The Genius of the First Amendment

Freedom is fragile. Throughout history, most people have lived in cultures or under regimes where blood, religion and soil have determined beliefs and behavior with no room for dissent. In the past 500 years, Judeo-Christian and Enlightenment affirmations of full liberty of conscience, private property and personal virtue have brought enormous good to the world.

As the US Constitution was framed and ratified in 1787, our Founders added ten amendments to ensure its passage and explicitly enumerate critical personal rights and political boundaries. Whether it is the right to bear arms, a trial by jury or the freedom to assemble, speak and petition the government, Americans have enjoyed liberty without parallel or precedent for more than 200 years. Sometimes those freedoms chafe our sense of justice as criminals, "take the 5th." Sometimes free speech is interpreted so broadly that millions are offended by blasphemous and immoral images and language. But most Americans - and most who have followed our lead around the world - feel the risks are the price we pay for liberty.

The first and greatest freedom is enshrined in the first sixteen words of the First Amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or restricting the free exercise thereof." This clause, along with the Constitutional declaration that there shall be no religious test for public office, constitutes the greatest experiment in freedom in history. For the first time, differences about the most important matters of the human soul are left to the individual and not determined by the state. No state church. People of all faiths or none can live with their deepest differences without fear. Religious communities are protected and welcomed, but they must compete in a free market of ideas and their future rests on their vitality, not state coercion or subsidies.

Over the years, this freedom has been tested by bigoted and intolerant people. Anti-Catholic and anti-Jewish sentiments permeate much of our history. Atheists and believers passionately present their causes, each claiming to have the best evidence. In the past half-century, secular elites have created a new sport with their anti-Christian screeds, like Bill Maher's failed movie and the constant attempts of the ACLU to eliminate religious expressions from the public square. Most Americans are appalled at intolerance and are willing to live with diversity.

Recent events in Dearborn, Michigan reveal the ugly side of intolerant Islam. They unveil an unprecedented threat to our future liberties. Christians were arrested for engaging in peaceful conversations about religion at an Arab festival. They were not blocking foot traffic, hurling insults, picketing or even accosting pedestrians like the brochure distributors in Las Vegas or New York. They were shouted down, accused of causing trouble and carried away in handcuffs. Amidst Islamic shouts, peaceful US citizens were denied their First Amendment rights.

Militant Islam has no place in its ethos for real liberty. There are progressive/liberal traditions of freedom and tolerance in Islamic history, but these have always been drowned out by voices committed to establishing a universal caliphate. One looks in vain around the globe for any Muslim-dominated country that offers full religious freedom - including the liberty to convert to another faith or leave the traditional community without fear of a fatwa.

I challenge Islamic leaders to affirm the First Amendment without qualification and to assert that complete freedom of conscience is a moral and political good. Without these assurances, tensions will only rise. It is not only Christians who are threatened by the assumptive language and sectarian demands of militants - all lovers of freedom are imperiled by intolerance. Some of my atheist friends feel persecuted by what they perceive to be a Christian-saturated culture. Several Christian friends I know feel persecuted for upholding their beliefs and values. To both groups I say beware of the real threat - a perverted interpretation of a religion with no history of anything approaching democracy.

If progressive Muslims will show courage, they will find allies with all people of conscience. The secular Left must step up and criticize some of the barbaric practices of the extremists and stop living in guilt for the colonial past. The Right must reach out and appeal to all people who affirm their core values. Most of all, Americans of all persuasions need to learn their history and rediscover the powerful principled freedoms bequeathed by our Founders.

There is no freedom without virtue and no virtue without absolute morality rooted in transcendent truth. We must recover these timeless principles or America will find herself in the clutches of religious or secular tyranny.

Action Report 3: Peace is Possible

Today at Acton I attended a lecture by Mustafa Akyol, a writer for the the Turkish Daily News and author of the forthcoming book, The Islamic Case for Freedom. He represents the most hopeful thinking I have heard from Muslims who seek to live peacefully alongside people of all faiths or none. Akyol uncovered some important historical sources of progressive Islamic thought, from the seventh to the twentieth centuries. There are multiple voices of pluralistic and tolerant thought that have been silenced by radicals throughout the centuries. He and I did not agree on every issue, but I have found a real partner for peace, a Muslim who does not want Jews and Christians in dhimmitude and rejects all forms of coercion in matters of religion.

THE issue for peace in the 21st century is creating a world where two missionary religions can live with their deepest differences, fervently carry out their missionary work and affirm rights for others that they want for themselves. Along with Imam Tahir Anwar in San Jose, CA (who I am honored to dialogue with at Apple Computer's Interfaith Panel twice a year), Akyol is a devout Muslim who respects the genius of political liberty in the US Constitution and affirms the importance of entrepreneurship and free market economies. We both agree that a free society is a virtuous society and that the way forward for the Islamic world is not Wahhabi Islamicism, but an embrace of freedom of conscience and opportunity.

Mr. Akyol shows great courage speaking in a devout Christian setting and graciously responding to the critiques and questions which are essential to understanding. A priest from Nigeria, whose parish is under siege by radical Muslims (hundreds of Christians have been killed this year as terrorists seek to impose their perverted version of Sharia Law), challenged Akoyl and all moderate-progressive Muslims to help him find a way to stop the violence. There are no easy answers as the call to "love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you" is heard in the context of wanton violence.

Peace will take courage, dialogue, economic partnerships and small steps of establishing trust. Today was a good day to hope that out of the current turmoil, trust can flourish.

Only at Action: Day 2

Today at the Action Institute I attended excellent presentations on a range of topics, from evangelical environmental and social ethics to the challenges of globalization and the need for ethical entrepreneurship as one key to liberating persons from poverty. The insights and principles were important and well-stated and I will be using this knowledge immediately in classes and communication.

What made today even more interesting was the amazing variety of people I conversed with, all of whom share a passion for integrating Christian faith with economic freedom and social justice. In the last 24 hours, I have met:

A Bolivian teacher and writer who is a devout Catholic with a deep respect for Evangelical and Pentecostal Christians. He loves God, his Church and is writing on some of the recent works of Pope Benedict. We had a delightful dinner conversation and the future of Bolivia is brighter because of his presence.

An Italian graduate student in philosophy who is passionate about clear thinking , virtuous living and seeing people use their God-given reason to create new solutions for current challenges.

A business owner who (actually) manufactures his products in Kansas. He is enthusiastic about seeing his work as a mission and service to the world.

A high-tech entrepreneur who was a member of the Swiss Guard protecting Pope John Paul II. His presentation and Acton's new initiative, "Poverty Cure," offer concrete solutions to world poverty. Prosperous nations have poured more than $2 trillion into the developing nations since WWII, with little long-term success.

An American Protestant seminary professor who is writing on ethics and global business and mentoring one of my former students.

A woman pioneering a new private school.

Leaders and thinkers from Anglican, Baptist, Congregational,Eastern Orthodox, Lutheran, Reformed, Pentecostal and Roman Catholic and non-denominational traditions.

I have met Black Republicans, Latina conservatives, Anglo semi-libertarians, Asian business leaders and Canadian scholars. No one is a slave to any extreme ideology or party politics. All these leaders were of one voice on the issues of honoring life from conception to coronation and preserving and enhancing traditional marriage. There is a remarkable absence of cliches. Instead, everyone is rolling up their sleeves and anxious to imagine and implement principled solutions to our economic, political and spiritual challenges.

In addition to this mosaic of personalities, I overheard intelligent conversations about faith and freedom and the utter necessity of virtue for a democratic society. Everyone is respectful of our national leaders, but the overall consensus is that our current crises stem from a combination of bad decisions, greed, governmental ineptitude and the spiritual poverty of our age.

As the dinner ended, our keynote speaker, C. William Pollard, former CEO of ServiceMaster, spoke on the "Awesome Responsibility of Leadership." His address was timeless and timely, full of enduring ideas and up-to-date insights from the front lines. One compelling notion for all Christian leaders to remember is that God expects a return on His investment in us. This return is not just about generating monetary wealth, but the ways we improved the lives of the people we led and loved.

I am a richer and wiser man, made better by "pursuing truth in the company of friends."

24 Hours at Acton

This week I have the honor of being a Kern Foundation Fellow attending a special conference at the Acton Institute/University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The focus is the integration of Christian faith and leadership in economic, political and social arenas. All too often there is a disconnect between Sunday's religious experiences and the pressures of commerce and community Monday through Saturday.

In the first episode of the first year of the television series 24, lead character Jack Bauer said that,"Today is the longest day of my life." And for the next several years we were kept on the edge of our seats by the plots twists, layers of conspiracies and Jack Bauer's moral and relational challenges in pursuit of justice. Whether you liked this show or not, it compressed time and made all devotees wonder how much activity can be crammed into one day.

In comparison, I can say that the past 24 hours at Acton have been among the most inspirational and intense in my life of learning. From Father Sirico's memorable stories of 1950s Brooklyn life to Immaculee Iligagiza's riveting testimony of courage and forgiveness in Rwanda, I have been subject to the finest thinking on faith and society. I have met leaders in all fields from over 20 states and as many nations, from Albania to Ecuador and from Alaska to Turkey. All of us are committed to our faith and to human flourishing. Whether, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant, participants share a deep loyalty to excellence, integrity and eternal values.

My personal motto is "Think deeply and act decisively." Acton is proof that deep thinking and decisive action are connected and crucial to the future of our planet. It is refreshing to hear intellectual giants affirm that government exists to protect God-given rights, not bestow them. It is exciting to see compassionate leaders dedicated to helping the poor affirm that free markets are the most empowering way forward, not bureaucrat-controlled enterprises. Economics is more than tax policy - it is the delightful art and science of creating wealth, serving human need and expressing our calling to create, discover and manage the wonders of the world.

In every conversation, discussion and lecture, the foundations of faith and virtue are affirmed as the essential conditions of true freedom. Freedom is not a license for anarchy and self-indulgence. Real freedom is the opportunity to realize our full destiny in the context of bringing glory to God and good to others. It is enlightening to see the rich Judeo-Christian heritage brought into focus, along with the deficiencies of the various 18th and 19th century philosophies that spawned the secular, totalitarian experiments of the 20th century, with countless dead in the name of party, race or soil.

Father Sirico's memories of Brooklyn unveil the common values held by diverse families on one block of an American city. His neighbors includes Irish and Italian immigrants, Catholics and Protestants and the "Mayor" of the block, Mrs. Rabbinowitz. Mrs. Rabbinowitz was a 70-something Jewish lady who sat on the front porch and heard and saw everything. With a single sentence she could still the course language of a dozen boys arguing over a stick ball base runner. How was this possible? How could people from very different cultures all get along? How could the voice of one old woman, threatening to tell one boy's parents of his verbal transgression, calm a crowd of adolescents? The answer is profoundly simple. All the families shared tacit values, regardless of ethnicity or religion. There was a civil center of virtue that was the glue of the community. Hard work,respect for authority, reverence for God and truth-telling were obligations, not options.

Immaculee Ilibagiza spent 91 days with seven other people hiding in a bathroom to escape the genocidal machetes in 1994 Rwanda. Today her home has been rebuilt and it is a center of forgiveness, healing and piety in her town. She has privately and publicly forgiven the man who murdered members of her family. She found in Christ and prayer the courage to choose faith, hope and love over doubt, despair and revenge. Hearing her story places all my "suffering" in perspective. My life has not always been easy, but my tribulations pale in comparison to sisters and brothers in Nazi Germany, Stalin's USSR, Mao's China, Pol Pot's Cambodia, the horrors of Rwanda and Darfur and the millions enslaved for sex or work.

24 hours of compelling testimony, insightful instruction and encouragement from new friends inspires me to greater courage and service. Stay tuned for Day Two.

Issues We Must Not Ignore

In recent dialogues with social activists, I am noting a disturbing trend among those who identify themselves as Christians and 'post-conservatives." There is a visceral fear among many devout people at being identified with the Right. This disdain for conservatism leads them to take positions they claim are compassionate and nuanced, while in fact they are violations of their deepest moral principles. My concern is that these well-meaning folks are being usurped by the Left as they react to the Right.

I see this confused compassion in the phrase, "We need to get beyond abortion and gay marriage and focus on more important things, like justice for the poor and environmental concerns." The confusion is also exposed in how the current Middle East crisis is interpreted. These compassionate post-conservatives are playing into the eliminationist anti-Semitism of radical Islam and secular Europe with their calls to punish Israel for defending herself. The same United Nations that voted for partition and the creation of a Jewish homeland in 1947 has spent the last 60 years condemning every attempt of Israel to protect herself from destruction.

We cannot ignore these three fundamental issues. There are intelligent ways to navigate toward solutions that are equitable for all and compatible with biblical faith.

Abortion is the destruction of life. In some cases it happens naturally, as in a miscarriage. In cases of the mother's life in danger, it may be a tragic moral choice, hard but necessary. The consequences of rape and incest (non-voluntary intercourse) do not have to include abortion, however, we must have compassion for the women involved who are recovering from trauma. But abortion as birth control, abortion as the removal of an inconvenience is not morally right. When people scream, "a woman's right to choose" they are forgetting about 1) the baby inside the womb (called a fetus if not wanted and a baby if desired!); 2) the father of the child; and 3) the potential for adoption.

The way forward is to nurture a culture of life that welcomes children, provides for single parents, opens doors for adoption, and protects the vulnerable while reminding us that we are not the Almighty. The same people who bemoan the forced sterilization of thousands of mentally-challenged people and particular racial and social groups from the 1890s to 1960s are forgetting that Planned Parenthood's founder was a eugenics devotee who wanted to make sure that certain classes of people did not breed! These same folks support cloning, designer babies and all kinds of "scientific" progress with no moral absolutes to guide the process.

Gay Marriage is an oxymoron. GLBT people are individuals deserving all the benefits and protections of civil society. They should be free from fear, undisturbed in private adult activity and able to form voluntary associations. But marriage, by all definitions throughout history, is a social and spiritual compact between a man and a woman that ensures the future of the family, clan, tribe, community and civilization.

The way forward includes domestic partnerships and civil unions that protect the rights of the people involved, but are not in the category of marriage. When a California legislator told a clergyman, "Give us gay marriage and we will give you a religious exemption so you don't have to perform the weddings" a sociopolitical tipping point arrived. The idea that government is now bestowing rights to religious communities instead of protecting them is a complete reversal of our Founder's vision and a total violation of our freedom of conscience.

Clergy who preach against homosexual practice must not be persecuted for hate speech. It is interesting that the far Left says nothing about the oppression of gays and women in Islamic nations while pouring vitriol on Catholic or Evangelical advocates of biblical morality. It is the Judeo-Christina ethos of freedom and tolerance, developed (sometimes haltingly, with many advances and reversals if we are honest) over that last half-millennium, that created the right to criticize. It must be noted that opponents of gay marriage and homosexual practice are NOT judging the soul or ignoring the complexities of why people feel the way they do. Biblical advocates also reject gossip and greed, extramarital heterosexual activity and other attitudes and practices destructive to relationships and spiritual vitality.

The mere presence of the state of Israel is unacceptable to the majority of Arabs and Muslims. Israel has valiantly fought off her enemies for 60 years and come to the peace table numerous times ready to end the conflicts. Nobel Peace Prizes have been (presumptively) awarded for these efforts. But in every case, militant Islamicists have subverted the process. Has Israel overreacted at times? Yes. The disaster in Lebanon in 1982 is a stain on Israel's history just as Wounded Knee troubles the American conscience. This said, Israel is the only democracy in the region, has Arab citizens and religious freedom and over and over again demonstrates her willingness to negotiate directly for peace.

The Muslim world needs to show courage and toleration and advocate two things: 1) the legitimacy of Israel's existence in secure borders and as a partner for prosperity; and 2) the ending of terrorism that kills civilians and continues the cycle of violence. A new Sadat needs to emerge who will face down Al-Queda, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Taliban and offer friendship.

Environmental sensitivity and compassion for the poor are possible without capitulating to statist socialism. We can create wealth and manage the environment. We can have private-public partnerships. We can hold capitalists accountable and streamline necessary government services. We can agitate for workers while affirming the right of owners to make a profit. We can deliver health care locally and regionally without a centralized Leviathan rationing services and providing jobs for folks with no other skills.

I urge all Christians and other friends of freedom, from all faiths or none, to keep arguing about solutions that actually work without sacrificing the virtue-based liberties that cost our Founders their "lives, fortunes and sacred honor." Ideologies of Right and Left are the enemies of good morality and theology. Atheist and fundamentalist can live as neighbors and build a better world. Jew and Muslim can be friends, civilly debating while partnering for better schools and peaceful neighborhoods.

We cannot ignore or "get past" crucial issues. We can, however, forge solutions that make our world better. Will you join me in the debate and sacrifice necessary for a better future?