c. 1999 Religion News Service

(The Rev. C. Welton Gaddy is executive director of The Interfaith Alliance, a national membership organization of people of faith that seeks to promote mutual respect, cooperation and civility.)

UNDATED _ On this last July Fourth of the millennium, we Americans once again observe our great national holiday celebrating independence.

As any fourth-grader can tell you, the first settlers fled to America to escape religious persecution in Europe. Thomas Jefferson described the historic battle for independence as a fight”against every form of tyranny”over the minds of people.

Thankfully, today, our nation thrives without a foreign oppressor threatening our liberty.

Frighteningly, though, our liberty is not secure. An internal threat throws a dubious shadow across our future. Far too many of our public leaders and elected officials seem to have forgotten the meaning of religious freedom as they press for a national”standard of faith.” If the 1980s were the decade of political correctness, then the 1990s surely should be known as the era of”religious correctness.”The public statements of candidates running in the presidential primaries illustrate the extent of devotion now given this”religious correctness.” Though claiming not to”wear faith on (his) sleeve,”Vice President Al Gore, for example, has begun publicly to bear witness to the depth of his Christian faith by advocating legislation that will provide government support for faith-based programs.

But Gore is not alone. Recently, at a prayer breakfast in Philadelphia, candidate Elizabeth Dole told supporters that though she once kept God”neatly compartmentalized,”she now allows her faith to govern every aspect of her life. In the last several months, almost every presidential contender has asserted his or her unique claim on morality and connection to God.

Obviously, these candidates for the presidency think voters will judge them on the basis of their proclamation of a”standard faith”and assume all Americans agree on the definition.

This dangerous, religious-liberty-threatening assumption was most clearly illustrated when the House of Representatives passed a bill allowing the posting of the Ten Commandments on state property. Which”Ten Commandments”? What is”the”Ten Commandments? Jews, Roman Catholics, Protestants, Muslims and others who revere the Ten Commandments in their Holy Scriptures hold different statements of all of the commandments as well as various interpretations of each commandment.

Did members of Congress not know of these differences when they drafted the legislation? Or did they assume”the”commandments in the religion of a majority of Americans?

When asked whether he would post the Catholic, Jewish or Protestant version of the Ten Commandments, Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush replied,”The standard version. Surely we can agree to a version that everybody can agree to.” Bush’s response prompts a gasp of shock among the millions of Catholics, Jews, Protestants and Muslims who know all too well the vast differences characterizing the application and meaning of each commandment in their respective traditions.

Congress doesn’t want the Ten Commandments simply to be a decoration for classrooms; it wants the commandments to be a guidepost for instructing moral behavior in students. Who decides what interpretation and meaning of the Ten Commandments to post for observance? If the answer to that question is”the religious majority,”then it is time to fear for the future of religious liberty.

Any assumption of the prevalence of a”standard version”of faith is a dangerous reminder that religious oppression can emerge and grow even in a society based on the principles of individual freedom and religious liberty.

According to a 1998 CNN/Gallup poll, 94 percent of the American people believe in God yet affiliate with some 2,000 different religious denominations.

That means a religiously diverse nation celebrates this Independence Day.

All those truly interested in freedom will recognize that our biggest challenge is guaranteeing every citizen the right to express faith without allowing any of these individual expressions to interfere with one another. Needless to say, attempts to”standardize”any one set of beliefs or practices threaten to delegitimize all others.

I love this day of celebration because I cherish the freedom that gave rise to it. On this Fourth of July weekend, let us remember, heed and obey Jefferson’s insistence that”if we choose for ourselves, we must allow others to choose also, and so reciprocally, this establishes religious liberty.”We cannot allow one group in our nation to choose and impose religion for all without surrendering the very liberty for which this noble experiment called America was begun.

DEA END GADDY