November/December 2001

September 11, 2001: a great horror is visited upon the United States and the entire civilized world. We watched it blossom into wicked flame high in a cloudless sky and then collapse in a moaning menace to life as we knew it. It replays itself on television screens and in millions of minds. Brave flags fly in the searing winds of change. But where are we bound?

The Danbury Baptist Association, concerned about religious liberty in the new nation, wrote to President Thomas Jefferson on October 7, 1801. Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, were persecuted because they were not part of the Congregational establishment in that state.

Suppression of public religious expression in Canada intensified with a June 19, 2001, decision by the Province of Saskatchewan’s Human Rights Commission that public reference to the Bible can be considered “hate speech.” The Saskatchewan HRC has ordered both the Saskatoon StarPhoenix newspaper and Hugh Owens, of the nearby city of Regina, to pay $1,500 to three homosexual activists for publishing an advertisement with references to Bible texts condemning homosexuality. The ruling also prohibits Christian activist Owens from “further publishing or displaying the bumper stickers” upon which his newspaper ad was based.

Those following the debate over President George W. Bush’s faith-based initiative are familiar with an oft-repeated claim—78 percent of Americans oppose the right of religious entities receiving government funding to discriminate on the basis of religion in hiring.1 On its face, “no taxation to fund discrimination” appears to state a principle fundamental to the protection of civil rights. And can 78 percent of the people be wrong?

As calls were going out to defend American Muslims from vigilante attacks in the wake of the events of November 11, some calls were met with the searching question; Why should America bend over backwards to provide the kind of religious freedom to Muslims, that Islamic nations typically refuse to provide to Christians?

This generation will remember for our entire lives the moment we saw the World Trade Center collapse. I know I will. Sitting with others in a colleague’s office we looked in disbelief as the catastrophe unfolded on a screen too small to contain the horror. Like many Americans, our unbelief was mixed with anxiety. I wondered which, if any, of my friends who work in Manhattan were in that horrifying conflagration. As the mighty towers fell, our hearts fell with them. We felt similar shock when, only a few miles from our office, the Pentagon was attacked; and then reports came in of the downed airliner in Pennsylvania. And even though none of my friends were among the fatalities, I, like all of us, feel in my heart an immense sorrow. There is simply no adequate way to express the collective grief we feel for those taken by acts of unspeakable brutality.

Barbara Gardner-Ihrig, a United States Postal Service employee, began her long difficult battle against religious discrimination shortly after her employment commenced in April 1986. “I made it known to them that I couldn’t work on Sabbaths,” Gardner-Ihrig says, “but they just blew it off, saying it shouldn’t be a problem.”

No one I know doubts the motives behind President George W. Bush’s desire to help “faith-based” organizations do a better job of helping the poor and needy. The president has seen the valuable work private charities are doing. He knows, because he has experienced for himself how a message about God and redemption can change a life. He believes that private groups do a better job than government in reaching the heart and soul of people in conflict with themselves and God. He is right.

At 5:30 a.m., January 23, 2001, SWAT police forced Pontiac, Michigan, homeless shelter residents from their beds into the wintry darkness. Thirty-two residents were arrested on misdemeanor charges, then shackled, handcuffed, and transported to jurisdictions throughout Michigan. Police even handcuffed a 6-year-old boy. For the first time in United States history, police had raided1 a church-based homeless shelter.2

On June 28, 2000, the last day of that year’s term, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled (by the narrowest of margins) that the Boy Scouts has a constitutionally protected right, as a private association, to exclude from the ranks of its adult leadership an avowed homosexual. This, according to the Court, because the Boy Scouts asserted that part of the organization’s purpose is to teach boys to be “morally straight,” a phrase that, according to the Boy Scouts, includes the view that homosexual conduct, like adultery or premarital sex, is immoral.