Reclaiming the Constitution

Every patriotic American concerned about the Constitution should read this article by Garrett Epps, a law professor and former Washington Post reporter. The article is excerpted from his forthcoming book. Interestingly, he cites Jaroslav Pelikan - one of the leading Orthodox theologians of our time - as saying that the origins of the constitutional debate taking place in America today are to be found in early Protestant theology.

Today's ideologues, Epps writes, argue that "virtually all of modern American life and government is unconstitutional. Social Security, the Federal Reserve, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, hate crime laws—all flatly violate God's law. State governments are not required to observe the Bill of Rights; the First Amendment establishes 'The Religion of America,' which is 'nondenominational' Christianity." This and similar thinking he calls "poisonous rubbish" and "mythology and lies" - and then he backs up his assertions with analysis of the document.

At the present time, efforts are being made to cut federal programs - everything from Head Start (by 22% of budget) to the National Weather Service (30% or $126 million). Such cuts are proposed ostensibly in order to achieve budget reduction - but the ideological underpinnings are the kind of thinking identified in Epps's article. The short-sightedness of such cuts is obvious. Consider the mega-billions it could cost our country if the Weather Service is unable to properly warn us of severe weather. As for Head Start, CNBC tells us in this report that cutting it is "bad for working families and worse for children. Kids who attended Head Start do better than their non-Head Start peers when they enter elementary school. One study found that in California, the state gained $9 in benefits for every $1 it invested in Head Start. And there are long-term gains in lower arrest and high school dropout rates once Head Start kids hit their teenage years."

Here is the section where Pelikan is quoted: "This notion—that there is somehow a fixed, binding, single intent hidden in a each phrase of the Constitution—confuses the Constitution with the Bible. The idea of a single, literal, intended meaning of a biblical text gained primacy during the Reformation. The religious historian Jaroslav Pelikan sees in early Protestant theology the origins of American constitutional discourse. Luther and the other Reformers believed that 'Scripture had to be not interpreted but delivered from interpretations to speak for itself.' What mattered to Luther was 'the original intent and sensus literalis [literal meaning]' of the words of the Bible."

Pelikan is not speaking of the authors of the Constitution - the American Founding Fathers - as being influenced by Protestant theology. Rather, he is speaking of today's ideologues

Just as we Orthodox Christians understand that we are to understand the Bible in the manner in which it was interpreted and explained by the holy Church Fathers, who breathed the same spirit and lived the kind of life that the holy authors of Scriptures themselves lived - so too should the United States Constitution be interpreted in a holistic way, and not in a piecemeal fashion that fails to consider the overall intent of its authors.

Epps is a serious patriot who perceives, in the current assaults on the Constitution, a threat to America's well-being, and thus is aroused to the defense of the true sense of this founding and constitutive document of our land. From the text of the Constitution itself, he shows that it provides for a strong central government, equipped with all the powers needed to govern this land for the benefit of its citizens. He refutes the novel theory that only those powers specifically named in the document are permitted to the government.

As Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has noted, the Constitution only mentions an Army and a Navy. Does this mean, she asks, that we cannot have an Air Force?

We need the countless services provided by the Federal Government, and as the article shows, the American Founding Fathers - who obviously could not see into the future - nevertheless did their best to anticipate new needs that might arise in the governance of the country, and to provide for meeting those needs. The authors of the Constitution, as Epps shows, intended to give us an able and empowered government, neither a weak confederation nor a tyranny, but a democracy for a unified nation.