Keep government free of religious expression
by Barry Henderson
Like a bad penny, that pernicious, unconstitutional "God resolution" keeps popping up in the halls of local governments around here, where there's apparently not much else for our supposed community leaders to do.
Knox Commissioner Ivan Harmon, who pushed for the resolution recognizing God as central to our national heritage, says he's bringing it back for reconsideration. It failed to pass last year, when 10 of the 19 members of County Commission voted it off the agenda, but it was passed by other area government bodies after Greene County set it in motion.
With demonic persistence, Harmon says he expects to reintroduce it. He doubtless has good intentions, but he ought to know that the road paved with good intentions may lead elsewhere than the throne of God. This time, Harmon says, he will eliminate the clause defying a federal court order that removed the Ten Commandments from the Alabama State Supreme Court.
Some commissioners had seized on that clause to oppose it. They needn't have looked that far into it. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was all that they needed to cite.
The God resolution makes much of the belief in God ascribed to the signers of the Constitution, but it goes far afield when it says those founding fathers never intended a separation between God and government. The fact that many of those who established this nation or their forebears emigrated to the colonies to escape from state-sponsored religions or religion-sponsored states is ignored.
Harmon says he hears that some churches are going to circulate petitions urging the Commission to pass the resolution after he brings it to the agenda next month, despite the fact that some church leaders said last year it was not a good idea to mix church and state in that way.
Perhaps an alternative resolution ought to be considered at the same time. In its whereas clauses, it could point out that the God-fearing founders were adamant in their insistence that religion be kept out of government; it could say that in the two millennia since the Constitution was adopted, waves of immigrants of all religious and spiritual persuasions built this nation and defended that Constitution against its enemies at home and abroad; it could maintain that all religions, whether devoted to the almighty Judeo-Christian God or the great Islamic Allah, or the good Buddha, or to some other deity or none at all are to be treated equally, their free exercise of their spirituality permitted, indeed encouraged, and the establishment by government or inclusion in governmental affairs of any religious expression prohibited.
There is no conceivable rationale wherein the proponents of Christianity should be allowed to set themselves up as the Taliban of this nation or any of its subdivisions.
The commissioners who voted the God resolution off their agenda last time were Mike Arms, Mark Cawood, David Collins, John Griess, Phil Guthe, Mary Lou Horner, Diane Jordan, Wanda Moody, Tank Strickland, and Billy Tindell. Many of those said then or have said since that they didn't want to take a position that seemed to instruct their citizen-constituents how to worship.
As good Americans, who honor our Constitution and its solemn tenets, let's urge them to hold their ground. The others obviously felt differently about the issue, and there's not much use trying to persuade them otherwise. If they insist on favoring the resolution, they remain a simple minority in a complex and diverse population.
January 22, 2003 * Vol. 14, No. 4
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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