
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, July 4, 1994                   TAG: 9407220089
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-5   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By GREGORY L. ADKINS
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DECLARING INTERDEPENDENCE OF POLITICS, RELIGION

NOT LONG ago, I was engaged in a closet cleaning. Inside the closet, I discover several unopened boxes from a few moves back. The one catching my attention is a Jack Daniels whiskey box which I, of course, open first. Besides making a great whiskey, the Jack Daniels Company constructs solid cardboard boxes. It's perfect for whiskey and other valuables. I open the dusty top and discover it doesn't contain what the outside boldly announces. Instead, I come across a copy of the Declaration of Independence.

I sit on the floor surrounded by old high-school and college yearbooks and this other piece of ancient history called the Declaration. If you are on a holiday from work today, this Declaration and the ensuing fight it caused is the reason. I read from the second paragraph under the dim light of the closet: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, than among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

What's strange about this document is the not-so-subtle blending of politics and religion. This is strange to those of us who have been taught that politics and religion, like water and oil, don't mix.

Whitney Darrow Jr. has a cartoon in The New Yorker in which a "successful" minister sits at his desk in his study. He's older and perhaps ready to retire. We overhear him offering advice to a young minister, one evidently ready to begin his parish work. The older minister speaks: "Drawing upon my not inconsiderable experience, Andrews, my advice to a young man ambitious of preferment in our profession is to steer clear of two subjects - politics and religion." And there you have it. We've been led astray by some ministers and some politicians. It's a sign of the past carried into our present. But we need to go back further.

If you sit in a closet by yourself without outside intrusion, you hear something. Something quite different. Yes. The Declaration is a political document. And, yes. It's also a document that references the Creator. The political document includes a religious conviction. Or is it a religious conviction put to practice in a political document? Is it both/and rather than either/or?

I know some of you are still disappointed that I didn't find Jack Daniels in the box. Thoughts of blending Jack Daniels and water contains potential for both danger and enjoyment. But the box I dug out of the dusty closet contains something much more powerful. One can blend the best intentions of politics and religion.

Oh, to be sure, a mixture for good also contains the potential of drunken abuse. But, for what it's worth, the Declaration of Independence is also a declaration of the interdependence of the best in politics and religion. I'll drink to that.

Gregory L. Adkins is pastor of Raleigh Court United Methodist Church in Roanoke.

by CNB