Once upon a time, at a well-known convention held in Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin suggested that the session be opened with a word of prayer. “In this situation of this assembly, groping, as it were, in the dark, to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how is it happened sir, that we have not once thought of humbly applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our understandings?” Franklin asked. Now some 200 years later, Americans are no more illuminated on religion and politics or on their “sacred” documents-the Constitution and the Bible.
I want to examine two cases, both involving the Bible and the Constitution, and the way in which they are both misunderstood and abused.
A principal at a Montana high school banned three students from passing out literature promoting a religious conference. What’s the fuss? Apparently, a teacher of a different faith reported the problem to the principal. This teacher used the Constitution as an excuse for stopping these students.
The principal, who is the same faith as the students, put a stop to their actions out of fear, lest his school becomes the center of attention of yet another battle over the separation of church and state.
However, the principal lifted the ban after the school was threatened with a lawsuit. Steve Crampton, chief counsel to the American Family Association’s Center for Law and Policy, which filed the lawsuit, had this to say about the principal, “Like so many others, he has been misled as to what students can and cannot do, especially when it pertains to religious speech.”
The purposes of the First Amendment are not hard to understand, yet the very rights that the Constitution protects, are the same rights that are attacked by Constitution-waving activists.
“The truth is that students do not give up all of their constitutional rights in public school. They have the same right to share their views and their faith, and pass out literature even, during non-instructional time, so long as they don’t disrupt classes,” Crampton said.
Religion and politics (read: church and state) are like two magnets. Align them one way and they’ll attract each other. Turn one of them a little bit and suddenly they repel. It’s all a matter of who is manipulating the magnets.
The second case involves the popular Fox News personality Bill O’Reilly and a recent interview he had with Stephen Bennett, a spokesman for the Concerned Women of America. The topic of discussion revolved around the issue of homosexual rights, but as far as this article is concerned, that is an irrelevant topic.
The point to focus on is that O’Reilly manipulated Scripture to have it read what he wants it to while belittling his guest through his own misunderstandings of the book. O’Reilly’s misunderstanding of the Bible led him to incorrectly conclude that anyone who believes in the entire Bible condemns practicing homosexuals to hell.
O’Reilly, who regularly cites his Catholic faith as a source for his views on many issues, next claimed to believe only in the Gospels of the New Testament, and that the Old Testament is strictly allegorical.
The problem is this: the Gospels repeatedly give testimony to the validation of the Old Testament. To believe or not to believe is the free choice of everyone, but what O’Reilly is doing is picking and choosing what he wants the Bible to say, ignoring what is really said.
Genuine misunderstandings happen. However, the first step of those who are ignorant of the Constitution and/or the Bible should be to check out these documents for themselves. Ask questions and demand answers. The Bible and the Constitution are interpretable to a high degree. If you read with limitations on what you’ll allow a text to say, then your efforts are in vain.
Michael Stewart is a junior philosophy and religion major.