Rare Jewel Magazine

"Lips that speak knowledge are a rare jewel."
- Proverbs 20:15

Elevating Freedom to Sacred Status
Rare Jewel Insight: September 14, 2004

Table of Contents:

COMMENTARY
"Elevating Freedom to Sacred Status"
ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO...
"Shifting Sands"
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Rare Jewel Ministries Hits the Road

1. COMMENTARY

"Elevating Freedom to Sacred Status"

(by Tim Ewing, Publisher)

One thread at the recent Republican National Convention (RNC) concerned me--even more so since nobody is talking about it, neither the secular nor the Christian media.

What should trouble Christian patriots is the Republicans' elevation of the concept of "freedom" to a sort of sacred status.

In prime-time speeches during the first three days of the convention we heard:

"We have to love our freedom for the goodness it makes possible." "The defense of freedom is always our first responsibility. All other responsibilities come second." (Sen John McCain)

"Have faith in the power of freedom." "There is nothing more powerful than freedom." [Freedom is] "the long-term answer to ending global terrorism." (Former Mayor Rudolph Giulini)

"Have faith in free enterprise, faith in the resourcefulness of the American people and faith in the U.S. economy." (Gov Arnold Schwarzenegger)

"Only freedom can bring lasting peace." (Vice President Dick Cheney)

The official 2004 Republican Party Platform states in its Preamble, "Today, the Republican Party gathers to re-nominate a man who carries on the best traditions of our Party by carrying a banner of freedom."

"Freedom" conspicuously is being emphasized by the Republican Party during this election season. There's no doubt why: Rallying around freedom is a great-sounding, emotional strategy of unity--most citizens in our nation will favor the promotion of "freedom" regardless of their party affiliation or social status. President Bush will no doubt score political points for his party giving exalted status to "freedom."

With due regard to the concept of freedom, is it worthy of this kind of treatment? Does freedom really solve all our problems and bring lasting peace to a nation? Is freedom the source of all the prosperity that our nation has enjoyed over the past centuries?

The "freedom" that the Founding Fathers talked and wrote about, the "freedom" that they built our nation and our government upon, was invariably anchored to Christian Biblical principles of morality as the basis for our public policy and law. Why? The Founders viewed freedom as a gift from God, a gift that should be respected and carefully maintained.

They understood the Biblical principle that mankind is fallen, is born with a sinful nature, and left to itself will tend towards evil, greed, and a lust for power. That's why our federal government was designed in three branches, each with checks and balances on the others. The Founders understood that freedom, removed from its moral underpinning, would easily be exploited as blanket permission for selfish schemes by the powerful, pursuit of personal pleasure at the expense of society as a whole, all the evil aspects of unfettered human nature elevated to a national scale.

The Republicans' elevation of "freedom" at the RNC with virtually no mention of the essential relationship to Christian moral foundations as enunciated by the Founders reflects an unfortunate cultural mentality in our nation today. The danger of worshiping "freedom" as an end in itself is exemplified by Cheney's comments about same-sex marriage the week before the RNC: "...with respect to the question of relationships, my general view is freedom means freedom for everyone... people ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to..."

This is exactly the kind of abuse of freedom the Founders warned us against.

Freedom is not a license to throw out God's absolute truth and make up our own rules. This is why President George Washington stated in his farewell address, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports."

Washington's Vice President and our nation's second President, John Adams, wrote to Thomas Jefferson in 1813 that, "The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite... And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity." Adams had earlier written, "Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity [happiness] under all governments and in all the combinations of human society."

Noah Webster, Revolutionary War veteran and compiler of the dictionary that bears his name, wrote in 1832 that "Our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion."

On the final night of the RNC, George Bush made one comment at the end of his speech that positioned Freedom closer to how the Founders defined it: "Freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every man and woman in this world."

Thank you, President Bush, for reminding us that a freedom which is tied to God is what we stand for in America, a responsible freedom with accountability to God's unchanging principles for culture and government; not a "freedom" to be irresponsible and break from our nation's Christian foundation.

The Great Experiment of the Founders was to build a free society based on the eternal truths found in the Bible. Freedom based on Christian principles will bring peace and prosperity. Pursuing a freedom that abolishes Christian principles will bring cultural and national demise.

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2. ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO...

"Shifting Sands"

(by Rick Marschall, Managing Editor)

"Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead."

Those words are cryptic today to most Americans, but exactly a century ago they electrified a nation and made governments stir across the world.

To translate, these are not names of viruses, or of Olympic sports teams from obscure third-world countries. In 1904 an American, actually of Greek lineage, Ionnis Pedicaris, doing business in Morocco, was kidnapped by a local Sultan, Ahmad Ibn Muhammad el- Raisuli. Pedicaris became the latest pawn in the endless and obscure factionalism (hug your brother one week; slit his throat the next) in the shifting sands f North Africa. The Sultan's purpose chiefly was to embarrass the Moroccan government by showing the US and the world how banditry and kidnapping could occur within its tenuous sovereignty with impunity. In this, he succeeded.

In the United States, meanwhile, "sovereignty" was a concept with new resonance. The century recently had commenced with an adjusted sense of Manifest Destiny for Americans. Earlier in our history it meant the inevitable occupation of a vast continent; very recently it meant the elimination of a European presence in this hemisphere. But the Spanish-American War's victories implied more than a flirtation with old-world flavored imperialism, as Democrats had charged in the 1900 election. No: the average citizen of America -- where prosperity was spreading, population increasing, technology bringing telephones, autos, movies, popular music, and leisure time to the masses -- could sense that the American Century was dawning.

Theodore Roosevelt, the new president, in 1904 embarked on a campaign to succeed himself after assuming the office of an assassinated President McKinley almost three years earlier. TR embodied the new nation's confidence, patriotism, and exuberance.

He also reflected what was once the feisty righteousness of the average American. TR's reaction to the kidnapping of an American on faraway shores: a State Department telegram to Morocco with the simple phrase, "Pedicaris alive or Raisuli dead," accompanied by orders to shift battle craft from the Atlantic fleet to Moroccan waters.

It was the dreamy days of summer -- even the Republican convention, duly re-nominating TR, was dull -- and this crisis, that message, sent a charge through common folks' spirits and distant governments' consciousness.

x x x

Pedicaris was released, by the way. A different outcome might have assured a bigger place on the pages of history books. Subsequently the rest of the world -- common bandits and haughty rulers alike -- had more respect for the United States. Roosevelt, often caricatured as bellicose, was proud that not a single gun was shot in military action during his presidency, even though American might and prestige both expanded lustily.

By the way, Theodore Roosevelt, whose re-nomination at the convention was briefly overshadowed by his foreign-policy episode outside the proceedings, was re-elected. By the largest majority in a popular election up to that time.

Now for some footnotes: 100 years ago, communications were spottier than today. Unknown to the State Department, Pedicaris had actually surrendered his citizenship shortly before this incident, and so was not a citizen; and he had actually been released, halfway around the world, just before the ultimatum was issued back home. When John Hay (the Secretary of State who had been Lincoln's private secretary and friend of TR's father) released the message, it was likely an accurate estimation of the President's sentiments; its "Road to Morocco" was actually through the Republican Convention, where its impact could first be aired. TR, who was justly proud of his many other achievements, seldom referred to l'affaire Pedicaris.

(If the episode sounds vaguely familiar to readers, perhaps some movie buffs remember the 1975 movie The Wind and Lion, a corrupted resurrection of events: Sean Connery played the Sultan; in a pioneer piece of political correctness, Candice Bergen played a kidnapped Widow Pedicaris -- by movie's end, of course, falling in love with her captor -- and Brian Keith rounded out the family affair by playing a great Theodore Roosevelt. In the movie, a ragtag group of Marines did "invade" Morocco?)

x x x

These trivia facts in no way diminish the lessons learned then, nor the lessons we can learn today.

Fevered over-response would have assured that the episode of 100 years ago this month would live more in the nation's memory? so would have a spineless Presidential response of indecision. Rather, once, America's word was enough to mean something, whether it was a promise or a threat. And TR's stance turned a corner for the nation, because the Moslem world had been a thorn in America's side long before Raisuli. Early presidents had to deal with murderous Barbary pirates. The line in the Marine hymn, "? to the shores of Tripoli," refers to thugs who bedeviled America virtually from our inception as a nation.

But what TR showed was proper for a nation, should teach us what's right today -- still, as a nation -- but also as individuals.

The Moslem world -- its aggressive, imperialistic, virulently anti-Christian component, anyway -- remains a thorn in America's side, to understate the case. Moslem extremists are not going to wake up, en masse, some morning, and love Christians or at least decide to live in peaceful co-existence. They hate our rock 'n' roll, and fast food, and pornography, and -- frankly -- a lot of things we should also regret about America.

Some of them hate what we do, not what we are. In that case, in our own "shifting sands" -- foreign policy, trade policies, alliances with other countries that oppress Moslems and Arabs and hide behind US skirts -- we can adjust matters, if America once again tends to its own self-interests. Every single great nation of the past has crumbled when it took to the imperial robes.

But there are pockets of Radical Islam that profess hate of Jesus Christ, not just of America. This conflict has widened in spots to be a clash of religions. As Christian patriots we should be suspicious of geopolitical arguments of the cabal known as "neoconservatives," many of them in high government positions, former Marxists and current interventionists whose agendas are seldom nationalist. Beware, too, of appeals to be "sensitive" (John Kerry's terminology) to Islam while, increasingly, Christians are being slaughtered. Why have hundreds of thousands of our brothers and sisters in the Sudan been martyred for their faith -- with few Americans aware of the nightmare, much less active against it? No oil in the Sudan? Not on Israel's to-do list? Not sexy enough for TV news?

Our response to those sorts of attacks -- not just on our national interests, but on our spiritual interests -- will be a demonstration of how strong our identities are as Christians in America, whether we define our worldview, or have others -- the media, mainstream religion, politicians -- define it for us.