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Eugene offered:
> Sorry to sound like a broken
record, but I wonder how this would have played out in other contexts. For
instance, the abolitionist movement, the civil rights movement, and various
anti-war and other movements have involved political-religious alliances on
controversial public policy questions. (The abolitionist movement was of
course indeed dangerous to the republic in the short term, though good in the
long term.)
>If in 1963, a
government official called on Christian ministers to oppose racism and
segretation and support civil rights, and asked them to assert that good
Christians should oppose racism and segregation and support civil rights, would
this really have been unconstitutional?
Since
Christian ministers differed on each of these issues (in the old South Christian
ministers maintained Bibilical support for slavery; in the South of 1963
Chritian ministers continued to maintain Bibilical support for segregation), it
seems to me that for the President to opine about the beliefs or actions of
"good Christians" constitutes endorsement of one set of varieties of
Christianity. However, for the President to call upon all like-minded
Christians to come to his support is another matter.
Bob
O'Brien
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