Barry Lynn is a committed Christian, an ordained pastor, and the nation’s leading proponent for the separation of religion from government. For nearly 20 years, he has served as the executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, where his battles have included keeping official prayer out of public schools, and political endorsements far from pastors’ pulpits. Lynn, 61, sat down with The Washington Examiner to share his principles and the faith that supports them.
Do you consider yourself to be of a specific faith?
I’m an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. This denomination appeals to me because it has been at the forefront of the movements for social justice around the world. Clearly, it’s a denomination that believes the Bible contains a clarion call to help those who are impoverished, and those who are oppressed.
Did anyone or any event especially influence your faith or your principles?
As a high school student growing up in Bethlehem, Pa., my hero was the great conservative leader William F. Buckley Jr. During my senior year, I saw him debate the by then very aged head of the Socialist Party of America, Norman Thomas, at Lehigh University. Bill Buckley lost the debate, and he seemed in my view to say the government had no responsibility at all except perhaps to wage wars and make rich people richer. And this contrasted with all of the things I was learning in Sunday school, and the values I held. I can remember thinking I had just seen my whole young political philosophy destroyed — it was in a large gymnasium on the university’s campus, I remember it clearly to this day. I never quite became a socialist, but I became a progressive. And the older I get, the clearer it becomes to me that was the right direction.
But wouldn’t you characterize the separation of church and state as stemming from a traditionally conservative ideology?
The separation of church and state is, at its core, and in the best sense, a conservative principle. It recognizes that if you keep that decent distance between government and church, both will be the better for it. And the evidence when you don’t is to be seen worldwide, and it is not pretty. It’s not pretty in Iran, and it’s not pretty in the battles in Afghanistan. Because religion means so much to so many people, it is best that people debate and make their cause in public places without getting governments involved. Government involvement universally degrades religious beliefs and practice.
As a man of faith, where do you find it most difficult to separate your religious beliefs from policy and constitutionality?
I guess the single toughest issue to divorce is my opposition to the death penalty, which is not something I do as a piece of my job at Americans United, but something I’ve taken seriously my whole life, and participated in and contributed to in other ways. Opposition seems to me to be a flat and obvious conclusion to be drawn from virtually any and all religious traditions.
At your core, what is one of your defining beliefs?
I believe that the separation of church and state is the most important principle that I hold, and indeed the greatest contribution that America has made to world thinking. Maintaining a real wall of separation between the institution of government and the institution of religion ensures that government does not have to sort out great theological matters, and religious groups are free to preach and to practice what they want — the only caveat being they cannot intrude on the rights of others.
If people really took a hard look at what happens around the world when we mix government and religion, they’d be less interested in mixing the two here in America. This extends to wars, and to the empty cathedrals of Europe where people have seen that government support for churches means we ourselves don’t even have to attend, or give any of our own financial support.
