Iambs And Pentameters

January/February 1998 If the tape of evangelist Pat Robertson telling a private meeting of Christian Coalition leaders that they needed to model their organization on the Tammany Hall political machine doesn't prove that the "Christian" of the Christian Coalition is false advertising nothing will. Tammany Hall, if you recall, was the New York Democratic Party organization whose corruption became so legendary that, according to the Encyclopedia Americana, "the name Tammany bears an onus of evil in politics." Isn't it kind of strange, then, that the leader of an organization named the Christian Coalition would seek to emulate Tammany Hall? (On the other hand, considering the corruption and scandal linked to the Christian Coalition lately, maybe the analogy's appropriate.)

Also, by linking the Christian Coalition with Tammany Hall, Pat Robertson has left himself wide open to be compared to Tammany's "Boss Tweed," whose political machine, the encyclopedia says, "built the most predatory band of looters in American urban history." Again, the analogy works at least in a spiritual sense because for years Robertson and his coalition have been looting the name of Christ, Christianity, and the Gospel to cover what is essentially a political movement. Maybe in the beginning the group began as sincere Christians seeking to bring about a needed (in many areas) political change, but over time the CC has become nothing but a hardball political machine using religion as a cover a cover that is slowly slipping away.

Besides exposing Robertson's remarks about modeling the CC after Tammany Hall, the tape has this "Christian" gentleman saying: "This is sort of speaking in the family. It's speaking out of my heart and not from any kind of prepared text. If there's any press here, would you please shoot yourself." Pat's speaking from his heart reminds me of a text in Psalms, "Verily I have cleansed my heart in vain." Meanwhile, remarks Robertson made on the tape show the claims that the CC is just "a non-partisan educational organization" not out to "advocate the election or defeat of any candidate," are bogus, and that the Federal Elections Commission charges (see Liberty, May/June 1997) against it are justified. While this professed Christian publicly denies that he runs a partisan organization, he was taped denouncing certain politicians by name (all Democrats), as well as saying, "So I don't think at this time and juncture the Democrats are going to be able to take the White House unless we throw it away."

Doesn't Pat read his Bible anymore, particularly Exodus 20, which depicts the law of God that he so vehemently wants implemented in America (except the part about not bearing false witness)? Or maybe he's too busying reading (as the tape revealed) Sun Tzu's The Art of War, which he said provided tactics for the Christian Coalition. As columnist Robert Scheer wrote: "Bizarre that the self-proclaimed leader of the Christians should reach back four centuries before Christ and cite Chinese general Sun Tzu's Art of War as the basis of his strategy to totally control our political system."

After the embarrassing tape was released, leaders in the CC (all professed Christians) tried to deny that these were official statements; rather, they said, it was merely Pat speaking as a private citizen. Please! Robertson is the founder and chairman of the board of the Christian Coalition, this was a meeting of CC state chapter leaders, and it was held at an official Christian Coalition event. And we're supposed to believe that his words were "private"?

Before these people bring Christian values to bear upon America, it would be nice if they were Christians themselves, or at least did a better job at faking it.



ARTICLE 27

No doubt the egregiously misnamed bill "On the Freedom of Conscience and on Religious Associations," overwhelmingly voted by the Russian Duma and signed last September by Boris Yeltsin, is a step in the wrong direction. Though the law's preamble echoes Jefferson "Confirming the right of each to freedom of conscience and freedom of creed, and also to equality before the law regardless of his attitudes toward religion and his convictions," Article 27 itself sounds more Stalinist than Jeffersonian. The new regulation doesn't, in fact, give each person equality before the law but, instead, places burdens on a person precisely because of "his attitudes toward religion and his convictions."

Enjoying popular support, the law restricts the activity of religious groups that have been in Russia fewer than 15 years. Considering that 15 years ago was smack in the Brezhnev era, when the Communists had been suppressing religious activity for more than half a century, Article 27 means that any new missionary activity as well as faiths that don't fall into the category of "traditional" will be subject to burdensome legal, financial, and operational restrictions. A statement released by Stuart McAllister, general secretary of the European Evangelical Alliance, warned that the new law "will deny religious groups many rights, including being able to publish any literature, use any media, educate any clergy, invite any foreign guests, hold any services in public buildings like hospitals, or allow clergy to avoid military service."

Critics see in this law the heavy hand of the Russian Orthodox Church, whose leaders complain that Article 27 is too "liberal." The church, apparently, is trying to ensure hegemony in a country where foreign missionaries are coming over in droves unlike anything seen since the early 1940s, when General Heinz Guderian's Second Panzerarmee spent the winter bogged down in the snow outside Moscow. Groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses, Mormons, and Church of God and Christ more than likely will be impacted, though Ukrainian Orthodox churches have already faced harassment (Lutherans in regions in Southern Siberia received a letter canceling their registration the day Yeltsin signed the bill into law).

This horrible legislation, however, shouldn't come as a surprise. The only surprise, perhaps, should be that it's taken so long, and is as "liberal" as it is. After all, what do these people know about religious freedom? They've had decades of atheistic Communist rule preceded by centuries of autocracies in which American-style concepts of religious freedom were as alien to them as suttee is to us today.

Besides, after 200 years, many Americans still don't understand the principles of religious freedom. For instance, writing about Article 27, William F. Buckley said, "What we must earnestly hope for is that the Duma in Moscow doesn't go as far as the Duma in Washington, while our Supreme Court does more to forbid religion than is contemplated by the Russian law." Cute, but when such a brilliant and illustrious mind as W.F.B. can't see the difference between U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence (no matter how misguided at times) and Article 27, why should anyone expect better from the Russians?



POST HOC ERGO PROPTER HOC

Writing in First Things, Richard Neuhaus complained about the ACLU's attempt to remove the religious language from the Michigan State Board of Education's mission statement, which included the phrase, "grateful to Almighty God" and an exhortation to "seek truth" (don't these Michigan folk realize that in the post-modern era, the mere concept of "truth" borders on cultural and intellectual totalitarianism?). Yet in his piece, Neuhaus had a baffling one-liner: "It's hardly a coincidence that the decline in the quality of public schools occurred at the same time that every vestige of religion was being eradicated from them." Of course, how algebraically obvious that once kids could no longer, under school supervision, mutter in unison some generic supplication to the Most High, the entire educational system would start collapsing. One minor detail though: how does Mr. Neuhaus explain why some counties in the deep south which despite the U.S. Supreme Court have conducted religious exercises in the classroom for decades still produce some of the worst educational statistics in the country? Neuhaus's logic is akin to saying that because everyone who eats Wheaties dies sometime afterward, then it obviously follows that eating Wheaties kills people. Better yet, "it's hardly a coincidence" that right after "every vestige of religion was being eradicated" from public schools, African-American children were finally given a chance to get a quality education. There we have it, utter proof that state-sponsored religion in schools promotes racism. Thank you, Brother Neuhaus.



SECULAR INQUISITORS

Every era has its myths; in ours, it's evolution, as dogmatically defended by its adherents as Ptolemaic cosmology was by its. Premised on a rabid take-no-prisoners materialism, evolution is taught in public schools with a certainty of the cogito. Thus, when a Louisiana school board wanted a disclaimer read before science class, the inquisitors of the secular Zeitgeist began lighting their fires. The disclaimer reads, in part, that "the lesson to be presented, regarding the origin of life and matter, is known as the Scientific Theory of Evolution and should be presented to inform students of the scientific concept and not intended to influence or dissuade the biblical version of Creation or any other concept." It also recognized the right of each student to form his or her opinion and maintain the beliefs "taught by parents on this very important matter of the origin of life and matter. Students are urged to exercise critical thinking and gather all the information possible and closely examine each alternative toward forming an opinion." This, however, was too much for the ACLU, which filed suit in federal court, arguing that the disclaimer jeopardized the right to a religion-free education, even though there was no attempt to teach Creation Science as an alternative to evolution. Apparently, for the doyens of the secular elite, just merely insinuating that there might be another view of origins was enough to try and squeeze out of the Establishment Clause something that doesn't belong there. Perhaps what scared the ACLU was the disclaimer's admonition for the students to "exercise critical thinking and gather all the information possible." After all, once students start doing that, evolution will be seen for what it is: the modern equivalent of Ptolemy's cosmos.

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