Why Our Humility Makes Us Better

In case anyone doesn’t know, “separation of church and

state” is not in the Constitution.  It
shouldn’t be in our vocabulary as Democrats either.  There are two main reasons for this.  First, the political answer: many moderate-to-conservative
Christians recoil at the term because it is often misused by secularists to
attack any use of faith in the public sphere.
Second, the legal/policy answer: this phrase is a very imprecise and
misleading shorthand for a beautifully crafted section of the First
Amendment.  Rather than “separation of
church and state,” our Constitution has an “Establishment and Free Exercise
Clause,” and that’s the language Democrats should use to describe the legal
principles that define the interaction of church and state in this country.

Our Constitution guarantees everyone a right to freely
exercise their religion and forbids the state from establishing a single
religion.  On the other hand, the
“separation” language used by many Democrats implies the complete exclusion of
faith from the public square, thereby creating restrictions on the free
exercise of religion.

The fact that I’m even talking about this may be making some
of the more liberal wing of our Party kind of nervous.  “Separation” is a sacred principle for many
Democrats, even though there is no arguing what the Constitution actually
says.  Nevertheless, there are many
Democrats who are very uncomfortable with what they see as the alternative to a
clear wall of separation between church and state.  They fear that any effort to reach out to
people of faith or to acknowledge that faith has a role to play in the public
sphere will automatically put our Party in league with the religious right and
Republicans who have abused religion for political gain.  People who make those arguments fall into the
classic trap the Republicans have laid in this and so many other areas–namely,
it’s either the Republican approach or its polar opposite.   We have got to stop letting Republicans
define the alternatives.

The two choices are not: defending God or defending
church/state separation.  The two choices
are between people who think God needs defending vs. those of us who trust in
God’s Providence
and acknowledge our own sinfulness, which compels us to approach policy-making
from a place of religious humility.

We must remember and remind others that the establishment
and free exercise clause of the Constitution was not a secular imposition on people of faith but rather stemmed
from a desire by people of faith to
protect their religious liberty and diversity from abuses of worldly
power.  The European settlers in this
country came here fleeing religious persecution by the state and hoping to
found a country that understood that faith can never be compelled by mortal means.

A faithful and true use of religious beliefs to guide policy
in our constitutional system of government is extremely difficult.  Faith is about service and conviction;
politics is about power and compromise.  The
two can never mesh completely.  As fallen
creatures living in a fallen world, even those individuals with the best
intentions will always fall far short.  That
is why our wise founders were so careful to craft a system that avoided the
temptation of using the sword of the state to try to enforce or spread the
gospel.  Our founders did this not
because they had lost their faith in God but rather because their faith allowed
them to understand that we are all sinners, and therefore we will never be able
to align our priorities and wills perfectly with God’s.

That is not to say we shouldn’t try or that we should
espouse an “anything goes” philosophy.
We can still believe we are right and that our actions reflect the
proper way of serving God.  But if Jesus felt
he must reject the Devil’s offer in the wilderness that would have allowed
Christ to use worldly power to spread the gospel and bring about God’s kingdom,
how could any of us even begin to imagine we should do otherwise?  It’s not wishy-washiness or lack of
conviction that leads Democrats to flee the temptation of using the power of
the state to force people to live under a single faith or moral system that may
not be their own.  On the contrary, our refusal
to use worldly power to enforce a single belief system it is one of the best
examples of true Christian conviction and faith in God.

Elected officials can stay true to their faith without
wearing that faith on their sleeves for all to see, and they would do well to
heed the words of Abraham Lincoln who sought “not that God should be on my
side, but that I should be on God’s.”
That should be the Democrat’s mantra.
At the end of the day, the average American will respond more positively
to our religious humility than the Republicans’ religious arrogance.  It’s also the morally right approach to take.