By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Original Sources (www.originalsources.com)
March 2, 2000
In the wake of Senator John McCain’s attacks on Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and other members of the media dubbed "Religious Right" Senator Robert Torricelli of New Jersey has introduced a resolution that defines for America the boundaries of Religious Correctness for Bob Jones University, a private educational institution. Shades of Joseph McCarthy!
Of course, Torricelli claims he is "leading a congressional rallying cry against religious intolerance and bigotry" with his resolution S. Con. Res. 85, which states:
Whereas the Senate strongly rejects the practices of racism, segregation, and intolerance based on religious beliefs:Whereas the administration of Bob Jones University enforces a segregationist policy by prohibiting interracial couples on Bob Jones University campus:
Whereas officials of Bob Jones University routinely disparage those of other religious faiths with intolerant and derogatory remarks:
Whereas officials of Bob Jones University have likened the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church to a "possessed demon", and branded Catholicism as a "satanic system and religion of the anti-Christ":
Whereas the Website of Bob Jones University greets visitors with the University’s belief that Catholicism and Mormonism are "cults"; and
Whereas senior officials of Bob Jones University have made openly racist remarks on many occasions regarding African Americans and Asian Americans: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate 9the House of Representatives concurring), That Congress-
1. condemns practices, such as those prevalent at Bob Jones University, that seek to discriminate against and divide Americans on the basis of race, ethnicity, and religion; and
2. strongly denounces individuals who seek to subvert the American ideals of inclusion, equality and social justice.
It’s one thing for Congress to issue Resolutions or the President to issue executive orders pertaining to political correctness, which has been the norm for about fifty years in America. It is quite another, a very sinister move, for Congress to start defining religious correctness.
In the first place, the First Amendment puts the matter into the Constitution: " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people to peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
Toricelli’s resolution, which is supported by Rep. Joe Crowley, of New York, from an Irish-Catholic background, Rep. John Conyers, of Michigan who is black, Sen. Harry Reid of Nevada, who is a Mormon, makes a law, or a resolution, respecting the establishment of religion AND prohibiting the free exercise thereof AND abridging the freedom of speech by those going to and managing Bob Jones University. The government of the United States has no authority under the Constitution to decided what religious beliefs should be.
In fact, by their very nature religious beliefs ARE intolerant. They are intolerant of what that religion defines as sin or contrary to the commandments of God. If they accept the Ten Commandments as a matter of doctrine they are intolerant of killing, lying, greed (coveting), committing adultery, foul and sacrilegious language. If other people don’t like their intolerance of such thing, in a free society, they can simply ignore them. It is not up to the U.S. Government to define religion and to proscribe any religion which the GOVERNMENT concludes is intolerant or "racist."
Recently in my analyses I published a couple of stories which dealt directly with this issue. (See "Who’s the Christian in the Latest Rash of National Religion Stories and "Is there a Political Dimension to the Debate Over ‘Who's the Christian?’". Those analyses dealt directly with the issue of Torricelli’s resolution - the notion that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons) and members of the Catholic or Jehovah’s witnesses and other churches are not, in the vernacular of modern day Evangelicals "Christian" using their definition of the word.
The January 27th article quotes letters received which INSISTED that Mormons or Catholics could NEVER be Christians. The letter writers are wrong and some of them certainly are clearly bigots - a word which means "a person who is totally intolerant of any creed, belief or opinion that differs from one’s own." Based on that definition, Torricelli’s resolution is far more bigoted than Bob Jones University’s rules for undergraduates that they date within their own racial group - i.e. whites date whites, Asians date Asians, blacks date blacks, etc. The rule is for ALL groups - not just one of them.
I see absolutely no philosophic difference in Torricelli’s resolution DEMANDING government rules for cross-race dating at a private college than the governmental rules for segregation that I fought in my youth. It is certainly not the right of the government to tell ANY person, or religious group what they must, or must not, believe. That totally destroys the meaning of the First Amendment. If people of other religions, be they Catholic, Mormon, Jehovah’s Witness or one of the many Evangelical churches that seem to spring up here and there, fail to recognize the clear threat to their religious liberty lurking in this Amendment they will deserve to find in later years that THEY are no longer in favor with some government definition of religious correctness.
Those of different faiths, but especially those who think it’s a good idea to support Torricelli’s resolution, need to re-read the experiences of the Reverend Martin Niemoeller, a Protestant clergyman and former World War I U-Boat commander. In 1933 there were forty-five million Protestants in Germany divided into many different sects, but the majority of them giving allegiance to Martin Luther, the founder of Protestantism. Martin Luther was both a passionate anti-Semite and a ferocious believer in absolute obedience to political authority. With that background, the majority of pastors of various churches in Germany in 1933, the day after the German people had overwhelmingly backed Hitler in a national plebiscite, "the ‘German Christians’ staged a massive rally in Berlin. Dr. Reinhardt Krause, the Berlin District leaders of the ‘German Christians’ proposed an abandonment of the Old Testament ‘with its tales of cattle merchants and pimps’ and revision of the New Testament with the teaching of Jesus to "correspond entirely with the demands of National Socialism (Nazism.)"
In 1935 Hitler appointed a Nazi lawyer friend, Dr. Hans Kerrl, to be Minister for Church Affairs. (May I point out that the natural procession flowing from a Federal Resolution that condemns the, obviously, state defined "correct’ position for people professing a difference of opinion on religion, would eventually become a Cabinet level position designed to do what Dr. Kerrl was supposed to do - get the Protestant and Evangelical churches to work out their doctrinal differences. Niemoeller continued to cooperate, while simultaneously maintaining HIS doctrinal definitions of the Christian Faith were the correct one. He would not negotiate a compromise on the matter with other Third Reich pastors.
On the first day of July, 1937, only two years later, Niemoeller was arrested and thrown in prison. What was his offense? On July 27 he had preached to an over-flow crowd of his congregation his last Sermon in the Third Reich: "We have no more thought of using our own powers to escape the arm of the authorities than had the Apostles of old. No more are we ready to keep silent at man’s behest when God commands us to speak. For it is, and must remain, the case that we must obey God rather than man."
After Niemoeller was rescued from the concentration camp he was in, seven years later, by the surrender of Germany in World War II, he wrote: "They came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. And then they came for me and by that time no one was left to speak up."
It is appalling to me that in announcing his resolution, Torricelli had gathered a small group which consisted in part of a Catholic nun, the politically chosen prop representing the Catholic Church, and Democrat Congressman Harry Reid, the prop representing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and John Conyers, the prop representing black people.
The move towards persecuting any who do not subscribe to the Government’s definition of "Religious Correctness" has moved with lightening speed since George W. Bush was condemned for daring to even speak to the 6000 students at Bob Jones University. The flames of bigotry and hatred have been fed, not by Bob Jones University, but those like the sponsors of this resolution who hope to seize control over what a private, religious university believes and discusses.
John McCain has made this kind of bigotry towards people who differ religiously such a factor in the Presidential race that our rights under the First Amendment are now about as threatened as our rights under the Second Amendment. The fires of racism, religious and ethnic bigotry, which have been banked for some years (at least since the election of our first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy,) have burst into flames for political expediency and in the name of seeking an END to "religious intolerance and bigotry."
The one candidate in the presidential race who has led on this issue is Alan Keyes - who spoke at Bob Jones University. As he pointed out, his invitation to speak there said a lot for Bob Jones University and should be proof that the University, while undoubtedly wrong in some of the rules, still have enough of the Christian spirit that they invited the one person in America who totally embodies all of their racial and religious errors. Keyes is black, a Catholic and married to a lovely woman from India. If Torricelli’s resolution was accurate in its portrayal of Bob Jones University, they wouldn’t have invited him to speak. (For Alan Keyes speech, At Bob Jones University
Call or write your members of congress on S.Con Res 85 or e-mail them this article and urge that they nip this effort of Torricelli and others in Congress to establish their view of a state defined "correct" religion. For names, addresses, phone number and e-mail addresses Click here to Contact Congress.
To comment to Original Sources: mmostert@originalsources.com
Links to past analyses mentioned:
http://www.originalsources.com/OS1-00POL/3-1-2000.1.html>To read Alan Keyes’ Speech at Bob Jones University Click Here
http://www.originalsources.com/OS1-00MQC/1-24-2000.1.html>"Who’s the Christian in the Latest Rash of National Religion Stories
http://www.originalsources.com/OS1-00MQC/1-27-2000.1.html>"Is there a Political Dimension to the Debate Over ‘Who's the Christian?’"
To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to:
Start Your Subscription
