Sacred Text Archive of World Religions

In a recent conference held by American Vision at the Ridgecrest Baptist Retreat Complex in Ridgecrest, North Carolina, drawing the largest crowd of the conference was a debate between Barry W. Lynn, the Executive Director of Americans United for The Separation of Church and State, and Herb Titus, a former dean of Regent University, founded by TV preacher, Pat Robertson.

The subject of the debate was whether the "First Amendment prevents 'A Bibically-Based Public Policy'."

And why, one might ask, should there be such a debate even considered, let alone held, in a free society? What's going on?

"American public policy cannot be based," Barry W. Lynn said, "solely on the Bible, any more than it could be based solely on the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. The laws that govern our daily lives," Lynn continued, "need to be based on commonly shared secular values, including those found in the Bill of Rights. Lawmakers take an oath, sometimes on a holy book even, to uphold the Constitution. They do not put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. Political leaders represent all Americans, Christian and otherwise," he said, "so yes, to base public policy on one constituency's religious text and, moreover, a particular interpretation of that text, would fly directly in the face of the First Amendment's guarantee that there will be no laws respecting, touching upon an establishment of religion."

Now, who possibly could take exception to anything said in those words?

Well, let's see...

The following are excerpts taken from a report on the conference by Jeremy Leaming that could have been entitled:

Christian Reconstructionists and Taking Dominion in America and Their Powerful Friends

"A recent conference....displayed the growing organization of the Reconstructionist movement...a movement that is calling Christians to replace the US Constitution with their version of a Biblcal theocracy.

"Speaking at the conference was Gary North. The son-in-law of the late Rousas J. Rushdoony the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, North has written a number of books and articles about the need to establish "Christendom." His material is widely available, and for years North has called for the death penalty, like Rushdoony did, for youngsters who curse their parents, gays and others who violate his interpretation of biblical law. He has argued that stoning is the preferred means of capital punishment, noting that it is a communal activity and "the implements of execution are available to everyone at virtually no cost." Writing for Reason magazine in 1998, Walter Olson observed that Reconstructionists like North "provide the most enthusiastic constituency for stoning since the Taliban seized Kabul."

"....American Vision states that "By God's grace, we will work together to make America a truly Christian nation for our children's children, American Vision produces material that advocate Christian Reconstructionism, a form of fundamentalism that argues for .... constructing an America governed by "biblical law." Reconstructionists seek to impose the criminal code of the Old Testament, applying the death penalty for homosexuals, adulterers, fornicators, witches, incorrigible juvenile delinquents and those who spread false religions.....This year's conference held at Ridgecrest, North Carolina, [a retreat and conference center along with Glorieta in New Mexico, both long owned by the Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Christian demoninaton] was co-sponsored by the Alliance Defense Fund, a well-funded Christian lawyers' group...

"The speakers spoke of the US as secular and ready for a radical makeover...Gary Cass, the former head of TV preacher D. James Kennedy's now-defunct Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, said "We need a new American vision...because we've lost our biblical heritage, our Christian birthright, which has been given to us by our founders, we have squandered for a poisonous bowl of atheistic humanism and political correctness. And now our culture is experiencing its deadly effects," he said. "By God's grace you are here to reclaim our godly heritage and to reassert, without apology to the atheists and the neo-pagans of our day, that this was and is a Christian nation, built on Christian ideals..."

"Other speakers denounced the public school system,...And still other speakers spoke against civil liberties organizations... particularly targeted the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, claiming that if those groups had their way God would be excised from "everything" in America. But, one speaker thankfully maintained, "there's a new sheriff" in town.... and stated, "they really have a battle on their hands with organizations like the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) ".... a $25 million operation based in Scottsdale, Ariz., for training young lawyers to fight for a "biblical worldview."

"Two Alliance Defense Fund representatives ... promoted the group's work to bring the legal system under Christian control, the one, in their worldview, that was the beginning of this nation from colonial times (editor's note: you know, that legal system, both in Massachusetts and Virginia that persecuted anyone who did not subscribe to their religious belief system and ran them out of their colonies, or worse, most notably Roger Williams), but has been wrenched from its religious moorings by secularists and "activist courts"... The ADF was formed in 1978 because "if we don't start showing up in the courts, our religious liberty is going to be lost in this country. We just need to bring "God back into this debate, and argued that when large numbers of fundamentalist Christians get to the voting booth, good things will transpire.... "We are one judge away".

"Gary Bates, one of the last speakers, and the head of Creation Ministries International, spoke about his recent book Alien Intrusion: UFOs and the Evolution Connection and he contends that the UFOs some Americans claim to see are not space aliens, but rather angels, some good, and some bad. He said that Joseph Smith, founder of Mormonism, and the Muslim prophet Mohammed had both been visited by fallen angels."

From this, then, it seems that organizations coming together to promote the Reconstructionist agenda, there is, indeed, a great need for informed debate on whether the "First Amendment Prevents a Biblically Based Public Policy".

Many, if not most, Christians cannot disagree that our society is woefully corrupted in every way. The issue is how to change it without compromising any citizen's basic freedoms to worship according to the dictates of their own conscience; their rights from unlawful search and seisure; their right not to be imprisioned without knowing the charges and a trial by a jury; the right not to incriminate oneself, eg: the whole Bill of Rights without which the United States of America would already have disintergrated.

That Bill of Rights gave the world for the first time in known history a government that was the servant of its people, and without the dissent of two of the original states, Rhode Island and North Carolina, that Bill of RIghts, when one reads and studies the Articles of Confederation and the later Constitutional Converniton of 1787, almost never would have come to pass. Taking the lead the delegates from those two states refused to go forward in the process of ratifying the Constitution without guarantees that a Bill of Rights would be added to it. The whole Convention desiring strongly a unanimous vote of the thirteen colonies for ratification of the new Constitution acceded to the demands of those whose advocated a Bill of Rights as part of the Constitution.

Rhode Island, founded by Roger Williams, having fled to that area to avoid religious sanctions and persecution by Puritan leaders in Massachusetts for his belief that the state had no authority to interfere in the religious beliefs and practices of its citizens or its subjects.

Ironically, Roger Williams was the first person who it has been recorded as having used the phrase "there should be a wall separation between the Church and the State." Ironic because much of the Southern Baptist Convention is now are calling for and working to dismantle that wall and claim Roger Williams established the first Baptist Church in the New World, even though he was only associated with that church for a very short while numbered in weeks.

So, it seems there is a need for debate and to reiterate the words of Barry Lynn:

"American public policy cannot be based," he said, "solely on the Bible, any more than it could be based solely on the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita. The laws that govern our daily lives need to be based on commonly shared secular values, including those found in the Bill of Rights. Lawmakers take an oath, sometimes on a holy book even, to uphold the Constitution. They do not put their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible. Political leaders represent all Americans, Christian and otherwise," he said, "so yes, to base public policy on one constituency's religious text and, moreover, a particular interpretation of that text, would fly directly in the face of the First Amendment's guarantee that there will be no laws respecting, touching upon an establishment of religion."

Lynn's comments are words that promote a free society, where one can worship who they please, what they please, and where they please and were the only words spoken advocating the right of the individual to believe and practice his beliefs and the state has no right to intrude upon his individual conscience. If such Christian fundamentalists succeed in replacing the Bill of Rights and other parts of the Constitution with their version of a Biblical theocracy, how soon will such debates cease to exist? How soon will a dissenting view not be allowed, let alone welcome? How soon?