By JIM GENARO

RIDGECREST — While the framers of the First Amendment were clear in saying that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” the specific meaning of this passage has been long debated by historians, judges and scholars.

Two such scholars, Herb Titus and the Rev. Barry Lynn, debated the meaning of the “no establishment clause” last Thursday night during a forum at the Lifeway Ridgecrest Conference Center.

About 500 people attended the public debate, which was sponsored by American Vision, an organization that promotes biblically based policies, as part of its Worldview Super Conference II.

The question posed to the two debaters was, “Does the ‘No Establishment of Religion Guarantee’ prohibit a biblically based public policy?”

On the affirmative side was Lynn, who is the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
On the negative side was Herb Titus, a constitutional attorney and founding dean of Regent University.

The two men were each given 12 minutes to make their opening statements.

Noting that he is both a lawyer and a United Church of Christ minister, Lynn joked that “this means that I can forgive someone tonight but still go to sue them tomorrow.”

He made a distinction between politicians making decisions that are informed by their faith and directly basing laws on scripture.

Of the latter, Lynn told the audience, “I would have to say the no-establishment principle would bar that at any level” of government.

“American policy can not be based solely on the Bible any more than it could be based in the Koran or the Bhagavad-Gita.”
Rather, he argued, laws “need to be based on commonly shared secular values — including those enshrined in the Bill of Rights.”

He said that the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land, not the Bible. Public officials, Lynn noted, swear an oath on the Bible to uphold the Constitution.

“They don’t place their hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

The Bill of Rights, he added, applies not only to Congress but to all levels of government in the U.S. because of the 14th Amendment, which made these rights universal.

However, the exact meaning of the no-establishment clause has been “a source of enormous consternation” for judges and lawyers, he added.

While many believe that the clause simply means that Congress cannot establish an official church, Lynn argued that “those words were not and are not today to be interpreted so narrowly.”

At the heart of the question, he said, is freedom of conscience, the right to make choices according to one’s beliefs.
He noted that Thomas Jefferson declined to declare official days of thanksgiving and prayer because he believed that such observances were better left to clergy.

Furthermore, Lynn argued, adopting the Bible as a standard for law would inevitably lead to contradictions between scripture and preexisting constitutional standards.

For instance, biblical commandments that recalcitrant children should be executed would contradict the Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

He noted that while directly taking rules from the Bible would be unconstitutional, it is acceptable to pass laws that “happen to mirror biblical precepts,” such as the commandment to not kill.

“It’s clear to me that Jesus had no desire to create a democracy,” he said in closing.

Titus then presented his position.

He argued that it does not make sense that as a political candidate, one can campaign on a Bible-based platform, “but once elected to office, I have to leave the Bible at home.”

Furthermore, he argued, the Constitution itself is rooted in Biblical law.

“Apart from the Bible, you cannot understand correctly the words ‘Congress shall enact no law respecting an establishment of religion,’” he told the audience.

He added that a cardinal rule of constitutional interpretation is that “every word must have its due force and evident meaning.”

Given that principle, he said, a correct interpretation of the First Amendment would require understanding why words such as “religion” were chosen.

“We know what the word ‘religion’ means,” Titus said. “‘Religion’ did not first appear in the First Amendment.”

Rather, he said, the terminology used by the authors of the Bill of Rights reflected that of the Virginia Constitution, which defined religion as “the duty that we owe to our creator.”

“If it is a duty owed exclusively to God the creator, then the civil government has no authority over” matters of faith, he added.

Furthermore, he said, the Bible is “God’s explanation of duties owed to Him,” and therefore is indispensable to understanding the meaning of the no-establishment clause.

Titus quoted the writings of James Madison, saying, “The first duty of man when he establishes a civil society is to secure the duties owed to the great governor of the universe.”

“This is not a deist argument,” Titus said. “This is a God who is actively involved in the affairs of the nation.”

He also took aim at public education, saying that by allowing scientific, but not biblical perspectives to be taught in schools, the state violates the principle of freedom of conscience.

“Mr. Lynn should not be taxed to fund propagation of the ideas that I hold,” Titus added.

The debaters were then given a brief period to respond to the specific statements made during each other’s opening remarks.

Titus began, saying he was having difficulty “sorting out those things that he (Lynn) thinks are unwise, as opposed to those that he thinks are illegitimate.”

He also noted that the phrase “‘freedom of conscience’ ... does not appear in the First Amendment.”

Rather, he noted, the words “free exercise of religion” are used.

“‘Religion’ is objectively defined ... by the revelation that is found in the Bible,” he added.

He conceded that “it might be that the Bible doesn’t have enough data to make a particular decision,” but added that it can be “coupled with science to reach decisions.”

Titus argued that Lynn’s interpretation of the Bible is “too small. He thinks it’s only a salvation book, when the Bible applies to all of life.”

In his rebuttal, Lynn said that Titus had not cited any arguments for his claim that the First Amendment is based on the Bible.

He noted that no official records were kept during the drafting or the ratification of the Constitution, so any opinion as to the intentions of its writers is merely speculative.

However, as to the specific wording of the Bill of Rights, Lynn said that there is no restriction on the establishment of economic policies or other issues other than faith.

“There is solely this prohibition of the establishment of religion.”

He also said that Jefferson had used religious terminology in the Declaration of Independence to make it politically acceptable.

The debaters then began a period of questioning and answering each other.

Prompted by earlier comments made by Titus that a candidate could be asked his positions on biblical issues such as abortion, Lynn argued that the Bible does not specifically address abortion.

The one reference to the rights of fetuses, he said, is a passage in the Book of Exodus that sets fines for someone who accidentally injures a pregnant woman causing her to abort.

However, the same passage says that if the woman dies, the person responsible is to be put to death, Lynn noted.

This disparity in sentencing, he pointed out, would seem to contradict that idea that the Bible considers a fetus to be a human being, he said.

Titus countered that other scriptures in which “God puts life into every human being” support the idea that a fetus is human.

Lynn noted that questions of theological interpretation are highly subjective, even among Christians.

“With so many different churches ... how can we possibly use a biblical argument?” he asked.

Titus countered that scientific data, too, are highly subjective.

“Why should science be a basis for making decisions, but not the Bible?”

Lynn countered that this comparison was “completely misplaced.”

While scientific theories can be continually updated and tested, the Bible is unchanging and its interpretations are unprovable, he said.

“How do we determine the truth of the very differences (in interpretation) that you and I were talking about with abortion,” Lynn asked.

However, Titus countered that science does support the Bible’s claims and that the two, taken together, cast clarity on crucial questions.

“This notion that science and the Bible are in contradiction — that in itself is an athiestic, evolutionary bias,” he said.

Lynn added that the only references to a divine creator in the Constitution is the “stylistic” reference to the “year of our lord.”

This, he argued, was a way of sending a signal to the rest of the world that the United States was not specifically an atheistic country.

While he acknowledged Jefferson’s use of religious concepts in the Declaration of Independence, he added that this is not the foundation for U.S. law.

Of Jefferson, Lynn said, “he sadly, in this instance, did what politicians do today: invoked God in a vague way.”

The debate ended with closing statements by each of the two men.

In his closing remarks, Titus cited a minority opinion in the 1961 McGowan v. Maryland Supreme Court case.

In that case, the court ruled that a Maryland law forcing businesses to close on Sundays was constitutional because, despite its religious origins, the law now had become a secular tradition.

In his dissenting opinion, Justice William O. Douglas stated that the question should not hinge on whether the law is secular now, but whether the civil government can enforce religious rules, an opinion with which Titus said he agreed.

Furthermore, Titus argued, constitutional rights are inherently founded in religious law.

“If our rights don’t come from God then they can’t be inalienable,” he told the audience.

He also criticized Lynn for not responding to arguments he had raised about the unconstitutionality of public schools.

In his closing remarks, Lynn claimed that the arguments made by Titus have never been upheld by any Supreme Court decision, nor by the writings of anyone involved in the writing of the Constitution.

“Why would we want to change a system when we look around the world at other countries and see how messed up they are because they reformulated the difference between secular and religious matters?” he asked.

He also noted that in a recent poll, while 78 percent of participants said that they wanted to see a manger scene erected on public land at Christmas, only 59 percent of those same people said they intended to go to church on Christmas.

“That should be a wholesale embarrassment to the Christian community,” he added.

“When religion and government form a matrimonial relationship, it inherently is a corruption of both government and religion,” Lynn said in closing.