Letter: Nation's strength in its diversity

As per Mr. William Kelly Jones' perspective on religion and politics. I must remind Mr. Jones that our nation is in better moral and ethical straits than in a decade or three.

Please note that crime statistics are at all-time lows, our churches, synagogues and places of worship are packed and building new buildings everywhere and our abilities to watch over our various governments, local to national, are at a peak due to the communications revolution we are in the middle of. The issues he addresses, abortion, gay marriage, sexual perversity, the will of God, among others strike me as extremely personal.

I submit that what goes on in my bedroom and in my heart are no business of the state or the church or particularly of sanctimonious moralists. It just so happens that religious freedom in America encompasses all belief systems and under that auspice it is incumbent on the citizenry to not be so narrow minded as to believe that one belief system has reign over any other. The body politic is just that, political, and must remain so or we endeavor onto the fringes of such systems as those in Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, China and a number of other social and religious dictatorships on this planet.

In the wonderfully democratic and noble words of Thomas Jefferson, "Believing ... that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." --Thomas Jefferson to Danbury Baptists, 1802.

I would also caution Mr. Jones to look deeply within as the machinations of various points of view within the many Christian churches and sects, when examined for continuity of belief and answers of the spirit, have yawning chasms spanned only by the compassion and tolerance espoused by its first, grandest and only true reformer and not surely by the loud few who choose to publicly represent their interpretation as the one and only.

Your point of view, sir, is abrasive and shrill in its use of terms such as "evil creature, pathetic sinful selves, and infanticide," all of which are subjective and emotionally inflammatory. Firing for effect and to manipulate, rather than to clarify and inform. And finally in the again august words of a founding father: "Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards

uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites.

To support roguery and error all over the earth." (Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782.

CHRISTOPHER LUNN

Minden