THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 9, 1994 TAG: 9410080133
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 06 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
SOURCE: Beth Barber
LENGTH: Medium: 53 lines
Regent University held a remarkable session the other day among ``liberal'' and ``conservative'' commentators about rights, responsibilities and religion.
It was remarkable because Regent, whose founder and chancellor is Pat Robertson, invited some of the severest critics of its viewpoints. It was remarkable because they came. And it was remarkable because on major issues some panelists were both right and wrong, at least by the gospel according to me.
``We are entitled to the marketplace of ideas whether our position is tolerant or not,'' said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. `` . . . The price of freedom in America is to have to tolerate the message that Jesus is the only way.''
Tolerate that message, yes. Embrace it, no. The difference lies between putting a Nativity on the courthouse lawn at Christmas, which acknowledges a religious belief, and, say, outlawing abortion, which coerces others into it.
``Women can order their lives,'' conservative columnist Mona Charen told a sympathetic audience at Regent, ``so they don't have to have abortions.''
Of course they can. Most do. Most who don't didn't intend ``disorder'' and don't repeat it. A price of freedom in America is to tolerate the majority decision, unless and until peaceful persuasion alters it, that abortion, though not good, is nonetheless tolerable at times.
I once sat in a control room watching local TV host Joel Rubin interview Ralph Reed of another Robertson-associated organization, the Christian Coalition. On a nearby monitor, talk-show host Montel Williams was well into the day's topic: Men Who Date Women Who Are Really Men. I remember thinking: Maybe Ralph and the Christian right are onto something.
Whatever the source of a code of personal conduct that produces responsible citizens, caring and competent parents, mannered and accomplished children, contributing members of society, it is due credit, even emulation. The Christian Right fosters religious beliefs and a political agenda which in large part I don't share, but it's owed more credit for its achievements and more tolerance of its voice than it's gotten.
Thing is, though, like the audience before the Regent panel, it often begrudges others the very tolerance it demands. That's a failing of both left and right, as the great American middle well knows. Just as it picks over the vegetables, it shops the marketplace of ideas, swallowing no theology or ideology whole. Yet it arrives at a remarkable consensus on rights and responsibilities by a variety of religious and unreligious routes. That middle might make deadly dull panels. It also makes this country work. by CNB