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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, APRIL 1, 1983
PAGE 10
government interference. They never meant to construct a wall of
hostility between government and the concept of religious belief
itself." And he went on: "The...Declaration of Independence men
tions the Supreme Being no less than four times.
'In God We
Trust' is engraved in our coinage. The Supreme Court opens its
proceedings with a religious invocation. And the Members of Con
gress open their meetings with a prayer." This is very poor his
tory. The author of the Declaration of Independence will offer
small succor to a religious view of the Republic; the Supreme
Being to whom Jefferson refers is a Deist diety, who made the
world and left it to its devices.
"Neutrality" is how the
Supreme Court has interpreted the First Amendment's attitude to
religion; noting that "we are a religious people," the Court
judged in 1963, that religion must nevertheless let government
alone,•.•
The old distinction between morality and religion, however, was
lost on Mr. Reagan.•.• The expulsion of religion from politics is
not an expulsion of morality from politics.... When revelation
was surrendered, however, virtue was not•••• President Reagan•••
cal.Led secularism a "value system that is radically different
from that of most Americans."
Most Americans, he continued,
believe in "families, churches, neighborhoods, communities--the
institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for
others and respect for the rule of law under God." But who are
the secularists who are not committed to these institutions and
values? Are the unchurched...really against families· and commun
ities? There are precincts of sanctity in secular lives, too•...
Secularism is just!§. committed to what he called "the tried and
true-tested values upon which our very civilization is based" as
religion.
If that last statement is true, then why so many assaults on the family in
our secular society in the form of abortion, ERA and gay liberation? Advo
cates of these causes are indeed committed to a "value system that is
radically different from that of most Americans." But THE NEW REPUBLIC
editors conclude:
The influence of religion upon the public life cannot be denied.
The President does not want to wish to divest the United States
of this influence. He is not the first...• Religion in America,
[Tocqueville] wrote, bore not upon laws, but upon mores, where
its function was to check the excesses of individualism and
materialism.
The President should cease these celestial navigations. There is
business on earth. He is not in the White House to save souls,
but to protect our bodies; not to do God's will, but the
people's. Anyway, God will forgive--that, said Heine, is his
profession.
Despite their own snide secular sermonizing, THE NEW REPUBLIC editors have
some valid points. It should be evident that the true responsibility for
the decline in moral values in our secular society resides with the
ministers of this world, who have allowed worldly values and concepts to
first creep in and finally overwhelm their churches. Instead of overcoming