Archive for the ‘Guest Editorials’ Category

Guest Editorial

By: Nick Olson

In recent weeks, the political world has been rocked by three major and separate sex scandals involving a former US governor, a current US congressman, and a well-known politician for the French socialist party. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Andrew Weiner, and Dominique Strauss-Kahn found themselves embroiled in a web of lies, deceit, and sexual misconduct.

In times of political scandal, it is both easy and common for Christians to have one of two equally problematic responses: apathy or judgmentalism. The first response, apathy, is characterized by indifference, and is fueled by an attitude that says politics are not worthwhile because the corruption will never change. The second common response, judgmentalism, is characterized by the temptation to drag the scandalized public figure in the ground from the impure motivation of self-righteousness.

Neither response to political scandal – apathy or judgmentalism – is Christ-like. Christian love and grace does not allow for indifference or self-righteous criticism. The gracious response calls us to forgive scandalized politicians because forgiveness is the appropriate response for those who have been eternally forgiven by God. Because we too have sinned, we are in no position to pridefully position ourselves above other sinners. However, from this position of humility, we must also sound the call for our politicians to display integrity through fidelity in their personal lives. If our elected officials cannot be faithful in their personal lives, then they force us to question their faithfulness to do what is right for the country and the world in the public spotlight.

Thus, the proper Christian response to these recent political scandals brings into focus three major issues to remember:

1. Scandals happen on both sides of the aisle. Neither right-leaning nor left-leaning Christians should use a political scandal as an opportunity for partisan politics. At bottom, it is simply dishonest.

2. God’s grace to us creates both humility and the desire for justice. They are two sides of the same coin. We cannot have one without the other. Seeking justice without humility breeds judgmentalism, while being humble without seeking justice breeds timid apathy.

3. We need to pray for our politicians. Pray that God’s hand would direct their lives. Pray that they would not separate the ethics which govern their public decision-making from the ethics which guide their private lives. It is a false dichotomy that cannot be sustained.

And, ultimately, we ought to pray for restoration in the lives of the politicians involved in scandal.

By Deacon Keith Fournier

The Cross at the Mt. Soledad War Memorial

This 9th Circuit opinion is an example of a growing governmental hostility toward religious faith, religious symbols, and, in particular, Christian faith and Christian symbols, in the public square. The effort to scrub the public square of such religious expression and symbols is a threat to religious freedom and represents an incorrect application of the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution. 

WASHINGTON, DC – On Monday January 4, 2011, a three judge panel of the United States 9th Circuit Court of Appeals filed its long awaited opinion in what has been popularly called the “Mount Soledad Cross Case”, Trunk v. City of San Diego, Case No. 08-56415. In effect, they held that because the Cross is a Christian Symbol it must be removed from a war memorial.

I know that some who read my assessment will take exception. However, I will not “nuance” the anti-Christian bigotry revealed in the opinion of these three unelected black robed Federal Judges. They held that the Mount Soledad cross, which has stood on Mount Soledad since 1913, has somehow now become a violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution simply because they say it has.

All who are concerned about the growing hostility toward religious speech and expression in the United States have watched this case with great interest.  I make my assessment as a constitutional lawyer who has long questioned the current establishment clause law in our Nation. In 1992 following the incomprehensible Supreme Court opinion in Lee v Weisman, while serving as the Executive Director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a public interest law firm, I wrote a law review article entitled “In the Wake of Weisman: The Lemon Test is Still a lemon but the Psycho-coercion Test is more bitter Still”.

In that article, after tracing the history of the interpretation of the Establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution and the developments of the last few decades, I predicted the insanity that would follow from the efforts of the Supreme Court to apply the so called “Lemon Rule” (named after the Courts 1971 opinion in Lemon v Kurtzman) and it’s ever expanding “interpretations” and permutations. That is precisely what has occurred.  We have experienced a judicial ping pong game of incomprehensible opinions requiring a showing that religious symbols have a “secular” purpose – as though religion and the common good are mutually exclusive!

Let me demonstrate the level of hostility toward religion and religious symbols in the Court’s own words. The Court, with great concern, took judicial notice that “After the Cross’s dedication in 1954″ there were “Easter services at the Memorial annually until at least 2000, and other religious ceremonies have been held there since. The annual Easter services included readings from the Bible, a Christian prayer and benediction, and songs such as “Jesus Christ is Risen Today” and “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name.” 

They decried the fact that, “The Cross’s importance as a religious symbol has been a rallying cry for many involved in the litigation surrounding the Memorial. LiMandri (a Catholic lawyer with the Thomas More Law Center seeking to preserve the cross) and the Thomas More Law Center were integral in devising the plan to designate the land as a national veterans’ memorial.”

They critically pointed out that the Thomas More Law Center “publicly characterized the campaign to save the Cross in religious terms-for example, as a “spiritual battle. LiMandri declared that “Christ won the war on Calvary. These are just kind of mop-up battles . . . . LiMandri also participated in a fifty-four day prayer movement in front of the Cross that opened with the singing of “Immaculate Mary,” and the prayer of twenty mysteries of the rosary.. Other Christian advocacy groups like the American Family Association, the American Center for Law & Justice, and Fidelis launched national petition campaigns for the Cross; an intercessory prayer movement was held by the Christian Defense Counsel outside the White House.”

This 9th Circuit opinion is an example of a growing governmental hostility toward religious faith, religious symbols, and, in particular, Christian faith and Christian symbols, in the public square. The effort to scrub the public square of such religious expression and symbols is a threat to religious freedom, runs contrary to our founding documents, and is unfaithful to our history as a free people. It also represents an incorrect application of the Establishment Clause, found in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. 

This opinion also demonstrates that the 2005 Supreme Court decision of Van Orden v. Perry, a “ten commandments” case, has now made the illogic of Establishment Clause Jurisprudence even more pronounced in the United States.  Now, even the convoluted trail left by the Lemon case and its progeny can be abandoned by a Court, under the ruse of an “exception” to the Lemon analysis, only to be replaced by Judicial whimsy.

Federal Judges now make up their own rules by which they decide whether a religious symbol, especially a Christian religious symbol, will be allowed to stand on public land or in a public building. There is not even a pretense that the actual words of the Establishment Clause have any effect in this new world of the judicial oligarchy. The 224 page opinion rendered by the 9th Circuit in the Mt Soledad case is one more example of why it is absolutely essential that we reclaim the “Separation of Powers” doctrine and rein in Federal Judges and Courts.

The Establishment Clause is best understood as an “anti-establishment” clause. It was intended to prohibit the “establishment” of one particular religion – in the sense of a Federal or State sponsored Church which mandated adherence from unwilling citizens. The American founders fled coercive approaches to religion which compelled adherence to a particular sect. Yet, they were not anti-religious.

They were assuredly not against religious symbols or religious expression. Our history is filled with them. Or, more accurately, it once was. Religious symbols are no longer seen as a wonderful sign of the history of the West and the American founding by the new Judicial Oligarchs. Rather they are seen as a threat to the secularist order. When they are allowed they must be demonstrated to have been eviscerated of any religious meaning and somehow thereby rendered “secular” and acceptable.

This Court showed hostility toward the Cross writing, “[C]onsidering the entire context of the Memorial, the Memorial today remains a predominantly religious symbol. The history and absolute dominance of the Cross are not mitigated by the belated efforts to add less significant secular elements to the Memorial…. The fact that the Memorial also commemorates the war dead and serves as a site for secular ceremonies honoring veterans cannot overcome the effect of its decades-long religious history…The Memorial’s relatively short history of secular usage does not predominate over its religious functions so as to eliminate the message of endorsement that the Cross conveys.”

They seemed particularly offended by the size of the cross noting “(W)e cannot overlook the fact that the Cross is forty-three feet tall. It physically dominates the Memorial, towering over the secular symbols placed beneath it, and is so large and placed in such a prominent location that it can be seen from miles away.”

The disjointed legal opinion concluded,  “[A]fter examining the entirety of the Mount Soledad Memorial in context-having considered its history, its religious and non-religious uses, its sectarian and secular features, the history of war memorials and the dominance of the Cross-we conclude that the Memorial, presently configured and as a whole, primarily conveys a message of government endorsement of religion that violates the Establishment Clause”.

Jay Sekulow, Chief Counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice, is one of our Nations’ leading constitutional lawyers. The ACLJ has been involved in the case as a “Friend of the Court” defending the monument and the Cross…As usual, the ACLJ’s summary of the 9th Circuit opinion is the clearest available and I commend it to our readers. The ACLJ called the 9th Circuits opinion a “Faulty Ruling.” I agree. However, it is much worse than that. It is one more example of a judicial oligarchy at work and a threat to religious freedom. 

Reprinted by permission from Deacon Fournier, this article first appeared in Catholic Online.

By Warren Cole Smith

(Warren Cole Smith is a columnist with World Magazine. We hope you enjoy his inspiring column on Veteran’s Day.)

COMMENTARY–The day before Veteran’s Day this year was another, lesser known, holiday. It was the birthday of the Marine Corps, an event celebrated by Marines everywhere and in all circumstances each year.

Exactly 25 years ago [now 31 years ago], on Nov. 10, 1979, I was a college student serving an internship with Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn in Washington, D.C. Nunn was on the Armed Services Committee, and one of his staff members was Arnold Punaro, who advised Sen. Nunn on military affairs. My desk was near Arnold’s in a crowded office in the Senate Office Building. Being a poor college student always on the prowl for a free meal, and also wanting to see a bit of the real “insider’s” Washington, I often worked late in hopes that one of the senior staffers, or on rare occasions the Senator himself, would ask me to accompany him to a dinner, a reception or other event common in Washington but not usually accessible to lowly interns.

One evening, Arnold asked if I would like to go with him to a birthday party. I said, “Sure, whose party?” He said, “You’ll see. Grab your jacket. We’ve got to go.” I followed Arnold to the basement of the building and we walked through the tunnel that joins the Senate Office Building with the Capitol. We eventually emerged in one of the U.S. Capitol’s gorgeous old caucus rooms. There was a huge sheet cake on a table, and Marine generals and colonels everywhere. It was, of course, a party for the Corps.

Though Arnold was dressed in a business suit, they all called him “Major.” And even the generals, I was surprised to discover, showed a certain deference to him. I assumed it was because his boss was a member of the Armed Services Committee. But that was only one reason for their show of respect.

Arnold, one of the officers told me that night, had served three tours in Vietnam as a young Marine, and had been wounded more than once. They tried to ship him home, I was told, but Arnold apparently fought the military bureaucracy as hard as he did the enemy, and he somehow got his wish to stay in Vietnam.

Arnold had continued to serve even after coming home from Vietnam; he was still in the Reserves, and that’s why they all called him “Major.” Arnold himself never spoke to me of Vietnam, but over the course of the evening, more than one general came up to me to say something like this: “Son, it must be a real privilege to work for someone like Arnold.” I said, “Yes, sir, it is,” but I was mostly thinking to myself, “I had no idea.”

I had almost completely forgotten about that experience until the evening of Nov. 10 of this year. I was listening to National Public Radio, and they interviewed a retired Marine general about his most memorable birthday celebration, which happened to be in a foxhole in Korea. It was at that moment that I remembered my first and only Marine Corps birthday party. I “googled” Arnold’s name and found a Web site that said he was a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve and a senior vice president with SAIC, a major defense contractor. It said his “current reserve assignment is Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command (Mobilization). From 1997 to 2000 he served as the Commanding General of the 4th Marine Division.”

I called SAIC and ultimately got Arnold’s e-mail address. He e-mailed back a day later, telling me that the bio was a bit dated. He was indeed still at SAIC, but he had retired from the Corps after 35 years. His son, though, was now a young officer in the Marines who had recently returned from a tour in Iraq.

That night, after my children were tucked safely in their beds, I thought about Arnold, his son now serving in the Corps, my dad who served in Korea, and all veterans. Because I never served in the military myself, I always try to take a moment each Veteran’s Day to remember the sacrifice of those who did.

So thanks to all of you who have served in the military, for your sacrifice and for all you’ve done to make my children’s dreams — and the dreams of many around the world — peaceful.

Pastor Mark Dever of Capitol Hill Baptist Church arrived in Washington the same year I did (1994). I’ve been with him on several occasions. He may be one of the finest Evangelical preachers in America. Next time you’re in Washington on a Sunday, I highly recommend you go to hear him. (See the link below for Capitol Hill Baptist.) Colin Hansen, who wrote this piece, is also a familiar face in the F&A circle. Trust you’ll enjoy this piece by Colin as much as I did!

To read Colin Hansen’s guest editorial, click here.