Spectrum Magazine has just posted an interview with Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. Lynn is an attorney, activist, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ.
Lynn discusses the election, the recent event with John McCain and Barack Obama at Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church, and his view of the United States Constitution.
Read the entire article at SpectrumMagazine.org
Here are a couple of excerpts:
Question: So how does your faith impact your work?
Answer: My faith helps me to understand both the breadth and the diversity of the American religious experience. And also the depth of feelings people have about their faith – or if they don’t have faith, the depth of their opposition to it.
It makes me able to understand that people sincerely believe a vast variety of things about religion and its place – if any – in our culture. I take people’s statements of faith seriously and I’m not quick to say: Oh well, he’s just saying that for political reasons.
. . .
Question: Have your politics changed over time? You marched with Martin Luther King, Jr. when you were younger. Certainly he mixed religion and politics?
Answer: Dr. King mixed religion with politics in the broadest sense. He went back to the Constitution for what he wanted for the country. He gave a speech the day before he was assassinated. I can’t quote it verbatim, but he basically said that all he was asking was that America do what she wrote about. He was talking about the Constitution. He called us back to our common roots.