Watermelon vines in the grass: Religion, Gardening, and Politics
- Sep 17, 2008 - 1
Baptists have historically held the view that the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment guarantees religious liberty to express their convictions on moral and cultural issues. This freedom was intended to reign not only at church but also everywhere from town hall to the halls of Congress.
In the 20th Century, it became politically mainstream that religious convictions on issues were not allowed in any area of government. This idea took root with the unconstitutional 1947 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Everson v. Board of Education.
This decision misinterpreted the Constitution as well as Thomas Jefferson’s statement on a wall of separation between church and state. The high court erred in judgment when they said the “First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”
Judges, politicians, and secular media have taken firm hold of this misconstrued idea of the “wall of separation.” They have incorrectly and persistently interpreted Jefferson’s original intent to mean that there can be no accommodation of religion in any area of government. This is why secularists want to keep prayer out of school and remove God from our currency and from our Pledge of Allegiance.
Jefferson’s original intent was for a “wall of separation” to restrict the government from interfering with religious liberty, NOT to restrict churches’ involvement in government, as decided in Everson v. Board of Education.
Jefferson’s idea of separation can be explained using a gardening example.
I recall my father planting a small vegetable garden in the backyard. Over the years he continued to expand the garden. He persistently kept the grass out of the garden but was not concerned if watermelon vines grew into the grass.
Jefferson’s intent is like this: the garden is the area of religious liberty, the area beyond the garden is the government, the boundary between the two is a wall, and the vine growing into the grass is the expression of religious liberty crossing the wall into government. The wall is to protect the church from government—NOT the government from the church.
According to Jefferson, the church could freely exercise its influence beyond the wall into the public realm at the church’s discretion. Had Jefferson intended a strict restriction of religion from government he would not have allowed Christian worship and taken part in it at the U.S. Capitol.
In addition, he asked the rhetorical question, “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure if we have lost the only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?” Jefferson believed that if anyone could violate one’s religious liberty, it could be God.
As a result of the above court case, the church has lost much ground on religious liberty but has wrongly been led to think that since the government has chopped off the vine of prayer in school that pastors can’t speak on moral issues.
Let us reverse the trend of churches stepping away from their God-appointed, prophetic role of speaking on moral issues, and cease handing it over to a secular society who increasingly calls evil good and good evil.
With the presidential election approaching, the Christian Action Commission will be providing IRS resources related to churches and elections, a 2008 Democrat/Republican Party Platform Comparison, and a 2008 Presidential Voter Guide focusing on issue like abortion, civil rights, energy, same-sex ‘marriage,’ hate crimes, and the method of interpreting the law when appointing judges.
These resources will be made available for free download by October 1st at www.christianaction.com and at the MS Baptist Convention on October 28th and 29th at the CAC booth. You may call (601 292-3329) and request hardcopies while supplies last.
This article is reprinted from the September issue of Practical Principles for Christian Living, the monthly publication of the Christian Action Commission of the Mississippi Baptist Convention.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Citizenship, Church and State, Religious Liberty
1 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Sep 17th, 2008, at 11:37am, Eleanor Hester wrote:
The God-appointed roll of the church is to bear witness to Redemption and lead the way thereto, through Jesus. Not: the “God-appointed, prophetic role of speaking on moral issues.” Not to be a wag but to lead sinners to saving grace. By attempting to stand straddle between the secular means of governance, by it’s nature a thing rank with expedient means, measures, and goals, and the church’s work as the body of Christ, inherently not given to expedience, the leadership of the church is only setting up both the work of the church and the life of the nation for a grand fall by means of their own providing. By their pretence to righteousness, the church as a body is actually distancing itself, as well as the unsaved, from the done-deed of redemption and the need of humans to avail themselves thereto.