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| Kenneth Conklin |
Recently Lt. Gov. Duke Aiona publicly
expressed his Christian beliefs, provoking outrage
from Hawaii's leftists. In a commentary on
Wednesday, May 18, 2005, The Honolulu Advertiser columnist
David Shapiro quoted Aiona as saying "Hawaii belongs
to Jesus" and "God is behind this [the Transformation
Hawaii evangelical movement]" and "I would like God
to bless the people of Hawaii and see God's love
transform our state" and "Our schools will become
God's schools; our community will become God's
community; our city will become God's city; our
Islands will become God's Islands; our state will
become God's state; and our Hawaii will become God's
Hawaii."
Surely Mr. Aiona has the same right as anyone
else to freely express his religious views. The
problem seems to be that in a letter expressing those
views he signed his name with his title of lieutenant
governor. However, even his detractors have not
claimed that he used official letterhead stationery.
His views are clearly personal, and nobody with half a
brain would have any reason to believe his statements
express the official policy of the government
(especially since Gov. Lingle is Jewish, and as
Aiona's boss she probably would not go along with the
Jesus part.).
Professors who write letters-to-editor, or even
lengthy commentaries, often include their university
title along with their name. When Joe Schmoe adds
"Professor of Political Science, University of Hawai'i
at Manoa" to his by-line, most people do not draw any
conclusion that Professor Schmoe is speaking on behalf
of his department or of the university.
Leftists have been attacking the Bush
administration for its success in mobilizing large
numbers of evangelical Christians to vote Republican.
There's fear that Christians are pressuring the Bush
administration to nominate anti-abortion judges to
federal appeals courts and, soon, to the Supreme
Court. But Christians are voters, so certainly they
have the same rights as the leftists to vote for
politicians they agree with, and to demand that
elected officials should implement the positions
expressed in the campaign platforms that got them
elected.
In an Advertiser letter-to-editor on May 25,
Nancie Caraway wrote the following about the political
activism of Aiona and other evangelical Christians:
http://tinyurl.com/da2n8
"This is ... a devastating attack on the notion of
religious freedom and a democratic republic.
Many Americans who are uninformed and critical of
Middle Eastern societies and Islam seem to have no
trouble imitating and adopting the repressive
extremism of state-sponsored religion. How is this
interface of evangelical Christianity and public life
any different from those regimes? Weren't America's
founding principles based on separation of church and
state? And for good reason!" Caraway concludes that
Christian evangelicals' political activism "poses the
same threat to an open society as any theocracy 'over
there'." [Islamic Middle East]
Nancie Caraway attacks Duke Aiona and Christian
evangelicals for using religious views to shape their
public expression of political opinion. She accuses
them of violating separation of church and state,
trying to establish a "theocracy."
Where was Nancie when her husband Neil
Abercrombie participated in a church service in our
Legislature?
On March 31 our Legislature held a hearing
(actually, a propaganda rally) on the Akaka bill.
Inouye, Abercrombie, and Case gave testimony and
answered questions. At the beginning, committee chair
Representative Scott Saiki called upon committee
member Representative Ezra Kanoho to open the hearing
with a prayer. Representative Kanoho told everyone in
the room to stand up. Then he led the "congregation"
in singing in unison the Hawaiian-language version of
the Christian hymn "Doxology." (The English version,
familiar to all Christian churchgoers, says: Praise
God from whom all blessings flow; praise Him all
creatures here below; praise Him above ye heavenly
host; praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; Amen).
Kanoho's tactic of using Hawaiian language is a
frequent political ploy to add an element of
indigenous mysticism to impress people who do not know
the language, much as Roman Catholic mass 50 years ago
was performed in Latin.
With everyone still standing, heads bowed, Kanoho
continued with a lengthy prayer in English explicitly
calling again upon the Christian Trinity of Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit to bring everyone together in
supporting the Akaka bill. See
http://tinyurl.com/9s8et for a complete transcript of
the 96-minute hearing.
Aiona's comments were not made in an official
government hearing in a government building. The
Saiki/Kanoho performance used a standard hymn of a
particular religion, and a prayer invoking the names
of the trinity of gods of that religion, as part of an
official government legislative hearing. The
Saiki/Kanoho performance was clearly a religious
ceremony being performed by government officials being
paid with taxpayer dollars while engaged in official
duties. Why was there no outrage from Nancie Caraway
or David Shapiro?
We often hear demands for government to bow down
to ancient Hawaiian religion on issues like military
training on "sacred land" at Makua, telescopes on
"sacred" Mauna Kea, and banning genetic engineering of
"sacred" taro. See http://tinyurl.com/2n4hy for
discussion of how Hawaiian religion is used to assert
political claims to racial supremacy. See
http://tinyurl.com/b5bef and also
http://tinyurl.com/b5bef for an explanation of how a
religious creation legend (Kumulipo) provides a
metaphysical theory explicitly used to support our
existing governmental institutional racism.
Sixteen months ago McKinley High School was
forced to remove the words "love for God" from its
honor code that had been adopted in 1927, after the
ACLU filed a lawsuit in federal court. Mitch Kahle,
of the Hawaii Citizens for the Separation of State and
Church, has pursued numerous issues of that sort; for
example, forcing the Honolulu Police Department to
remove "so help me God" from its oath of office. The
HCSSC Web site at http://www.lava.net/~hcssc/ describes
many such victories. The Honolulu Advertiser,
reporting the settlement of the McKinley lawsuit, said
"The code, written by students in 1927, says: 'As a
student of McKinley, I stand for honesty in all I do
and say; for industry in study, work, and play; for
purity in spirit, thought and deed; for courage to
meet life's every need; for brotherhood of races all
combined; and love for God and all mankind.' The code
has been recited at graduations, put to music by the
school's choir and included in the school's handbook
and other materials."
http://tinyurl.com/asrpu
Where are Mitch Kahle and the ACLU when we need
them? At least a dozen of Hawaii's
taxpayer-supported public schools almost certainly
open each day's activities with a prayer. These are
the "host culture" public charter schools, where
Hawaiian culture and the ancient Hawaiian religion are
the focus of the curriculum. Learning about religion
is perfectly acceptable, even for zealous defenders of
church-state separation. Children should be expected
to know about religions that have been important in
world history, and should know about the ancient
Hawaiian religion that was so important in the history
of Hawaii.
But it clearly violates the law to require public
school children to actually engage in religious
activity and prayer for a religious purpose (as
opposed to play-acting or giving illustrative
examples). Ceremonies honoring the god Lono are part
of the makahiki festivals; prayers are used to open
and close every school day; prayers are offered when
taro is planted or harvested in the school's loi
kalo; etc. The curriculum also includes building
ethnic pride by teaching as fact the Hawaiian creation
legend in Kumulipo, which describes ethnic Hawaiians
as members of a family that includes the gods and
these islands themselves as living beings. Thus
ethnic Hawaiian children learn that they have a
genealogical connection to the land and to the gods
which is not shared by anyone lacking a drop of native
blood. Pity the feelings of the children who have no
native ancestry and must wonder where they fit in
(they can never fit in as equals). Also pity the
children with native ancestry who grow up feeling
entitled to superior status and are in for a rude
awakening later on. See http://tinyurl.com/2h6uo
for information about the "host culture" charter
schools and the attempt to create an apartheid
"public" (i.e., tax-supported) school system.
Government officials are human beings like
everyone else. They have a right to hold whatever
religious views they wish. They have a right to
express those views as individuals. The public
benefits by knowing a political candidate's religious
views, since those views can be expected to
significantly influence his public policy decisions
and his personal integrity. Lt. Gov. Aiona
was well within his rights to express enthusiastic
support for the Transformation Hawaii evangelical
movement. By publicizing his views he also helps
voters judge his character and make a better-informed
decision whether to support his future political
candidacies.
Government officials violate the Constitution
when they use government resources to promote any
particular religion, or religion in general. They
most emphatically violate the Constitution when they
engage in religious ceremonies (and intimidate others
to follow along) during official government activities
to promote legislation or to make it seem that God
expects people to vote a certain way. Representatives
Saiki and Kanoho should be censured for their
behavior.
Nancie Caraway (Mrs. Abercrombie) pushes the
panic button, screaming that Hawaii is in danger of
becoming a theocracy. That danger is real, but it
does not come from the Christian evangelicals she
targets.
Kenneth R. Conklin, Ph.D., is an independent scholar in Kaneohe, Hawaii. His Web site on Hawaiian Sovereignty is at: http://www.angelfire.com/hi2/hawaiiansovereignty He can be contacted at: mailto:Ken_Conklin@yahoo.com
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