[excerpt from First the Gospel, Then Politics …, 1999, Vol. 1, now out of print]

On several occasions in the 1990s I was in written communication with Ira Glasser, then executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). One reason for writing was in response to an ACLU fund-raising letter he penned, using certain figures of the so-called “religious right” to pillory. His language declaimed their “hateful speeches,” their “massively funded and dangerous political force,” “their dangerous, anti-liberty agenda,” and that “(w)hat we face today is an energetic and resourceful ultra-right-wing religious movement ….  hell-bent on continuing the civil liberties assaults …. ” He then itemized three “anti-liberty” agenda points of the “religious right”: 1) “Break down the wall of separation of church and state,” by “mandating prayer in the public schools and forcing taxpayers to support religious activity”; 2) “Trample the privacy rights of millions by restricting women’s reproductive choices,” by “having anti-choice Justices appointed …. in electing anti-choice lawmakers …. in having their onerous and frightening anti-abortion state laws upheld …. ”; and 3) “Attack the ACLU” in a “battle” by “those who place themselves in opposition to liberty” (emphasis in the original).

What is noteworthy in his language is the abundant use of extreme adjectives that help serve to dehumanize the political “enemy” in order to conduct a successful fund-raising campaign. If we as Christians ever embrace this practice, we may as well forfeit the authority of the Gospel. In Christ Jesus, we have the power to love enemies.

In fact, Glasser’s letter was partly in reaction to a leader of the “religious right” whose metaethics of language included the call “to take back our culture.” Depending on context, this language can be read by detractors like Ira as though it were the power to take and coerce, not the power to give and the power of informed choice. Now this phrase requires nothing in terms of coercion, but the metaethics of it allow the ACLU to rationalize that it does. In my desire to see society transformed by the Gospel, I  speak in terms of “winning the culture through the art of persuasion.”

So I invited Ira out to lunch, meeting him at his office in downtown New York City, which overlooks the Statue of Liberty and his native Brooklyn. Of Jewish ancestry, he describes himself as an agnostic. We had a good conversation, and he was straightforward in saying that his hyperbolic language was indeed designed to use the “religious right” as a shill, as “bait” to lure donors to the ACLU by defining “the enemy.” He spoke of it as how the game is played, and how the “religious right” does it all the time. But biblically based Christians should never play such a game.

I told Ira that I have never and will never engage in such a game, that in all my conduct, I will seek to exercise the power to give in relating to him or others who hold different views on public policy interpretation. As I communicated with Ira in the meantime, he added his belief that my “eschewing of hyperbolic language in direct mail solicitations is not typical of ‘biblically-based Christians.’ ” Do we in the church hear what he is saying? Can we be truly biblical if we use hyperbole designed to set up straw figures to attack, so that we can raise money for our politics or “ministry?”

I once was told by a different first-hand source, an attorney within an ACLU affiliate, about a national “pro-family” organization and a national “gay-rights” organization that struck a Faustian bargain under the table to periodically attack each other in the media and in their fund-raising letters. Thus they could respond to such “outrageous attacks” with a moral superiority, and maximize fund-raising success for each of their own respective organizations.

This source is well placed to know this, and he kept the parties involved anonymous to me. He himself is a “gay-rights” partisan, and he confided in me because I had reached out to communicate with him in the process of a long lunch conversation. He responded positively when I articulated the power of informed choice and my opposition to the church ever using coercive means in her witness, and after this point his trust in me visibly increased. It was the articulation of the power of informed choice and its resonance in him that caused him to think about this Faustian bargain, and to relay his thoughts about it to me – about how he had also opposed it from his partisan perspective. So I do not know this information first-hand, but if indeed there is any truth to it, then those in the “pro-family” organization have to face the judgment of God for their deceit and the bad reputation it brings on the name of the church. Indeed, for any Christians who may be involved in such an arrangement, it is no different than the spiritual prostitution that led to the Babylonian exile.

Once I was given, by an ACLU advocate, a copy of ACLU Briefing Paper, Number 1: “Guardian of Liberty: American Civil Liberties Union.” In its section on “First Amendment Rights,” it reads:

“These include freedom of speech, association and assembly, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion, including the strict separation of church and state.”

When I visited the ACLU offices in New York, it was adorned with many framed posters that celebrate the Bill of Rights (the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution). The first three rights are listed as 1) “freedom of speech,” 2) “freedom of press,” and 3) “no mixing of church and state.” In view of these two listings where the freedom of religion was placed last and as negatively as possible, I asked Ira Glasser why the ACLU ordered these liberties in a manner inconsistent with the First Amendment. He said that he “sees no hierarchy of values among First Amendment rights” and that the order in the Briefing Paper and the framed posters was not deliberate.