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20.Edward M. Kennedy: Truth and Tolerance in America

Thank you very much Professor Kombay for that generous introduction. And
let me say, that I never expected to hear such kind words from Dr.
Falwell. So in return, I have an invitation of my own. On January 20th,
1985, I hope Dr. Falwell will say a prayer at the inauguration of the next
Democratic President of the United States. Now, Dr. Falwell, I’m not
exactly sure how you feel about that. You might not appreciate the
President, but the Democrats certainly would appreciate the prayer.
Actually, a number of people in Washington were surprised that I was
invited to speak here -- and even more surprised when I accepted the
invitation. They seem to think that it’s easier for a camel to pass
through the eye of the needle than for a Kennedy to come to the campus of
Liberty Baptist College. In honor of our meeting, I have asked Dr.
Falwell, as your Chancellor, to permit all the students an extra hour next
Saturday night before curfew. And in return, I have promised to watch the
Old Time Gospel Hour next Sunday morning.
I realize that my visit may be a little controversial. But as many of you
have heard, Dr. Falwell recently sent me a membership in the Moral
Majority -- and I didn't even apply for it. And I wonder if that means
that I'm a member in good standing.
[Falwell: Somewhat]
Somewhat, he says.
This is, of course, a nonpolitical speech which is probably best under the
circumstances. Since I am not a candidate for President, it would
certainly be inappropriate to ask for your support in this election and
probably inaccurate to thank you for it in the last one.
I have come here to discuss my beliefs about faith and country, tolerance
and truth in America. I know we begin with certain disagreements; I
strongly suspect that at the end of the evening some of our disagreements
will remain. But I also hope that tonight and in the months and years
ahead, we will always respect the right of others to differ, that we will
never lose sight of our own fallibility, that we will view ourselves with
a sense of perspective and a sense of humor. After all, in the New
Testament, even the Disciples had to be taught to look first to the beam
in their own eyes, and only then to the mote in their neighbor’s eyes.
I am mindful of that counsel. I am an American and a Catholic; I love my
country and treasure my faith. But I do not assume that my conception of
patriotism or policy is invariably correct, or that my convictions about
religion should command any greater respect than any other faith in this
pluralistic society. I believe there surely is such a thing as truth, but
who among us can claim a monopoly on it?
There are those who do, and their own words testify to their intolerance.
For example, because the Moral Majority has worked with members of
different denomination, one fundamentalist group has denounced Dr. [Jerry]
Falwell for hastening the ecumenical church and for “yoking together with
Roman Catholics, Mormons, and others.” I am relieved that Dr. Falwell does
not regard that as a sin, and on this issue, he himself has become the
target of narrow prejudice. When people agree on public policy, they ought
to be able to work together, even while they worship in diverse ways. For
truly we are all yoked together as Americans, and the yoke is the happy
one of individual freedom and mutual respect.
But in saying that, we cannot and should not turn aside from a deeper and
more pressing question -- which is whether and how religion should
influence government. A generation ago, a presidential candidate had to
prove his independence of undue religious influence in public life, and he
had to do so partly at the insistence of evangelical Protestants. John
Kennedy said at that time: “I believe in an America where there is no
religious bloc voting of any kind.” Only twenty years later, another
candidate was appealing to a[n] evangelical meeting as a religious bloc.
Ronald Reagan said to 15 thousand evangelicals at the Roundtable in
Dallas: “ I know that you can’t endorse me. I want you to know I endorse
you and what you are doing.”
To many Americans, that pledge was a sign and a symbol of a dangerous
breakdown in the separation of church and state. Yet this principle, as
vital as it is, is not a simplistic and rigid command. Separation of
church and state cannot mean an absolute separation between moral
principles and political power. The challenge today is to recall the
origin of the principle, to define its purpose, and refine its application
to the politics of the present.
The founders of our nation had long and bitter experience with the state,
as both the agent and the adversary of particular religious views. In
colonial Maryland, Catholics paid a double land tax, and in Pennsylvania
they had to list their names on a public roll -- an ominous precursor of
the first Nazi laws against the Jews. And Jews in turn faced
discrimination in all of the thirteen original Colonies. Massachusetts
exiled Roger Williams and his congregation for contending that civil
government had no right to enforce the Ten Commandments. Virginia harassed
Baptist teachers, and also established a religious test for public
service, writing into the law that no “popish followers” could hold any
office.
But during the Revolution, Catholics, Jews, and Non-Conformists all
rallied to the cause and fought valiantly for the American commonwealth --
for John Winthrop’s “city upon a hill.” Afterwards, when the Constitution
was ratified and then amended, the framers gave freedom for all religion,
and from any established religion, the very first place in the Bill of
Rights.
Indeed the framers themselves professed very different faiths: Washington
was an Episcopalian, Jefferson a deist, and Adams a Calvinist. And
although he had earlier opposed toleration, John Adams later contributed
to the building of Catholic churches, and so did George Washington. Thomas
Jefferson said his proudest achievement was not the presidency, or the
writing the Declaration of Independence, but drafting the Virginia Statute
of Religious Freedom. He stated the vision of the first Americans and the
First Amendment very clearly: “The God who gave us life gave us liberty at
the same time.”
The separation of church and state can sometimes be frustrating for women
and men of religious faith. They may be tempted to misuse government in
order to impose a value which they cannot persuade others to accept. But
once we succumb to that temptation, we step onto a slippery slope where
everyone’s freedom is at risk. Those who favor censorship should recall
that one of the first books ever burned was the first English translation
of the Bible. As President Eisenhower warned in 1953, “Don’t join the book
burners...the right to say ideas, the right to record them, and the right
to have them accessible to others is unquestioned -- or this isn’t
America.” And if that right is denied, at some future day the torch can be
turned against any other book or any other belief. Let us never forget:
Today’s Moral Majority could become tomorrow’s persecuted minority.
The danger is as great now as when the founders of the nation first saw
it. In 1789, their fear was of factional strife among dozens of
denominations. Today there are hundreds -- and perhaps even thousands of
faiths -- and millions of Americans who are outside any fold. Pluralism
obviously does not and cannot mean that all of them are right; but it does
mean that there are areas where government cannot and should not decide
what it is wrong to believe, to think, to read, and to do. As Professor
Larry Tribe, one of the nation’s leading constitutional scholars has
written, “Law in a non-theocratic state cannot measure religious truth,
nor can the state impose it."
The real transgression occurs when religion wants government to tell
citizens how to live uniquely personal parts of their lives. The failure
of Prohibition proves the futility of such an attempt when a majority or
even a substantial minority happens to disagree. Some questions may be
inherently individual ones, or people may be sharply divided about whether
they are. In such cases, like Prohibition and abortion, the proper role of
religion is to appeal to the conscience of the individual, not the
coercive power of the state.
But there are other questions which are inherently public in nature, which
we must decide together as a nation, and where religion and religious
values can and should speak to our common conscience. The issue of nuclear
war is a compelling example. It is a moral issue; it will be decided by
government, not by each individual; and to give any effect to the moral
values of their creed, people of faith must speak directly about public
policy. The Catholic bishops and the Reverend Billy Graham have every
right to stand for the nuclear freeze, and Dr. Falwell has every right to
stand against it.
There must be standards for the exercise of such leadership, so that the
obligations of belief will not be debased into an opportunity for mere
political advantage. But to take a stand at all when a question is both
properly public and truly moral is to stand in a long and honored
tradition. Many of the great evangelists of the 1800s were in the
forefront of the abolitionist movement. In our own time, the Reverend
William Sloane Coffin challenged the morality of the war in Vietnam. Pope
John XXIII renewed the Gospel’s call to social justice. And Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr. who was the greatest prophet of this century, awakened
our nation and its conscience to the evil of racial segregation.
Their words have blessed our world. And who now wishes they had been
silent? Who would bid Pope John Paul [II] to quiet his voice against the
oppression in Eastern Europe, the violence in Central America, or the
crying needs of the landless, the hungry, and those who are tortured in so
many of the dark political prisons of our time?
President Kennedy, who said that “no religious body should seek to impose
its will,” also urged religious leaders to state their views and give
their commitment when the public debate involved ethical issues. In
drawing the line between imposed will and essential witness, we keep
church and state separate, and at the same time we recognize that the City
of God should speak to the civic duties of men and women.
There are four tests which draw that line and define the difference.
First, we must respect the integrity of religion itself.
People of conscience should be careful how they deal in the word of their
Lord. In our own history, religion has been falsely invoked to sanction
prejudice -- even slavery -- to condemn labor unions and public spending
for the poor. I believe that the prophecy, ”The poor you have always with
you” is an indictment, not a commandment. And I respectfully suggest that
God has taken no position on the Department of Education -- and that a
balanced budget constitutional amendment is a matter of economic analysis,
and not heavenly appeals.
Religious values cannot be excluded from every public issue; but not every
public issue involves religious values. And how ironic it is when those
very values are denied in the name of religion. For example, we are
sometimes told that it is wrong to feed the hungry, but that mission is an
explicit mandate given to us in the 25th chapter of Matthew.
Second, we must respect the independent judgments of conscience.
Those who proclaim moral and religious values can offer counsel, but they
should not casually treat a position on a public issue as a test of fealty
to faith. Just as I disagree with the Catholic bishops on tuition tax
credits -- which I oppose -- so other Catholics can and do disagree with
the hierarchy, on the basis of honest conviction, on the question of the
nuclear freeze.
Thus, the controversy about the Moral Majority arises not only from its
views, but from its name -- which, in the minds of many, seems to imply
that only one set of public policies is moral and only one majority can
possibly be right. Similarly, people are and should be perplexed when the
religious lobbying group Christian Voice publishes a morality index of
congressional voting records, which judges the morality of senators by
their attitude toward Zimbabwe and Taiwan.
Let me offer another illustration. Dr. Falwell has written--and I quote:
“To stand against Israel is to stand against God.” Now there is no one in
the Senate who has stood more firmly for Israel than I have. Yet, I do not
doubt the faith of those on the other side. Their error is not one of
religion, but of policy. And I hope to be able to persuade them that they
are wrong in terms of both America’s interest and the justice of Israel’s
cause.
Respect for conscience is most in jeopardy, and the harmony of our diverse
society is most at risk, when we re-establish, directly or indirectly, a
religious test for public office. That relic of the colonial era, which is
specifically prohibited in the Constitution, has reappeared in recent
years. After the last election, the Reverend James Robison warned
President Reagan no to surround himself, as president before him had,
“with the counsel of the ungodly.” I utterly reject any such standard for
any position anywhere in public service. Two centuries ago, the victims
were Catholics and Jews. In the 1980s the victims could be atheists; in
some other day or decade, they could be the members of the Thomas Road
Baptist Church. Indeed, in 1976 I regarded it as unworthy and un-American
when some people said or hinted that Jimmy Carter should not be president
because he was a born again Christian. We must never judge the fitness of
individuals to govern on the bas[is] of where they worship, whether they
follow Christ or Moses, whether they are called “born again” or “ungodly.”
Where it is right to apply moral values to public life, let all of us
avoid the temptation to be self-righteous and absolutely certain of
ourselves. And if that temptation ever comes, let us recall Winston
Churchill’s humbling description of an intolerant and inflexible
colleague: “There but for the grace of God goes God.”
Third, in applying religious values, we must respect the integrity of
public debate.
In that debate, faith is no substitute for facts. Critics may oppose the
nuclear freeze for what they regard as moral reasons. They have every
right to argue that any negotiation with the Soviets is wrong, or that any
accommodation with them sanctions their crimes, or that no agreement can
be good enough and therefore all agreements only increase the chance of
war. I do not believe that, but it surely does not violate the standard of
fair public debate to say it. What does violate that standard, what the
opponents of the nuclear freeze have no right to do, is to assume that
they are infallible, and so any argument against the freeze will do,
whether it is false or true.
The nuclear freeze proposal is not unilateral, but bilateral -- with equal
restraints on the United States and the Soviet Union. The nuclear freeze
does not require that we trust the Russians, but demands full and
effective verification. The nuclear freeze does not concede a Soviet lead
in nuclear weapons, but recognizes that human beings in each great power
already have in their fallible hands the overwhelming capacity to remake
into a pile of radioactive rubble the earth which God has made.
There is no morality in the mushroom cloud. The black rain of nuclear
ashes will fall alike on the just and the unjust. And then it will be too
late to wish that we had done the real work of this atomic age -- which is
to seek a world that is neither red nor dead.
I am perfectly prepared to debate the nuclear freeze on policy grounds, or
moral ones. But we should not be forced to discuss phantom issues or false
charges. They only deflect us form the urgent task of deciding how best to
prevent a planet divided from becoming a planet destroyed.
And it does not advance the debate to contend that the arms race is more
divine punishment than human problem, or that in any event, the final days
are near. As Pope John said two decades ago, at the opening of the Second
Vatican Council: “We must beware of those who burn with zeal, but are not
endowed with much sense... we must disagree with the prophets of doom, who
are always forecasting disasters, as though the end of the earth was at
hand.” The message which echoes across the years is very clear: The earth
is still here; and if we wish to keep it, a prophecy of doom is no
alternative to a policy of arms control.
Fourth, and finally, we must respect the motives of those who exercise
their right to disagree.
We sorely test our ability to live together if we readily question each
other’s integrity. It may be harder to restrain our feelings when moral
principles are at stake, for they go to the deepest wellsprings of our
being. But the more our feelings diverge, the more deeply felt they are,
the greater is our obligation to grant the sincerity and essential decency
of our fellow citizens on the other side.
Those who favor E.R.A [Equal Rights Amendment] are not “antifamily” or
“blasphemers.” And their purpose is not “an attack on the Bible.” Rather,
we believe this is the best way to fix in our national firmament the ideal
that not only all men, but all people are created equal. Indeed, my
mother, who strongly favors E.R.A., would be surprised to hear that she is
anti-family. For my part, I think of the amendment’s opponents as wrong on
the issue, but not as lacking in moral character
I could multiply the instances of name-calling, sometimes on both sides.
Dr. Falwell is not a “warmonger.” And “liberal clergymen” are not, as the
Moral Majority suggested in a recent letter, equivalent to “Soviet
sympathizers.” The critics of official prayer in public schools are not
“Pharisees”; many of them are both civil libertarians and believers, who
think that families should pray more at home with their children, and
attend church and synagogue more faithfully. And people are not sexist
because they stand against abortion, and they are not murderers because
they believe in free choice. Nor does it help anyone’s cause to shout such
epithets, or to try and shout a speaker down -- which is what happened
last April when Dr. Falwell was hissed and heckled at Harvard. So I am
doubly grateful for your courtesy here this evening. That was not
Harvard’s finest hour, but I am happy to say that the loudest applause
from the Harvard audience came in defense of Dr. Falwell’s right to speak.
In short, I hope for an America where neither "fundamentalist" nor
"humanist" will be a dirty word, but a fair description of the different
ways in which people of good will look at life and into their own souls.
I hope for an America where no president, no public official, no
individual will ever be deemed a greater or lesser American because of
religious doubt -- or religious belief.
I hope for an America where the power of faith will always burn brightly,
but where no modern Inquisition of any kind will ever light the fires of
fear, coercion, or angry division.
I hope for an America where we can all contend freely and vigorously, but
where we will treasure and guard those standards of civility which alone
make this nation safe for both democracy and diversity.
Twenty years ago this fall, in New York City, President Kennedy met for
the last time with a Protestant assembly. The atmosphere had been
transformed since his earlier address during the 1960 campaign to the
Houston Ministerial Association. He had spoken there to allay suspicions
about his Catholicism, and to answer those who claimed that on the day of
his baptism, he was somehow disqualified from becoming President. His
speech in Houston and then his election drove that prejudice from the
center of our national life. Now, three years later, in November of 1963,
he was appearing before the Protestant Council of New York City to
reaffirm what he regarded as some fundamental truths. On that occasion,
John Kennedy said: “The family of man is not limited to a single race or
religion, to a single city, or country...the family of man is nearly 3
billion strong. Most of its members are not white and most of them are not
Christian.” And as President Kennedy reflected on that reality, he
restated an ideal for which he had lived his life -- that “the members of
this family should be at peace with one another.”
That ideal shines across all the generations of our history and all the
ages of our faith, carrying with it the most ancient dream. For as the
Apostle Paul wrote long ago in Romans: “If it be possible, as much as it
lieth in you, live peaceable with all men.”
I believe it is possible; the choice lies within us; as fellow citizens,
let us live peaceable with each other; as fellow human beings, let us
strive to live peaceably with men and women everywhere. Let that be our
purpose and our prayer, yours and mine -- for ourselves, for our country,
and for all the world.

　