These Letters to the editor in Today's Chicago Tribune demonstrate how deep and wide is the cultural divide. They were all in response to a commentary addressed in This Blog. There is no crossing this divide with pure reason. It requires conversion. People will have to have their hearts changed to make this trip.
I have long wondered how the Whore Church in Revelations will come about. I see it clearly now. It's a secular religion with all the trappings of high church.
Religious beliefs
Rich Lapka
Published May 23, 2005
Chicago -- The commentary piece "Political pulpit; The Bible as weapon in the culture war," by John Shelby Spong (Perspective, May 15), was astounding to me.
I was amazed that a religious person, the retired Episcopal bishop of Newark, N.J., no less, could question the Bible as the "Word of God," would speak out against the use of the Bible and religion as a weapon by the religious right and argue eloquently for the separation of church and state.
As a "non-believer," this government tries to make me feel like a second-tier citizen.
Spong wrote, "These are nothing less than the steps people take on the road to transforming a democracy into a theocracy, which is to walk in the direction of the cruelest form of government that human beings have devised."
To hear those words of Spong gives me hope of a more tolerant religious community, and that our democracy and our patriotism will not be judged by our religious beliefs.
Spiritual ideas
Wanda Connell
Published May 23, 2005
Chicago -- The religious right speaks a lot of quackery concerning its interpretation of the Bible and values.
Thank heaven the Tribune is finally publishing voices unheard before concerning religious thought. John Shelby Spong, the retired Episcopal bishop, and his commentary gave me hope that there are still spiritual and intelligent people in Christianity instead of the warmongers and ideas that would destroy democracy. Thanks so much.
Required reading
Jim Walker
Published May 23, 2005
DeKalb -- The essay by John Shelby Spong should be required reading for all avowed Christians.
Thank you for printing it.
Erwin Lutzer a respected Leader I respect in our community of faith (not Pentecostal or radical but a solid Man of God) wrote this fine article in Sunday's Tribune.
Imposing left morality
By Erwin W. Lutzer
Senior pastor at the Moody Church, in Lincoln Park
Published May 22, 2005
In his article "Political pulpit--The Bible as weapon in the culture war," John Shelby Spong is critical of those Christians who are trying to influence government according to their convictions (Perspective, May 15).
Spong writes, "When leaders seek to intimidate the presumably independent courts, the first step toward totalitarian government has been taken," and then he reiterates the charge that conservative Christians "seek to impose their religious agenda on the whole body politic."
What Spong fails to point out is that the liberal left also seeks to impose its agenda on the rest of us. The three examples he gives--same-sex marriage, abortion and the Terri Schiavo case--all point to a conflict of opinions, and no matter which side one takes, somebody is imposing his morality on someone else.
If same-sex marriage became law, the definition of marriage would be changed for all of us.
It would affect adoption laws and certainly the entire school system. Already, a father here in Chicago asked me recently how he should handle a situation in which his 6-year-old daughter is expected to watch a film that defines a family as any combination of adults: two men, two women, etc. So who is seeking to impose his morality on whom?
Ominously, on Jan. 11, both the Illinois House of Representatives and Senate amended the Illinois Human Rights Act to include sexual orientation as a protected class. Two weeks later, Gov. Rod Blagojevich signed it into law.
This law makes no exemption for churches and other religious institutions. Sen. Carol Ronen, the sponsor of the bill, is on record saying that the new law applied to churches: "If that is their goal, to discriminate against gay people, this law won't allow them to do that. But I don't believe that's what the Catholic Church wants or stands for."
If same-sex marriages were legalized, we have every reason to believe that churches that fail to comply will have their tax-exempt status revoked. We can hear it already: "You have no right to deny us our constitutional rights to be married."
When that happens, we will witness a chilling intolerance for those who write or speak against such unions. No laws are neutral.
The mother who chooses abortion imposes her own morality on her preborn infant, whose life is wantonly snuffed out. And in the case of Schiavo, the will of her husband was imposed upon her (evidence to the contrary is at least questionable), and she was starved to death.
In other words, in all moral judgments, and in every law, someone's morality prevails.
In recent years, many judges have expanded the 1st Amendment phrase "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion" as a reason to eliminate all expressions of religion in the so-called public square.
Forgotten is the second part of the sentence, which bars Congress from "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It is indeed difficult to see how a prayer before a football game is an example of Congress establishing a religion, or why a principal would think that a student who brings his Bible to school is guilty of establishing religion.
Nevertheless, through the courts, we see an ever-increasing desire to stamp out religion from public life and to impose a secular agenda on "the whole body politic."
When we hear that a teacher is forbidden to read the Declaration of Independence in a classroom because it contains the word God, we can be assured that such a notion was foreign to the framers of the Constitution. Already many years ago, George Will perceptively wrote, "And it is by now a scandal beyond irony that thanks to the energetic litigation of `civil liberties' fanatics, pornographers enjoy expansive 1st Amendment protection while 1st graders in a nativity play are said to violate 1st Amendment values."
When I visited the People's Republic of China in 1984, our tour guide justified the government's policy on religion by arguing for a separation of church and state. She said that religion was free to operate in all of those areas that were not controlled by the state. When we probed more deeply, she said that religion was a private matter and that the people of China were free to be as religious as they wanted to be "within their own minds."
Today the Senate is deadlocked over the question of which judges should be approved; this of course is not a small matter. Conservative Christians wonder whether the approved judges will further limit religious expression, or whether they will take the Constitution seriously when it says that the free expression of religion should not be prohibited.
Freedom of religion necessitates freedom of speech beyond the narrow boundaries that some of our courts dictate.
Conservative Christians do not advocate a totalitarian government; if anything, they fear a totalitarian government from the left: When children, beginning in the 1st grade, are indoctrinated in a morality that is contrary to both natural law and their parents' convictions, is not this a step toward totalitarianism?
And when a whole class of people, such as preborn infants, is denied protection, and thus can be killed for convenience--is not this a precursor to totalitarianism?
After all, if one class of people can be denied a basic right to live, who is next, the elderly, the infirm? And if religion is deemed to be private, who is to say that the day might come when it is completely restricted to houses of worship, eventually to our homes, or even limited to our own minds?
Harvey Cox was right when he said that secularism is most deceptive when it pretends to be neutral.
He writes, "Secularism, on the other hand, is the name of an ideology, a new closed worldview which functions very much like a new religion. ... It must be especially checked where it pretends not to be a worldview but nonetheless seeks to impose its ideology through the organs of the state."
It is so easy to repeat the mantra that conservative Christians want to "impose their morality on others" without realizing that the liberals have been doing so for years, by judges whose opinions affect us all.
Conservative Christians do not pretend to be neutral.
We are opposed to abortion on demand; in keeping with the desire of most parents, we are opposed to pornography in our libraries, and we are opposed to same-sex marriage. We are also opposed to an arbitrary religious censorship in the schools, and we favor tolerance of religion rather than the abolition of religion in the public square.
We must thoughtfully debate these issues and at the same time seek for common ground that will help us respectfully live together despite our deeply held differences.
Decisions made today will have far-reaching consequences tomorrow.
END
LAST POINT
Which brings me to this. This battle those of us who are called to it is not about religion, politics or freedom. It's about life and death. I responded to a column by Jane Ahlin.
If you have the courage to face the truth this should stir you.
JANE AHLIN
I don't want you to do more than think about it and ask yourself the hard questions. Is this really where you want to go?
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