LETTERS.

Greetings From The South Pole 

Greetings from Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica. After a year's absence from Americans United, I have joined your great organization once again (the election results may have had an influence on my decision). Thanks for all your hard work -- keep it up! And know that your actions are far reaching -- all the way to the bottom of the globe!

--Jon Emanuel Amundsen-South Pole Station, Antarctica

Official Prayer And American History

It is about time for legislators and others who favor prayer in governmental institutions to take a refresher course in American history. One topic in particular should be "Our Founding Fathers," those esteemed gentlemen who set up the machinery for the world's first democratic republic. This machinery was very carefully designed to prevent all types of tyranny including that of one despot, a "junta" or tyranny of the majority.

The members of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 were totally opposed to prayer in governmental institutions. When Benjamin Franklin proposed a non-sectarian prayer addressed to the "Father of Light," it was overwhelmingly rejected. Moreover, they deliberately left out the word "God" from both the preamble and the rest of the Constitution. George Washington, who had been unanimously elected president of this convention, believed that religious controversies were always productive of more acrimony and irreconcilable hatreds than those that spring from any other source and stated this in letters that he wrote.

The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom should be required reading for all legislators since it is directly related to the public prayer issue. Originally drafted by Thomas Jefferson in 1779, it was finally adopted by the Virginia legislature in 1785, largely through the efforts of James Madison. This statute was the precursor to the First Amendment. The carefully worded document clearly points out that it is "sinful and tyrannical" to compel a person to contribute money in the form of taxes to support the propagation of opinions in religion which he disbelieves.

Jefferson and Madison advocated the total separation of church and state. Jefferson coined the term "wall of separation" in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in 1802. Madison's view was the same as Jefferson's as he clearly stated in his journal of the Constitutional Convention. Madison even opposed the formation of a chaplain corps for the military.

It is interesting to note that Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, when referring to ti higher power, used the Deistic terms Nature, Nature's God, Creator, Supreme Judge of the Universe and Divine Providence. Jefferson deliberately avoided using terms like Yahweh, Jesus, Allah or Holy Spirit.

As I see it, the first person to advocate the separation of church and stale was Jesus. His statement, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's and unto God the tilings that are God's," is known by members of the Christian Coalition, but they choose to ignore it in their quest for official school prayer. Jesus clearly stated that those who want their prayers to be heard in public were hypocrites. (Matthew 6:5)

Let us all try to refresh our memory of the lessons that were taught to us by our Founding Fathers. If we forget the lessons of history, we will be replacing the Era of Enlightenment with an Age of Darkness. Jefferson told us that a society cannot be both ignorant and free.

--Sol Abrams West Palm Beach, Fla.

Biblical Punishment

In the "Books & Ideas" column of the October Church & State, Joseph Conn writes, "[Gary] North, for example, thinks stoning is the biblically preferred form of capital punishment. He notes that the means of execution are cheap and readily available and that stoning demonstrates the whole community's responsibility for crime prevention. (Picture your Neighborhood Watch as a lynch mob.)"

I think that your author could have written a bit more openly on the subject. North not merely "thinks" (a word that implies that he may be incorrect) that stoning is the biblically (at least, in Deuteronomy, Leviticus, etc.) preferred form of capital punishment. North is entirely correct in so knowing; the words are clear beyond the possibility of mistranslation from the original (so far as I know). It ,nay be that the authors of these punishments consciously chose stoning over death by sharp weapon in order to demonstrate the community's solidarity (a single executioner must obviously be appointed by those in power), or it may be that it was a simple matter of using the available weapons.

After all, throwing stones was the preferred method of protecting the flocks from predators, and as recent events still demonstrate, in Palestine stones are readily available. Stoning was still the village punishment during Roman times, for Jesus suggested, without a sign that he was referring to the past: "Let the one of you who is without sin throw the first stone."

The "Neighborhood Watch as a lynch mob" is a very pictorial statement, too good to discard in the rewriting. However, I think that your author could have written that North is correct about the biblical statement, but that most Christians and many nations have adopted both a rule of different laws and a different level and means of punishment.

--John Forester Lemon Grove, Calif.

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