Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Nick Miller
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000369A
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00:26 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:28 This is a program, 00:29 a must watch program of religious freedom, 00:32 religious liberty, 00:34 discussions of history and of the present. 00:36 My name is Lincoln Steed, editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:40 And my guest on the program is Professor Nicholas Miller. 00:44 I was hesitating between professor and attorney. 00:49 And author, yeah. 00:50 This is the queue 00:52 where we are most anxious for viewers 00:54 to be aware of this new book. 00:55 500 Years of Protest and Liberty 00:57 from Martin Luther to modern civil rights. 01:01 It covers the 500 years 01:03 since Martin Luther's 95 theses 01:05 and discusses how Protestantism has interacted 01:08 with the rise of religious freedom 01:10 and civil liberties. 01:12 And its, the foreword is written 01:13 by a well-known figure 01:15 in the church state establishment, 01:17 Lincoln Steed himself. 01:19 You can get a copy of the book at Liberty500.com 01:25 where if you order it from that site, 01:27 you'll also get a subscription to Liberty Magazine. 01:29 Good combination. 01:31 It's a great, you can't beat that for keeping abreast 01:35 of both the history of religious liberty 01:36 and current events in it. 01:38 Now, in a previous program, 01:40 we were talking about the civil war in last century. 01:43 And I've actually never seen Gone with the Wind. 01:46 Well, I suppose we should set this up by saying 01:48 we've done a program on each century 01:50 since the 16th century, five programs for 500 years. 01:54 Martin Luther in the 16th century, 01:55 the priests of the believers 01:57 tracing that through the Anabaptists down 01:59 through England, into America, Madison, Jefferson, 02:02 how the civil war brought 02:04 the principles of the First Amendment 02:06 and made them national principles... 02:07 Right. 02:09 That was the connection I was trying to make, 02:10 but very good outline... 02:11 And now we're starting in the 20th century. 02:13 So we've been dealing with the civil war. 02:14 Yeah, we were finishing up with the civil war. 02:15 And I've never seen Gone with the Wind, but just clips. 02:20 But I know the central theme there 02:22 from history was the burning of Atlanta. 02:24 Right. 02:26 That epitomized really the destruction of that era. 02:29 But I've got to tell you, for me, 02:31 when I came to the United States 02:32 as a teenager, 02:34 it was only about two years after we arrived in 1968, 02:37 I saw Washington burning. 02:40 And I'll never forget that. 02:43 It's a matter of history... 02:44 It was the race riots. 02:46 Yes, but it was because of Martin Luther King's... 02:49 Sorry, Martin Luther King's assassination. 02:51 And they broke out all across the U.S. 02:53 but here, the nation's capital was going up in smoke. 02:57 From where we lived in Tacoma Park, 02:59 you could look out and you could see 03:01 this huge pool of smoke, 03:03 then in all neighborhoods there were police 03:06 and National Guard with tape over the vehicles, 03:09 it was a city under siege. 03:12 And so Martin Luther King was not an abstraction. 03:17 He was at that stage an incredibly polarizing figure 03:21 but he changed the country. 03:23 Many white Americans think that slavery was over 03:25 and done within 1865 at the end of the civil war, 03:29 but our country has been haunted 03:30 by the demon of slavery up to the present time. 03:34 And it's... 03:36 we pick up our story at the beginning 03:38 of the 20th century 03:39 when, as I said, in the last program 03:41 after the Civil War 03:42 the 14th Amendment should have applied 03:44 all the civil rights 03:46 that we had in the Bill of Rights 03:48 to the states and to state citizens. 03:50 But because of the desire of the commercial classes 03:54 and the Southern elite classes to continue segregation, 03:59 those days of applying the Bill of Rights were forestalled 04:02 and were put off. 04:03 And part of it too, you know, 04:05 your history of the carpetbag is that the north saw 04:09 the south as the subjugated territory. 04:11 And initially at least, 04:13 I don't think 04:14 there was aggressive about extending 04:18 the full protection of law 04:20 as they were extending their commercial rates 04:22 and capitalizing on this fallen people. 04:24 It's generally acknowledged by historians 04:26 that there was a period, 04:28 a window of seven or eight years 04:30 after the civil war 04:31 where serious attempts were made 04:32 to create greater equality and political equality, 04:36 but soon the flood of commercial interests 04:40 overwhelmed that. 04:41 And you had a period characterized by Jim Crow 04:44 and discrimination that ran from the 1870s 04:47 into the 1930s, '40s, and '50s 04:50 until the civil rights movement took hold. 04:51 Yeah, I can remember. 04:52 Again in '66, I first came to the U.S. 04:54 You could go down south, 04:56 so the signs out front of some of the stores 04:58 it was not quite placid. 05:02 Well, and we shouldn't be surprised 05:04 that when we deny civil rights to one group in society, 05:07 that civil rights generally are not robustly enforced. 05:10 And what happens at the beginning 05:12 of the 20th century, 05:14 of course, there are some major events 05:15 that happened in the first half of the 20th century 05:17 that we have to mention World War I for instance. 05:21 The suppression of freedom's dissenters 05:24 who opposed the war were persecuted... 05:28 prosecuted, locked up, 05:29 and jailed but there were judges 05:33 who wrote in defense, 05:34 famously Oliver Wendell Holmes of freedom of speech. 05:38 And these dissenting opinions soon, 05:40 actually, carried the day. 05:42 And the First Amendment Bill of Rights 05:44 began to be applied to the States 05:47 one right at a time. 05:49 And it wasn't until the 1940s that some famous cases 05:51 involving the Jehovah's Witnesses 05:54 and their refusal to salute the flag during World War II 05:58 caused the court to apply a more robust First Amendment 06:02 both speech and religion protection 06:05 that it hadn't previously done. 06:06 You're getting into heavy stuff, 06:08 even states' rights things. 06:09 I can remember, 06:12 I wasn't there at the location but on television, 06:14 I can remember Governor Wallace 06:15 standing on the schoolhouse steps 06:19 I think it was opposing federal agents. 06:24 So it wasn't an abstraction. 06:25 No. 06:26 This was, as they saw it, 06:28 states' rights versus the federal government. 06:31 And there's another point 06:32 that I like to see how you deal with this. 06:34 I don't remember directly reading about it 06:37 but there was a theology of slavery 06:40 and of apartheid. 06:43 Like these horrible statements, 06:45 you know, coloreds or blacks and Jews here, 06:49 not by accident the Jews were included 06:50 because this was derived from a religious world view 06:54 that had demonized, these are the racist groups. 06:58 And it seems to me 07:00 that in bringing religion and theology 07:03 and as you point out 07:05 the principles of the reformation 07:06 to the fore, 07:07 Martin Luther King was countering 07:09 another theological view point. 07:11 I think largely won at that point, 07:13 but I think it's coming back again. 07:15 So some people like to say that religion 07:17 is the basis of oppression, 07:19 and they're half right 07:20 because religion is also the basis of liberation. 07:24 And as you've pointed out, 07:25 the civil rights movement was fermented, 07:29 formulated in the churches, right. 07:32 Martin Luther King Jr. is a pastor. 07:34 And he preaches from the pulpit 07:36 and he uses theological concepts 07:38 and categories and ideas 07:39 to promote the civil rights movement 07:41 which is the foot soldiers of whom are people 07:43 from the pews 07:44 of the black churches in America. 07:46 And they are joined by evangelical Christians 07:50 from the north and some from the south as well. 07:53 Now is religion also used as an argument 07:56 to preserve the status quo? 07:59 It is. 08:00 But it's a certain kind of religion 08:02 that you might characterize as a fundamentalism, 08:05 a very rigid 08:06 and literal application of scripture 08:08 that goes beyond the plain teaching of scripture 08:11 to insisting on the plain reading of scripture. 08:15 So if you read the words slave and slavery, 08:18 it means the same thing as what's happened 08:21 in 19th century America, 08:23 not an economic bondservant 08:25 that would have been the case 08:26 in the Roman Empire or in the Hebrew Empire. 08:28 Not a good situation, 08:30 but not a direct analog to what happened. 08:31 Not a racial chattel kidnapping based slavery 08:35 which most people don't know 08:37 that the Old Testament actually prohibits. 08:39 Man stealing was a crime in the Old Testament. 08:41 Yeah, I know. 08:43 So you have these two competing forms of religion... 08:45 Although the Old Testament allows 08:47 for selling your terms of service 08:48 and all the rest. 08:50 No, that's right. 08:51 And we don't accept or believe that anymore 08:55 but it wasn't the same kind of thing as... 08:56 Oh, yes, we do. 08:58 I have a mortgage. 09:00 No, I'm not half joking. We're wage slaves. 09:01 You basically bond yourself for different reasons 09:05 and in different ways. 09:06 But to give up your freedom of movement 09:09 and all rest and to be own lock, stock, 09:11 and barrel for that time period. 09:12 That's something we're not used to now. 09:15 Well, and you know, 09:16 I think to compare having a mortgage 09:18 to the kinds of limitations 09:20 that even indentured servants has, 09:22 it's still quite different. 09:24 But I'm glad we live now and not then. 09:26 The difference of degree 09:28 but it's controlling mechanism, that's my point. 09:32 So what we have is we have a theology 09:35 which comes out of the Second Great Awakening 09:37 which is renewed by the black American churches 09:40 which bring questions of, 09:42 these days unfortunately social justice 09:45 and religious freedom or religious groups 09:47 are seen often as opposite things. 09:50 But in the mid 20th century, 09:54 religious belief led convictions 09:57 to those who held the convictions 09:59 about social justice and fairness. 10:01 And really these two things can be married. 10:04 And I think it's no accident 10:05 that after Brown versus Board of Education 10:09 in the early 1950s, 10:10 that it's only then when the government has agreed 10:13 to a racial equality 10:14 that it also begins enforcing religious freedom. 10:17 For our viewers, shorthand for some of us, 10:20 what is, I mean, within the system? 10:22 What is Brown? 10:23 What was the...? 10:24 Brown versus Board of Education, 10:26 it was the famous Supreme Court case 10:28 that said separate is not equal, right. 10:30 There had been an earlier Supreme Court case, 10:32 Plessy versus Ferguson at the end of the 19th century 10:35 that said, "Well, there is segregation 10:39 but that's fine as long as the trade races 10:41 are treated equally, then we can have segregation." 10:45 But the rub was separate just was not equal. 10:48 We've all seen the pictures of the drinking fountains. 10:49 It sounded good on a certain level 10:51 unless you knew the real darkness. 10:52 And the kinds of schools that the blacks had 10:54 versus the whites were very, very different. 10:56 So Brown versus Board of Education 10:58 essentially integrated the school wasn't 11:00 said you could not keep out someone from school 11:03 because of the color of their skin or their race. 11:05 Yeah. 11:07 And I think it was after we accepted 11:09 that principle of equality 11:10 and that it was to be applied at the state level, 11:13 it was only then that the court robustly 11:15 began to protect religious freedoms as well. 11:18 What year was Brown again, I should know. 11:19 Well, I think it was '50... 11:21 I have in my head, '52, but it may have been 1954. 11:24 In any event, it was the early 1950s. 11:28 And you pointed out, 11:29 this has a contemporary resonance 11:31 because there's been much discussion 11:33 about the Johnson Amendment, right. 11:36 Perhaps the viewers... 11:37 Well, within our group, 11:38 I'm not sure the regular newspaper reader 11:41 or TV watcher would have noticed. 11:43 What they've picked up is the new administration 11:45 making bold statements that they want to really... 11:49 Well, there was an executive order 11:51 to reinforce religious freedom. 11:53 So the new administration being 11:55 the President Trump's administration, 11:57 he promised in his campaign 11:59 to do away with the Johnson Amendment. 12:00 He promised then, but since he was... 12:01 Well, tell our viewers what Johnson Amendment is. 12:04 The Johnson Amendment was by, 12:07 what was he, Congressman... 12:09 Johnson at the time, President Johnson later on... 12:10 Yeah, I'm trying to think if he was a senate. 12:12 When he was in Congress, 12:15 he had a hard fought reelection battle. 12:18 And he was angry at a church group 12:20 that had opposed his reelection 12:22 or actually helped him... 12:23 It was actually, it was a not for profit group. 12:25 It wasn't actually a church group. 12:26 I thought it was a church group. 12:28 No, the bill actually applies to church groups. 12:31 Well, I mean, yes, that I know. 12:32 But it was a not for profit... 12:34 Anyhow, he was angry at this nonprofit 12:36 which is the same tax category the churches come under... 12:39 Yes, that's right. 12:40 That's your 5013c, right? Yeah, that's right. 12:43 And so to get back at them, he proposed what is known 12:47 as the Johnson Amendment 12:49 which limits political activity 12:52 by churches or any 5013c. 12:56 I tend to think that that was his personal payback 13:00 but one of the reasons 13:01 that it was broadly supported became legislation 13:05 was this was the beginning of the civil rights movement 13:07 and there was some suspicion 13:08 about the new activity of the southern or the blacks, 13:13 Baptists down south and so on. 13:15 So the connection we're making 13:18 is that as the civil rights movement grew 13:22 and as churches were involved in it, 13:24 some of the politicians pushed back 13:26 against it by trying to keep, not for profit organizations 13:29 including churches out of politics, 13:32 out of speaking moral truths to the public square. 13:34 I've forgotten the pushback. 13:38 You can't always say who did it 13:39 but there was the bombings of churches 13:44 where these young girls were killed for example. 13:46 The federal officials going against the voters 13:52 but as well as that the evidence is very plain, 13:55 the FBI harassed Martin Luther King. 13:59 Yes. 14:00 And perhaps had something to do with his assassination even. 14:03 Well, I don't think I would go that far. 14:06 They surveiled him, they got a file on him. 14:10 There's a connection between the surveillance 14:12 and the information that was known 14:14 that led to his assassination, so this is often the case, 14:17 remember FBI and other law enforcement 14:19 they deal with nefarious elements, 14:21 so information goes two ways. 14:24 Well... 14:25 I know what you try to avoid, 14:27 but it was a very murky time 14:29 and, you know, I remember living 14:31 through some of that, 14:32 and night was day and day was night. 14:34 It was very said. 14:36 Well, when we come back, 14:37 I want to talk about a profound and important connection 14:39 between Martin Luther, 14:40 the reformer and Martin Luther King, Jr. 14:43 the civil rights activist. 14:44 It's very nice 14:45 that Martin Luther King was named 14:47 after the leader of the reformation 14:48 or the initiator. 14:50 Stay with us. 14:51 We'll be back after a short break. |
Revised 2017-07-24