On Tuesday the Council for America’s First Freedom announced its 2006 First Freedom Award recipients. The awards will be given to the recipients in Richmond, Va., where the group is based, on January 18.
This year’s recipients are Václav Havel, former president of both the Czech Republic and Czechoslovakia; Chet Edwards, seven-term U.S. Representative from Waco, Texas; and Robert S. Alley, professor emeritus of Humanities at the University of Richmond. While none of the awardees is black, the EYE applauds any group fighting for religious freedom and the separation of church and state in these dangerous times, and that is precisely the goal of the Council for America’s First Freedom.
These founding values of the United States were often disrespected by the founders themselves, of course, who did all they could to deny and disrupt the traditional religious practices of American Indians and African slaves. But they did enshrine these important rights, which are all the more valuable today with extremist conservative Christians holding the highest offices in the U.S. and the state of Missouri, not to mention on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Edward and Alley in particular have fought the good fight on these shores. On the House floor, Edward once said, “Separation of church and state does not mean keeping faith out of government. Rather, it means keeping government out of our faith. By passing language saying ‘Congress shall pass no law respecting an establishment of religion,’ known as the Establishment Clause, our founding fathers were putting religion on a pedestal so high that the hands of government and politicians could not reach it.”
Alley has said, “Only complete separation of church and state, with absolutely no establishment, will guarantee free exercise of religion. To whatever degree a form of establishment, no matter how mild, enters the Constitution through the amending process, free exercise is dust.”
Amen.