The Christian States of America

If belief creates reality, it's no wonder we're living in a Bizarro World.

The First Amendment Center just released its 2007 survey results of Americans' opinions on the U.S. Constitution and the First Amendment.

Sixty-five percent (nearly two-thirds) of the respondents said they believed the nation's founders intended the United States to be a Christian nation, and 55% believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation.

When asked to name the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment, 64% knew that freedom of speech was one of them. Only 19% knew that freedom of religion was a right enumerated in the First Amendment. Sixteen percent knew about freedom of the press, and 16% knew about the right to associate and assemble. Only three percent mentioned the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

A full 29% either refused to answer the above questions or flat out admitted they just didn't know!

After having the First Amendment read to them, 25% agreed when asked if the First Amendment goes too far in the rights it guarantees.

Let that sink in for a moment.

One in four Americans believes that we have too much freedom!

Thirty-four percent think the press has too much freedom. Thirty-seven percent do not think the press should be allowed to criticize the U.S. military's strategy and performance.

Twenty-eight percent believe that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion "was never meant to apply to religious groups that the majority of the people consider extreme or on the fringe."

More from the survey:

• Public schools should be allowed to put on Nativity reenactments with Christian music: 43% agreed.
• Musicians should be allowed to sing songs with lyrics that others might find offensive: 42% disagreed.
• People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups: 39% disagreed.
• People should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to racial groups: 56% disagreed.
• Teachers and other school officials should be allowed to lead prayers in public school: 58% agreed.
• A public school teacher should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in a history or social studies class: 50% agreed.

The demographics of the respondents: 67% with at least some college; 79% white; 62% having a household income over $40,000 a year; 30% Democrat, 28% Republican, and 26% claiming to be Independent. 49% were men, 51% women. Only 1/3 of the respondents had children under the age of 18.

Seventy-three percent said they were Christians (50% Protestant, 23% Catholic).

Twenty-six percent of all respondents said they were "fundamentalist/evangelical Christians." If I remember high school algebra, that means that .26 / .73 = nearly 36% of the Christians interviewed considered themselves fundamentalists and/or evangelicals.

To me, the most telling of all the statistics is the section asking where the respondents primarily get their news. Sixty-one percent of the respondents said they got most of their news from passive sources, that is, television (52%) and radio (9%).

Twenty-one percent get their news from what I would call, for lack of a better term, active sources (newspapers, 20%; magazines, 1%.) By active, I mean, in comparison to TV and radio, where you don't usually actually think about the news, at least not while you're receiving it. With magazines and newspapers, at least you choose the pace at which you try to absorb a news story, and you have the choice of whether to actually read a story or not. With rapid-fire TV and radio, you're usually just bombarded, and before you can decide if you actually want to know about a story, yet another story is being presented. Often, you're not only given the story, but told, directly or indirectly, what you should think about it.

Fifteen percent said they got their news from the Internet, and four percent said "other," whatever that means. Again, for lack of a better term, I would call news you get from the Internet "interactive." You choose what to read. You can take your time thinking about what you've read, and leisurely form an opinion. In many cases, whether on news organization sites or on personal blogs, you can interact with others by posting your own opinions, conclusions, disagreements or rebuttals.

It's my hypothesis, which of course cannot be proved or disproved without access to the individual survey forms, that the readers (of magazines, newspapers and Internet) in this survey held more liberal or libertarian views, and knew more about, and held in a higher regard (or even higher reverence), the First Amendment, while those who got their news spoon-fed to them by television and radio talking heads and pundits held the more "conservative," anti-freedom viewpoints, and knew less about, and valued less, the freedoms enumerated in the First Amendment.

Agree? Disagree? Come on... be interactive!

You can find the actual survey questions and answer tables in a PDF file provided by the First Amendment Center. You can also find the Center's original press release on their site.

News stories about the 2007 survey can be found here, and here, and here.

First Amendment | Christianity | U.S. Constitution | Founding Fathers | 2007 First Amendment Center Survey | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Onward Christian Lawyers: Pat Robertson's law school grads fill Dept. of Justice

More than 150 attorneys hired by the federal government during the Bush administration have been graduates of Regent University School of Law, founded by televangelist Pat Robertson to provide "Christian leadership to change the world," the Boston Globe is reporting.

The story opens with this chilling paragraph:

The title of the course was Constitutional Law, but the subject was sin. Before any casebooks were opened, a student led his classmates in a 10-minute devotional talk, completed with "amens," about the need to preserve their Christian values.

Monica Goodling, a Regent graduate and until last week top aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, recently resigned. She was one of a handful of officials who oversaw the firings of U.S. attorneys in what has become another Bush scandal.

She recently refused to testify to Congress, citing the Fifth Amendment.

Regent University's 21-year history is that of a school that has turned out a high number of graduates unable to pass the bar exam. It was accredited by the American Bar Association in 1996.

"It used to be that high-level DOJ jobs were generally reserved for the best of the legal profession," wrote a contributor to The New Republic website. "...[T]hat a recent graduate of one of the very worst (and sketchiest) law schools with virtually no relevant experience could ascend to this position is a sure sign that there is something seriously wrong at the DOJ."

Monica Goodling's undergraduate work was done at Messiah College, a Christian school "committed to an embracing evangelical spirit." Her entire higher education has been steeped in evangelical tradition and beliefs.

Shortly after Bush became president, he picked the dean of Regent's government school, Kay Coles James, to be the director of the Office of Personnel Management, and she has since packed the upper echelons of the Dept. of Justice with attorneys with Regent degrees.

"We've had great placement," said Jay Sekulow, who heads a non profit law firm based at Regent that files lawsuits aimed at lowering barriers between church and state. "We've had a lot of people in key positions," the Globe reports.

Regent University is ranked a "tier four" school by US News & World Report, the lowest score and essentially a tie for 136th place.

Sixty percent of the graduates in Goodling's 1999 class failed the bar exam on the first attempt. It has improved, according to the Princeton Review, to a 67% pass rate today.

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft is the university's newest instructor. He co-teaches a course called "Human Rights, Civil Liberties, and National Security."

Creeping theocracy, or just typical of Washington politics?

UPDATE, Wed., April 25: The House Judiciary Committee voted Wednesday 32-6 to authorize a grant of immunity for former Justice Department official Monica Goodling.

Image: Karl Rove and Monica Goodling

Theocracy | Politics | Evangelical | Regent University | Monica Goodling | Burning Taper | BurningTaper.com

Wisconsin brother refutes anti-Masonic statements leveled by Lutherans

Are you tired of hearing fundamentalist and evangelical Christians repeatedly making the same dumb accusations against Freemasonry?

W. Bro. Joshua M. Armstrong, the current Master of Excelsior Lodge No. 175 F & AM, in Excelsior, Wisconsin, is. He has created an excellent web page for his lodge that refutes five common oppositions to Freemasonry leveled by evangelical groups. Specifically, he is responding to statements made by Missouri and Wisconsin Lutheran Evangelical Synods.

Read W. Bro. Armstrong's responses to these charges:

• Freemasonry is a religion.
• Freemasonry holds the belief that all faiths are equally valid pathways to salvation (or that Freemasonry is "unionistic").
• Freemasonry requires that men of different faiths pray together.
• Masonry promotes good works and personal betterment as a means of salvation.
• Masons swear blood oaths.
• Masons swear to protect other Masons from punishment for their crimes.

W. Bro. Armstrong has done a great job, not only with this article, but with the entire website he has created for Excelsior Lodge. His site has a nice mix of local news for brethren of his lodge, plus articles of general, universal interest. The site also includes an aggregator that stays up to the minute with new articles from all your favorite Masonic blogs, including The Burning Taper. Well done, Brother!

Masons | Masonic Attacks | Fundamentalist Christianity | Freemasonry | BurningTaper.com | Evangelical Christianity | Excelsior Lodge | Burning Taper