The editorial on the importance of free speech was timely and well done.
I am a retired worker, 70 now, and have benefited from classes in UI’s history and political science departments. I am a member of the larger Christian community and in Christ Church I have good friends and neighbors.
On some issues I may agree with them and yet have concerns about the way a few of their leadership present their arguments to the public. Here I hope to increase understanding.
The theology of Christ Church, Puritanism, is deeply rooted in American religious and political tradition. Our rights of life, liberty, property, freedom of religion and speech come largely from this tradition.
Englishman, John Locke, whom you may have read about was a father of liberalism and himself a Puritan. Our tradition of no kings, open debate and speech, democratic government, party politics developed in large part out of the Puritan settlement of North America 400 years ago.
Forward to the present, the Puritan is a champion of liberty and can be militant in the pursuit of that goal. However, when society begins to confuse liberty with libertinism, you can expect to fight.
Their understanding of liberty is that it is given to us by God, and the individual must be internally governed by God’s grace as informed by the scriptures. When the individuals of a society abuse personal freedom as in “doing your own thing” regardless of what God desires or how it affects our neighbor, the Puritan will speak on the public square. He is generally not moved or coerced by the latest politically correct thinking of social activists or government. For him, freedom is a gift from God for the self-disciplined and obedient.
Now, I also think that Christians, whether of Puritan, evangelical, Catholic or another sect, if regenerated by God, can easily forget where they came from.
We live in a time of confusion. Few of us are not touched by broken families, drug abuse, sexual confusion or the apathy that results from the spirit of our times. Too often, the Christian does not communicate to the non-believer that they understand. God can repair that which is broken in the individual person or society and nation.
Until then, The Argonaut editorial board has it right: debate, but listen in a mannered way. Extend to other groups that which you would have them extend to you. If listening and understand are not practiced, political life, a key to freedom is lost.
Letter to the editor received from Fred Banks