REFORMED HERALD
November 1992
A Publication of the
Reformed Church
in the United States
"Heralding the Good News of Jesus Christ"
Part One
OUR COUNTRY IS IN THE midst of the most severe cultural conflict
it has ever faced. The conflict tears at the fabric of common values
with which this Republic was woven. It tears at the hearts of the
people, who have divided into a variety camps that are equally
intolerant of one another. America is in the midst of an identity
crisis. As a people, Americans no longer seem to have a clear idea of
who they are or what they stand for. Americans have lost touch with
where they have come from as a people and with where they are going.
People are seriously divided about the most basic principles of right
and wrong. Without a consensus of what is right and what is wrong, a
society can have no more than a fragmented view of justice. As lawyers
who are in the justice business, that should concern us deeply. So the
question arises: Can a society that is not sure what justice is any
longer deliver justice to its citizens? Clearly, it cannot!
Where Is Justice?
A nation that does not have a coherent view of what is just and what
is unjust, and which cannot deliver a single standard of justice to all,
will disintegrate into contentious, envious, hateful racial, ethnic and
economic tribes and cults. Witness the Rodney King case where Americans
are pitted against each other because of the color of their skins, where
lawless people, without respect for the American jury system, take to
the streets and riot, loot and burn because of a jury verdict they
disagree with. In Los Angeles, T-Shirts proclaim, "Justice for the
L.A.4. Let my people go." Who are the L.A.4? They are the thugs who
ripped Reginald Denny from the cab of his truck, then robbed, bludgeoned
and kicked him senseless on the afternoon the L.A. riots begin.
In his highly-publicized, much-maligned "Murphy Brown Speech," Vice
President Quayle said, "No matter how much you may disagree with the
jury's verdict, the riots were wrong. If we as a society don't condemn
what is wrong, how can we teach our children what is right?"
The Vice President went on to say, "So, I think the time has come to
renew our public commitment to our Judeo-Christian values.... We are, as
our children recite each morning, 'one nation under God.'"
Perhaps that is the most basic question for those who would define
justice in this society. Are we one nation under God, or are we a nation
under men? Is the concept of justice given to man from above, or is it
made by man here below? Is justice based upon principles that are
eternal and unchanging, or does the concept of justice change as social
situations and values change?
Should human law be fashioned after and subject to a higher law -
the higher law of God - or should the law be, as Chief Justice Charles
Evans Hughes once said, "no more than what the judges say it is"? Is a
man a special creation with duties and responsibilities to his Creator,
or can we attribute to man, as Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes once said,
"no significant difference in kind from that which belongs to a baboon
or a grain of sand"?
Everything Is Right, Nothing Is Wrong
This has become a nation that abhors absolutes. It is not
politically correct to differentiate right from wrong, or good from
evil.
Regarding ethics of abortion, if I were to take a position - and I
do - I say that abortion is the killing of an innocent, living human
being. It's wrong, and no one should have the right to do what is wrong.
The prochoice response will always be, "Well, let's not talk about
abortion, let's talk about the circumstances surrounding it. And then if
we consider those circumstances, sometimes abortion is right and
sometimes it is wrong. In any event, the Supreme Court has ruled, 7-2,
that an unborn child is not a person."
In the slavery debates, Abraham Lincoln would say that one man
cannot have property in the life of another, that slavery is wrong, and
that no one should have the right to do what is wrong. Some people then
were "pro-choice," too. Many of the pro-choicers, like Illinois Senator
Stephen Douglas, were personally opposed to slavery, but felt that new
states and territories ought to have the right to choose. The pro-choice
response to Lincoln was, "Well, let's not talk about the institution of
slavery. Let's talk about the social and economic circumstances
surrounding it. And then if we consider those circumstances, slavery is
right for some people in some situations, but it is wrong for others in
other situations. In any event, the Supreme Court has ruled, 7-2, that a
negro is not a person."
In these debates, one side advances an absolute value. The other
side advances an ethical choice based upon varying situations - we can
call that "situation ethics." Situation ethics is a difficult thing on
which to build a solid, consistent system of justice - a system of
justice that the weak and the strong, the rich and the poor, the
advantaged and the disadvantaged, can look upon with an equal degree of
respect. Situation ethics is contrary to justice.
In front of the Wyoming Supreme Court building is a statue of Lady
Justice. The sword she carries represents the enforcement of absolute
values. The blindfold over her eyes signifies the enforcement of those
absolute values equally and impartially to all who come into court,
without regard to their person or their situation.
Elevating situational ethics as a method of judgment is tantamount
to stripping the blindfold from Lady Justice's eyes so that she can see
the difference in people and situations. Then she can vary her
judgments to fit those differences.
Freedom Is Founded on God's Absolutes
This nation was founded upon absolutes. It could not have been
otherwise. The signers of the Declaration of Independence looked to a
higher law with which to judge, point by point, the unjust acts of King
George III. None of those acts violated the law of England which was
applicable to the colonies. They violated the law of God. Like political
philosophers Samuel Rutherford and John Locke, the colonists firmly
believed that a man-made law which violated the law of God was
illegitimate and could not be enforced against them. George Mason, the
moving force behind the Bill of Rights, said, "The laws of nature are
the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on
earth."
The founders of this country clearly recognized that human rights
come, as John F. Kennedy pointed out in his inaugural address, "not from
the generosity of the state but from the hand of God."
No nation in the history of the world has so advanced the cause of
human rights as the United States of America. Our birth certificate, the
Declaration of Independence, provided the foundation for that advance:
`"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights, that among those are life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness."'
Thomas Jefferson, the author of that remarkable statement, disclaimed
any credit for originating the concepts it contained.
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`Nearly fifty years later he wrote James Madison that those words were
"intended to be an expression of the American mind."`
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The American mind - the foundation for establishing and vindicating
human rights, the bedrock of a just society - it is all contained within
those words, Abraham Lincoln said, "I have never had a feeling
politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the
Declaration of Independence."
Blackstone Who?
In the British parliament, Edmund Burke tried to warn his fellow
Englishmen that they would not be able to withstand the American drive
for independence. In March of 1775, Burke said, "In no country, perhaps
in the world, is the law so general a study. The legal profession in
America is numerous and powerful, and in most colonies it takes the
lead. The greater number of deputies sent to Congress are lawyers. But
all who read, and nearly all Americans can read, endeavor to obtain some
knowledge of the law. I have been told by an eminent bookseller, that in
branch of his business, except for tracts of religious devotion, were so
many books as those on the law exported to the American colonies. The
colonists have now fallen into the way of printing them for their own
use. They have now sold nearly as many of Blackstone's `Commentaries` in
America as in England."
It was interesting that Burke should mention Blackstone's
Commentaries. In the America of 1776, no person could have become a
lawyer without reading Blackstone, and probably without reading the
following words contained in the `Commentaries:`
`"Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the
laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being. And
consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything,
it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker's
will.
"God has laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby
man's free will is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave man
also the faculty of reason to discover the effect of those laws.
"Considering the Creator only as a being of infinite power, He was
able unquestionably to have prescribed whatever laws he pleased to his
creature, man, however unjust or severe. But as He is also a being of
infinite wisdom. He has laid down only such laws as were founded in
those relations of justice, that existed in the nature of things
antecedent to any positive precept. These are the eternal, immutable
laws of good and evil, to which the Creator Himself in all His
dispensations conforms; and which He has enabled human reason to
discover, so far as they are necessary for the conduct of human actions.
"This law of nature, being coeval with mankind and dictated by God
Himself, is of course superior in obligation to any other. It is binding
over all the globe in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are
of any validity, if contrary to this; as such of them as are valid
derive all their force, and all their authority, mediately or
immediately, from the law of God."`
It was an American legal profession armed with these principles of a
higher law that Burke warned Parliament against. It was this sort of
legal profession that produced the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution and the Bill of Rights - that produced the foundation for a
just society in which fundamental human rights could not be be abridged
at the whim of men. It was this sort of legal profession that was able,
in Jefferson's words, to articulate the state of the American mind. The
American mind, then, was a mind that accepted the principles of the
Bible and of Christianity as truth - as absolute truth for American
society.
What Your Lawyer Doesn't Know
For a lawyer or a legislator to publicly profess Biblical or
Christian principles today, let alone submit that they were the original
basis for the common law and the American legal system, is to invite
contempt, scorn, disrespect, and disgust. Such attacks arise either out
of an ignorance of our nation's legal heritage or out of contempt for
Christianity itself.
Certainly, we never read any Blackstone when I was in law school. In
the course on constitutional law, we never even read the Constitution of
the United State from beginning to end. We never read the Wyoming
Constitution, which, in its preamble expresses gratitude to God as the
source of our civil, political and religious liberties. We only read what
the courts say the Constitution said. In our law schools, Charles Evans
Hughes' statement has become true: "The law is only what the judges say
it is." Law students don't study the law, they study what the judges say
the law is. They study appellate opinions. They don't concern themselves
with the source of law, with the source of justice.
In law school, we didn't read the unanimous opinion of the United
States Supreme Court in the Girard case in 1844, written by Justice
Story. The Court said that Christianity is an integral part of the
common law, that the United States is a Christian nation, and that the
Christian religion is "not to be maliciously and openly reviled and
blasphemed against." It went on to say:
"Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly
or so perfectly as from the New Testament? Where are benevolence, the
love of truth, sobriety, and industry, so powerfully and irresistibly
inculcated as in that sacred volume?"
Yes, you can find these words in the `United States Reports`. These
are the reports of the opinions of the same Court which, having the Ten
Commandments posted in its courtroom above the heads of the Chief
Justice, has now ruled that the Constitution prohibits the posting of
those same Ten Commandments in any public school classroom in this
country.
What is Morality Without God?
An official of the Wyoming Education Association told me recently
that moral values cannot be taught in the public schools because there
is no longer a consensus on what they are. As I sit on the House
Judiciary Committee, I hear the argument that the words "good moral
character" should be stricken out of every licensure statue because they
are undefined and no one knows what they mean.
Sometimes I wonder what George Washington would think if he could
hear this kind of statement.
In his Farewell Address, Washington told his fellow citizens to be
proud of being called American. "With slight shades of difference, you
have the same religion, manners, habits and political principles." Mr.
Washington warned American citizens of future generations that national
virtue and morality are essential to the preservation of liberty. He
said, "Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national
morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
The first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, John Jay, said, if there were no God, there could be no moral obligations, and that no ordered society can exist without moral obligations. (To be concluded next month.)
REFORMED HERALD
December 1992
A Publication of the
Reformed Church
in the United States
"Heralding the Good News of Jesus Christ"
PART TWO
Once A Christian Nation
IN LAW SCHOOL, I NEVER heard about the unanimous opinion of the United
States Supreme Court in the 1892 case of `Church of the Holy Trinity v.
United States`. The Supreme Court flatly declared that "this is a
Christian nation". "From the discovery of this continent to the present
hour there is a single voice making this affirmation," the Court said.
That single voice the Court found reflected in the nation's founding
documents and in each of the constitutions of the 44 states then
admitted to the union. The Court said, "There is a universal language
pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and reaffirm that
this is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings,
declarations of private persons; they are organic utterances: they speak
the voice of the entire people."
That "voice of the entire people" was the same "expression of the
American mind" that Jefferson attempted to express in the Declaration of
Independence.
The `Holy Trinity` case was cited with approval in 1931 for the
proposition that "we are a Christian people" `United States v. MacIntosh`
283 U.S. 605. By 1952, the Court, in an opinion written by Justice
William O. Douglas, was still willing to make the more generic comment
that "we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme
Being" `Zorach v. Clauson`, 343 U.S. 306.
The Grand Neutrality
No, what I heard about in law school was the neutrality or
separation theory of the religion clauses adopted by the Supreme Court
in the 1940's. Do you remember the `Everson` case? That was were my legal
education on the religion clauses began.
It is historically significant that the neutrality theory came into
being directly upon the heels of the struggle between the orthodox and
modernist camps in American Protestantism that culminated with broad
modernist victories in the 1930's. Orthodox Christian tenets, such as
the Bible is the word of God, that the law of God has relevance and
applicability to modern life, and that Christianity is a complete world
view, have slid into the backwaters of American in the past 10-15 years.
Orthodox Christians are now finding out how difficult it is to come up
for air after being submerged for nearly half a century. They are now
called the "voices of intolerance" by those who are tolerant of every
voice but the Christian voice.
With the victory of modernism, its rejection of the Bible as truth,
and its rejection of absolute values, came the notion that life could be
divided into the religious and the secular. This was a suicidal move for
modern Protestantism. We now see a mass exodus from many of its
churches, for that notion limited the relevance of religion to an hour
or two on Sunday morning.
I grew up in a church like that, and it didn't take me very long to
figure out that it was little more than a social club without any
relevance outside the walls of the church. When I truly came to accept
Jesus Christ, it was not for me, an emotional "conversion experience," I
was looking for values to live my life by, and to raise my children by.
I was looking for absolutes. I was looking for truth. I came to know
that if the Bible is true, if Christianity is true, then it is true in
family life. It is true in economics. It is true in law, and it is true
in all facets of human endeavor.
I know that only with such a world view can Christians have any
impact upon the culture around them. It was only with such a view that
Martin Luther and John Calvin ignited the Reformation and transformed
Western civilization. It was the ideas of Christian liberty flowing from
the Reformation that began the great Western movement toward
self-government that spilled onto the shores of North America.
Learning to Hate Truth
Neutrality was not neutrality at all. It was a calculated method of
moving American society away from its Christian base and toward a
secular base. It was a calculated method of pushing Christians into a
corner from which they could have little or no impact upon society.
The idea of neutrality relied upon the myth that law and government
can function without relying upon shared moral premised. The upshot of
neutrality was that some moral premises could be considered in the
formulation of law and policy, but that Christian moral premises could
not.
Secular Religion:
I am My Own Law
Neutrality theory provided the "land-bridge" from a Christian
America to the America of today. First, Christianity; then, neutrality;
and now, autonomy.
American society has now veered sharply away from its Christian
base, toward a materialistic, selfish society in which individuals
define right and wrong for themselves. "Right" is now considered to be
that which feels good and "wrong" is that which feels bad. Individual
autonomy has become the word of the day. Autonomy means making your own
law for yourself. In a recent speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas
said, "The right to be free from burdens is the only nationally
recognized right that many people embrace, though they cannot say where
such a right comes from or who gave it or why."
To the champions of autonomy, liberty means freedom from restraint.
Autonomy makes no room for the ideas of accountability and
responsibility, or for the idea of duty.
Autonomy is the new secular religion sanctioned by The United States
Supreme Court. The Supreme Court no longer talks about America as a
Christian nation or about the Christian underpinnings of the law. In
moving even beyond the pale of neutrality, it openly advances the idea
of autonomy, stating that "personal dignity and autonomy are central to
the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment".
By the summer of 1992, in a plurality opinion written by Justice
Souter, we find a statement extolling individual autonomy that would
have sounded bizarre to the ears of Blackstone, Jefferson, Washington or
Story: "At the heart of the liberty is the right to define one's own
idea of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of
human life." This is a wholesale abandonment of the idea that a fabric
of common values binds this nation together. This statement means that
there are no absolute truths, no absolute rights and wrongs, and that
each individual, without accountability or responsibility, is free to
define truth for himself. However, we were always taught that we were a
nation of laws and not of men. Our founders more likely would have said,
"At the heart of liberty is responsibility."
It doesn't take a legal scholar to perceive that the nation's
highest court, its universities and law schools, its political
institutions, and its news media, have moved racially away from a
Christian base toward a secular base in which man, not God, is the
creator of values, of rights, of law, and of justice. It is less clear
to what degree these institutions reflect changes in views of the
American people, changes in the state of the American mind - or to what
degree the institutions of led the charge.
From Autonomy to Tyranny
Historically, such an intellectual movement away from the idea of
higher law, though the movement initially espouses liberty and autonomy,
leads to tyranny, to totalitarianism. If human rights come from
government, then they can be taken away by government. If Supreme Courts
are free to create rights that can't be found in the Constitution, then
they are equally free to take those rights away, depending upon the
make-up of the Court. Thus, we are seeing vicious political battles over
judicial appointments that would not have occurred had the Court not
politicized itself by creating rights rather than construing them.
Statism looms whenever government is free to define truth for
itself, whether by majority vote or by totalitarian degree. Without
absolute values, the the dissenter is powerless to criticize the state.
R.J. Rushdoony has said it best, `"If there is no absolute God and His
law, then there is no absolute standard of right and wrong that I can
appeal to against the tyranny of other men and the state. If I deny God,
I also deny to myself the logical right to make any judgment about the
state, for I have then no law or standard that transcends the power of
the state."`
What's A Christian To Do?
So, where do we find ourselves today? As Christians, we are
increasingly approaching the brink of that sort of tyranny. Its first
symptom is intolerance. Those of us who speak out on Christian values
are often attacked viciously and even personally. The secularists have
successfully banished Christians from law, politics, and government, and
they won't want to let them back in. While it is "politically incorrect"
to attack the most reprehensible, immoral conduct, and while it is
"politically incorrect" to wish not to pay for obscene art, Christians
are fair game.
When we try to renter the debate, to initiate a dialogue, we are
rebuffed. Our opponents do not want an intellectual debate. Instead,
they want to label Christians are religious zealots, fanatics,
narrow-minded bigots and fundamentalists. They live by absolutes and
judge their society by those absolutes. Name-calling is the substitute
for dialogue.
To the adversaries of Christianity, it is important that we stand
strong, and that we do not back off. We must continue to witness to the
truth and that we do it accurately and articulately. As lawyers, we must
be prepared to file suit to vindicate religious liberties. As citizens,
we must take part in our local, state and national governments. We must
fight to restore our country's foundational values, without which true
liberty cannot survive.
As parents, we must impart the absolute truths of our Christian
faith to our children, knowing that they will face even more critical
battles than we face. Unlike the society in which we live, we must think
generationally, beyond the confines our own lives. The sovereign God,
who governs all things, paints carefully and surely with a broad brush.
His timing is not our timing, and we need only do our duty on our watch.
As Mother Teresa once said, "God does not call us to be successful. He
calls us to be faithful."
If we are faithful, we will surely be successful. For God's truth
will always prevail - sometimes not as quickly and easily as we would
like - but always, and ultimately, and inevitably. For, "The grass
withers, and the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever."
Rock Springs, WY