We affirm before God and the law all are equal, "endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness." As leaders of diverse churches and Christian communities,
we address our fellow citizens with no partisan political purpose. Religion and
morality are not an alien intrusion upon our public life but the source and
foundation of our pursuit of the common good. The great threat to the
American experiment today is not from enemies abroad but from disordered
liberty. That disorder is increasingly expressed in a denial of the very
concept of moral truth. The bitter consequences of disordered liberty resulting
from the denial of moral truth are by now painfully familiar. Abortion,
crime, consumerism, drug abuse, family disintegration, teenage suicide, neglect
of the poor, pornography, racial prejudice, ethnic separatism and suspicion --
all are rampant in our society. Our attention must be directed to the role
of the courts in the disordering of our liberty. The most egregious instance of
such usurpation of power is the 1973 decision of the Supreme Court in which it
claimed to have discovered a "privacy" right to abortion and by which it
abolished in what scholars have called an act of raw judicial power, the
abortion law of all fifty states.
Our concern is by no means limited to the question of abortion, but the
judicially imposed abortion license is at the very core of the disordering of
our liberty. Our goal is unequivocal: Every unborn child protected in law and
welcomed in life. We have no illusions that, in a world wounded by sin, that
goal will ever be achieved perfectly. We believe, however, that democratic
deliberation and decision would result in laws much more protective of the
unborn and other vulnerable human lives. We are convinced that the Court was
wrong, both morally and legally, to withdraw from a large part of the human
community the constitutional guarantee of equal protection and due process of
law.
In its stated effort to end the national debate over abortion, the Supreme
Court in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey (1992) transferred the legal ground
for the abortion license to an explicit liberty right under the Fourteenth
Amendment. The Court there proposed a sweeping redefinition of liberty, stating:
"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence,
of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." The doctrine
declared by the Court would seem to mean that liberty is nothing more nor less
than what is chosen by the autonomous, unencumbered self. If the Supreme Court
and the judiciary it leads do not change course, the awesome consequences are
clearly foreseeable.
The Court's justification of the abortion license under its debased concept
of liberty has brought us to the brink of endorsing new "rights" to
doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia which threaten those at the end of life,
the infirm, the handicapped, the unwanted. We are confronted by a radical
redefinition of marriage as courts declare marriage to be not a covenanted
commitment ordered to the great goods of spousal unity and procreation but a
mere contract between autonomous individuals for whatever ends they happen to
seek. Under a specious interpretation of the separation of church and state, our
public schools are denuded of moral instruction and parents are unjustly
burdened in choosing a religious education for their children. These are among
the many urgent problems that must be addressed by a free and self-governing
people. We cannot simply blame the courts for what has gone wrong. We are all
responsible. A most particular responsibility belongs also to our elected
officials in state and national government. Too often, Christian legislators
separate their convictions from their public actions, thus depriving our
politics of their informed moral judgment.
We reject the idea that ours should be declared a "Christian" nation. We do
not seek a sacred public square but a civil public square. We strongly affirm
the separation of church and state, which must never be interpreted as the
separation of religion from public life. Knowing that the protection of
minorities is only secure when such protections are supported by the majority,
we urge Christians to renewed opposition to every form of invidious prejudice or
discrimination. We can and must bring law and public policy into greater
harmony with the "laws of nature and of nature's God." (emphasis ours)
The above are excerpts from a statement issued on Independence Day 1997. Some
of the signers;
Bishop Vinton R. Anderson, African Methodist Episcopal Church
Dr. Gary L. Bauer, Pres. Family Research Council
Archbishop Eusebius J. Beltran, Archdiocese of Oklahoma City
Anthony Cardinal Bevilacqua, Archdiocese of Philadelphia
Dr. William R. Bright, Campus Crusade for Christ
Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz, Diocese of Lincoln
Rev. Paul F. Bubna, Pres. The Christian & Missionary Alliance
Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, Archdiocese of Denver
Mr. Charles Colson, Pres., Prison Fellowship
Dr. James Dobson, Pres., Focus on the Family
Bishop Charles V. Grahmann, Diocese of Dallas
Mr. Donald P. Hodel, Pres., Christian Coalition
Rev. Dr. D. James Kennedy, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church
Bishop John R. Keating, Archdiocese of Arlington
Dr. Richard D. Land, Pres., Southern Baptist Convention
Archbishop William J. Levada, Archdiocese of San Francisco
Adam Cardinal Maida, Archdiocese of Detroit
Bishop James T. McHugh, Diocese of Camden
Bishop John J. Myers, Diocese of Peoria
John Cardinal O'Connor, Archdiocese of New York
Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, Pres., Institute on Religion & Public Life
Dr. Ralph Reed, Christian Coalition
Dr. Robert A. Seiple, Pres., World Vision
Theodosius, Primate, Orthodox Church in America
