By Brent Walker
At a time of national tragedy, we should all be praying, grieving and supporting those who suffered grievous loss. Then we must have a conversation, even a debate, followed by action to make sure what we saw in Newtown does not happen again, or at least lessen the chances.
Thankfully, last weekend many pastors and religious leaders across the nation provided leadership that will help see us through. They took to their pulpits to provide guidance and words of hope to members of their congregations — many who came to worship with heavy hearts.
What we do not need, however, is for pundits — like Mike Huckabee no less — using those awful events to score political or journalistic points, especially when what is said is not true.
Last Friday, the former presidential candidate and Baptist preacher claimed that the murder of 26 students and teachers at a Newtown, Conn., elementary school was caused by the nation’s systematic removal of God from public schools. This is bad theology and a blatant misstatement of the important constitutional protections afforded to students in the public schools.
It is impossible for anyone to remove Almighty God from anywhere, including the public schools. God is never truant. He was there on Friday morning suffering with those killed and injured, embolding the many acts of heroism, rejoicing with the lives that were saved.
It is true that state-sponsored religious exercises are not allowed in public schools, and properly so. But religion can be expressed — voluntarily and uncoercively — in dozens of ways by the students and even in the classroom.
In an effort to regain some credibility, Huckabee still maintains that we have “escorted God right out of our culture and marched him off the public square,” and that we only call upon God after a tragedy.
False again. We have no more banned God from our culture and public square than kicked him out of our public schools. And, certainly after a tragedy it is a particularly appropriate time to reach out to God for comfort and guidance, but our political culture and day-to-day public rhetoric is replete with references to God far more than in any industrialized country that I know.
We’ll never be able to explain what happened last Friday in Newtown — not politicians, not theologians, not social scientists. But, self-serving, simplistic and simply wrong explanations will not do.