Government must accommodate religion, not endorse it, Land says

DALLAS?There are three competing approaches to the Constitution’s First Amendment, the most valid being the one in which government fairly accommodates the free expression of its citizens’ varied religious viewpoints, Richard D. Land told a Criswell College audience during a lecture series held Jan. 29-31 in Dallas.

Land, the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) president and a leading evangelical voice on cultural issues who once taught at Criswell, spoke on the subject “What Does God Have to Do with America?Past, Present and Future?” during the Criswell Theological Lectures.

Land began his three lectures by explaining the context of Thomas Jefferson’s famous “wall of separation” letter to the Danbury Baptists, and ended noting the open religious speech?mostly biblical allusions, quotations and public prayers?of former U.S. presidents while in office.

Of the three approaches championed by First Amendment advocates?the avoidance position, the acknowledgement position, and the accommodation position?Land said the latter most closely honors the American founders’ intent and historic Baptist principles.

“The accommodation position would say, ‘If the people in the community want to have a manger scene on the courthouse lawn, then they ought to be allowed to collect the money and buy a manger scene and the government should accommodate their wish by allowing its display at the appropriate Christmas time, and they should provide police protection for it and the lighting for it and possibly even the storage for it during the Christmas season,” Land explained.

“But that also means that if there are Jewish people in the community and they want to have a Menorah scene at the appropriate time in the Jewish calendar, then they ought to be able to have a Menorah celebrating Judaism as well. And if there are Muslims in that community, then at the appropriate time they ought to be allowed to display a Muslim scene. Accommodation means the government is an umpire. And the government makes sure that everybody plays fair.”

Land said the avoidance position, championed by groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), seeks to keep all religious expression out of the public square, while the acknowledgment position “says that it’s perfectly all right for the government to acknowledge on behalf of the people the majority religion, that, after all, Christians are the majority.”

“What we should want as Baptists,” Land said, “is maximum accommodation. That is your view and my view and everyone else’s view [included] in the public square.”

Land said President Jefferson?perhaps the most frequently quoted advocate of church-state separation?never intended his famous phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” to mean anything but that citizens are free to follow their religious or irreligious consciences without the state’s favoritism or infringement.

Land explained that Baptists such as John Leland championed the First Amendment guaranteeing “a free church in a free state,” and that early American Baptist forebear Roger Williams had written more than a century before Jefferson that “there needs to be a wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the state to protect the garden from the encroachment of the wilderness.”
Land said, “The last thing we as Baptists should want is government-sponsored religion. Government-sponsored religion is like getting a hug from a python.”

Jefferson’s “wall of separation” phrase has been claimed by proponents of the accommodation position and by groups like the ACLU that champion the avoidance position.

But Land said if Jefferson had intended that government avoid religious expression in its domain, it is curious that Jefferson, the Sunday after penning his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists, attended Sunday worship services in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber led by his friend Leland, a Baptist pastor from Connecticut.

Land said the ERLC’s vision statement?”An American society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority”?alarmed a New York Times reporter who asked, “What about separation of church and state?”

Land said he answered: “Well, do you see the word ‘church’ or the word ‘state’ in that vision statement? It says an American society that affirms Judeo-Christian values rooted in biblical authority.”

“She said, ‘Well, no.’ I said, ‘See, what we’re calling for is for people of faith to go out and by the way they live and by their sharing their faith, to change our society so our society becomes a society that affirms and practices Judeo-Christian values.'”

“I explained to her that it is the people of faith who are the engine that drives the locomotive of the church and society, and the government is the caboose,” Land said. “It comes along behind. I said, ‘I know you believe in democratic and representative government. So if the majority of Americans affirmed and practiced Judeo-Christian values, you would want to see that reflected in the nation’s laws, right?’ She said she’d have to think about that.”

One of the most egregious examples of the avoidance position being imposed by the courts, Land said, was the 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that a female high school student in Santa Fe, Texas had acted unconstitutionally “because the school district had paid for the microphone [during a public prayer before a football game]. I’m not kidding. I couldn’t make that up.”

When religious speech is challenged, Land said, “Their right not to hear ends with our right to free expression and free speech.”

There is “theological imperialism” in places such as Iran, where every woman must cover her head under penalty of law, Land said, and there is “supreme secularism” in places such as France, where if you are a Muslim girl, “you can either wear your head covering or you can attend public school, but you can’t do both.”

“And then we have what we call in the United States principled pluralism, where in Muskogee, Okla.?about as deep into Red State country as you can get?the decision was made that Muslim girls may or may not wear their headscarves in public school. It’s up to the Muslim parents and each Muslim girl. They are not going to be discriminated against and they are not going to be disallowed from going to the public schools because they are practicing their faith. That is what our Baptist forefathers had in mind, and it is the principle that we should promote in the public square. And if we do so, we will benefit because all that Baptists and Christians have ever needed to flourish is a level playing field.”