobility. I encourage you to check it out.

Conservatives, Libertarians, and Progressives on Same Sex Relationships

In several previous blog posts, I talked about some of the different assumptions that I see as underlying conservative and progressive political ideas. I wanted to address what I think will be the final aspect of this issue in this post, adding libertarians into the mix as well. To get at these differences, we’ll at the three groups’ reactions to so-called same sex marriage.

First, a word about libertarians. Libertarians believe that the government should keep out of people’s lives, that they should be left on their own to make their own decisions, and that governmental power should be strictly limited to things like defense, protection of people and property, etc. They are frequently isolationists, arguing against U.S. involvement with other nations militarily or otherwise except for free trade. There is a great deal of overlap with conservative thought, except that conservatives tend to be more open to “foreign entanglements.” And they frequently differ on social policy as well.

Looking at the issue of whether or not homosexual relationships should be accorded the status of marriage, progressives argue that this is an issue of justice and equal rights. They see homosexuals as an oppressed minority, and as such their rights must be protected and extended to equal those of the non-oppressed heterosexual majority. What this means is that their relationships have to be accorded the same status in every way as heterosexuals, which means they have to be allowed to marry.

To date, though some state legislatures have passed laws recognizing same sex relationships as marriages, same sex laws, every time the public has had a chance to fote on the issue, it has failed. The net result is that its progressive advocates have taken to the courts to enforce their vision of society. They have won in some states, even overturning a constitutional amendment in California. Democratic processes and the will of the people matter much less than the presumed human rights of homosexuals to marry whom they will, though it should be noted that whether this is a human right is hardly clear even among groups normally allied with progressives. The European Court of Human Rights rejected the idea that same sex marriage is a human right, for example, and they can hardly be seen as a conservative body.

Libertarians end up in much the same place as progressives with respect to same sex relationships, though for different reasons. For libertarians, the government has no business being involved in marriage at all, and in the name of personal freedom anyone should be allowed to marry whomever they want to regardless of gender. They don’t see this as redressing a historical grievance against an oppressed minority as much as an issue of people’s freedom to live their own lives any way they want to.

Conservatives tend to oppose recognition of same sex relationships as marriage. At this point, the tendency of conservatives to emphasize individual rights over group rights exists in tension with the idea that government exists in part to promote the general welfare. Put simply, conservatives do not believe that recognizing same sex relationships as marriages is good for society.

Conservatives do not see marriage as a purely private relationship. In all cultures, marriage performs a critical public function: it ties mothers and fathers to their children and provides a stable foundation for children to be brought into the world and raised. This is why it is given a privileged position with respect to other kinds of relationships in all cultures throughout human history. Without this public function, the libertarian argument would hold. In light of this role, however, redefining marriage to include same sex relationships makes no sense at all. For more on the definition of marriage, you can read my article at the Colson Center.

In practical terms, it is worth noting that children living with their biological parents do better in a host of areas than children in other types of living arrangements, vindicating the traditional understanding of marriage as the best arrangement for raising children. Conservatives argue that putting the personal desires of adults ahead of the interests of children is bad for society and bodes ill for the future.

Many conservatives, of course, also see homosexual activity as a moral issue, but in my experience most do not favor legislating against it. There are exceptions, but most see it as a matter of private behavior and thus as a place where individual rights should be upheld. Recognizing homosexual relationships as marriages moves them beyond private behavior into the public sphere, however, and at that point the public role of marriage becomes the key issue.

There are other arguments on all sides of this issue, and there’s no way I can cover all of them. The point here is that this issue can illustrate some of the underlying ideas of the different political philosophies. To sum up: progressives tend to frame this in terms of civil rights, which ties in to their emphasis on group identity and their emphasis on the centrality of the state (which in this case defines and bestows rights and benefits); libertarians see this as a matter of personal freedom, which means that the government has no business being involved with it; conservatives believe marriage is something that is foundational to human society, predates governments, and thus cannot be redefined by legislative or judicial fiat (tying into their ideas about limitations on government power), which in this case acts as a counterbalance to individual rights.