The Bosque Boys

Texas declared its independence from Mexico on this date in 1836. Read the Texas Declaration of Independence here.

Nowhere But Texas:

Texas state motto: "Friendship"

The pledge of allegiance to the Texas state flag:

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one and indivisible."

Some background on the flag and the pledge via the Handbook of Texas Online here.

The Texas State song, Texas, Our Texas:




One last symbolic anecdote: As the 1864 Battle of the Wilderness reached its fever pitch, Robert E. Lee watched the Texas Brigade sweep forward to fill a potentially lethal hole in the line. As they moved out, Lee reportedly stood in his stirrups and yelled, "Texans always move them!" And they did.

May wild Bluebonnets bloom in the Lone Star State for as long as the rivers flow.

In part 1, I briefly surveyed the situation from the founding of the United States into the 20th century. Summary: by the 1830s we had a de facto Protestant establishment that was supported by the courts. Things changed in the 20th century. In this post, I wish to highlight the cultural and legal factors that led to the change, then in part 3 cover the change with reference to specific cases.

First, even as the de facto Protestant Establishment was strengthening, population demographics were changing in ways that would ultimately help undermine this hegemony. Large numbers of Irish and German immigrants radically increased Roman Catholic numbers in the U.S. so that even prior to the Civil War Roman Catholicism was the largest single religious group, though still smaller than the aggregate of Protestants. After the Civil War immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe augmented Roman Catholicism, brought large numbers of Eastern Orthodox Christians to this country, and significantly increased the Jewish population. Some changes were homegrown; new religious movements such as Christian Science, Transendentalism, and Mormonism would challenge Protestantism's grip on American culture and politics. Favoritism toward generic Protestantism seemed to discriminate against these other groups. (more below)

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Perhaps the best "one-stop-shopping" for information on the current court challenge is LawMemo here.

Other sources are found in my earlier post.

At this juncture, the court case will decide whether taxpayers have the standing in court to sue the executive branch over a First-Amendment issue such as the Faith-Based Initiative. If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, then I assume the foundation will then take the Bush Administration to court over the constitutionality of the Faith-Based Initiative plan.

For historical background on church and state in the U.S., see the category Religion and Public Policy on the right of this blog.

In light of the Stock Market uncertainty, I am reprising this analysis piece from the summer:

From July 2006:

I refuse to push the panic button on the economy, and I hate Vietnam parallels, but a growing chain of events gives me cause for concern.

The stagflation and misery of the 1970s arrived, in part, as a result of the belief that we could have "guns and butter" without sacrifice. During an extended and expensive overseas military expedition, the US attempted to leverage the Vietnam War and the Great Society with little concern for revenue. At the same time, American manufactures suffered from an increased period of competition from emerging industrial nations. And, finally, the American economy, heavily dependent on foreign oil, suffered mightily from the rise of OPEC, which attempted to punish the United States for its support of Israel.

I firmly believe that history does not repeat itself--but sometimes the present is eerily reminiscent of the past.

We are in the midst of a protracted and expensive military engagement, a huge event on which we are divided but strangely detached. We continue to run-up budget deficits to pay for the war and our pampered national lifestyle. Our manufacturers are in much worse shape than thirty-five years ago, evidenced by our ever-increasing trade deficits and changing labor reality. Add Israel and oil to this equation, during a time when we are more dependent on foreign fuel than ever before, and there are serious reasons for concern.

You have heard my numerous exhortations in the past to stay the course in Iraq. I am not backing away from that line of thinking. But there is real danger ahead. Although the President's approval ratings in general (and on Iraq specifically) have turned dismal, his initiative in the Middle East has moved forward despite its diminishing popularity (mainly because Iraq seems disturbing but peripheral to most Americans).

Added commentary: The above is obviously much less true in the early months of 2007 than it was last summer.

But an economic crisis would end all that. A deep recession would completely break America's will for war. The Iraq commitment survives precariously on the crest of this fortuitous economic wave. If this economy is as fragile as some have speculated, then the support for the war is just that tenuous.

More added commentary: Even more so today, an economic downturn would bring the war effort to a panic stop.

Guest Blog: Tocqueville

I am interested to see Hugh Hewitt agreeing with me that John McCain is toast and for the reasons Hewitt cites:

The GOP base has a trust issue with McCain, one that flows from the 2000 campaign, McCain-Feingold, the Gang of 14, the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, the September 2006 derailing of the Republican end-game strategy.

McCain is fading, and not because of his age or energy level, but because the GOP electorate has to absolutely believe that the next president will be as committed to victory as Bush has been. Senator McCain's avoidance of new media has been reinforcing the impression that he is unwilling to provide the assurances he needs to in order to regain the trust he has repeatedly broken with the GOP electorate over the years. There is time to turn that around, but Senator McCain is not making the effort, an effort that would begin by a relentless courting of the base rather than the Hardball/Meet The Press audience. Every week that Senator McCain delays launching that effort is a week in which the mayor and the governor gather more pledges and momentum. The big three could be the big two by Memorial Day.

Simple fact: McCain cannot win a head-on with Giuliani and perhaps is hopeless against others.

Giuliani hasn't the political and malodorous traits that pervade McCain (I can't stand him) and I doubt the public cares about The Mayor's divorces.

HH offers no insight on how important McCain's support and (supposed) supporters will prove in tipping the balance among whatever contestants remain. Also, lurking is the question whether McCain's neutralization might induce an entry by someone else.

Cited by Hewitt, here is Dick Morris's take.

~~Tocqueville

You probably have read articles like this one from the Chicago Sun-Times.

"Titanic" director James Cameron has produced a new documentary for the Discovery Channel in which archeologists claim to have discovered the tomb of Jesus Christ and his family -- including Mary Magdalene

Or heard reports in the media. Some background from the same article:

The documentary, directed by Simcha Jacobovici, claims that 10 ossuaries -- small limestone coffins into which bones were placed a year after a first-century Jew had died -- found in Jerusalem in 1980 contained remains of Jesus and members of his family -- including Magdalene, whom they say was Jesus' wife.

One of the ossuaries is inscribed with the name Jesus, another "Judah son of Jesus," and a third with the name "Mariamene," the moniker used to identify Mary Magdalene in early Christian texts, Jacobovici said Monday at a press conference in New York. The filmmaker says DNA testing showed that Mariamene's ossuary contained the remains of a woman who was not related to Jesus, and therefore likely was his spouse.

The Discovery Channel is to air Cameron's documentary Sunday night at 9pm ET. Link to the promotional material here.

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Originally delivered as a Wednesday night lecture at Seventh and James Baptist Church in January of 2006:

Around six PM on Thursday evening, Dec. 1, 1955, headed home after finishing her work day as a seamstress at a downtown Montgomery department store, Rosa Parks stood in front of Court Square waiting for the Cleveland Avenue Bus.

She hurriedly boarded the bus and found an empty seat. A few moments later, she would refuse to surrender her seat to a white passenger. The police would come, they would arrest her, and a pivotal moment in modern American history would commence.

“Let me have those seats,” the bus driver had called back over his shoulder, seeing that a white passenger was standing.

Rosa was sitting next to an African American man and across the aisle sat two African American women. Although the driver was speaking to all four of them, not one of them moved.

The driver called back a second time: “Y’all make it light on yourselves and let me have those seats.”

The man next to Rosa began to stir, and then stood and moved into the aisle.

Rosa looked across to see that the other women were also complying.

Rosa eased over to the just-vacated window-seat and, for lack of a better word, she “dug in.”

“I could not see how standing up was going to make it light for me,” she would later say.

”The more we gave in and complied, the worse they treated us.”

The driver saw that she was not moving and asked one more time if she was going to stand up.

“No,” she said.

“Well, if you don’t stand up, I’m going to have you arrested,” he said.

“You may do that,” Rosa Parks said.

By the time the police arrived a few minutes later, the back of the bus was quietly emptying out. When one of the policeman asked Mrs. Parks why she didn’t stand up, she asked him: “Why do you push us around?”

And he replied: “I do not know, but the law is the law, and you are under arrest.”

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The question of the consitutionality of President Bush's Faith-Based Initiative is before the Supreme Court. I have posted information already here.

In this post I wish to give a brief historical survey of the relationship between Church and State in the United States into the 20th century.

To begin, I will repeat material from an earlier post on Religion and Public Policy. (If interested in the entire series, see Religion and Public Policy under Categories on the right.)

The Constitution of 1787 has been called the most secular document produced until then. There is no mention of God. ( An omission which some 19th-century evangelicals tried and failed to correct through Constitutional amendment.) And the few mentions of religion are negative (no religious tests for public office, etc.) Furthermore, the First Amendment prohibits Congress from establishing a religion, or from interfering with the free exercise of religion. As is well known, we have been debating since then exactly what the role of religion, and its relationship to government, should be regarding public policy. Avoiding the lengthy and messy details of this history, I wish to make a few points.

First, neither the Declaration of Independence, nor The Articles of Confederation, nor the actions of the Continental Congress, nor the Constitution of 1787, nor the actions of Congress in the opening decades of our nationhood, can be understood to be a deliberate rejection of religion. This assertion can be sustained by comparing our Revolution and its aftermath to the French Revolution. Even our most Enlightenment influenced founders such as Jefferson and Franklin were products of the English-speaking Enlightenment, not the French-speaking. They rejected traditional Christianity, but did not reject the idea of God and an orderly universe governed by laws established by the divine Law Giver. Jefferson and Adams did not hope that all religion would die away; they hoped that a sort of Rational Christianity would replace traditional sects. My point: the founders did not envision a secular society as we understand one, therefore the context in which to understand our Constitution, and by extension our present government including public debate, is not that of a thoroughly secular world-view.

Second, in prohibiting the Federal government from establishing a religion (First Amendment), the founders were paying homage to two realities: states with their own laws, including established churches in some of them (Massachusetts was the last to disestablish in 1833); and the Christian diversity of the American population in which no single church had the alliegance of an overwhelming majority of citizens. Another reality that may have influenced the decision, a significant number of Americans belonged to no church. (Though very few of these were secular men and women in the modern sense of the term; their worldview tended to be a kind of generic Protestantism.) My point: the no establishment clause cannot be understodd as a mandate for removing religion from the public square.

Third, the history of political discourse, and public policy, in the United States is filled with religious motivation and rhetoric. Slavery, Women's Rights, Consumption of Alcohol, the place of Farmers and Workers in the Industrial Economy, Race Relations, and more, all have been argued in Christian language and reasoning. Point: historical precedent allows the use of religious reasoning in public discourse, and by extension, in public policy.

(More below.)

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One of the toxic aspects of our culture is the way that younger and younger girls are sexualized. Media images of women are mostly as sexual beings. Sexual encounters first happen at younger and younger ages. You may have seen some media reporting on the recent release of the American Psychological Association findings. We are damaging the vulnerable children of our culture. Here is the APA release, with a link to the full report. Some excerpts from the Executive Summary:

Journalists, child advocacy organizations, parents, and psychologists have argued that the sexualization of girls is a broad and increasing problem and is harmful to girls.The APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls was formed in response to these expressions of public concern.
. . .
There are several components to sexualization, and these set it apart from healthy sexuality. Sexualization occurs when


a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics;

a person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness (narrowly defined) with being sexy;

a person is sexually objectified—that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than seen as a person with the capacity for independent action and decision making; and/or

sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person. All four conditions need not be present; any one is an indication of sexualization.The fourth condition (the inappropriate imposition of sexuality) is especially relevant to children.Anyone (girls, boys, men, women) can be sexualized.

But when children are imbued with adult sexuality, it is often imposed upon them rather than chosen by them. Self-motivated sexual exploration, on the other hand, is not sexualization by our definition, nor is age-appropriate exposure to information about sexuality.
. . .
Psychology offers several theories to explain how the sexualization of girls and women could influence girls’ well-being. Ample evidence testing these theories indicates that sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, sexuality, and attitudes and beliefs. (Emphasis mine.)

What is wrong with a degree of censorship?

A giant in New Testament studies died this month. Dr. Metzger was an internationally famous scholar of Greek and of the New Testament. A partial list of his accomplishments is here taken from the tribute on the Princeton Theological Seminary website (link here):

Dr. Bruce Manning Metzger, New Testament professor emeritus at Princeton Theological Seminary and one of the preeminent American New Testament critics and biblical translators of the twentieth century, died February 13, 2007, at the University Medical Center at Princeton, at the age of 93.
. . .
He served as Chair of the Committee on Translation of the American Bible Society 1964–70, and as Chair of the Committee of Translators for the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible 1977–90. The impact of this work is incalculable and Bruce Metzger saw it through the press almost single-handedly.
. . .
Bruce Metzger cared about and provided for his students. Generations have been grateful for his Lists of Words Occurring Frequently in the Coptic New Testament, and his Lexical Aids for Students of New Testament Greek (first published in 1946) became a standard study tool. He edited The Oxford Annotated Bible in 1962, and in 1966, along with Kurt Aland, Matthew Black, and Allen Wikgren, edited the United Bible Societies' edition of the Greek New Testament. This text, especially adapted to meet the needs of Bible translators, with its beautiful original font and indication of the relative degree of certainty for each variant adopted in the text, proved to be an enduring landmark. The editors were later joined by Carlo Martini (the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan from 1980 to 2002).
. . .
There were other honors. In 1994, Bruce Metzger was awarded the Burkitt Medal for Biblical Studies by The British Academy in London (of which he had been a Corresponding Fellow since 1978). This is only awarded in recognition of a lifetime of distinguished biblical study. Bruce Metzger was elected president of Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas (1971), the International Society of Biblical Literature (1971), and was the first president of the North American Patristic Society (1972). He was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (1969 and 1974) and visiting fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge (1974) and Wolfson College, Oxford (1979).

There were many other books, among which the classic studies The Text of the New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (1964, and translated into German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian and Russian) and The Early Versions of the New Testament, Their Origin, Transmission, and Limitations (1977) have been particularly influential. Bruce Metzger's last publication before his death was Apostolic Letters of Faith, Hope, and Love: Galatians, 1 Peter, and I John (2006).

Dr. Metzger was one of my teachers in seminary and my personal reflections are below.

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