Media Musings: Religious freedom can’t be lost
Will D. Campbell has long been a voice for civil rights and freedom during his long career as a Baptist minister of the South, a farmer, a writer of a dozen books, and a man who believes morality is greater than any denomination.
So now he comes in a Nashville Eye piece in The Tennessean to tell us of the Rev. Don Beisswenger, who, at 73, is facing six months in federal prison and a $1,000 fine for taking six steps past a “No trespasing” sign at Ft. Benning, Ga.
Beisswenger’s story is just one of many, told and untold, in the media. Anti-war protestors have met for years at Drake University in Des Moines. They held a forum on Nov. 15 and talked of the non-violent philosophies of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi and how to convey their feelings about Iraq using civil disobedience, the same tactic used by Beisswener.
Then, early this month, federal subpoenas arrived at the doorstep of the sponsor, the National Lawyers Guild, demanding a leadership list, its office location, and its annual reports. The Guild moved to federal court to squash the subpoenas.
In a rare move, the federal prosecutors said they wanted to learn only about one person who had scaled a security fence at an Iowa National Guard base in protest a day after the forum. But to rebut what was becoming a public matter over e-mail, prosecutor Stephen Patrick O’Meara said his office did not prosecute anybody involved in peaceful protests under the protection of the First Amendment.
The New York Times ran a long story Feb. 10 detailing how the American Civil Liberties Union is fighting to protect this activist organization and such members as the Catholic Peace Ministry and Wendy Vasquez, 52, a clerical worker who was arrested outside the National Guard base and in earlier years protester the war in El Salvador.
There is a much greater story here that is going under-reported or ignored. Across the nation, there are many clergy and men and women of faith who are lifting their voices on behalf of the poor, the homeless, the needy, and against the war and are getting scant coverage. Why? Because they are viewed as members of the marginal left politically, yet it is nonsensical to make such a ridiculous charge.
Two examples suffice: the ideas and work of the Rev. Dr. James A. Forbes, Jr., senior minister of the famous Riverside Church in New York and the Rev. William A. Graham, dean of Harvard Divinity School.
Dr. Forbes was asked by the mayor of New York to conduct a service marking the first anniversary of 9-11. Vice President Cheney represented the White House and sat on the front row. Dr. Forbes walked with Cheney to his car imploring him to allow the many people of the cloth who were concerned about the moral issues surrounding the voiceless and the war to meet with the President. Cheney turned his back and walked away.
The Rev. Graham, an internationally ranked theologian and scholar, appeared on “Sixty Minutes” to discuss the evangelical right’s rise to power. Characterizing them as “The Army of God,” he voiced his concern about its media-driven concepts of religion.
Such criticism brings brutal, vitriolic attacks from writers such as Tim Chavez, who act as if they are under siege by the non-existent liberal media. One can only wonder what Chavez fears to cause him to be so willing to attack those who have different views than his about the nature of God and Man.
What has become a central issue, beyond the absence of constant reporting on religion, is the concern that mainstream religious thought and belief is being replaced by such a militant and intolerant stream of religion that freedoms can be lost.
Dissent is the lifeblood of our democracy. Freedom of religions is also, and when that gets too far out of balance for our nation, the tyranny of religion becomes all too possible.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)