STATE'S MORAL COMPASS NEEDS CORRECTING

As the influence of organized religion continues to diminish in contemporary American life, it is difficult for some to understand why those who wrote our federal and state constitutions were so concerned about the pervasiveness of church and clergy in the affairs of government.

If readers will indulge a brief didactic second, let it be recalled that for centuries throughout western Europe -- -the source of American political thought -- -churches exerted broad influence over not only the daily lives of all citizens but the conduct of their governments, most often made up of church-sanctioned monarchies. In the name of these realms, the churches often dominated both private and public thought, while maintaining ecclesiastical monopolies that perpetuated their existence and protected their self-proclaimed right to interfere in and control matters of state.

Reacting to these abuses, some of which were inflicted on early colonists, authors of our federal constitution insisted on the right of citizens to pursue their own religious beliefs while prohibiting government from designating an exclusive spiritual franchise. Colonists felt so strongly on this issue that it is the first item mentioned in what we know as the Bill of Rights, the first 10 amendments, passage of which was deemed essential for ratification of the entire constitution.

Influenced by federal authors, those who wrote our present Missouri constitution included the same basic freedoms but added even more restrictions than did Jefferson, Madison and Adams. Instead of being only a part of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the Missouri document outlines its religious freedoms and restrictions in three separate sections of Article I. Perhaps the trip westward imbued still greater determination to be free from what was often correctly perceived as religious intolerance and clerical anarchy.

If you will pardon my cynicism, it would appear that our federal and state founding fathers may have overstated their case a bit. Instead of worrying today, more than two centuries after the constitution was conceived, about the dangers of repressive theocracy, we seem to be suffering, particularly at the state level, from a lack of participation of any kind by organized religion in the affairs and conduct of our democratic forms of government. Instead of overpowering visibility, some of us see an eroding invisibility of spirituality and religious presence in the halls of government.

I am not speaking of the absence of spiritual values in our elected officials, who often are still elected because they can be described as God-fearing men and women, but of the absence of religious principles in both federal and state programs that are deemed essential to self-government. A perfect example can be found in Jefferson City, where voter abhorrence to higher taxes has produced an entirely different set of solutions than would have been offered only a few years ago. Politicians, being political animals, have sought to diminish voter higher-tax retribution by creating an entirely new set of revenue enhancers, almost all of them based on the exploitation of human frailty and weakness.

Instead of increasing income or sales tax levees, our political leaders have offered a series of regressive taxes based on the transfer of personal resources. We have a state-sanctioned lottery, a soon-to-be expanding casino industry catering to the willingness to seek gain through games of chance, and we may soon sanction electronic gambling devices that will be available in public bars and taverns. Again, to enhance revenue in a seemingly painless manner, we have expanded the hours of sale of alcoholic beverages to limits that were unimagined only a decade or so earlier. It is only a matter of time until all forms of gambling are offered throughout the state. All of this is being done, not because it is the function of government to offer up every pleasure demanded of its constituents, but in the name of funding essential services that are needed, required and demanded

As this unending search for new and painless revenue is increased, our churches and their leaders remain virtually silent, tacitly ignoring this rush to governmental pickpocketing. Slot machines, and their appeal to those with more compelling responsibilities to family and community, are the antithesis of our Judeo-Christian beliefs and teachings. So are state-sponsored lotteries, roulette wheels and expanded privileges for dispensers of destructive alcohol.

Where are our churches and religious leaders when these questions are being debated in the halls of government? They appear unconcerned and indifferent as their parishioners make a senseless, destructive rush to judgment.