Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, November 7, 1993                   TAG: 9312100283
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: D3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: KEITH A. FOURNIER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

'RELIGIOUS CLEANSING'

By religious cleansing I mean the current hostility and bigotry toward religion and people of faith, that are leading to covert and overt attempts to remove any religious influence from the public arena. How? Not by physical extermination - at least not in the United States - but by political and legal containment. The religious cleansers, most of whom are secularists, often don't make their agenda this clear, but their actions and rhetoric betray their true intentions.

For example, they use pejorative language - intolerant, extremist, fundamentalist, zealot, fanatic - to smear religious people. The term "fundamentalist" is used often, and for a very strategic reason. As John Green, a University of Akron politial science professor, has rightly observed, the word is now synonymous with descriptions such as "intolerant, nasty, narrow-minded hayseed, poorly educated and anti-intellectual." Who wants people like that having a vital role in public affairs and policies?

Religious cleansers have also effectively used the media to demean people of faith. The movie and television industries usually portray religious people, especially Christians, as either bungling morons, or naive and ill-equipped counselors, or con men ready to pounce on innocent victims. The news media does its share of religious cleansing too. Characteristic is a Washington Post news article that described Christians as "poor, uneducated and easy to command."

Cartoonists have had a heyday too. One - Pat Oliphant - recently went so far as to depict Christians as rats, dragging the Republican Party into the "Fundamentalist Christian Mission" in order to save it.

Tragically, all too many people have embraced such stereotypical labels and images, allowing the myths to shape their perceptions and responses. This is how bigotry breeds.

Some in the news media have begun to acknowledge the presence of religious hostility in their own ranks. Political reporter Laurence Barrett of Time magazine recently wrote in the Columbia Journalism Review, "Though the [religious] movement has significant internal differences, we tend to depict it as monolithic." Barrett argues that this often happens because few journalists are religious followers themselves. Therefore, he says, "it's an easy call to recognize that we need a broad sensitivity check. ... [W]hatever we think of its agenda, we must get ourselves to church, if only as observers.``

He's right. Consider the movement referred to as the religious right. It's anything but monolithic. Politically, it is a mixture of Republicans, Democrats and independents who share common social concerns and moral convictions. Religiously, it's varied, too, encompassing people from many different religious traditions.

I am the head of a public-interest law firm and educational organization called the American Center for Law and Justice. We are dedicated to pro-liberty, pro-life and pro-family causes. Its founder, religious broadcaster Pat Robertson, an evangelical Protestant Christian, hired me, a Roman Catholic Christian, to direct the organization. Among our full-time legal staff are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and Jewish Christians. We do not agree on all theological issues, nor do we all share the same political positions. And yet we have formed an alliance to defend civil and religious liberties.

Contrary to what many secularists want the public to believe, we have just as much right to contend in the marketplace of ideas as any other group. We are not extremists or fanatics. We believe our culture needs to be desecularized, not secularized further; that the unborn are full human persons from conception and therefore have a right to life equal to those outside the womb; that religious speech is speech and therefore protected by the First Amendment; and that no arm of our government - the Supreme Court included - is infallible in its judgments. We're against secularism, but that does not mean we wish to replace a democratic form of government with a theocratic one, as many secularists claim we do. We just don't want the constitutional right of the freedom of religion turned into freedom from religion.

I readily admit that some in our number have fueled the fires of fear that the media have so often fanned into destructive flames. We have used overly strident rhetoric. More often than not, it has been in a sincere desire to express the urgency of our cause. Despite our intentions, however, we must learn to exercise this ancient art more carefully so we do not unduly alienate those we wish to persuade.

On the other hand, even granting such faults, lampooning people of faith and working to exclude them from the marketplace of ideas are still unjustified. The public arena must remain open to all people, including those who hold deep religious convictions, so all of us are truly free to expess our beliefs and live according to our dictates - whether we are in a place of worship or a community center or before a school board or serving on a city council or in a federal office.

As a person of faith, I will continue to help whoever will listen to better understand me, other religious people and our common goals. I will continue to be open, direct and honest, and I will strive especially to help Christians keep their rhetoric in check. I will also continue to invite others, including religious cleansers, into our churches, not merely to come and sit as observers but hopefully to become participants.

In turn, I ask for secularists to purge their ranks of religious bigots and become true civil libertarians - dedicated to the freedom of expression and exercise of all people, regardless of their religious convictions. Religious bigotry and oppression are as wrong as racial or ethnic bigotry and oppression. The religious cleansers must go.

\ Keith A. Fournier is executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice in Virginia Beach, and author of "Religious Cleansing in the American Republic."