Forrest Church lecture to cover fear, the founding fathers and his new book

Vern Barnet, Faith and Belief Columnist for KansasCity.com

Meeting with area clergy for lunch today is one of the nation’s leading liberal preachers, Forrest Church, and tonight at 7 he gives a free public lecture about his latest book, So Help Me God, at Community Christian Church, 4601 Main.

The son of the late Idaho Sen. Frank Church, Forrest Church received his doctorate in early church history from Harvard in 1978. Almost immediately he became senior minister at All Souls Church in New York. He now is Minister of Public Theology there.

Appointed by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to chair New York’s Council on the Environment, Church has thought deeply about public issues. His 2004 book Freedom From Fear may be the best book produced by a cleric in response to the events of 9/11 that still shape our concerns.

That book remains remarkable for its counsel about how to live with the five species of fear he analyzes: fright (a bodily fear), worry (a mental fear), guilt (the fearing conscience), insecurity (emotional fear) and dread (the fear that afflicts the soul).

Our fears are often out of proportion to any reality that might justify them, and his sane words on 9/11, for example, provide a perspective that has yet to be absorbed by the body politic.

In his 2002 book, The American Creed: A Spiritual and Patriotic Primer, he considers the term “creed,” not as a sectarian statement, but as the pluralistic spirit of the nation with a vision of freedom and justice:

“Though the American Creed as fashioned by Thomas Jefferson and perfected by the Continental Congress rests upon a clear separation between church and state, the body politic does have a soul,” he writes.

Of his 23 books, the one I most frequently pull from my shelves is The Separation of Church and State: Writings on a Fundamental Freedom by America’s Founders.

In it, Church has gathered and introduced documents that provide historical context for understanding the intent of our nation’s founders as they thought about how the threads of religion and government can be woven with liberty.

The writers include Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington and James Madison. The book also includes a treaty that states “the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion,” ratified by the Senate in 1797. But in our time, should we consider God the source of liberty or is the Constitution’s invocation of “We the people” sufficient?

I expect Church’s new book and his talk will illumine such questions.