 This program is brought to you by Emory University. Distinguished colleagues and friends, welcome back to this penultimate session of this conference. It's been a wonderful day again, and we appreciate so much for being part of this. We have had three Fs and three I's that have been organizing rubrics for us in this conference. We are studying faith, freedom, and the family, the three things that people will die for, and we've been studying these in interdisciplinary, interreligious, and international perspective. And while every one of the sessions has partaken of each of these Fs and each of these I's, in this final session, we're going to be focusing the law and religion discussion directly through the lens of international law and international affairs. And we have a splendid panel to launch us into that conversation together. Under the able and remarkably generous chairmanship of my dear brother and friend and colleague, Sizzler fellow Mark Jordan. Mark Jordan is a candidate professor of religion, a world-class authority in medieval philosophy and medieval theology with particular emphasis upon Thomas Aquinas. He has in recent years been a path breaker in the study of the history of sexuality and the great dialogue that church, state, and society have had about homosexuality. A wonderfully articulate voice pressing for us, rethinking, retrieving, reconstructing the tradition over issues of sexuality and our life together, both in this country and indeed around the world. It's a special privilege to have worked with him over the past six years in his role as senior fellow in our center, and I am honored to cede the lectern to him to chair this session this afternoon. Professor Jordan. My thanks to John Witte for that extravagant introduction. John has, so far as I know, only two vices, a taste for the alliteration of consonants and a tendency to overpraise his colleagues. But this afternoon's session is about neither of us. It is about a cluster of urgent topics, law, religion, international affairs, and about these three distinguished speakers. I will introduce each a bit more before he speaks, but the severe, indeed the Calvinistic constraints on our time will limit not only what they can say, but what I can say about them. First, Jeremy Gunn is director of the program in freedom of religion and belief at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York. He has served as a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace and as the director of research and deputy general counsel for the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. Dr. Gunn has published numerous works on religious liberty and its history in America and France, including the recent Dieux en France et aux États-Unis, Quand les Mites font la loi, and an anthology, The New Religious Question. Mr. Gunn. I was a little disappointed. I thought perhaps this was actually going to be a panel on sexuality, but I will try and keep my comments to the assigned topic. On July 6th of 1898, president of the United States, William McKinley, issued a Thanksgiving proclamation. In this Thanksgiving proclamation, which was delivered in the midst of the Spanish-American War, it came out after the United States had defeated the Spanish Navy in Manila Bay, after the United States had invaded Cuba and had won several victories but was still fighting. While the United States was fighting after having invaded the Philippines and after the United States had seized Guam, President McKinley thought that it was in midst of these military actions appropriate to have a reflective interlude, and he said in conjunction with his Thanksgiving proclamation, it is fitting that we should pause and put aside for the moment the feeling of exultation that too naturally attends great deeds wrought by our countrymen in our country's cause. We should reverently bow before the throne of divine grace and give devout praise to God, who holdeth the nations in the hollow of his hands and worketh upon them the marvels of his high will, and who has thus far vouchsafed to us the light of his face and led our brave soldiers to victory. President McKinley went on to offer Thanksgiving to Almighty God, who in his inscrutable ways has watched over our cause and brought nearer the success of the right and the attainment of just and honorable peace, this in blessing of the American Imperial War in the Spanish American War. The day after issuing the Thanksgiving proclamation, President McKinley signed papers unilaterally annexing the Hawaiian Islands to the United States without any consultation with the Hawaiian people, and so a just and honorable peace continued. The following Sunday, President McKinley went to church, and he heard a sermon by the Reverend Dr. Frank Bristol of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Washington, D.C. The Reverend Bristol was very much caught in the spirit of the times, and he said from the pulpit, if God ever had a peculiar people, he has them now. They are the product of all the struggles and aspirations of the past. The men who stand before Santiago in Cuba with the ongoing battle are not the product of a day or a century. They are the rich consummate flower of the ages, the highest evolution of history. That's when evolution was a good word. They represent a manhood that has climbed century by century up the steps of light and liberty and now stands in sight of the glorified summits of universal freedom and the universal brotherhood of man, also in praise of the war. He went on, do you look toward the successful fighting in Manila and Santiago and say, superior guns did this? I say superior men stood behind the guns. Superior schools stood behind the men. The superior religion stood behind the schools and God the Supreme stood behind the religion. Now what is this religion he's speaking of? The people who the United States was fighting at that time were Spaniards, members of for the most part the Roman Catholic religion. So what religion has prevailed in which religion is God standing behind? He went on to conclude, thanks to all those sons of God who in offices of state and on fields of battle have caught the spirit of the heroic Christ and have pledged their fortunes, their sacred honor and their lives to realize the kingdom of righteousness and peace among men. Now what should the people in the audience have said to the Reverend Bristol? Should there have been exclamations that this is blasphemy, that somehow the good Reverend has confused the United States with God and has confused a political decision to go to war with God's divine will? Well a reporter who attended the service said, and I quote, at times Dr. Bristol's hearers were so thoroughly aroused by his patriotic utterances that ripples of spontaneous applause swept over the congregation. Now this is during the war of 1898 during the Spanish-American war. Have things changed? In 1955 Will Herberg, so we go from William McKinley to Will Herberg said the following, religion as American citizens understand it is not something that makes for humility or the uneasy conscience. It is something that reassures him about the essential rightness of everything American. His nation, his culture and himself. Something that validates his goals and his ideals instead of calling them into question. Something that enhances his self-regard instead of challenging it. Something that feeds his self-sufficiency instead of shattering it. Something that offers him salvation on easy terms instead of demanding repentance with a broken heart. Now Will Herberg was speaking of the 1950s and speaking specifically of the Eisenhower administration but the words that he said would fall would be equally applicable to the war of the Spanish-American war and would seem to fit perhaps wars that have been fought since that time. We have been hearing during the course of the last two days messages about the role of the prophetic and among the many different roles the prophetic can take as one of them can be or is understood to be something like predicting the future. Sort of the crystal ball tea leaves version of prophecy. There's another form of prophecy that we think of as calling people to repentance and calling them to think more seriously about the connections that they're making. The questions arrogance that can be done in the name of God. Now I'm going to take an interlude from what I've been saying and go on to a different direction. I will come back to the theme that I start with President McKinley. The United States among countries in the world has relatively few domestic laws about religion. It's not in many ways from the foreign perspective the United States thinks upon religion as something like the way that it thinks about guns and firearms. It's something that's good. It's something that should be unregulated. And the answer to problems of it is to have more of it. If we look at the major issues in the world on the area of religion so from a comparative law perspective the issues that I would rate sort of in order of priority but it will vary from country to country. The United States does quite well on them. The first one that I would identify the most problematic issue across the world is registration of religious organizations. In the United States it's quite easy to register a church regardless of which state you are in. In fact often state laws will have a variety of laws to facilitate the registration of religion. In other countries that typically is a process that must go through some kind of government review before a religion can be registered in the United States. It is a ministerial act. It is one that is almost automatic. For tax exempt status for religious organizations in the United States also it is automatic. If you declare yourself to be a religious organization the Internal Revenue Service recognizes it immediately subject to subsequent revocation. Another issue that is problematic in the world is the issue of donations to religious groups. Again in the United States we don't even think about this as an issue because donations are not only not regulated by state but they are even tax deductible. Other issues that cause problems in the United States are zoning and land use. Can you build a church? Can you build a mosque on a particular site? On those issues we do have lawsuits but the United States Congress then enacts a law, RELUPA, designed to facilitate the erection of religious sites. The laws in the United States are designed less to regulate or restrict religion as to facilitate religious practice. The United States virtually stands alone in this. Another issue are religious activities. What kinds of religious activities are permitted and not? Well in the United States the U.S. Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act designed to help once again facilitate religion and religious practice. And there are of course problems with its constitutionality but that is another issue. But again when we come to issues of religion domestically the United States first has few laws and secondly those laws that the United States does have are designed to facilitate the practice of religion. But if we go to the issue internationally where most countries issues of religion internationally most countries of the world have no laws and have no attempt to have an effect on the issue of religion internationally. The United States along with several other countries of course has been involved in international human rights treaties and international human rights declarations to promote freedom of religion and belief. So the United States played a role in the drafting of the international declaration on human rights including its article 18. The United States played a role in the international covenant on civil and political rights in enacting that. The United States played an important role in the drafting of the 1981 declaration on intolerance of the United Nations. The United States played an important role in the drafting of the Helsinki Final Act of 1975. The United States played a major role in the Vienna Declaration for the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. So the United States like many other countries has been involved in international movements and international efforts to promote freedom of religion and belief. Some who are more skeptical of the United States will say well yes sometimes the United States participates in the drafting process but the United States certainly has a difficulty when it comes to the ratification process and sometimes when the United States well often when the United States ratifies international human rights treaties so only after introducing what is in State Department parlance providing ruds which are reservations, understandings and declarations which often means that the United States qualifies its ratification of the Human Rights Treaty to say that anything that is in this treaty that might be construed as being against U.S. law is hereby null and void. But the United States again whereas the United States has few laws on religion the United States for domestically the United States does like to enact laws related to religion internationally and the United States going from one extreme on its domestic laws of not having laws to the other extreme in international or relatively extreme in international laws. So the United States has enacted several laws designed to promote freedom of religion internationally and just skipping over some of these in 1974 one of the most famous was the Jackson Vanick amendment to the trade act which provided that for what were called it was really designed to help Soviet Jews emigrate from the Soviet Union though it was targeted to all non-market economies meaning that the United States differentiated between those who would not let people emigrate who had capitalist systems and those who the United States would not be permitted to emigrate who were under socialist or communist systems. In 1977 the U.S. Congress passed a law requiring the State Department to issue annual reports on human rights practices of other countries including practices related to religion and those reports started issuing in 1979 been going on for almost 40 years. In 1998 the most famous of the laws were the United States attempted to promote freedom of religion internationally was the International Religious Freedom Act and at the time in the United States Congress was enabled to adopt that law virtually unanimously at a time that was a great deal of controversy in the United States. Of course adopting laws on religion in controversial times is not unique to the International Religious Freedom Act the original Columbus Day celebration which is where we first got our Pledge of Allegiance also was adopted unanimously by a Congress in 1892 so religion is something that does bring us Americans together. But now let's go back and start looking at where I left off with President McKinley and his proclamation giving thanks to God for military victories and Reverend Bristol for identifying the spirit of Christ behind America's victories. The idea of issuing presidential proclamations on issues of foreign policy did not begin with President McKinley and even James Madison issued some which he later apologized for having issued in regard to the war of 1812 but they'd been issued before and they were issued subsequently but in 1948 the US Congress decided to get involved so these were not just presidential proclamations but these were now laws of one sense, laws in one sense a joint resolution but has the effect of law setting aside days of Thanksgiving days of prayer days of prayer and adoration in 1948 in response to one such declaration President Harry Truman issued the following day of prayer and adoration statement. Now I would think that if I read this to you without identifying in advance that it was President Truman you probably would never I guess who the president was who issued this and think of different presidents in whom you might understand these words but listen carefully to them if you would speaking of the prayer we must always make spiritual values our main line of defense we're talking here about communism our main line of defense freedom of religion as well as the freedom of security of nations is seriously threatened by anti-religious forces it is therefore necessary that all loyal American citizens join together to stem the tide of these evil forces by setting ourselves with the sword of faith and the armor of truth loyal Americans he says will use the sword of faith who are the unloyal Americans apparently those who do not use the sword of faith because Christians in other lands are being persecuted President Truman went on to say we in the United States who still enjoy full religious liberty should commemorate this day in a solemn and sacred manner this is Good Friday that we're celebrating in a solemn and sacred manner for us Good Friday should be a day of prayer and adoration of sorrow and love of forgiveness and assistance this is the President of the United States speaking on Good Friday to tell American people how to worship and what to worship and that this is as the first line of defense against communism now an editorial writer for the Jackson Citizen Patriot and a person named Carl Saunders heard President Truman's statement and thought that it would be a good idea to enact further legislation to make these presidential declarations more common so he wrote an editorial in his newspaper suggesting that this be created as a national day and that within two weeks Congress quickly enacted a law requiring that on Memorial Day at 8 p.m. in case you forgot what time it is whether Eastern Standard Time or not but at 8 p.m. on Memorial Day it would be a time for universal prayer so in a law enacted by Congress we have now set aside a time for universal prayer Journalist Saunders argued in favor of this by saying that we are largely a Christian nation and so isn't a moment of national prayer a logical course he also believed that the prayer would be a first line of defense the editorial that he wrote espousing this position was so well regarded that he won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial comment that year let's go forward a couple of years to 1953 the president there's just been a newly elected president of the United States Dwight David Eisenhower who by this particular time does not belong to any church in fact in 1952 he confessed to Billy Graham that his religious had not intended ceremonies in his book Crusade in Europe he did not refer to his personal faith at all the book that he had published by that particular time so religion had not been particularly important to Eisenhower at least through 1952 but by 1953 shortly after his inauguration shortly after he took the oath of office he made the following statement now think of this as being the very first presidential inauguration you have a hero from World War II newly elected president of the United States what are his first words to the American people my friends before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own I ask you to bow your heads so Eisenhower no longer the commander in chief he is as has been frequently noted taking the role of pastor in chief but note that he uses the word private prayer in a prayer broadcast live before the American people what does the word private mean there a few days later on the Sabbath that is Saturday Rabbi Samuel Siegel made comment about president Eisenhower's call for prayer I know what do you think the good rabbi would say he did say in fact he praised the Eisenhower administration for the new tone which it had taken and he said in freedom the administration in freedom will inspire others to become free to reap a harvest of brotherhood under the spiritual sovereignty of God so we are a country now of Protestants Catholics and Jews in this 1953 in 1953 president Eisenhower declared a national day of prayer for the 4th of July so the 4th of July is not only a national holiday to celebrate independence from Great Britain it is also now a day of prayer in 1954 the following year a prayer room was erected in the capitol building in 1954 president Eisenhower also went to a sermon at the New York avenue Presbyterian church here by the Reverend Joseph Docherty who suggested at that time that two words should be added to the Pledge of Allegiance under God as you can all figure out and Reverend Docherty said this is something that will help separate American school children from what Reverend Docherty called those little muscovites so by saying under God we are now offering a pledge that little muscovites cannot offer congress stumbled when president Eisenhower left the service where Reverend Docherty made that the press corps was standing outside and asked the president what he thought of this and Eisenhower said he thought of the idea after which members of congress stumbled over themselves to adopt legislation to put under God in the Pledge of Allegiance in the report that was issued by congress very short senate report that said one of the greatest differences between the free world and communists is a belief in God adding a total of eight letters in two words will enable us to strike a blow against those who would enslave us and so under God went into the Pledge of Allegiance sure and secure against the communists president Eisenhower when he signed the law that added this to the Pledge of Allegiance said from this day forward millions of our school children will daily proclaim in every city and town every village and rural school house the dedication of our nation and our people to the almighty a few years later when the ninth circuit struck down under God in the Pledge of Allegiance the United States congress was once was outraged by having removed these important words from the Pledge of Allegiance among other comments I think it's notable to say that a certain senator Hilly Rodham Clinton said that she was by the decision of the ninth circuit to take under God out of the Pledge of Allegiance that she was quote surprised and offended by the decision and she accused the court of having sought to undermine one of the bedrock values of our democracy and we are indeed one nation under God as embodied in the Pledge of Allegiance Senator Clinton said now I have to ask you we can ask ourselves are all of these politicians really serious about what they're saying is the Pledge of Allegiance with under God a bedrock value does congress really believe that it should set aside its other business to reaffirm this are congressmen and senators serious about this or are they cajoling the American people are they speaking as genuine political leaders or are they acting as cheerleaders the litany goes on in the 1950s from under God under God in the Pledge of Allegiance to in God we trust each of which was introduced as a way of fighting the communists so Americans believed that or Americans said that thought that by law by enacting laws of congress to put under in God we trust on currency to put in God we trust on postage stamps to make in God we trust the national motto that we were we were waging a battle against the communists and we were up shoring up our own virtues now I would hope that when you heard the words of William McKinley with which I began that you might have some thought in your mind that that certainly was an abuse of religion that certainly was an abuse of rhetoric that that was appealing to the lowest common denominator rather than calling people to the highest highest form of repentance or understanding that what was happening is that God was being used to bless political decisions rather than the people of America were being called to repent and called to understand themselves in this in this this two day conference we're asked both to look to the past 25 years and to look towards the future well what does the future bring in as much as I have suggested to you that a hundred years ago President McKinley would abuse this form of language 50 years ago Will Herbert could identify this as not being language of religion but this is not language of serious religion but it's language of superficial use of religion and that perhaps such language continues to this day we might ask ourselves is there to be changed and so I think of Doug Laycock saying the reason that we know that the fourth great awakening will end because the other three did well this may be something that will go on without end but the challenge I believe is not for lawmakers to revisit this issue because lawmakers will do what is politically acceptable and politically pleasing the issue is for I believe for religious leaders to say what are we doing with our political rhetoric are we using this political rhetoric that unites country, God and immediate political decisions trying to combine those in order to gain particular political advantage are we using it for that purpose and should we not be instead calling people to repentance and calling people to look at the truly fundamental values of our country and the truly fundamental values of our religion thank you I want you all to appreciate the opportunity to see the world's first religious freedom nowhere near the red card our second speaker Robert Seipel is president and CEO of the council for America's first freedom he earlier founded the institute for global engagement and was the first U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom Mr. Seipel spent 11 years on several books most recently ambassadors of hope how Christians can respond to the world's toughest problems Mr. Seipel many many thanks to you and to Jeremy and Jeremy we'll flesh out the rest of this afternoon as soon as I gather my thoughts on this podium Napoleon once said he didn't see a throne he didn't like to sit upon I feel the same way about podiums except the microphone system that do not allow you to spread out let me start with a story to establish my bona fides as an optimist you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist as the pessimist has more facts and so you have to selectively choose and intentionally choose to be an optimist and get your licks in every chance you can and then following that brief story name what I think are some of the culprits because by the way religion is a non-state actor religious freedom is a non-state actor whatever happens here happens other places and vice versa it knows no boundary it knows no national flag or should know no national flag so I'd like to suggest some things that have happened in this country and without that have been detrimental to the cause of religion and religious freedom the beginning of wisdom is calling something by its proper name I think we have to name these things before we begin and then I would suggest going where angels fear to tread a few thoughts for the next 25 years that perhaps will make us more a little bit optimistic and then in all of this sprinkled throughout I list seven trends or strategies or issues if by reason of strength prophetic utterances seven of them because seven of course is a heavenly number and if you know what happened to Old Testament prophets when they got one of them wrong they were taken out in stone so if I want to be around for the golden anniversary I should perhaps give some cause and caution to eliminating myself to seven let me tell this story when I was at the State Department we lived in Washington we had a pastor at the National Presbyterian Church Craig Barnes some of you will know him Craig was invited by the number two man at the Pentagon for a meeting specifically a luncheon now that's kind of tall cotton for a young Presbyterian pastor so of course he said yes and he went and when he got there he was surrounded immediately by all the brass and there's a lot of brass in the Pentagon that he ever thought imaginable there were admirals there there were army people with seven eight nine rows of ribbons there were marines there of course to give the whole event a little class they had a couple of marines there I was a former marine it's all about the uniform they sat down to this starchy luncheon with these starchy generals and admirals and it wasn't very long because before all the small talk was done away with and one of the admirals had just taken over the seventh fleet and was responsible for that area that included the capital brought up the issue of the day he said to Craig he said tell us about forgiveness tell us about forgiveness we are seeing things in Kosovo that we have never seen before now I find that to be an absolutely extraordinary picture here you are in Washington the power capital of the last remaining superpower you go over to this five sided building that spends half a trillion dollars a year with all of its wire diagrams and they have come to the conclusion in spite of the fact that this is the biggest army and the best army capable of supplying shock and all at a moment's notice anywhere they had come to the conclusion that they had a hole in their body armor and so they asked their pastor if he would spend some time with them that day to talk about forgiveness now you can take a lot of things away from this I only offer one take away and that is to say there are tremendous resources available in the religious community from religious and spiritual leaders perhaps that can only be supplied by folks like that at a time when we don't have all the answers in the world let me mention a few foes of religious freedom I think one of the things that certainly happened in my lifetime and has taken on a speed of its own the last 20 years has been the politicization of religion I wasn't familiar with the history that Jeremy has spoken of but certainly we have seen culture wars which is to say conflict created by two sides fighting things out and just in a sense destroying the best of our religious traditions in 1992 when Bill Clinton became president at someone a national religious leader somewhat left of center excuse the shorthand who said to me we finally have our man in the White House I thought that was a very strange statement for a religious leader to make and then in 2000 when George W President of the United States I had someone come and say exactly the same thing we finally have our man in the White House and you had the sense that the best of our religion, the best of our faith was picking up the hard edge of ideology and when it does that irresistibly there's a gravitational tug that pulls it in the direction of power and when it gets that power it doesn't let go of that power unfortunately it's a power that precludes it's a power that divides I cannot understand why it's so important to have our man in the White House these are folks that forever had the opportunity to speak with our father who art in heaven why in the world would they stop with a self-imposed glass ceiling at a political supercharged environment where to join the fray immediately 50% of the United States would be against whatever you wanted to do we always talk about that today in terms of the religious right the religious left is organized in the same way the only difference between the left and the right is the left doesn't have the same microphone they don't make as much noise perhaps I'm not sure I'm right on this but perhaps they have been too willing to sacrifice absolutes not that they don't have them but they're too willing to submerge them in favor of political detente easy ecumenism dialogue and when they've done that somehow they got lost in the spongy parantium of the liberal movement sadly both the right and the left have made religion unattractive in this country I mention absolutes that's another issue another foe of religious freedom perhaps the problem with absolutes it's the title of a book that my hero has written we all have them we bet on their viability it's what we take to the bank we bet that we are right both for this world and the next and it's not really always religious in nature Stalin had an absolute you had to be an atheist until of course you needed the Russian Orthodox Church to pull your chestins out of the fire but atheism became an absolute Jacques Chirac and so they exist in many different forms the problem with absolutes as you heard over and over again this week is we don't know them absolutely there are biblical insights to this in the Hebrew Bible, Isaiah there's this verse that says that the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways, so are my ways of my thoughts different than yours in the New Testament you had that verse that's often quoted now we see through it glass darkly we got the smudged mirror someday we'll know even as we are known we don't know at all if people would just absorb that insight at the very least we should be a little more humble we should have a different kind of tone in politics we should have a different kind of discourse in this world sadly that doesn't work that way we have a conflict between a place to stand our absolutes and pluralism and we have yet to develop the humility and the respect to embrace both my first trend indice prophetic utterance negotiating tension between absolutes and pluralism is absolutely key to the next 25 years please let's not make false choices but figuring out how to deal with that tension is going to be important internationally you also have power and paranoia authoritarian countries fear what they cannot control they fear what they don't understand and they crack down on things China did not understand at all why 10,000 Falun Gong would come and do a workout in front of their one of their major governmental buildings and so they cracked down on them and they're still cracking down on them and it's a horrific crack down but if you can't control it Beijing would get along a whole lot better with the Catholic Church if the papacy would move from Rome to Beijing that's the only problem they fear what is outside of their jurisdiction they fear their borders they fear what they can't control to their credit let's remember that they had a bird's eye view of some of the key important historical events in the world from the paranoid and parochial purchase they saw the fall of communism where statues of Lenin were lying supinely in the horizontal on his back they saw 9-11 they saw what was going on in Indonesia where sectarian violence of the worst kind broke out in a country that was always a modern Islamic state and they in every case saw religion as the culprit the Vietnamese had tens of thousands of students studying in East Germany when the wall came down you can imagine the tales they told when they got back home be careful be careful those people that are religious in nature well there are other countries where there have been majority religions that haven't behaved well we talked at our table about India India prides itself on being the biggest largest democracy in the world there are things that happen in India that are very very difficult to assimilate if you're into human rights today there's another abuse of religious freedom Pakistan now called the scariest country in the world in these countries minorities are scared they're afraid and the fact that there's so many laws about conversion which is to say anti-conversion legislation being ramped up says that the majorities are also afraid let me say as a second prophetic utterance this anti-conversion legislation which by definition is coercive I mean for faith to be authentic it has to be freely embraced and when you can't have an anti-conversion when you have to have an anti-conversion law you're going against basically every international covenant that's ever been put together on human rights not to mention what it means to be uniquely and distinctly human free choice under the sovereignty of a god the other issue that I'll mention as a foe of religion is the fact that we come very easily to categories someone mentioned yesterday the easy categorization once we establish a category by the way this is an intellectually lazy exercise it means you got 1.34 1.7 billion Muslims over there and you don't understand them so you do the cliff notes you create a category and you make one size fits all and everybody is in that category how destructive how demeaning the problem with a category is once you create a category you can begin to stereotype those people that you've categorized once you begin to stereotype them you can demonize the ones that you have stereotyped once you begin to demonize them you can hate the people that you have begun to demonize and then this negative spiral goes forth and in a lot of parts of the world today you have a sectarian violence of the worst kind religious identity against religious identity blood flows like water and the worst kinds of things happen let me say this as a third thing to watch in the next 25 years and it gets to Islam the potential for a second attack of the 9-11 variety in the west if that ever happens in the next several years we will lose the voice of moderation in this country Muslims are already afraid there's a great deal of anxiety in the Muslim communities in America because of how we might treat them but there's a moderate voice there's a reflective voice there's a thinking voice let me tell you when the person strapped on the bombs and walked into that pizza parlor in Israel and blew up a whole bunch of innocent people the moderate voice was silent silenced forever you lose memory you lose a sense of nuance the category firms up and it becomes us and them and there's no middle ground well I told you I was an optimist how do we get back to optimism I would suggest three things a new language, a new methodology and a new player this is where fools indeed rush in I am not a lawyer I'm not on TV but the language that I would suggest needs to be changed is legal language I am suggesting I'm going out on a limb here that the old values be recodified I have four Rs there's probably a whole lot of other things but I just want to mention by way of example four tolerance to respect oath to reverence pardon to redemption and conflict management reconciliation the easiest one to talk about is respect I think we need to retire the word tolerance Steven Carter talked about this in his book 1994 it is still very viable and useful today tolerance is not equality tolerance is forbearance tolerance takes us to the lower common denominator tolerance is a cheap form of great supply to people I don't especially care for I don't like you but I will tolerate you respect on the other hand respect takes us to a whole new place respect focuses on those things we have in common one of which is for many of us we feel we've each been created in the image of God that is worthy of celebration that is worthy of respect respect perhaps the most important component and I will come back to it because it is that for all of us to strive for a little bit more difficult to talk about going from the oath to reverence made possible through respect hardest to codify the fuzziest of exercises I think we need a more reverential tone that there is something holy yeah I get nervous there is something holy in this institution of illegal tradition because it involves people uniquely distinctively human laws where legality and morality become one the reverence is a higher motivation than a mere allegiance let me move on quickly I see my first 10 minute marker coming down pardon to redemption pardon to redemption is like taking pity to mercy pity is feeling sorry for somebody mercy is feeling sorry for somebody and doing something about it and I'm talking about the action word in redemption we've just commemorated a year anniversary of that horrible scene in Pennsylvania in the Amish schoolyard where the man walked in tied up everybody began to execute the young girls, killed five before the police came turned the gun on himself, killed himself at the end of the day members of the Amish community went and sat with the perpetrator's wife they grieved with her they felt her grieve as well as their own they went to be with her was buried 72 members of the Amish community came to the funeral they have now collected 4.3 million dollars to take care of the victims a portion of that goes to those kids that the perpetrator left behind I would suggest that they showed us a redeeming moment not simply saying we forgive you not simply the pardon but the action word the redeeming moment and then finally the big one here in changing our conversation or language this conflict resolution to reconciliation reconciliation the word's been around for a couple thousand years the rationale and the need ever since Adam and Eve opted for the apple we've got to talk about reconciliation there are four components very briefly there's truth telling a confessional about looking back to the past and recreating the past in a way that you can say that's what I did to you and I'm sorry by the way this is why the Arab Israeli peace treaties have never come to fruition we've always brought over old men to let them shake hands in a rose garden for a photo op we've never got to the hard place this is what I did to you in 1948 yeah and this is what I did to you and until that's done we're always going to paper over the past mercy the engine that drives this people who can say they're sorry people who refuse to wear the missile of victimhood justice lawyers love justice forward looking make sure that that history that's just been forgiven doesn't repeat itself and then peace security for all on both sides of the green line on both sides of the wall on both sides of the missile shield make people feel comfortable and secure that's peace this is what that young pastor was trying to tell the folks at the Pentagon reconciliation strategies this is going to determine the relevance of our movement our impact and our seat at the geopolitical table reconciliation strategies need to dominate the methodologies of religious freedom secondly a new methodology we've had the methodology of the last 40 years where the left and the right have gone out each other culture wars neither side fought very fairly we've had one approach to take away those things that simply endusted maybe all the problems would go away that's a problematic methodology and by the way methodologies are never really talked about in terms of religious freedom you just have laws that you implement but we need some methodologies but here is the problem with removing the offense if Christmas trees in a Seattle airport offend you we take them out if the ring cross at William & Mary offend you we'll take it out we have people who pray to a certain person our people who end their prayers a certain way we'll just remove them well the problem with that there's no end game there's no list of the things that can offend people you can go and go and go and go and then one day you wake up and you say gee am I in France we have focused almost entirely on respect understanding someone having the knowledge of someone having the wisdom to put that together so that respect can emerge respect can emerge as a new behavioral change we cannot just look at this as an airy fairy word out there we've got to put legs under it and make sure that people understand what we're talking about I have used for many many years as a mantra for religious freedom to understand your own faith or your lack of faith wherever you got to and how you got there understand how that happened understand the heroes of your faith understand the orthodoxy understand why in the words of Pascal good men believe to be true and then just as importantly understand and know your neighbor's faith so well that you can offer legitimate and sincere respect for it this is what Osama bin Laden could not do Osama bin Laden looked at the Islamic faith and he began to pick and choose and he came down on the side of jihad against the west at that point it became murder and so you had someone who didn't know his own faith and didn't respect someone else's he was working with a redacted gospel and when he took a misunderstood faith and an inappropriately applied faith and kept it into the hands of this religious zealot bad things began to happen national security issue understand faith and respect your neighbors I would say this as items number five in terms of our prophetic utterances we need to emphasize respect every chance we get is behavioral change in the next 25 years that goes without saying let me also say that not only Osama bin Laden got it wrong but our foreign service establishment got it wrong as well I think there's a hangover I think there's a hangover that comes from the fact that we all grew up saying there's two things we don't talk about in polite company religion and politics folks religion and politics are at the nexus and the problems in the world you got to talk about them and not only admit that they are geopolitical issues but we got to understand them deeply the motivation, the rationale from a non-western perspective we're not doing that right now and so my item number six foreign policy establishment needs to embrace religion as a key geopolitical component the way I've just described it it's something indeed to watch in the next 25 years as a new player a new player and I'll do this very very quickly because my time is almost out the cultural anthropologist America has never been very big on culture and I don't know why perhaps because we have large oceans on one side of us and we've got good neighbors on the other side but we are certainly not a people of cultural nuance and we are paying a heavy price for that in much of the world that we're trying to occupy right now abroad however culture is everything I had a friend teaching a class to a group in Laos an indigenous church and he was talking about the parable of the Good Samaritan and at the end he asked for feedback and he started to feedback to him and they started to talk about the parable of the Good Samaritans the one had morphed into the plural and he was saying no no no there's only one and he said no wait a minute no self-respecting now would ever take a walk on the highway all by himself cultural insight times the thousand and if we're not in the business of understanding and promoting and embracing culturally congruent faith positions we have problems but here's the other issue that comes out of this in Laos they have 63 laws total that's all they have so they don't have anything that we would call as a tradition of law or rule of law certainly no settled law but to the practiced eye principle culture that's transparent culture that's an organizing principle and I would say to you until we get rule of law and all the things that you know are good and right and blessed we may have to pay some attention to what their culture is giving us settled culture in anticipation some day of settled law my seventh peace my seventh prophetic utterance my second issue to watch is what happens to the cultural anthropologist in our world I think that we need to embrace them I think they will make our lives immeasurably easier I need to conclude I have one minute and I will conclude in one minute I started with an optimistic optimistic story let me end with one the terrible civil war in Mozambique went on for like 16 years civil wars are the worst to get over they began to meet the both sides for limo and renamo in the late 1990s began to meet and at the table where they were meeting was a catholic lay order of saint agitio now the ambassadors came and went as they were called back the political folks came and went as the elections neared and they couldn't be there these guys stayed at the table they persisted their motivation was love of neighbor that's the only thing today in Mozambique there's a peace agreement that is lasting the continent where not many things work they have found a way to do something sustainable the hero in all of that is the lay catholic order of saint agitio once again like our young pastor going to the pentagon we will have the chance and an opportunity to do very positive things I'm not Polly Anish I think there'll be time when we'll feel like the Old Testament prophets reluctant to accept the role projecting the minority voice in face of a hostile minority held accountable to a higher truth there's no time out but we can prepare for that day by elevating the language to better articulate the old vision embracing a new methodology a methodology of respect and locking arms with the best of our cultural anthropologist thank you our third speaker this afternoon is Jeremy Waldron university professor of law at New York University he has held earlier faculty appointments in Columbia among other schools an accomplished essayist including for those of us who read the New York review of books his books include the dignity of legislation law and disagreement and God lock and equality he has delivered the Sealy lectures at Cambridge the Carlisle Lectures at Oxford and the Wesson Lectures at Stanford to which we can add this afternoon's presentation at Emory thank you very much I'm greatly honoured to John and Frank for the invitation to be here and I have a hard act to follow the title advertised is not exactly what I'm going to talk about the more accurate title would be the war on terror and the image of God so let's begin in December 2005 the Court of Israel considered the Israeli government's policy of preventive strikes aimed at killing members of terrorist organisations in the West Bank and Gaza Strip even when the people being targeted were not actively or immediately engaged in terrorist activities the petitioners were an Israeli human rights organisation and it argued that the members of terrorist organisations were either criminals and therefore ought to be dealt with arrest and trial or in the alternative if we were to use the paradigm of armed conflict then the civilian members of such organisations were liable to be killed by the Israeli Defence Force only during the time that they renounced their civilian status by taking up arms and actually engaging in combat or hostilities so that was the complaint in a long and very thoughtful opinion President Emeritus Aaron Barak of the Israeli Supreme Court rejected the absolutism of this contention he argued that people who had engaged and intended to engage again in terrorist activities did have the status of unlawful combatants and one couldn't rule out absolutely the right of the IDF to use force against them even when they were not actually involved in combat he said this that the revolving door phenomenon by which each terrorist has a city of refuge to flee to to which he turns in order to rest and prepare while they grant him immunity from attack is to be avoided he said there is no alternative but to approach these situations carefully on a case by case basis how regular is this man's participation in attack in civilian life just an opportunity for further preparation is the mandated alternative of arrest and trial available and safe in the circumstances and what is the likely collateral cost in terms of death or injury to those who are not guilty as he is well I think that was a very sound conclusion to come to but I'm not interested today in discussing the legality and wisdom that conclusion instead I'm interested in something that Justice Barack said in the course of his opinion as a sort of reminder of what was at stake he acknowledged that the states fight against terrorism as the fight of the state against its enemies and he acknowledged that Israel had suffered a terrible cost in the innocent lives of its own people as a result of thousands of actual terrorist attacks directed against them but he said this nevertheless unlawful combatants are beyond the law they are not outlaws God created them as well in his image their human dignity as well is to be respected God created them as well in his image the references clear enough we've had references to it throughout this morning God said let us make man in our image after our likeness God created man in his own image in the image of God he created him male and female created he them but here's my question why was it appropriate or important to insert this specifically religious reference into this context what is the reference to man's creation in the image of God doing in paragraph 25 of Justice Emeritus Barack's opinion I doubt that an American court would ever say this in its decisions about unlawful combatant status it would not necessarily take time to remind us that the man responsible for planning and carrying out the attacks in September the 11th were created by God in his image just as much as the victims of the attack though there was a time when our justices did talk in these terms a time when Justice McLean could say in his descent in Dred Scott against Sanford that the petitioner bears the impress of his maker and that he is destined to an endless existence Israeli courts are not afflicted with rosy and doctrines of public reason which are intended to limit the citation of religious considerations in public life but still there's this question what's this reference doing there in the concurring judgment of Vice President Rivlin of the Supreme Court in the same case a very similar point is made about the terrorists but not in the language of the image of God Justice Rivlin said this the duty to honor the lives of innocent civilians is our point of departure but it's not the end point we cannot negate the human dignity of the unlawful combatants themselves and Barack also used the language of dignity as well he said God created them as well in his image their human dignity is to be honored so there's the question slightly more sharply what does the reference to the image of God add to the point about human dignity I have one speculative answer and some deeper considerations to offer about the importance of this reference in this and similar circumstances speculative answer refers to an old Jewish tradition concerning the way witnesses were admonished in capital cases this is in Mishnah Sanhedrin witnesses were reminded that if somebody was convicted in a capital case as a result of false or equivocal testimony an evil would be done that could not be remedied in any case as the blood of the man put to death would be on the witness's head until the end of time the first man Adam created alone was created alone to teach us that whoever destroys a single life it is as if he destroyed the whole world and whoever saves a single life it is as if he saved the world entire man was created to show the greatness of the Holy One blessed be he for if a man strikes many coins from one it will resemble one another but the king of kings the Holy One blessed be he made each man in the image of Adam and Adam in his own image it's a bit of a stretch but it's as though Justice Barack were repeating something like that traditional admonition for the image of God idea is often connected in Jewish thought with the idea of God having stamped us like coins with his image and coined us from the initial creation of Adam it's one of the lovely variations of the render unto Caesar that which is Caesars the coin has the image of Caesar stamped on it render unto God that which is God we have the image of God stamped on us it's not a matter of demarcating our activities it's our whole being anyway it's a way of reminding the court according to the speculative idea about Sanhedrin 4.5 it's a way of reminding the court to proceed carefully in its arguments because this was in effect a case it concerned the shedding of blood and if the court were wrongly or carelessly to sanction this sort of assassination it would like a false witness take upon itself the grave responsibility of having provided judicially for the murder not just of a few terrorists but of sacred human life in general and in principle care was necessary the same point could be put more directly the reference to the image of God and Barack's judgment is intended to pull us up short to remind us that although we are dealing with an enemy an evil doer a threat to the lives of our loved ones one who will kill and maim scores of innocent people if he gets the opportunity although we are talking about somebody who is justly liable through his actions and intentions the deadly force we are nevertheless not just talking about a wild beast or a good animal gone bad or a thing that may be manipulated or battered as a mere tool for our purposes the unlawful competent is also man created in the image of God and the status associated with that imposes radical limits on what may be done with him and radical requirements on how we may treat the question of what may be done with him so a proclamation that the individual we may be targeting is created in the image of God counsels us to take great care and to respect the holiness of the individual even in this extremity no doubt those who are committed to human rights will accept most of these propositions about caution and elemental respect that Justice Barack is trying to convey here they won't need the image of God rhetoric to convince them to do that if they are already committed to the propositions about human rights although it's remarkable that one of the leading Israeli organizations on human rights cause itself to be in the image the problem is that our commitment to human rights is not always unwavering as was said this morning there's human rights in black letter law and then there's human rights as actually executed in the morality and practice of the community our commitment to human rights is not always unwavering as we have seen in the last six years here the sense that we need to hold steadfastly to certain basic constraints of rights in these situations is hard to sustain in the face of what otherwise seemed like sensible and compelling strategies for dealing with our enemies, with outsiders, with terrorists with those who may be categorized as the worst of the worst it is the most counterintuitive thing to say of a terrorist that he is at some level entitled to the same respect as his victims our standing temptation is to build upon what might be a legitimate sense one that we can treat outsiders from differently from the way we treat our own and two that we can treat the guilty especially the horrendously guilty in a way that is radically different from the way we treat the innocent the standing temptation is to take those two perhaps legitimate points and head towards something much more problematic a degradation of the person or as Robert just put a demonization of the other or a bestialization of the humanity of an evil doer when he is also an outsider and so someone to whom we think we owe nothing in the way of rehabilitative energy or nothing in the way of civic respect somebody who we think we may treat in the words of John Locke as a noxious creature one of those wild, savage beasts with whom man can have neither society nor security the temptation is to move in that direction it's a powerful temptation and accompanied as it is by the strongest feelings of moral righteousness and genuine legitimate concern for ourselves and our innocence it needs to be answered by something which is not just rooted in our attitudes but something that goes beyond our attitudes maybe goes even beyond our morality something commanded objectively from the depths of the pre-political and pre-social foundation of the being of those whom we are tempted to treat in this way it needs to be answered in other words by something beneath the letter of the law of human rights something that can motivate and sustain the positing and the observance of these legal constraints and of the care that's to be taken in interpreting them well you may think that that's precisely the role of human dignity to fulfill that function it's a role of human dignity to provide the sort of basal underpinning for the black letter law of our human rights commitments that they then appeal to if somehow the black letter law doesn't tell us exactly what to do or if the black letter law wavers if our commitment to it wavers in difficult cases I'm not sure about this dignity is an odd and ambiguous concept I wouldn't denigrate it for the world but in many contexts it does little more than repeat or reiterate the idea of human rights at its best and we should think about it at its best and dignity is a way of expressing something about the inherent rank or worth of the human person like any status term like citizen for example it may provide a ground from which further conclusions of rights can be inferred but also like any status term in law or morality it stands itself in need of further explication and justification and of course those needs for explication and justification are nowhere near more are nowhere more compelling in situations than in situations where everything in our morality everything in our allegiances everything in our concern for community militates in favor of denigrating or degrading not to mention bestializing or instrumentalizing those who pose the sort of threat that terrorists pose in the modern world dignity is fragile and vulnerable as an idea it's primarily meant as a way of articulating our thoughts of status but we still have to give dignity its grounding we have to give dignity its root in some I think deep objective ontological commitments about what is actually the basis of this elevated status that we accord to human individuals so this is where Justice Barack's invocation of the image of God may have work to do the claim about the image of God assuming it is true and I'll come back to that in a moment does more than simply reiterate claims about dignity in religious terms and it does more than simply reiterate claims of rights it provides a ground and a characterization of dignity that is both substantive or objective and compelling it presents itself as grounded ontologically not just in what we happen to care about or what norms we happen to have committed ourselves to but in what it says is a fact about what humans are actually like or more accurately a fact about what they have been made by their creator to be like to be like unto himself and to command by virtue of the fact of that likeness treatment and consideration and respect as something sacred and inviolable if there were unlimited time I would talk a little bit about why the Kantian position that it's the human capacity for moral autonomy that commands this momentous respect why that is not a genuine alternative but so much of what I would want to say about that has already been said more eloquently by David Novak this morning so I'm happy to talk about it in discussion I mean I think the main point is this that you remember Kant talks about two things fill the mind with awe and contemplate how things really are the starry heavens above which seem to reduce us to nothing and the moral law within which seems to elevate us infinitely but one question is is that admiration or amazement at the human capacity for moral judgment sufficient to ground and command the elemental respect that's involved here isn't it so far just an aesthetic attitude and the respect that's associated with simply how amazing that there could be this creature with this attitude without perhaps acknowledging the association of that aptitude with the image of God by contrast the notion of respect generated by the presence of the image of God seems to be exactly the sort of concept that can stop us in our tracks not just the gaze and admiration at an amazing phenomenon but to realize that we are in the presence and proposing to act upon something holy and inviolable something whose command upon us is in certain respects indistinguishable from what is commanded by the presence of God himself so I am not sure that we can do without a concept like this I'm absolutely sure that it was appropriate for Justice Barack to invoke this as a marker immunity from killing of the terrorist but as a marker of the care that is to be taken in the spirit of the witnesses in the capital trial in determining the treatment of terrorists I'm not sure we can do without a concept like this I don't want to be misunderstood I am not saying that we should come to believe that man is created in the image of God because it is morally efficacious to do so we mustn't say that a religious proposition is confirmed or vindicated by the role that it plays in explaining, characterizing grounding and motivating normative positions about human dignity and human rights that would be the sort of legal fictions strategy that David Novak talked about this morning the religious proposition that man is created in the image of God is supposed to provide a reason and like all reason it is vindicated in this role certainly it can be effective in this role of it it's believed but it's properly effective only if what is believed is actually the case if there is no God or if he did not create man in his image and likeness but just created another beast of the field then there may be nothing to motivate the inviolability of the person in extremis we may hope that some secular sense of the sacredness of the individual can survive such doubt but it cannot be a long hope in light of the experience of the last 80 years in which as Hannah Arendt has pointed out the world showed that it found nothing sacred in the abstract nakedness of being human for Arendt dignity and rights are to be rooted in the thick substance of an existing political community because our naked humanity by itself the bare forked humanity can't do it we have to rest upon the thick effective political substance of an existing community and that's the ground of her famous skepticism about human rights but I have chosen to focus on a case in which that won't do it either a case where the society has no choice but to confront a person who presents himself as a stranger to the community or as an enemy or a threat to the community as a dangerous wrongdoer outside the bonds of all community with nothing social or ethical to recommend him but the bare fact of his humanity we sometimes have to decide as the Israeli court had to decide and in what circumstances to kill such a person and if the person is thrown back simply on the fact of his humanity to plead with for care in that decision he may well find as Michael Ignati once said that the claim that because he is a human he deserves to live is one of the weakest not one of the strongest claims that one person can make to another this panel is devoted to the future of law, religion and international affairs and I wanted to end by relating what I've said about the image of God to these broader themes together with Robin Loven of Southern Methodist University who's here today together with Robin I lead a working group on religion and international law based at the Center for Theological Inquiry at Princeton we have tried to develop some general positions on the importance of international law so far as a Christian vision of the world is concerned so we've been trying to figure out the significance of international law and God's will for the world and the way in which distinctively Christian ideas may cast some light on topics like the legitimacy of customary international law the good of the international legal order human rights, the place of sovereignty the relation between international law and local law and the most difficult topic of the hubris that might be involved in attempting too ambitiously to establish a kingdom of the whole world in advance of the coming again of our Lord Jesus Christ one of the things that we have been grappling with is the attitude that should be taken by Christians towards the doctrinal proposition that international law is primarily a game played among states or a game played among sovereigns and that the bearers of the duties of international law and in the first instance the bearers of the rights of international law are sovereigns and that individual men and women ordinary human individuals only come in in a secondary and an indirect way this as you know is not just a sort of doctrinal orthodoxy in international law doctrine but it's also an orthodoxy of some sort in international law philosophy as is demonstrated by John Rose's last book The Law of Peoples rather than the law of all the individuals that there are in the world there is no doubt that Christian doctrine does recognize the importance of our being gathered together into nations and into specific and distinct political communities it's a wonderful article by Nigel Bigger called The Value of Limited Loyalty in a book on Boundaries and Justice edited by David Miller that's very important in this regard we cannot live, we cannot flourish we cannot worship even without community and without political and legal authority to provide a framework for us to live nevertheless the ontology of that concession that community is important to us as worshipers, as beings created in the image of God the ontology of this concession needs to be treated very carefully when we approach the claims that have to be made against the national community by particular human individuals and I do not see how a Christian can approach this or how a Jewish court could approach this on any other footing than that there is a radical disparity between the standing of human individuals and the standing of national communities in God's world human individuals are created by God in his image and likeness ordinary human individuals male and female created ordinary human individuals each of them one by one they are the holiest things besides God on the face of the earth and states are created to minister to them let me digress for a moment to tell you the story of the most notorious mistranslation in the history of political philosophy Sir Malcolm Knox who translated Hegel's philosophy of right told Hegel's English readers and what was for many years the standard translation that Hegel had said that the state is the March of God in the world the state is the March of God upon earth he had misunderstood the syntax of the German sentence es ist der Gang Gottes in der Welt das gestart ist which ought to rather to be translated as it is God's way with the world that states should exist not the state is the March of God on earth but it's God's way with the world that there should be states it may be God's intention God's way with the world that there should be states in the world, distinct nations and independent political communities at least for the time being but states are trustees for the bearers of ultimate value they are not themselves the bearers of ultimate value states are trustees for the bearers of ultimate value and here's the paradox, here's the challenge the terrorist though an enemy of the state and though the enemy of each of us nevertheless is one of those bearers who can't be killed does mean we must take the greatest care in determining whether in what circumstances he can be killed here's another way of putting it and I owe this last formulation to Robin Loven no doubt individuals will be judged in the final analysis for what they have done in and for their community no doubt we will be judged for our obedience and respect to those who have been set over us but the basis of that judgment will be ultimately a matter of what we have enabled or frustrated rulers and nations and communities from doing for the individuals committed to their charge nations on the other hand will be judged directly and ultimately for their treatment of individuals the authority for this is unequivocal in the Christian tradition and made piercingly clear in the parable of the greater size referred to earlier today when the son of man shall come in his glory and all the holy angels with him then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory and before him shall be gathered all nations and he shall separate them the nations from one another as a shepherd divided his sheep from the goats and he shall set the sheep on his right hand and the goats on his left and then he will say to those on his right hand come ye blessed of my father and her at the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world for I was in the hungry and you gave me meat I was thirsty and you gave me drink I was a stranger and you took me in naked and you clothed me I was sick and you visited me prison and you came unto me and all the righteous look very puzzled the righteous nations and say lord when we saw we hungry and fed thee or thirsty and gave thee drink when we saw we a stranger and took thee in or naked and clothed thee or when saw we were sick or in prison and came unto me and the king shall answer and say unto them the nations verily I say unto you in as much as you have done it to the least of these my brethren you have done it to me and you know how it goes on for the goats from our perspective the striking things about this forefold first of all that it is the nations who are judged I believe it applies to individuals as well but it certainly applies to the nations secondly that they are judged for the treatment of individuals thirdly that their treatment of individuals is related to the distinctively strong and radical Christian conception of the image of God namely the presence of Christ in some sense in the predicament of each individual and fourth that the focus is not just individualistic but beyond that on the least of these my brethren which include the most despised and perhaps the worst of these my brethren the radical work that the image of God does and we do well to consider that the work that it does is not just judgment of ourselves but judgment of the nations and so to come back in conclusion to my starting point although that Christian conception is not exactly the Jewish conception I think that the general proposition about the image of God was entirely appropriate and utterly necessary in the sort of context we founded in the opinion of Justice Barak considering the bearing of international law on the status and protections to be accorded to the most dangerous and despised human individuals that the state of Israel has to reckon with or that any state including our own might have to reckon with in the future. Thank you very much. Unless my instructions are changed by the consistory of Geneva I am supposed to end this session in three minutes which means if someone has a brief and perfectly well formulated question the microphones are at the side yes please. It's pretty brief I'm not sure it's meticulously well formulated but I do want to ask Mr. Gunn a question if you had begun your presentation with let's say Abraham Lincoln's Thanksgiving proclamation in 1863 your narrative would have taken a rather different tone I suspect that is you would have had calls for repentance humility and a recognition that in fact God's ways are inscrutable and that it therefore behooves us not to be triumphalist in our own cause our own case. So that being said I'm wondering what exactly your position is it wasn't clear to me from your presentation is your objection to the instrumental use of religion to promote certain political ends and find profoundly troubling for example sort of bringing God into it when you're talking about force of arms in an ambiguous morally ambiguous conflict let's say or senators and congresspersons doing the same thing during the 1950s to fight an officially atheistic ideology so you object to the particular instrumental uses of religion or alternatively as your objection to any president, any senator any congressperson bringing God into it at all that is that they should simply not talk about God and bring scriptural references to bear when they're promoting particular public policies so I wondered if you could share with us which what your position is the particular political uses or the use of scripture and biblical references in God period is this on? in the more extended version of my paper I do use Abraham Lincoln so the time limits prevent a fuller discussion of this and Abraham Lincoln would be exactly the way that I think that it should be done for a politician or public speaker to make references to religion is perfectly appropriate just as they can make references to Hegel or Kant all of that is perfectly appropriate the issue I think from speaking of this from a religious perspective it is to take political decisions whatever they be and then rather than trying to understand the issues deeply to use religious language to justify to encourage support to rally the troops over something which perhaps the troops should not be rallied around could I do just a very quick follow-up would you have then the same objection let's say when you were criticizing those from the pulpit who were taking this triumphalist stand in a war situation would you have the same concern if you had let's say a very un-nuanced rallying of the troops not troops who are bearing arms but bearing a political message in a war situation they were preaching anti-war but perhaps at the time of the run-up to World War II when you'll know Reinhold Wieber was very critical of his fellow pastors, preachers people from the pulpit not recognizing the threat of represented by Nazism and what was being done to the Jews and they were in fact rallying the troops to maintain a kind of quasi-pacifist or isolationist stand you similarly object to that because it wasn't particularly nuanced I mean is that the problem not being nuanced raising Reinhold Wieber is an interesting case immediately after World War II Reinhold Wieber on behalf of the then federal council of churches got together with some theologians and issued a statement denouncing the use of nuclear weapons ever and said the United States should not do that and he based that he and his fellow theologians of scripture about four years later that it's almost the same exact group got together and issued another statement that did not reference the first now on behalf of the National Council of Churches without referencing the other and said that the United States should acquire and develop nuclear weapons the Bible did not change in four or five years it was Reinhold Wieber and the theologians that changed all of this I think underscores the wisdom of Abraham Lincoln to say that this is an ongoing quest where we need to be searching for our own motivations and anyone using God language or country language or patriotism language in a way designed to obfuscate the issue or to cover the issue or to hide or keep hidden the issue is the problem that I am calling for the prophetic tradition my name Jeremy like Jeremiah we are prophets and that is the approach to take to search one's own heart rather than to try to convince people using God language I'm afraid with that I need to call this wonderful session to an end thanks to our speakers for their remarks thanks to you all my only task is to say amen that was a fabulous panel they deserve another round of applause I think we will see you for our final session at 8 p.m. and if you have not done so turn in your form please and grab your poster we'll see you at 4 the preceding program is copyrighted by Emory University