Conscience and the American experiment

Fairbury is a small farm town in the middle of the great American farm belt. I was born in Fairbury, Illinois, and grew up as a “town kid” in that lush farm expanse. Life was about farming even for a town kid.

Growing up in Fairbury was a unique experience. The two largest churches in town were Apostolic Christian. Apostolic Christians were from German Anabaptist stock. They were pacifists and opposed all wars. The typical Apostolic family had fled German militarism. They were gentle, kind people, who made a valiant effort to live out their faith. I went to grade and high school with many Apostolic children. Fairbury was an Apostolic colony.

My high school years were the same years as World War II. Young men were massively drafted into military service. With the exception of a few Apostolic men, who served in the Army as non-combatants, Apostolic men refused the draft as CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTORS. The U.S. government honored their conscience without any penalty. So also did the people of Fairbury. Conscience was honored.

I was personally connected to the Apostolics. My great grandparents were Apostolic and had fled Germany as a protest against German militarism. My grandfather was the first of their children to be born in America. He became a very successful dairy farmer. I remember my grandparents as quiet, gentle, kind, loving people. My mother was such a person. I never remember a single harsh word from her mouth.

My parents married and became faithful American Baptists. It was at the First Baptist Church of Fairbury that I first learned about Roger Williams. American Baptists own a beautiful conference center at Green Lake, Wisconsin. The central building on the property is Roger Williams Inn. While I learned at an early age that he was the driving force in our denomination for exercise of conscience, it was in graduate school that I learned the full significance of Roger Williams.

Williams was a 17th century English man of privilege. He graduated from Oxford and was ordained a priest in the Church of England. He developed significant theological differences with his Church. He decided to move to the new world of America. He found that he had significant differences with the English Church in America. Specifically he accepted American Indians as fully human equals. He made friends with Indians and learned the languages of two tribes. Christians drove him out of their community in the cold of winter. He found shelter with Indians.

Roger Williams received a commission from the English government to found a colony in the new world. He established the Rhode Island colony and the city of Providence. Under his leadership, Rhode Island was the first colony to welcome Jews and Roman Catholics.

Williams was a scholar and a writer. His passion was the phenomenon of conscience. He believed that it was conscience that set human beings apart from all other life. He believed that every human being had a conscience, and that conscience was to be respected. Conscience, he believed, could be shaped and trained. The content of conscience was to be argued with total respect. The diversity that was produced was always with respect.

Modern psychologists would argue with Williams about the nature and the place of conscience, but Williams was a persuasive and powerful force in his day. His books were read and he was respected by the people who were shaping the future of the American colonies. I and many believe his thinking was the foundation that produced our American cherished separation of church and state. The American tradition of freedom of religion is unknown in much of the world today. The value of conscience is not embraced anywhere in the world in the way it has been treasured by Americans.

This tradition of conscience as a guide to right and wrong is still honored by many. The United States Is a nation of law and governing rules. However, the pressure to become conformists is ever with us. Then conscience raises its head. Just now this is being played out in the Congress of the United States. Wyoming’s Rep. Liz Cheney and Alaska’s Senator Liza Murkowski are refusing to conform to the dominant thinking of the Republican Party. I believe Cheney and Murkowski are both honorable people driven by conscience. They are both being threatened with penalties and exclusion. The pressure to conform is enormous.

America is a great nation. Diversity is the key to our greatness. Respect for conscience

Is essential to our national health.

The End

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer, Alaska. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net. He is pastor emeritus at Church of the Covenant in Palmer.