Bush and God.

In his 2003 Independence Day message President George W. Bush declared, "Liberty is God's gift to humanity." That, of course, echoes the language or the 1776 Declaration of Independence: "[A]ll men are created Equal, ... [and] are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights...." Much Fourth of July rhetoric through the years has expressed similar sentiments. Yet how many people bother to consider the implications of these expressions?

ff "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights," why didn't anyone notice that before 1776? And why has "God's gift to humanity" been given only rarely and sparingly? And what sort of capricious God would withhold the gift of liberty from so many for so long?

Furthermore, why for so many years after 1776 was liberty enjoyed only by white American males, generally property owners? And if governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed," as the Declaration states, why aren't the residents of the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico and felons who have paid their debt to society asked for their consent to be governed?

So many questions! Yet the answer is simple. If there is a deity, it isn't actually in the business of giving liberty to anyone.

Where, then, do liberties--ours or anyone else's--come from? Again, the answer isn't hard to find. Liberties exist when they are conceived of, defined, and fought or struggled for. They exist when machinery is developed or evolved to protect them--machinery such as legislative bodies, representative governments, legal systems, courts, schools for cultivating responsible citizens, and nongovernmental organizations dedicated to defending or expanding liberties.

One is reminded of the visitor to a well-kept New England farm who remarked to the farmer, "What a wonderful farm you and the Lord have made!" To which the farmer replied, "Well, you should have seen it when the Lord had it all to himself."

Whatever one might think of the probable or improbable existence of a deity, it is clear that liberties and democratic government are the result of the hard and continuing work of people, with all our strengths and weaknesses.

Why, then, did the Declaration of Independence, mainly the work of deist and "proto-Humanist" Thomas Jefferson, refer so prominently to a "Creator" and "Nature's God?" In 1776 the independence movement was in a very precarious position. Only a third of the colonial population favored independence. Another third remained loyal to Britain and the rest hadn't made up their minds. The war wasn't going well for the Americans and Benjamin Franklin (and the Battle of Saratoga) hadn't yet persuaded the French to offer their invaluable assistance.

Furthermore, Americans were struggling against the most powerful nation in the world with the most powerful navy--a nation, moreover, that held to the "divine right of kings," as did nearly all the rest of the world. How better than to counter the "divine right of kings" with the "divinely" endowed rights of the people? It gave the independence movement a certain useful symmetry.

Pious language is often little more than a propaganda tool, regardless of the sincerity or insincerity of the user and regardless of whether there is any real basis for the belief. Remember the saying, "Trust in God but keep your powder try." Or Schiller's "God does not help a coward."

Finally, Bush's Fourth of July rhetoric about liberty rings rather hollow. This is the president who is working hard to diminish every person's right not to be compelled to support religious institutions financially, to weaken the right of women to reproductive choice, to diminish civil liberties, and to pack the federal courts with judges less than optimally committed to upholding the rights of the people.

Independence Day occurs only once a year. The struggle to defend liberty goes on 365 days a year.

Bad News, Good News

First, the bad news. On June 26 the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously upheld the placement of a sectarian Ten Commandments plaque on the courthouse in Chester, Pennsylvania. Attorneys for the church-state separation side seem to think that an appeal in this particular case would be too risky. An amicus curiae brief in the case was filed by the American Humanist Association, Americans for Religious Liberty, the Unitarian Universalist Association, the American Ethical Union, the Society for Humanistic Judaism, and the Philadelphia Ethical Society. ARL Board Chair Burton Caine, a professor of constitutional law, wrote the brief.

Now the good news. On July 1 the U.S. Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ruled against Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore, the raving fundamentalist who thinks that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to Alabama. In the dead of night a couple of years ago Moore placed a 2 1/2 ton stone with a sectarian version of the Ten Commandments in the courthouse, the action filmed by a crew from fundamentalist preacher D. James Kennedy's media operation. (Several years ago when I was lecturing in Chautauqua, New York, at Unitarian Universalist and Jewish services, Kennedy objected to my quoting him in a reading.)

In more good news, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin ruled against a Ten Commandments monument in a city park in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on July 14. The suit, Sue Mercier, et. al. v. The City of La Crosse, was supported by the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

Edd Doerr, immediate past president of the AHA, is president of Americans for Religious Liberty.