I had hoped this subject would die its natural death but our esteemed publisher seems intent on mischievously, artificially and it turns out, wrongfully extending our public flogging of private beliefs.
Thus far the debate has turned on what voters may do, and one founder’s alleged view of the limits of government. Apparently Mr. Presberg is a member of a free thought society, and he is a public official, and there is a sneaking suspicion on the part of some that he may be an atheist.
Mr. Beverly rightly points out that the Constitution speaks only to government; that there may be no religious test IN GOVERNMENT in order to hold office and that Congress may not establish an official religion.
He goes on to point out that this prohibition on government says nothing about our rights as private citizens to hold someone to our own religious test. He feels therefore as a private citizen newspaperman that it is right and proper for himself or any citizen to delve into the private beliefs of public officials and to make these known as relevant to the execution of their public duties.
Mr. Beverly goes on to quote a letter written by Jefferson which, he purports, demonstrates his belief that the “wall” separating religion and government is not really a wall but a one-way check valve which should keep government out of religion but not religion out of government.
I studied the breadth of Jefferson’s writings and actions for much of my adult life, and far as his beliefs, nothing could be further from the truth. Jefferson disdained organized religion’s influence on government and his entire career reflected this disdain.
Jefferson was not present at the Constitutional Convention but his protégé James Madison was. Madison firmly believed in a WALL and had worked with Jefferson in the House of Burgesses to ensure religious freedom and freedom from religion in Virginia prior to the Convention.
John Adams was not there either (his pamphlet was) and you would think as the author of the statute establishing a state religion in Massachusetts he would be all for the mix of religion and government. However by his death in 1826, all states had abolished their state religions and Adams fully approved.
Further, if you asked the 55 men who attended the Convention what they thought about religion in government you would undoubtedly get 55 different answers.
But we needn’t hash over the founder’s intent because the principle has been well established over 200 years of judicial review. The question is not may we do this, but should we.
It seems from his writing that in Mr. Beverly’s mind we ought to investigate personal beliefs, or at the very least a basic belief in God. But why should our line of disquisition end there when the fun is just starting?
We could perhaps fashion in depth questionnaires based on religious sects which, when answered truthfully might provide us all with reasons to divide along religious fractures:
For the Southern Baptists: whom do you hate more, Jews or Catholics?
For the Mormons: Seer stone, golden plates and reformed Egyptian … really?
For the Presbyterians: Predestination? Why should anybody try?
For the Lutherans: Justification by faith. Is that all it takes?
For the Catholics: Transubstantiation? Come on.
I have a fascination for the Balkans. Nowhere on the planet can you find in such close proximity large numbers of people who carry such a burden of history and strife.
In the center are the Serbs. Slavic people converted by St. Cyril with their own proud traditions and their Orthodox faith. West of them are the Croats; ethnically indistinguishable, speaking the same language (close enough) with their Western alphabet, Roman Catholic faith and own proud traditions.
During the Second World War Serbs were interred and murdered in the tens of thousands, often with hammers, by the Croatian Ustashe at extermination camps like Jasenovac where Croat Ustashe also murdered Jews and Roma. They were offered conversion before death.
Mixed in are Serbo-Croat Muslims, primarily in Bosnia, descendants of Slavs who converted during the Ottoman occupation and now have their own traditions. Some 8,000 of these were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces at Srebrenica in 1995.
To the south are the Macedonians who speak a form of Bulgarian but have their own traditions and Orthodox faith. There are ethnic Albanians in Kosovo who have suffered their own atrocities at the hands of the Serbs.
There are Greeks further south who are upset with the name Macedonia and have joined in fighting both Serbs and Bulgarians at one time or another; to the west are Bulgarians who still wish to claim parts of Macedonia.
In 1876 Muslim Bulgarians murdered 5,000 Orthodox Christians in the southern Bulgarian town of Batak. In 1989 some 300,000 ethnic Turks were “allowed”(forced) to leave all their property behind and emigrate elsewhere (primarily Turkey).
To the north and east are Romanians who are a Latin race and despise the surrounding Slavs, particularly since Bessarabia was taken from them and given to Ukraine by Stalin.
In 1941-1942 Romanian army forces marched 185,000 Jews out of Bessarabia and northern Moldavia to Transdniestria where Romanian army units stripped and shot the adults and buried the children alive.
Romania also has large minorities of Hungarians who do not mix and had a sizable population of Saxons (Germans) until the war. They were either eliminated or have left. Romanians are Orthodox, Hungarians Roman Catholic and the Saxons Lutheran.
So what’s the point? What do the Balkans have to do with us?
The people of the Balkans are just people but are a sort of laboratory for the effect of long-term religious and ethnic pressure. In the Balkans they don’t need to ask what you believe because they already know by who you are.
Jefferson wrote: “that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.” We Americans have a tradition of measuring a person by what they do in life. And we have a tradition of electing leaders based on how we believe they will have conducted their lives and will fulfill their offices.
Mr. Beverly thinks that speculation about a person’s beliefs based on associations is a valid area for examination. But history shows us repeatedly that there is nothing down that road but raw prejudice and in its extremes, civil strife.
Our forefathers, to the degree that they could, endeavored to excise this burden. It is a call to our unfounded preconceptions, and always the tool of the tyrant.
Timothy J. Parker
Peachtree City, Ga.
