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From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com
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Subject: 'A Christian Nation'=
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 92 04:44:31 EST
Message-ID: <16.1992Nov19.044432@AmeriCast.com>


 KIRK FORDICE, the Republican governor of Mississippi, says that
the United States is a Christian nation. Really? Things may be
different in Mississippi. But in Washington, as you step over the
forms of people sleeping on sidewalk grates or huddled at the top
of the downtown Metro escalators, you may see reason to doubt it.
There are plenty of rooms in the surrounding inns, to borrow the
language of a familiar seasonal story, but the rates start at
more than $100 a night.

 After 22 months of searching, quarreling and negotiating, the
city has finally found a site in Ward 3 to serve as a temporary
shelter for homeless people. That would presumably gratify Gov.
Fordice, as a man who strongly upholds Christian values. The
shelter will open next month, if certain legal quibbles can be
resolved, to receive up to 50 people on those nights when the
temperature drops below 32 degrees. At 33 degrees they can get
along in the fresh air. Whether this rule fully meets the re-
quirements of a Christian nation is a question that we leave to
Gov. Fordice and others qualified to discuss it.

Dealing with its poorer neighbors is always a special concern for
a Christian nation. Unless the Supreme Court gets busy, the U.S.
Coast Guard will spend the coming Advent season picking up Hai-
tian boat people and dumping them back in their impoverished is-
land on grounds that they are not genuine refugees but only
hungry people trying to escape starvation. Perhaps Gov. Fordice
will want to address the Haitian policy the next time he gets
onto the subject of national Christianity.

But possibly Gov. Fordice was only referring to ethnic and polit-
ical Christianity, which has nothing to do with the Gospels or
moral conduct. Gov. Carroll A. Campbell of South Carolina, shar-
ing the microphone with him at the Republican governors' confer-
ence, hastily suggested adding Judeo, as in "Judeo-Christian." To
that Gov. Fordice stonily replied, "If I wanted to do that, I
would have done it."

  The phrase "Christian nation" carries a heavy hint that this
country belongs to some of its citizens but not others - an ugly
thought that has frequently led to even uglier acts. That's the
politics of exclusion, attempting to cut large categories of peo-
ple out of the process. It's a strange way to begin rebuilding
the strength of a party that, in the recent election, got 38 per-
cent of the vote.

02:12 11-19C9999-----

Copyright 1992, The Washington Post.  This story is from the
Washington Post's Capitol Edition On-Line and is not to be ar-
chived or redistributed.

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