Families Faith and Freedom

Have you noticed how much attention is being paid to the families and the faith of the presidential and vice presidential candidates? Their children fascinate me: Barack Obama’s little girls during the Democratic national convention and Sarah Palin’s five children as she was presented as the Republican candidate for vice-president; Joe Biden’s son tearing up as he talked about how he and his bother call their step-mother Mother; and John McCain’s children surrounding their adopted sister from India. This presidential campaign has brought us more emphasis on family than any I remember, and I am grateful. I believe we have four fine families before us.
I appreciated Saddle Back Church and Rick Warren hosting a discussion with both Presidential candidates on the same night. We were enabled to hear something from the mouths of the candidates about their own faith in God and to get a feel for how they try to live out their faith. Rick Warren said, “I believe in separation of church and state, but not in separation of faith from politics.” I think he is right. We benefit from hearing the candidates talk about what they believe. Thank God for the freedom of religion we have in America. It is freedom for all religions.
A survey was conducted by the First Amendment Center. See http://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/about.aspx?item=FAC_publications. The results showed that many people don’t understand our religious freedom.
28% of the American people, it said, believed that freedom of worship was never meant for fringe groups. They must not know that Baptists were a fringe group in the early days of the colonies. So were Catholics. So were Jews and Quakers and about any other religious group you can name.
46% strongly agreed that our founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation. Incredible! Our founders knew from the beginning that we were a mixture of orthodox Christians and Universalists and Deists like Thomas Jefferson, as well as Jews and others.
38% strongly agreed that the U. S. Constitution established a Christian nation, while 17% mildly agreed. How can that be? Have they not read the First Amendment to the Constitution?
Compare all this to dear old Roger Williams who founded Rhode Island and the First Baptist Church of Providence, Rhode Island: "It is the will and command of God that . . . a permission of the most Paganish, Jewish, Turkish or anti-Christian conscience and worships be granted to all men, in all nations and countries." One of my teachers, Dr. Walter Shurden says, “The Baptist point of view is freedom of conscience in the will of God for all people. No exceptions. None. Zilch.”