Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Robert Seiple
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000250A
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00:22 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:25 This is a program as those of you 00:27 who watch this regularly know that discusses religious liberty 00:31 in the United States and around world 00:33 bringing you up-to-date opinions information 00:36 and discussion of these serious ongoing issues. 00:40 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine 00:43 and my guest on this program is Ambassador Robert Seiple. 00:48 Among your other accomplishments 00:49 you were the first ever US ambassador-at-large 00:52 for Religious Freedom for the United States 00:55 which has given you I think an incredible box seat 01:00 to understand some of these issues around the world 01:02 but you are representing the United States, this country too. 01:07 Let's talk a little bit about the United States 01:09 and religious liberty. 01:11 Of course, it's a great tradition 01:13 and more than a tradition it's a legal requirement 01:17 for the constitution that there be 01:20 as much non involvement by the government as possible 01:23 and as much allowance of individual freedom 01:25 of religious expression. 01:27 Do you think we're doing well? 01:28 Let's go have a state of the union address. 01:31 Well, that's what it's supposed to be and I think by and large 01:33 that's what it's happened, yeah. 01:36 We have tended to beautify our religious freedom along the way. 01:41 I mean we make a big deal with the pilgrims in Massachusetts 01:46 that wasn't very religious salary free environment. 01:50 I mean, not of your Quaker or woman who act to like a witch. 01:53 You had some problems there. 01:56 I wish we have done more with Roger Williams 01:59 who comes out of that context 02:01 and creates a much more diverse and free. 02:06 Does I remember Roger Williams, 02:07 he was in personal contact had gone to England 02:11 and it was in discussion with some of the puritans there 02:15 who ended up establishing their own common wealth. 02:19 And before you got kicked out which she had to be kicked out. 02:22 From the colony, yeah. 02:23 From the colony, I think it was Governor Winthrop 02:25 that has an active grace said "get in your paddle. 02:30 Yeah, I will get in your canoe and start to paddle 02:32 and you got more room over in Rhode Islands." 02:35 So he comes up the arrogance, 02:36 obey with an arrogance of Indians 02:38 and sets up camp as a, as a Baptist which of course 02:43 has a long tradition of religious freedom as well. 02:46 Yeah, no, and Seventh-day Adventist church 02:48 was trying to do as much as it can do advance religious liberty 02:52 for all people in the US and around the world. 02:55 And very often we found ourselves in 02:57 I don't know alliance is the right word, 02:59 but you know with fellow travelers with the Baptists. 03:01 And I know that's a great history in the US 03:05 of Baptist thinking on religious freedom. 03:09 But, yeah, you're making interesting point. 03:12 I read an article the other day it was an older article 03:16 but I just found it for the first time 03:17 it had been in the Mezonin Magazine. 03:19 It started off by saying something in the effect 03:21 that we talk about religious freedom 03:23 and the lack of religious conflict in the United States 03:26 but they've said that it's not true 03:28 this is how an incredible record of religious conflict 03:31 started with the colony of course 03:33 before there was an entity known as the Untied States. 03:36 But it continued then with the Mormons 03:39 and their problems and making going on and on 03:43 and it seems to me we've had the conflict 03:45 but not as broad based as in Europe 03:48 where there were whole people groups that were in conflict 03:51 but we have our struggles haven't we. 03:53 Everybody got a piece of territory it seems 03:55 and you know the catholic settled 03:57 in Talbot County down in Maryland 04:00 and Quaker settled in Philadelphia area and so on. 04:05 But the fact that they had to settle 04:07 kind of as a closed in community with them with parameters 04:12 to their thinking and their living 04:14 so it is always not as good as we like 04:17 to embellish as we think back. 04:20 Well, this article mentioned one thing 04:22 that I remember reading but only once 04:24 and it's never come up until I saw this article 04:26 that in Boston I think it was and in mid 1800s 04:29 there was a whole weekend of rioting 04:32 where mob of thousands rampaged around stringing up 04:37 any catholic they could get the hand on. 04:40 And those things are they are not secret 04:42 but they are sort of inconvenient 04:44 for the high school history books 04:46 and we forget about them. 04:48 I remember as a young boy listening to my parents 04:52 talk about the wars between 04:53 the Catholics and the Protestants 04:55 up in the hills and there were fascinating. 04:59 People use to get shot. People used to die. 05:03 And everybody knew where everybody 05:05 was in terms of their religiosity 05:07 and who you could date and who you couldn't date. 05:11 So we don't have a pure record nor should we. 05:14 We had to work things out and yet today 05:17 in terms of religious freedom 05:19 I don't think anyone we talk about a war on Christmas. 05:23 I don't think that service to people who are under persecution 05:28 They know what was like persecution 05:32 in terms of its international definition. 05:35 Its basically physical mayhem. 05:37 It's prolonged detention without cause its rape, 05:41 its killing, its torture and so on. 05:43 We don't' have that widespread anyway 05:47 or at all in this country 05:49 and for that we should be praise that we got the constitution 05:53 that we have, the bill of rights that we have 05:54 and the people who let us into those kinds of documentations. 05:59 Now I think the word is not wrong 06:01 there is a tradition of live and let live. 06:04 I mean there are religious thoughts that are often 06:07 and violently expressed in the last presidential election 06:10 not violent but you know 06:12 they're expressed in the rough way. 06:14 There was some crude comments about Mormons 06:18 I think when governor Romney ran that were regrettable 06:21 but as a free country and no one was 06:24 that I know was harmed directly by them its just was intemperate 06:27 that they were said their way of terms. 06:30 I personally think religious expression is very free 06:34 in the United States that the developing problem 06:38 is more insipient tendency towards establishment 06:42 and state funding and ownership of religious expression 06:47 but free exercise is not very much. 06:50 No, I think it was set up obviously to tilt towards 06:54 making sure that the church could be free with government. 06:57 Much more than government than free of the church. 07:01 One is freedom of religion and the other one is 07:06 freedom for religion or against religion. 07:10 Or from it the religion-- excuse me, 07:13 yes, you got it freedom from religion. 07:15 And that's we see atheistic groups and so on. 07:19 Well, you gave the opening. 07:21 Right now, we have the Freedom 07:24 from Religion Foundation which is as far as I know 07:26 is probably no more than a handful of people 07:28 with some money. 07:29 But they have ran also to challenges from the pledge 07:33 now that they settled on ministerial exemptions 07:37 but they get very highly publicized cases 07:39 that several have gone up to the Supreme Court 07:42 but they state of dime is to remove religion 07:44 from public life which nobody that respects religion 07:47 would be comfortable with that 07:49 and that's not in the American tradition 07:50 nor in the legal continuum that we are part of. 07:55 I think there will be a backlash to that. 07:57 I mean they're strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. 08:00 And everything is everything is a gnat 08:02 as far as I'm concerned these gnat picking things. 08:05 But they will take on one at a time, 08:07 one at a time, one at a time. 08:09 Remember when they tried to take out in regard 08:11 from the Pledge of Allegiance 08:15 the entire Congress came out on the steps 08:17 put their hand over their heart and we recited 08:19 that didn't make me feel any more secure in my faith. No. 08:23 And I never take a-- 08:24 Well, emotion kicked in and I don't think 08:26 they did a bad thing on that. 08:28 But most of them didn't quite think clearly 08:31 on how to got there in the first place. 08:33 So it was put there during the cold war really is a way 08:36 to position ourselves as God fearing Christians 08:40 as opposed to godless communism. 08:42 Which again was not a bad thing 08:44 but may be sort of playing footsie 08:47 with the original intention to allow personal expression 08:50 but keep the government largely out of the business. 08:52 Yeah. Yeah. Well-- 08:54 I would like to see more strong feelings 08:57 earnestly held from a reflective backdrop. 09:01 But from individuals even, even individuals in government. 09:04 We had articles in Liberty 09:06 and most people don't understand it. 09:07 Even you're arguing for separation of church and state 09:10 you can't and you should never take away 09:11 the rights of religious expression 09:13 of the individual people that are in government. 09:17 I never felt offended when George Bush made comments 09:21 about his own personal faith that's his right. Sure. 09:25 I felt suspicious perhaps 09:27 when I could see some foreign policy 09:30 that might have been expression of the wish list 09:31 to the religious right say that's another question. 09:34 But you still didn't question his faith. No. 09:37 Or is right to speak about his faith. 09:38 No, absolutely not. Yeah, yeah. 09:40 We need to defend that and be comfortable with it. 09:44 And when its--when we're not comfortable with it 09:46 when we have people speaking up 09:48 and everybody else shying away we have lost something. 09:50 We have lost of the rich tapestry over of who we are 09:54 and who we said we want to be. 09:56 Now, you know one of the more insidious things 09:58 that's happened lightly under the present administration 10:02 and I know the political rumblings that gave rise to it 10:05 but its repeated it's like the blood liable 10:07 against in this case a precedence. 10:11 It said that he is a closet Muslim. 10:13 Well, even you and I know that that's just a silly statement 10:16 but so what if he were. 10:19 Its not, it's not a high crime or a misdemeanor. 10:23 In fact, it would be an endorsement 10:28 of religious pluralism of the United States. 10:30 Yes, I don't moment think that the president is 10:33 I mean he is not he is made 10:35 very public statements of his religious faith. 10:38 But it's not antithetical that the American civil system 10:41 that there be a Muslim or a Hindu 10:43 or whatever holding top office, right. 10:45 You know, if I am going to a mechanic 10:48 because I got to broken automobile 10:51 I'm not gonna ask him his faith, 10:52 I'm not gonna ask him what denomination he ascribes to. 10:56 I want to know if he is a good mechanic. Yeah. 10:58 I feel its two ways about precedence. 11:00 Whether they are catholic or Jewish 11:02 or Christian or my kind of Christian 11:05 or evangelical Christian or what have you. 11:07 I want to make sure that person understands leadership 11:10 and understand governance and has the guts 11:13 to get the right people around him 11:14 to do the job that has to be done 11:17 and that's a whole different exercise. 11:20 I think its when we, we conflate the two 11:24 when we say my president has to be a Christian. 11:27 My president has to think this way 11:30 that we lose something on both sides. 11:33 And I would like to think whoever he is our president 11:36 or people in public trust they're good people, 11:38 moral people, honest people 11:42 and those things can reside 11:47 in any belief system or a no belief system. 11:49 I mean, I like to think as a Christian 11:51 that the highest good and morality might be 11:55 in my modern tradition and in my viewpoint 11:58 and hope of the Savior and beyond 12:00 but its hardly impossible and it should even be expected 12:03 that the nonbeliever still should exemplify 12:11 strong principles of behavior 12:13 and keep the public trust and so on. 12:17 But there is a lot that can be learned 12:19 from the simple admonition to render into Caesar. 12:22 Oh, yes, separation of church and state. 12:25 And the law the things that are of the Lord. 12:29 We don't always articulate the separation very well. 12:32 I'm not sure that Jefferson would really like 12:35 where we have come down 12:36 I mean he talked about a serpentine wall. 12:40 Well, he was talking about something that it was flexible 12:43 and even some of the legal scholars today say that wall 12:46 and he works when you got some windows in it. 12:48 Well, Jefferson is an interesting guy to invoke. 12:51 I mean, you can't blame alchemy of history turns Jefferson 12:54 into a funny I was about to say 12:58 but I will use a cultural Christian. 13:02 He is not a cultural Christian. 13:03 I happened to own the Jefferson Bible. 13:06 It's very thin. Yeah, the redacted one. 13:08 Yeah, because Jefferson as you know 13:11 anything that had to be tuned to faith or tied to faith 13:14 he cut out of the Bible. 13:16 So all the miracles are gone. 13:18 So he is like the way of sayings of Jesus, 13:19 so the like sayings of the Buddha. 13:21 Yeah. Yeah. 13:22 So he ended up with a very thin Bible 13:25 which says in awful about Jefferson 13:27 that we should that should make us nervous. 13:30 He was essentially creating God in his own image. 13:33 It's an interesting take I like that. 13:36 Well, we are at a good point to take break 13:38 and I would like to continue this discussion 13:40 and I like you to comeback so stay with us 13:42 and we'll be right back to continue 13:44 this discussion with Ambassador Seiple. |
Revised 2014-12-17