Where I Stand —Brian Greenspun: Keep religion private

Saturday, Jan. 27, 2001 | 10:39 a.m.

Brian Greenspun is the editor of the Las Vegas Sun.

IF YOU are looking for faith, you can find it in the churches, synagogues and mosques that make the United States one of the most diverse and religious of democratic countries.

If you are looking for compassion you can find it any in number of these faith-based organizations, which have as part of their calling the responsibility to help their fellow man. And if you are looking for God, our houses of worship, millions of American houses and the hearts of hundreds of millions of our citizens would be a very good place to start.

You can also find him close, I suspect, to Tampa this afternoon where a few dozen football players will be seeking his assistance as they do battle in the Super Bowl.

There is one place, though, where we should not look for the trappings of religion and that is the White House. Not that faith and religion shouldn't have a home in the hearts and minds of the men and women who live and work there on behalf of the American people.

To the contrary, that is the one place where morality, decency and compassion must exist if this government of, for and by the people is to have any chance of living through another couple of centuries.

The danger comes when people of goodwill -- let's be charitable -- decide that the blurring of religion and government in this country is a good thing and should be done in the most highly visible place in our nation. But, regardless of what people think is the right and good thing to do when it comes to helping others, it is never a good idea to cross the lines proscribed by the Constitution of the United States.

The fellows who met together over 200 years ago to create this most magnificent of governmental charters knew what they were talking about when they wrote the First Amendment into the Bill of Rights.

They were each the products of religious intolerance and knew full well the importance of allowing each citizen of the newly formed Republic the absolute right to worship as he saw fit. Or not worship if that were his choice.

By requiring that Congress "shall make no law" respecting religion, they recognized the impossibility of a government trying in any way to legislate the kind and quality of worship that is and must always be a matter of personal conviction.

That doctrine has become known as the separation of church and state, and as much as the men and women who run our government from time to time would wish it were not quite so separated, the Supreme Court has continued to ensure that what the Constitution says will not be violated. To be fair, the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law respecting freedom of the press but that hasn't stopped the courts and the lawmakers from prohibiting people from yelling "fire" in a movie theater unless, of course, there actually is one. But, so far as I knew, the high court has scrupulously guarded against intrusions of the state into religion and vice versa. The reasons are obvious.

The most compelling case, of course, was lived by the new immigrants to the colonies in the mid-1700s who were escaping the requirements that they practice only a certain religion to the exclusion of those they preferred and those in which they fervently believed.

The last person any of those people wanted telling them how and what to believe was a king or queen, whose motives were always less than godly and certainly not in sync with those of the great majority of worshippers.

It is said in this country that to get along with friends and neighbors you should never discuss religion or politics. That is true and the reason most people observe that refrain is because there can never be unanimity of thought on either subject. Hence, an argument ensues or worse, discussion is halted and friendships are tested. The admonition, to be sure, applies to columnists. I am now going where only fools dare tread.

President George W. Bush is on a roll. Now that his tax plan has gained the momentum only a Federal Reserve Board chairman could give it, he is turning his sights toward a commitment to provide compassionate conservatism through faith-based institutions in our country. There is no question that our religious institutions are well suited for helping people in need. That is their mission and many of them do a pretty good job of it in their communities.

The president's plan, though, takes taxpayer dollars and funnels them into the collection boxes of churches and synagogues in an effort to pay those institutions to do what government has either been unwilling or unable to do.

It is the mixing of public monies with private religious groups that appears to me to offend our Constitution. And, as if that weren't bad enough, the president plans to create a faith-based liaison office in the White House to follow up on his plans.

First, let's be clear. Religious groups are usually very good at getting help to those who need it in as efficient a manner possible. That's because they are never long on dollars and are usually short on red tape. What the pastor, priest or rabbi says is what usually happens. Voila, help has arrived.

But to take the next step, by providing tax dollars to help fund certain religious organizations in their own efforts to provide help and religious instruction -- they almost always go hand in hand and not without good reason -- is to blur beyond distinction the lines that the Constitution has drawn that mark very clearly that which government can do and that which religion must be allowed to do or not do as the individual sees fit.

Most of us can still remember the brouhaha that erupted when Vice President Al Gore used the telephone in his White House office to make fund-raising calls to supporters. You would have thought the sky had caved in listening to his detractors proclaim his ruthlessness in violating some campaign laws that, according to the opposition, would have required the taxpayers to pay thousands of dollars in security arrangements every time he wanted to use the phone. Mind you, this was a campaign law we were talking about. Not the Constitution of the United States!

Now, those of us who see danger in government preferring one religion over another by the way it hands out tax dollars, are faced with the prospect of sounding anti-religious when we try to discuss the merits of the Bush plan. The president, of course, will give a compassionate response to questions that will focus attention on results and cast those of us who disagree as godless creatures who misunderstand the true value of his efforts. I don't misunderstand anything about this issue. In fact, it is because I understand it so well that I am so deeply concerned.

There is a place for religion in our society. God knows there is. But he would probably be the first to agree with the framers of our Constitution when they decided that democracy works best when there is a place for religion and a place for government. And the less the latter interfered with the former, the better off the people would be.

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