Circleville Herald, July
10, 2010
Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas facing
the imminent prospect of federal troops enforcing integration of Little Rock
Central High School in 1957 played the religion card. Governor Faubus trumpeted the
following statement, signed by over eighty local clergymen: “We believe the
best interests of all races are served by segregation. We resent the implication
by certain liberal ministers that it is unChristian to oppose integration. We
believe that integration is contrary to the will of God [and] is based on a
false theory of the ‘universal fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood
of man’. We believe that integration is not only unChristian, but that it
violates all sound sociological principles and is not supported by scripture or
biological facts.” (TIME Magazine, 6 October 1958)
Thank the Constitutional separation of
powers for “activist” Supreme Court judges who ruled against segregation and
for the separation of Church and state. Thanks for President Eisenhower
and the 101st Airborne troops that overruled “states rights” and
“local control” in Little Rock and throughout the nation during the civil
rights years.
The accurate teaching of our American
history is at risk. As Texas buys such a large market share of school texts,
publishers are under considerable economic pressure to cater to the Texas School
Board standards. Ten conservative Christian Republicans on the Texas School
Board would teach children that the Civil Rights era lead to unfortunate
“unrealistic expectations” and that Jerry Falwell’s Moral Majority
that began the ascendancy of the Religious Right, Ronald Reagan, Newt Gingrich
and the Republican Party was a more praiseworthy movement. In
fact, Rev. Falwell’s rise began by attacking Rev. Martin Luther King King
as a communist and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as the “Civil Wrongs Act.”
(Falwell 1964 sermon “Ministers and Marchers”). Later Falwell attacked
the gay friendly Metropolitan Community Church in 1984 as a “vile and Satanic
system” and “brute beasts” that will be ”utterly annihilated and there
will be a celebration in Heaven.” Rev. Falwell on the morning of 11 September
2001, just after the World Trade Center fell proclaimed “… gays and
lesbians… the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them… I point the
finger in their face and say: ’You helped this happen’”.
Unfortunately, catering to civil and
religious prejudice has been and remains a shameful yet prominent aspect
of our national discourse. The Democratic Party sought the support of Southern
segregationists until 1964 when President Johnson bemoaned while signing
the Voting Rights Act of 1964 “ We (Democrats) have lost the South for a
generation.” Actor Ronald Reagan campaigned in Philadelphia, Mississippi at
the Neshoba County Fair 1980 openly appealing to those locals feeling abused by
the Supreme Court rulings on integration and federal enforcement of civil and
voting rights. At the time Reagan spoke promising to “restore to state and
local governments the power that properly belongs to them” Baptist Minister
Edgar Ray Killeen had yet to be convicted for planning the murders of three
civil rights workers James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman in
June 1964. The site of their deaths was just a very short distance from where
Mr. Reagan spoke praising local control. The State of Mississippi until 2005
refused to prosecute any of the Klansmen and Neshoba County Sheriff’s Office
deputies responsible for the killings. It was only by the use of “activist”
federal prosecution in 1967 that any conviction was obtained for violation of
the civil rights of the three murdered men.
In one of the most shameless misuses of
faith, can we forget that George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign accessed membership
rosters of evangelical churches, sent out mailings indicating that Democrats
would “Ban the Bible” while Karl Rove helped engineer the placement on the
ballot in 13 states of anti-gay rights initiatives, thus turning out
evangelicals who would then vote for Republicans? Robert T. Bennett, then Chair
of the Ohio Republican Party said of the anti-gay ballot issues: “I’d
be naïve if I didn’t say it helped—and it helped most in the Bible Belt.”
Mr. Bush himself stated “I believe God wants me to be President.” (Campbell,
DE “The Religion Card: George W. Bush and the 2004 Presidential Election”,
University of Notre Dame Press and “Republicans Admit Mailing Campaign
Literature Saying Liberals Will Ban the Bible.” NY Times 24 September 2004)
Could it be this is why Thomas Jefferson
lobbied, wrote and worked so hard for the separation of Church and state? We do
know the Texas School Board has virtually erased Jefferson’s name from the
history they would like our children to learn. Could it be that a less arrogant,
kindlier view of faith as expressed by President Abraham Lincoln should guide
our nation? Lincoln confessed “Our task should not be to invoke religion and
the name of God by claiming God’s blessing and endorsement for all our
national policies and practices—saying, in effect, that God is on our side.
Rather we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God’s side.”
We shall examine in future columns exactly what Jefferson, Washington,
Paine, Madison, other Founding Fathers really had to say about church and state.