One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America (37 page)

Again, like their constituents, these congressmen argued that without the amendment, these same manifestations of public religion would be swept away. Carleton King, a New York Republican, claimed that prayers would be purged from congressional sessions, while Pennsylvania Republican Willard Curtin worried that presidential inaugurations would have to be purely secular as well. President Lyndon Johnson had recently closed an address in the Rose Garden with the words “God bless you,” noted Republican John B. Anderson of Illinois. “I wonder how long it will be before someone will seek to enjoin the President of the United States from indulging in such expressions of official piety,” he asked, “or perhaps from gracing the annual Presidential prayer breakfast with his presence and thereby implying the official sanction of the U.S. Government for an exercise which exalts the ministry of prayer?”
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Because these congressmen assumed those who opposed the amendment were atheists or secularists, they were baffled when religious leaders
began to align against them. “It seems that to many of the proponents ‘prayer is prayer,'” marveled Reverend Kelley. “They seem unable to realize that some devoutly religious citizens, at least, care what the content of prayer is, and do not wish to engage in a prayer whose content is so vague or innocuous as to be ‘non-sectarian.'” Florida congressman Billy Matthews, who had once studied for the ministry, claimed to be “somewhat puzzled at the opposition that many of our churchmen have against the Becker Amendment.” Del Latta, an active member in the Churches of Christ and a conservative Republican from Ohio, dismissed such worries. “They are fearful of the establishment of a state religion,” he surmised. “I have no such fears.” While these congressmen saw their differences with the clergy as an honest difference of opinion, others took a darker tone. George Goodling, a Pennsylvania Republican, added to the record an angry letter he had sent to “our so-called religious leaders” at the National Council of Churches. “Let me suggest you come from your exalted position and mingle with the 40 million rank and file [members of the NCC's constituent churches] as I do constantly,” the Methodist congressman testified. “You will discover beyond any shadow of a doubt the chiefs and indians are in violent disagreement.” At times, even members of the committee sparred over how well religious leaders represented their denomination's laypeople. As California's James Corman rattled off a list of organizations that had issued statements against a prayer amendment, for instance, Basil Whitener interrupted to object. “The gentleman has undertaken to put into the record that the Methodists took a position,” he protested. “The Methodists have not taken that position. At least, this Methodist didn't.” Statements from individual religious leaders, Whitener insisted, simply did not reflect the feelings of all members of a faith. “I don't think anybody speaks for all Methodists, or all Baptists, or all Jews.”
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But the leaders of these religious organizations soon had a chance to testify, if only for themselves. The first testimony came from Dr. Edwin H. Tuller, head of the American Baptist Convention (ABC), who also appeared on behalf of the National Council of Churches. Tuller was an impressive witness, and his testimony took up most of the day. He noted that after the Supreme Court rulings, both the ABC and NCC had voted overwhelmingly to reaffirm traditional support for separation of church
and state. “The First Amendment has served the nation well for nearly 200 years,” Tuller read from his prepared notes. “It would be tragic if in a moment of emotional turmoil the Nation weakened the amendment and woke too late to the realization that a fundamental American freedom had been damaged, perhaps destroyed.” He derided the government-made Regents' Prayer as “a rote thing” devoid of spirituality. “If children are taught this prayer, then my teaching that prayer is a vital relationship between the individual and his Creator through Jesus Christ is contrary to that teaching.” At this, Representative Arch Moore Jr., a Methodist from West Virginia, challenged him. “I do not know why a group of children, State or teacher dictated, freely deciding that they want to recite the scriptures, would be an [invasion] of your professional responsibility,” he said. “I think they are adding a little bit to you.” Tuller bristled at the congressman's suggestion “that the public school should do the work the church is supposed to do. This is precisely what I reject.”
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The church leaders who followed Tuller emphasized their widespread opposition to the proposed amendments, offering sharp rebukes to the state's meddling in religious instruction. Reverend Eugene Carson Blake of the United Presbyterian Church worried that “school prayer and Bible reading either become a ritual that is meaningless and has no effect on the children, or it is some kind of indoctrination.” Either way, it amounted to “state religion,” he warned. “If you get the idea that religion and Americanism are the same thing, all of us are scared to death, because we think religion transcends the State.” Reverend William A. Morrison, head of the Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, was even blunter, asserting that state-ordered prayer amounted to “a theological caricature at best or a theological monstrosity at worst.” In a pointed response to the Methodist members of the committee, who had been the strongest defenders of the prayer proposal, Bishop John Wesley Lord of the Methodist Church argued that in his experience school prayer accomplished little. “Despite the reading of the Bible and the offering of prayer in the past in the public school, we have produced a generation of Biblical illiterates,” he charged. “The entire practice was profaned by the secularized atmosphere in which so-called worship was conducted.” There had been repeated claims that some sort of meaningful religion had been struck from the schools, Lord said, but “the loss is more imagined than real.”
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These churchmen worried that the prayer amendment would do great harm. Frederik Schiotz, president of the Lutheran Church, feared it would destroy the protections that churches enjoyed under the First Amendment. “An American ideal would be shattered,” added Theodore Carcich of the Seventh-day Adventists. Rabbi Irwin Blank of the Synagogue Council warned that constitutional changes would “open the way to religious tension, a misuse of public institutions, and irreverence.” Speaking for the main Baptist bodies, Dr. Emanuel Carlson argued that the amendments were unwarranted. “To those who fear that God is somehow being pushed around, locked out, and robbed of his power, our people will reply that God does not need our defense, but that we need the humility to serve him,” Carlson testified. “The politician who says he believes in reducing the scope of Government and then asks for a Government role in nurturing and guiding the inner man can expect scrutinizing conversations as these issues are pursued by our people in future debate.”
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Meanwhile, a number of major religious publications came out against the Becker Amendment, defending the rationale of church leaders who testified against it. “It is so easy to think that one is voting for prayer and the Bible,” cautioned the
Christian Science Monitor.
“It comes as a shock that this is not the issue. The issue is that agencies of government cannot avoid favoring one denomination and hurting another by the practical decisions that have to be made by government authority on what version of the Bible shall be imposed and what prayer. The churches know this and that is why they are against the Becker Amendment.” Some religious publications went beyond merely defending clerical opponents of the prayer amendment to attacking its secular sponsors. “Whipping the Supreme Court, even when it faithfully interprets the Constitution, is a popular pastime, and a political candidate who runs on a platform that ‘defends God' expects from Providence a reciprocal courtesy,” the
Christian Century
chided. “God does not need our defense, but we need to defend ourselves against religion-intoxicated fanatics, sincere but bungling religionists, and opportunistic politicians who offer us their kind of religion and their brand of God in exchange for God-given religious freedom.” Throughout the hearings, Celler steadily inserted into the record such editorials from national, state, and local religious publications as an additional sign of religious resistance.
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As the weight of the churches bore down against the Becker Amendment, its supporters searched for clergymen who would back them. Bishop Fulton Sheen, one of the most prominent Catholics in the country, was perhaps their best hope, but even he proved halfhearted. He hesitated to support an amendment allowing Bible reading in the schools, agreeing with opponents that the “problem of pluralism” would lead different faiths to lobby for use of their own version of Scripture. But he favored restoration of a shared prayer that would avoid divisiveness. He suggested “that the prayer to be said in all of the schools in this country be the prayer that every Member of Congress is already carrying in his pocket: ‘In God We Trust.'” Dr. Robert Cook of the National Association of Evangelicals went further, announcing his organization's full support for a prayer amendment. Celler pressed him on theological details that were only vaguely addressed in the amendment: “Would a Protestant child be taught papal infallibility? Would a Catholic boy or girl be required to listen to divine instruction from the Torah? Might Mohammedan parents insist their child be taught the scriptures of the Koran?” In an unusual statement for an evangelical leader, Cook dismissed those concerns, claiming that there was really “not that much difference” among the texts used in the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Muslim traditions. The important issue was that religion not be overwhelmed by atheism or secularism. “We are in danger of being religiously governed by a minority,” Cook claimed. “It is religious freedom that is at stake, not necessarily some of these other things.”
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With only slight support from religious leaders, the Becker Amendment's backers had to rely on the grassroots organizations of laymen who had, through their petitions and letter-writing campaigns, prompted the hearings in the first place. Dr. Charles Leaming, the Florida evangelical who led the Committee for the Preservation of Prayer and Bible Reading in Public Schools, said there had previously been a “spirit of apathy” in the country, but the Supreme Court rulings against school devotions sparked “an awakening.” Father Robert Howes, the head of Massachusetts Citizens for Public Prayer, claimed that the national religious leaders heard by the committee were “generals without armies.” “We say quite frankly that isolated leaders and isolated editorials against the backdrop of the expressed will of the massive majority of Americans simply cannot
be interpreted as speaking for neither the Nation nor, at least in some cases,” Howes said, “for the organization itself, in terms of the people who make it up at the grassroots level.” Susan Seaforth, a television actress, made these same charges in an appearance for the Hollywood-led Project Prayer. Mocking the National Council of Churches, she said her organization would never have “60 or 70 delegates out of hundreds vote on this issue and then, in even the vaguest way, infer that we are speaking for those 40 million Americans when it just plain isn't so.”
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Despite such protestations, the leaders of pro-amendment groups nevertheless claimed to represent the majority's will themselves. Charles Winegarner, whose Citizens Congressional Committee had unrolled their mile-long petition on the Capitol steps a year before, claimed that the impact of their grassroots campaign was already evident in Congress. Many of his congressional allies had assured him the Becker Amendment would win passage “by a handsome majority” if the Judiciary Committee would only end its obstruction. If it did not, there would be a political price to pay. “A rather meticulous survey on my part leads me to believe that opposition candidates for Congress are likely to spring up all over America in campaigns inclined to identify not only those who have opposed this legislation” but also those “who even neglected to give aggressive support to this thing. . . . An indignant populace,” Winegarner warned, “might identify them with a campaign to remove the tradition of faith from the bloodstream of American life.” At this, Celler interrupted: “Is that a threat?” “No,” Winegarner protested, “it is not.” “Members of Congress would resent threats, would they not?” The witness sheepishly said he hoped it did not come to that. Celler asked him to leave his written statement with the clerk and abruptly excused him from the witness chair. (It was likely no coincidence that, only days later, the well-connected Washington columnists Evans and Novak wrote their exposé on Winegarner's roots in the radical right.)
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Other lobbying organizations tried to distance themselves from Winegarner's extremism but fared little better. On behalf of the Constitutional Prayer Foundation, Francis Burch insisted his intentions were pure. “I am no alarmist,” the Baltimore city solicitor stated. “I belong to no extremist group, but I say to you with all my heart that America is in danger if the very foundations upon which this Nation was built continue to be chipped
away.” Celler nevertheless treated Burch with suspicion, interrupting his testimony and challenging his claims. When Burch warned the committee members that “ignoring the amendments before you” was the same thing as “favoring the goals that had been established by the atheists,” Celler stopped him cold. “I am opposed to these amendments and I don't subscribe to any of the tenets of the atheist association,” he huffed. And when Burch went on at length about his worries that the Court would turn against other expressions of religion in public life, Celler noted that the Court had explicitly sanctioned such measures in “plain English.” When Burch persisted, the chairman finally threw up his hands: “You are seeing ghosts under the bed.”
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