The First Liberty
Spaeth, Robert L.
FREE TO WORSHIP OR NOT THE FIRST LIBERTY RELIGION AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC William Lee Miller Knopf, $24.95, 373 pp.________________ Robert L. Spaeth As the 1986 political party caucuses...
...Positing that this year presents "the possibility of changing the face of government here in Minnesota" and noting that "in our state 82.36 percent of the church-affiliated people are Catholics or Lutherans," the monsignor asked a question that to him was rhetorical: "Should not government reflect our gospel-grounded value system...
...Murphy takes issue on a number of subordinate ones...
...Questions, or opinions, of this sort — clever combinations of religion and politics — normally attract replies: agreement or denunciation, delight or outrage...
...Murphy does not address this point...
...The U.S.," we wrote, "might argue against restricting ASATs on the basis of other reasons...
...In between these very limited strikes on our main points, Mr...
...Our editorial — and the CIA — pointed out the Soviets' capacity to add warheads in the near future much more quickly than the U.S...
...His figures are selective...
...Miller calls his essays '' an account'' and '' a commentary," but they would be more accurately named "meditations," for they draw us into their subjects and down to their depths, whence we emerge with feelings and conclusions all our own...
...Our June 6 editorial, for example, discussed widely voiced appeals for "Rethinking Arms Control...
...Likewise, our point about the ABM treaty's "original spirit," which was based on Schelling's account, is not rebutted by noting that, as it turned out, the defense system the treaty permitted each nation was used by the Soviets (but not by the U.S...
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...Astonishing interrelationships...
...Write: Timothy McCarthy, Director...
...We could pursue other points that Mr...
...In our view, neither the MX policy nor the SDI "revolution" that the administration has launched reflects a primary concern with avoiding destabilizing systems...
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...For the monsignor who wants Minnesota's laws to reflect our "gospel-grounded value system" (ours or Ms...
...Murphy ascribes to Commonweal was, in fact, a discussion of arguments made by Thomas C. Schelling, whose criticism challenged the arms control theories not only of the present administration but of the three administrations preceding it and of many peace activists as well...
...Miller insists that Williams fought hardest against "the pernicious evil of persecuting anybody, of coercing anybody, 'for cause of conscience.' " "Anybody" to Roger Williams meant Jews and Catholics as well as the "anybodies" of various Protestant denominations...
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...to defend a city...
...For after the First Amendment anchored that liberty in fundamental law, the religious complexion of the nation changed again and again, mainly by successive waves of immigration...
...It would be better, however, to focus on the main lines of our concern: whether the administration (or its critics, for that matter) has a coherent approach to arms control, and whether the administration, faced with real possibilities, has the will to bring them to fruition...
...And the small American Jewish community, fighting time and again against hatred imported from Europe, came, in Miller's words, to have "an importance to the American religiopolitical drama out of all proportion to its numerical membership — a distinct, complex, and essential relation to the central American tradition of religious liberty...
...They deserve more — reflection on history, analysis of constitutional principles, consideration of the religious diversity of the United States and of its special political life...
...The fact that the administration urged deep cuts before the letter was actually published hardly demonstrates that the extended process of drafting the letter had no impact on the administration in other respects, nor does it rebut our real point, that the administration's pursuit of arms control has appeared uncertain apart from prodding by Congress, the freeze movement, etc...
...a book would be required...
...FREE TO WORSHIP OR NOT THE FIRST LIBERTY RELIGION AND THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC William Lee Miller Knopf, $24.95, 373 pp.________________ Robert L. Spaeth As the 1986 political party caucuses drew near, the executive director of the Minnesota Catholic Conference mailed a memo to the state's "pastors and pastoral people...
...he directly attributes developments to the "SALT II framework" that have independent causes...
...LLH 1818 N. Washtenaw, Chicago, IL 60647...
...Call 1-800-633-2252...
...Miller first sets us in the Virginia of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, particularly in the legislative session of 1785-86, where Madison's awesome political skills pushed to passage the "Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom" drafted by Jefferson back in 1777...
...In a letter to Jefferson in Paris, Madison foresaw, and exaggerated, the lasting effects...
...Philip Neri and Cardinal Newman contact: Vocation Director,Brooklyn Oratory, P.O...
...We listed the bishops' letter as one among a series of pressures on this administration over the course of its first term...
...Theology Workshop 23rd Theology Workshop, St...
...Our second editorial argued that the administration's announced intention to abandon SALT II was counterproductive and augured ill for arms control...
...The bill would not have been enacted without the support of religious groups whose views did not flow from the same sources as Madison's and Jefferson's...
...The bill in part proclaimed that "all men shall be free to profess, and by argument 16 January 1987: 23 to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities...
...As Mr...
...John Milton in his Areopagitica excluded "popery and open superstition" from the dissenting ideas that deserved toleration...
...Murphy replies, "the SALT framework wasn't working," and cites Soviet vigor and U.S...
...Biblical Institute 22nd Biblical Institute, Trinity College, Burlington, VT 05401, June 21-26, 1987...
...and his work in Congress on the Bill of Rights...
...The "Memorial and Remonstrance" especially repays close study...
...We also regret, however, that in a rush to defend his agency and his administration in every particular and to discredit any source of criticism, he has skirted both the editorials' main points and the spirit in which they were written...
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...In the mid-seventeenth century those who advocated religious liberty often drew the line against Jews and Catholics...
...The First Liberty investigates how this nation secured religious freedom at its very founding, inquires into certain colonial beginnings of that freedom, and reviews the complex religious-political history that we have experienced in the past two centuries...
...But leaving aside these omissions and granting (as did our editorial) the flawed nature of SALT II, the questions remain: Would the situation have been worse without the agreement...
...Miller paraphrases a portion of its argument: "If you want pure, effective, real, and lively belief, then do not use coercion to support it...
...An American Catholic of the 1980s contemplating the full implications of this argument will no doubt drift to thinking about the Vatican, with results hardly predictable...
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...insistence on reaching parity in tested ASAT systems, that verification or definition might pose serious problems for a ban...
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...force modernization during this period nor Soviet retirement of over a thousand missiles in order to stay within SALT limits...
...his legislative work on the bill mentioned above...
...Father Nigro Gonzaga University, Spokane 99258...
...his "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments" of 1785...
...The fact that the Reagan administration has concerned itself with the character as well as the numbers of Soviet weapons falls far short of the notion of a coherent arms control policy built on "reciprocal vulnerability" that Schelling proposed and we discussed...
...In the wake of Reykjavik, these questions are being asked even more widely...
...But the monsignor would probably reply that the subject is more complicated than that...
...Murphy raises, about the likelihood of a negotiated deployment of SDI, for example...
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...Catholics came after a time to be the largest religious body in the country...
...Madison himself is the subject of Miller's second meditation...
...If you are interested in becoming a priest or brother in the tradition of St...
...A letter-to-the-editor response wouldn't do...
...James DiGiacomo: Youth and the Church...
...He would be right...
...Miller quotes from one of Williams's many hortatory publications: "And oh...
...THE EDITORS 16 January 1987: 27...
...Murphy's letter, written before Reykjavik, constitutes a lawyer's brief much more than a convincing response...
...Murphy knows, such appeals have been made from within as well as outside the Reagan administration...
...Write: Sister Miriam Ward...
...This is not the Madisonian style, but it is close to Madisonian thinking...
...As Miller puts it — he puts many things very well — "Jefferson, Madison, and a small group of other heirs of the Enlightenment furnished much of the brain power, but the religion of revival furnished the troops...
...we can of course suggest a reading of Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance," where the use of "Religion as an engine of civil policy" is said to be "an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation...
...There is no conclusion to the meditations of The First Liberty, as there is no conclusion to the interplay of America's religions with America's politics...
...Perhaps not extinguished but certainly dampened...
...10: Chess Study, 1226 Haight San Francisco, 94117...
...since the commonweal cannot without a spiritual rape force the consciences of all to one worship, oh, that it may never commit that rape . . . which a stronger arm and sword may soon . . . arise to alter...
...Nor were we unaware, in challenging U.S...
...Much of what Mr...
...No longer could Sam Adams's view be endorsed: "Much more is to be dreaded from the growth of Popery in America than Stamp Acts or any other Acts destructive of men's civil rights...
...Mary's College, Moraga, CA 94575, June 15-19...
...Miller's fourth and final essay, called "Reflections after Two Centuries," functions as a reminder that a knowledge of the roots of our religious liberty, though vitally important, is not enough...
...The First Liberty next leaps back in time another century and a half, to the New England of Roger Williams, who built a support for separation of church and state on religious not secular footings...
...Clearing Madison is worth a great deal of our attention...
...In the formation of America's tradition of church-state relationships, Madison made four crucial contributions: his amendments to the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights...
...It was an extraordinary achievement...
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...the bill, he wrote, has ' 'extinguished forever the ambitious hope of making laws for the human mind...
...26: Commonweal ness to respond to our arms-control editorials, and we regret our delay in getting his response into an issue...
...delays in adding to strategic arsenals after 1979...
...Murphy's narrow response is to contend that this administration, unlike its predecessors, alone escapes Schilling's strictures, a position that evidently did not convince Schelling himself, whose article in Foreign Affairs appeared in 1985...
...Not so Roger Williams...
...he recognizes neither significant U.S...
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Vol. 114 • January 1987 • No. 1
