Church-State relationships

Nancy and I have just returned from a family church camp put on by the Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland (Continuing). The camp was held in a very small community in western Virginia. Noah’s and Ben’s families were there; and we very much enjoyed seeing all of them.

The main speaker talked on the subject of The Establishment Principle of the church, an exposition about the relationship of the church to the government. The speaker was the Reverend Gavin Beers, of Ayr, Scotland. Reverend Beers presented four types of church/government relationships:

Type 1: Government dominated by the church.
Type 2: Church dominated by the government.
Type 3: Volunteeristic, i.e., people free to choose their own form of religion without governmental interference. Supposedly, the government would be neutral in all aspects of religion, allowing all religious groups to worship and behave as they see fit.
Type 4: Establishment principle, in which there is full cooperation between the church and the state. The church is allowed freedom to worship God and behave according to biblical principles. The state would not interfere with church operations. The state would suppress apostasy and punish heresy. Neither church nor state would dominate the other; the two would walk hand in hand, as friends.

Type three relationships are the present-day principles that most Western societies aim at manifesting.

Rev. Beers made the point that types 1, 2, and 3 are not consistent with the examples given in the Bible; most of his examples were taken out of the Old Testament. Only type 4, i.e., the establishment principle is biblically sound. I was told by one attendee that all the objections to the establishment principle are pragmatic objections. I would fully agree with that assessment—in my view, the establishment principle will not work in any present-day polity.

The reason that the establishment principle will not work is that we live in a multicultural world where there is no consensus of correctness in religion. Many different cultural groups have just as many different religious beliefs; and each one thinks all the others are wrong.

One major function of government is to prevent bloodshed among the populace. We, as humans in society, understand that types 1 and 2 relationships have resulted in extreme forms of violence and bloodshed among the people. I believe that none of us would like to go back to those kinds of church-state relationships. In like manor, I would be very reluctant to think of the establishment principle as the best way for church-state relationships to be set up.

It sounds good to think of the church and the state walking hand in hand as friends; but the truth is that if the state is authorized to stamp our apostasy and punish heresy, it would become necessary for the state to determine what apostasy is and what heresy is. That becomes very problematic, in my mind! In giving the state the function of figuring out what to punish and what to stamp out, we come very close to functioning in a type 2 relationship—the entity that holds the sword holds the control over the other.

So…we Westerners have come to the conclusion that we just want the government out of our religious business; we want to be left alone, if possible. On the other hand, we want the option of expressing our religious beliefs freely and of helping other people to see religious things the way we do. I believe that the proper Christian thinking would leave it at that and expect the Holy Spirit to do the work of conversion. I believe that the Christian faith can hold its own in any kind of reasonable discussion—we do not need the force of the state behind our belief system. Let us function openly in the marketplace of ideas.

We Christian peoples should have learned from history the dangers of governmental intervention in religious matters. I am told that the magistrates of the ancient Persian Empire discovered the value of separating religions from the administration of the government; and the result was, for the most part, peace among the populace. But…over and over, again, governments have been established that interfered with freedom of religion. History is full of that kind of civic governmental meddling in religion—all to the detriment of the people.

I believe that Rev. Beers makes the mistake of thinking that the descriptions of church-state relationships in the Old Testament are prescriptive of the way things should be today. I believe that those descriptions  were just that, i.e., descriptions. They were not prescriptions of what we should be doing today. As a matter of fact, organizing church-state relationships as Rev. Beers suggests it is an open invitation to conflict, persecution, limitation of Christian freedom, and bloodshed.

We Western democratic republicans have demanded freedom of religion. Well, if we really mean that, it means that all religions must be granted that religious freedom. “Freedom of religion” is not just freedom for Christians; it is freedom for all religions in the realm.

I must admit, however, that Rev. Beers suggested that the establishment principle might apply only in the millennium. I would suggest that it might only apply even at a later time—that is, in heaven, itself.

Another objection I have to the establishment principle is that I just do not have enough antipathy toward other religious people to apply it. I would just as soon see them practice their own forms of religion in their own ways—with two caveats:

1)   I want freedom to present the claims of Christ to my neighbors. I am willing to listen to them if they wish to express their religious beliefs to me; but I want to be able to reason with them about the basic features of Christianity. I firmly believe that the Christian faith can hold its own in a straight up reasonable debate. I also believe that the Holy Spirit can act on the hearts of unbelievers. I do not need to worry about getting some external, governmental force to back up my desire that they be converted; nor do I welcome the government ferreting out apostasy and heresy. I do not welcome governmental interference in my evangelical efforts.

2)   I want the government to intervene in religious conversations, even to the point of exerting force, if any particular religion is advocating overthrow of the government. That is the only reason I think that government intervention is appropriate. Following are two examples of anti-government rhetoric that should certainly be censored by the government:

a)    The Wahhabi branch of the Sunni Islamic religion has several mosques in the United States that advocate violent reaction to the American way of life. A study conducted by the non-governmental organization, Freedom House, found Wahhabi publications in mosques in the United States. These publications included statements that Muslims should not only "always oppose" infidels "in every way", but "hate them for their religion … for Allah's sake", that democracy "is responsible for all the horrible wars of the 20th century", and that Shia and certain Sunni Muslims were infidels. This kind of doctrinal teaching should be monitored by the government and silenced for the public peace.  

b)   The Reverend Jeremiah Wright of the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago has been documented as saying several very un-American statements in public discourse. Rev. Wright was the pastor of President Obama and his wife for many years, but it must be said that the president and his wife have strongly repudiated these un-American remarks and have withdrawn their membership from that church. This kind of anti-American talk needs to be silenced by the government for the sake of the public peace. There are other examples of anti-American rhetoric going on in our country, e.g., flag burning, etc. All of this should be forcibly suppressed by the government.

So…what do I think should be the proper relationship of church to state? I believe that Christians should be actively advocating for Christian principles in government by helping Christians get elected to government office. I believe that we have the responsibility of keeping ourselves informed of social and political affairs and for writing letters and e-mails to our representatives expressing our beliefs. I believe that we should be presenting Christian issues from the pulpits of our churches and actively promoting Christian politicians there.  I also believe what was said by President Ronald Regan. He said that if a candidate for office expresses 60%-80% of what you want to see in that office, vote for him. There are no perfect candidates. Not to vote is to violate your sacred duty as an American citizen. We are the most fortunate people in the world to be Americans.

To bring this discussion down to practicalities, if you are opposed to the policies of the Obama Administration and you refuse to vote for Mitt Romney, you are automatically voting for President Obama.

Eagle Scouts

This year, the Boy Scouts of America have celebrated the 100^th anniversary of the Eagle Scout Award.

Out of the more than 115 million boys who have passed through the Boy Scouts of America in the last 102 years, approximately two million have become Eagle Scouts, a 2% rate that has climbed to about 4% of all scouts in recent years. Some may have excelled in outdoor challenges and troop leadership, or while earning merit badges for oceanography and entrepreneurship. Yet all have been changed by the experience of what has been come to be called "the Ph.D. of Boyhood." And these Eagles in turn have changed the face of American culture in ways both obvious and unexpected.

Many went on to notable careers and distinguished service to the country. The list of famous Eagles over the last century includes movie and television stars, six Medal of Honor recipients, Nobel Prize winners, novelists, a number of astronauts (including most Shuttle astronauts), Tuskegee airmen and Japanese-American internees, congressmen, senators and governors, an endless number of corporate CEOs and university presidents, a U.S. president (Gerald Ford), and the first man to walk on the moon (Neil Armstrong).

And that reputation is deserved. A recent Gallup survey (for Baylor University) of Eagle Scouts, former Boy Scouts and men who never joined scouting found that America's Eagles are far more engaged with the world around them in almost every way—in community service, club membership, churchgoing, outdoor recreation, and the fields of education and health.

Eagle Scouting's biggest contribution to American life is the one most recognized: the service project, the "dissertation" of the boyhood Ph.D. Since the mid-1960s, all Eagle candidates are required, beyond earning the traditional 21 merit badges, to devise, plan, execute and manage a community-service project.

Most of these projects are small: a new bench at the park, painting a school building, collecting blankets for a homeless shelter. But some are hugely ambitious: restoring wetlands, building a library in Africa or a playground at a Russian orphanage, creating an artificial reef—and they consume thousands of hours.

Those projects likely make the Eagle Scout service project the single greatest youth service initiative in history, and one that has touched every community in America in an important way.

This blog post was redacted from the Wall Street Journal opinion pages 31 July 2012.

I Don’t Think Opposition to ObamaCare Is A Dead Letter, Yet!

A Newsweek poll taken after the Supreme Court ruling on Obamacare showed 37% of likely voters approved of the Affordable Care Act, while 58% disapproved.

 In an economy with 8.2% unemployment, ObamaCare’s employer mandate may be the worst and most unacceptable part of the new law. The law imposes a $2000-$3500 per-job tax on businesses that employ 50 or more people but do not provide health coverage. For employers who currently provide health coverage, ObamaCare threatens to drive up the cost of insurance, leading to lower wages and fewer jobs.

Then, there’s ObamaCare’s eye-popping price tag. According to the Congressional Budget Office, during the first decade when it’s in full effect (2014-2023), ObamaCare will cost about $2 trillion. A decade of ObamaCare will cost five times more than the Medicare prescription-drug benefit or 2½ times the cost of the Iraq war. A decade of ObamaCare will cost four times Greece’s total public debt!

With federal bureaucrats in charge of cutting hundreds of billions from Medicare to pay for ObamaCare, heavy-duty rationing of health care is always a possibility. That would make the law even more unpopular than it already is.

The problem in evaluating the fiscal impact of the Affordable Care Act is that Republicans and the Congressional Budget office predict huge deficit costs; but Democrats and a raft of New York Times economists say the law will be budget neutral and, according to President Obama, “It will not cost the ordinary tax payer one dime.” Well…I hope the Democrats are right; but if they are, this will be the first entitlement program that will not cost anything. To me, it seems astounding to think that we can insure 38 million uninsured Americans without any cost to the rest of the nation.

ObamaCare includes provisions that promote surgical abortion and, now, drugs that cause abortion and contraceptives. Those features are highly objectionable to social conservatives.

Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has said, “The law fails to implement sensible solutions to control costs, improve quality, and increase coverage. We can’t afford to settle for ‘reform’ that doesn’t accomplish those fundamental goals.” He continued, “Consumers should be allowed to choose the coverage they want, and providers should be paid based on the quality of care—not merely the quantity of services rendered. Medical liability reform that curbs the need for providers to practice defensive medicine would also drive down costs. And widespread adoption of health information technology—including electronic prescriptions and medical records—could further improve quality, lower costs, and reduce medical errors.”

Well…we’ll see. President Obama is still ahead in the polls to be our president over the next 4 years. I think he is in that position because people like his warm and convincing personality; but his policies on health care do not appeal to me or to lots of others.

This post was largely redacted from the Weekly Standard 23 July 2012, page 16 and 17.

It’s the Size of Government, Stupid!

This presidential campaign is getting STUPID! We see the candidates catching at straws to gain the attention of the electorate in the hope that voters will elect “me—I can do the best job.” Their campaign pitches are becoming more and more ridiculous. For instance:

Now Governor Romney is criticizing the President for not attending a single meeting of his Jobs Council in months. He says that if the President were really interested in jobless Americans, he would be all over that Council to learn what he could do to get Americans back to work.

The truth about this campaign ploy is that the Jobs Council has made 60 recommendations in the past year about jobs in America; and the President has either implemented or is working on implementation of 52 of those recommendations, according to Politico.com.

About this issue, voters should realize that the President does not need to attend the meeting of all of his advisory councils. He can stay in contact with them by phone or by sending a representative to the meetings.

On the other side of the election debate, we see the President kicking at Governor Romney about his involvement at Bain Capital—sending thousands of jobs overseas. This argument is equally stupid. Romney has had no administrative dealings with Bain Capital that had anything to do with this issue since 1999. That fact has been painfully verified by several of the President’s own supporters on the Bain board of directors.

The real issue in this election is the size of our government. Obama believes in a large government establishment and Romney believes in a small government—it’s as simple as that! All these “issues” we hear about on TV are just a rubric of smokescreen in attempts to make voters believe they are getting to know something new of real value.

Personally, I believe in small government. Large government saps away our freedoms and hamstrings the genuine drivers of our economy, the private entrepreneurial spirit of American business and industry. We would do much better with a smaller government.

All that being said, I must admit that there is another issue that divides conservatives and liberals in this election; and that is the issue of moral integrity. The Democrats are on the side of moral rot with their endorsement of abortion, homosexuality, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, etc., etc. Conservatives are more or less on the side of traditional marriage, stable families, sexual continence, and other issues that have stood the test of time in producing a morally healthy America.

I’ m voting for Governor Romney.

Catholics and Evangelicals Stand Together For Religious Liberty.

Although Catholics and Evangelicals do not stand together on several theological issues, on one issue we are solidly united—our need and our right to religious liberty.

We are seeing presently an important demonstration of Catholic/Evangelical unity in that both Catholic University of America and Wheaton College are together sponsoring a lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services protesting a recent requirement of the Affordable Care Act. That Act requires that all religious institutions except churches, which carry health insurance on their employees, must provide in that insurance, payment for abortion-inducing drugs as well as contraceptives.

Although Catholics and Evangelicals are not completely united on their opposition to contraception, we are united on the issue of induced abortion. We both strongly believe that live begins at conception; and no government has the right to violate that right by the application of abortion-producing drugs or surgical procedures. We are most certainly united in our belief that the government has no right to interfere with our right to practice our religious beliefs; and that issue is the sticking point in this whole matter. The Affordable Care Act, as interpreted by the Executive Branch of our Federal Government, is requiring a limitation on our right to freedom of religion.

In 1943, Justice Robert Jackson wrote in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette "If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, “it is that no official . . . can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein." This belief in the freedom of religion must apply to all Americans who gather in voluntary association for distinctively religious purposes, such as Christian education.

Chuck Colson and John Neuhaus have written concerning our American Constitutional system, "[T]his constitutional order is composed not just of rules and procedures but is most essentially a moral experiment. . . . [W]e hold that only a virtuous people can be free and just, and that virtue is secured by religion. To propose that securing civil virtue is the purpose of religion is blasphemous. To deny that securing civil virtue is a benefit of religion is blindness."  

This blog post was redacted from the Wall Street Journal of 18 July 2012 in the opinion section.

Obama's Imperial Presidency

The following is a complete test of an editorial written by Kimberley Strassel in the Wall Street Journal of 7/5/12, titled Obama's Imperial Presidency. If we do not understand this, we miss something vital to our understanding of our present political situation.

Now that ObamaCare litigation is history, with the president's takeover of the health sector deemed constitutional. Now we can focus on the rest of the Obama imperial presidency.

Where, you are wondering, have you recently heard that term? Ah, yes. The "imperial presidency" of George W. Bush was a favorite judgment of the left about our 43rd president's conduct in war, wiretapping and detentions. Yet say this about Mr. Bush: His aggressive reading of executive authority was limited to the area where presidents are at their core power—the commander-in-chief function.

By contrast, presidents are at their weakest in the realm of domestic policy—subject to checks and balances, co-equal to the other branches. Yet this is where Mr. Obama has granted himself unprecedented power. The health law and the 2009 stimulus package were unique examples of Mr. Obama working with Congress. The more "persistent pattern," Matthew Spalding recently wrote on the Heritage Foundation blog, is "disregard for the powers of the legislative branch in favor of administrative decision making without—and often in spite of—congressional action."

 

Put another way: Mr. Obama proposes, Congress refuses, he does it anyway.
For example, Congress refused to pass Mr. Obama's Dream Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for some not here legally. So Mr. Obama passed it himself with an executive order that directs officers to no longer deport certain illegal immigrants. This may be good or humane policy, yet there is no reading of "prosecutorial discretion" that allows for blanket immunity for entire classes of offenders.

Mr. Obama disagrees with federal law, which criminalizes the use of medical marijuana. Congress has not repealed the law. No matter. The president instructs his Justice Department not to prosecute transgressors. He disapproves of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, yet rather than get Congress to repeal it, he stops defending it in court. He dislikes provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, so he asked Congress for fixes. That effort failed, so now his Education Department issues waivers that are patently inconsistent with the statute.

Similarly, when Mr. Obama wants a new program and Congress won't give it to him, he creates it regardless. Congress, including Democrats, wouldn't pass his cap-and-trade legislation. His Environmental Protection Agency is now instituting it via a broad reading of the Clean Air Act. Congress, again including members of his own party, wouldn't pass his "card-check" legislation eliminating secret ballots in union elections. So he stacked the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with appointees who pushed through a "quickie" election law to accomplish much the same. Congress wouldn't pass "net neutrality" Internet regulations, so Mr. Obama's Federal Communications Commission did it unilaterally.

In January, when the Senate refused to confirm Mr. Obama's new picks for the NLRB, he proclaimed the Senate to be in "recess" and appointed the members anyway, making a mockery of that chamber's advice-and-consent role. In June, he expanded the definition of "executive privilege" to deny House Republicans documents for their probe into the botched Fast and Furious drug-war operation, making a mockery of Congress's oversight responsibilities.

This president's imperial pretensions extend into the brute force the executive branch has exercised over the private sector. The auto bailouts turned contract law on its head, as the White House subordinated bondholders' rights to those of its union allies. After the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the Justice Department leaked that it had opened a criminal probe at exactly the time the Obama White House was demanding BP suspend its dividend and cough up billions for an extralegal claims fund. BP paid. Who wouldn't?

And it has been much the same in his dealings with the states. Don't like Arizona's plans to check immigration status? Sue. Don't like state efforts to clean up their voter rolls? Invoke the Voting Rights Act. Don't like state authority over fracking? Elbow in with new and imagined federal authority, via federal water or land laws.

In so many situations, Mr. Obama's stated rationale for action has been the same: We tried working with Congress but it didn't pan out—so we did what we had to do. This is not only admission that the president has subverted the legislative branch, but a revealing insight into Mr. Obama's view of his own importance and authority.

There is a rich vein to mine here for GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Americans have a sober respect for a balance of power, so much so that they elected a Republican House in 2010 to stop the Obama agenda. The president's response? Go around Congress and disregard the constitutional rule of law. What makes this executive overreach doubly unsavory is that it's often pure political payoff to special interests or voter groups.

Mr. Obama came to office promising to deliver a new kind of politics. He did—his own, unilateral governance.

Tax Effect on Government Income

Thomas Sowell has published on Townhall.com that raising taxes on the rich does not usually increase income for the government, as President Obama has told the American people it will.

Many people are under the impression that those who oppose higher taxes claim that if taxes are lowered or not increased, the money left in the coffers of the wealthy will “trickle down” to the rest of the population. Nobody seems to know where this claim for “trickle down” effect came from; but it has never been the claim of knowledgeable economists. And…“trickle down” is not the reason conservatives want the Bush tax cuts to stay in effect for everyone.

Several presidents, including President Obama, know that raising taxes does not usually increase government income. As President Kennedy once explained, investors' "efforts to avoid tax liabilities" made them put their money in tax shelters, because existing tax laws made "certain types of less productive activity more profitable than other more valuable undertakings" for the country.

The Obama campaign's attacks on Mitt Romney for putting his money in the Cayman Islands substantiate the point that President Kennedy and others have made, that higher tax rates can drive money into tax shelters, whether tax-exempt municipal bonds or investments in other countries.

As far back as the 1920s, a huge cut in the highest income tax rate -- from 73 percent to 24 percent -- led to a huge increase in the amount of tax revenue collected by the federal government. Why? Because investors took their money out of tax shelters, where they were earning very modest rates of return, and put their money into the productive economy, where they could earn higher rates of return, now that those returns were not so heavily taxed.

This was the very reason why tax rates were cut in the first place -- to get more revenue for the federal government. The same was true, decades later, during the John F. Kennedy administration. Similar reasons led to tax rate cuts during the Ronald Reagan administration and the George W. Bush administration.

All of these presidents -- Democrat and Republican alike -- made the same argument for tax rate reductions that had been made in the 1920s, and the results were similar as well. Yet the invincible lie continues to this day that those who oppose high tax rates on high incomes are doing so because they want to reduce the taxes paid by high income earners, in hopes that their increased prosperity will "trickle down" to others.

 Well…all this nonsense about “fairness” we are hearing from the President is just election year propaganda. The top 10% of present day earners already pay 50% of the federal budget—where’s the “fairness” in that figure?