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Lieberman Stresses Faith while Anti-Defamation League Objects

August 29, 2000

Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, campaigning in key Midwestern states, spoke on Sunday at a Detroit church where he underscored the importance of religious faith. "As a people, we need to reaffirm our faith and renew the dedication of our nation and ourselves to God and God's purposes," the Connecticut senator said. Lieberman stressed his view that religious faith should play a more prominent role in public life. "The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion, not freedom from religion," he said. "I say there must be and can be a constitutional place for faith in our public life." Addressing the "toxic culture" of violence and immorality in movies and music, Lieberman said, "No parent should have to compete with the popular culture to raise your children. Parents should be able to pass along their faith and values and we need a government that will stand with our parents and work to give control of the family back to you."

Lieberman, the first Jewish candidate for vice president from a major party, called for breaking through "some of the inhibitions that have existed -- to talk together across the flimsy lines of separation of faith, to talk together, to study together, to pray together, and ultimately to sing together his holy name." But he explained that his message "is not one of intolerance, but one of love." He sought to reassure those who did not share his faith, saying "that we share with them the core values of America."

Some see the Lieberman's message differently. On Monday, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), established to protect Jews from discrimination and anti-Semitism, warned Lieberman to stop talking about God. "We feel very strongly, and we hope you would agree, that appealing along religious lines, or belief in God, is contrary to the American ideal," the ADL statement said. "Language such as this risks alienating the American people."

"The place for religion is in church, synagogue, and in the home and in one's heart," ADL Director Abraham Foxman said. "Certainly, we think it's contradictory to the American tradition to put it on the campaign trail, to say, 'Vote for me because I'm a believer.' "

Lieberman "respectfully disagrees," according to the senator 's spokesman Kiki McLean. "Joe Lieberman is someone who has always respected the role faith plays in the lives of millions of Americans," she explained. "He is someone who always expresses his support of tolerance and separation of church and state."

American history does not support the ADL assertion that the "American ideal" should exclude God. At its initial meeting in September 1774, the First Continental Congress invited the rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, to open its sessions with prayer. The Continental Congress set December 18, 1777, as a day of thanksgiving on which the American people "may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor" and on which they might "join the penitent confession of their manifold sins . . . that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance." George Washington added the words "So help me God" to the president's oath of office, and one-third of his first inauguration speech invoked God. Second president John Adams said that statesmen "may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand." Thomas Jefferson referred to God as the author of human rights in the Declaration of Independence. John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, was president of the American Bible Society.

Abraham Lincoln, who established the holiday of Thanksgiving as a regular observance, said in 1863, "We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace." He called on Americans to "fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union." William Jennings Bryan, Democratic presidential nominee in 1896, 1900, and 1908, was the best-known spokesman for Christian fundamentalism of his day and published weekly Sunday school lessons which were syndicated in over a hundred newspapers with an estimated readership of fifteen million. Theodore Roosevelt taught religion for seven years, advocated weekly churchgoing, and published a work entitled Fear God and Take Your Own Part containing eight references to God on the opening page alone. "Let us care," he wrote, "for the things of the body, but let us show that we care even more for the things of the soul." Woodrow Wilson promoted daily Bible reading, attended church as president, and called for days of prayer and thanksgiving. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who introduced the practice of cabinet prayer and modified the Pledge of Allegiance to include the phrase "under God," penned speeches and memoirs that are replete with references to the Bible.

Indeed, public expressions of religious faith by politicians remained common until John F. Kennedy ran for president. Kennedy, the first Catholic elected to the nation's highest office, feared that anti-Catholic sentiments might jeopardize his chances of winning Protestants votes. To counter these fears, he made a promise that his religion would have nothing to do with his policy. According to David Walsh, professor of politics at Catholic University of America, this was not the ideal solution. "I think that was excessively pragmatic and a little bit calculating," he explains. "If you're sincere about your religion, it's going to play some role. If you're not sincere, then perhaps you are not a good candidate."

However, although public expressions of piety by politicians may have been briefly squashed, they soon found their voice in the civil rights movement. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was by profession a preacher, and he and other civil rights leaders invoked God and the scriptures as justification for racial equality. In his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, King said, "I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land." Then, quoting from the Bible, he said, "'And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.'" Public expressions of piety returned to presidential politics with Ronald Reagan. In his Autobiography, he refers to God seven times in the first fifty-seven pages, and, when asked whom he admired most, he replied, "the man from Galilee."

Responding to the ADL accusation that Lieberman's discussion of his faith was "contrary to the American ideal," Samuel Freedman, a Columbia University professor, said, "To muzzle God runs deeply against the American experience." Freedman, author of Jews vs. Jews, which looks at divisions among modern Jews in America, further explained, "What you are getting here is the perplexity of secular Jews at Orthodoxy. This is just voluntary expression, and if people don't like it, they can vote for someone else. Why would the assumption be that this kind of religious talk risks dividing people in a dangerous way?"

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