A Slave to Principle

JUST LAW AND RELIGION

Michael Kessler

Only U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa saw the problem with a plaque honoring the slaves who helped build the U.S. Capitol.

King, a Republican, was the only House member to vote against House Resolution 135, "directing the Architect of the Capitol to place a marker in Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center which acknowledges the role that slave labor played in the construction of the United States Capitol." He said he was standing firm on his principles to preserve the "Judeo-Christian" heritage from being "held hostage" by the liberals running the newly-opened Capitol Visitors Center.

King and some other members of Congress have been disturbed by the way the new Visitors Center portrays the role of religion. Since the Center opened in 2008, King and his colleagues have been braying about its omission of religion: "This is just the latest example of a several year effort by liberals in Congress to scrub references to America's Christian heritage from our nation's Capitol. Liberals want to amend our country's history to eradicate the role of Christianity in America and chisel references to God or faith from our historical buildings," he said.

Instead of making the Center all about the religious views of the Founders, the Center tries, instead, to portray the Capitol as the chamber in which citizens come together to make laws to govern themselves. As the mission statement reads, the goal of "the Visitor Center at the U.S. Capitol is to provide a welcoming and educational environment for visitors to learn about the unique characteristics of the House and the Senate and the legislative process as well as the history and development of the architecture and art of the U.S. Capitol."

But this talk of legislative process counts as God-less human hubris for some. Consider Jim DeMint's (R-SC) concerns. The Center "exhibits portray the federal government as the fulfillment of human ambition and the answer to all of society's problems. This is a clear departure from acknowledging that Americans' rights 'are endowed by their Creator' and stem from 'a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.' Instead, the [Center's] most prominent display proclaims faith not in God, but in government. Visitors will enter reading a large engraving that states, 'We have built no temple but the Capitol. We consult no common oracle but the Constitution.' This is an intentional misrepresentation of our nation's real history, and an offensive refusal to honor America's God-given blessings."

So apparently we must plaster religious ideas all over in order to make sure that the legislative process and the Capitol building are explicitly linked to the religious ideals of some of the founders.

But wait. Shouldn't the legislative process and the construction of the Capitol building be more appropriately seen as the fruits of human creation? Surely many considered these human institutions to arise from our God-given natural rights and talents. And the very process of achieving security of human persons and communities through law is a theologically rich idea, since human institutions that protect human dignity have always been central to political theologies in a range of religious traditions.

Yet the legislative process itself is imbued with the idea of human individual sovereignty. Representatives come together in the halls of Congress to represent the will of the people--not the will of God. They consult their own reason and intuition (ideally!), public polls, and political demands in crafting policy, not divine oracles or religious authorities. Laws are supposed to be designed to protect individual freedoms and their communities. It is not an arrogant, sinful stretch to point out that the founders thought we citizens and our Representatives should consult the Constitution as our guide for organizing political life.

And if the other main goal of the Visitors Center is to teach the visiting public about the construction of the building, then it's entirely appropriate to point out that the foundations, walls, and domes of that government building were crafted in significant measure through slave labor. Walking into the Capitol constitutes a prime teaching moment about our tragic national irony--the hall of freedom built by enchained hands.

So should we think that King was stupidly enslaved to principle in casting this single "no" vote? Is it racially insensitive? Racist? Politically inept?

King explained that he voted against Resolution 135 because he "opposed yet another bill to erect another monument to slavery because it was used as a bargaining chip to allow for the actual depiction of 'In God We Trust' in the Capitol Visitor's Center."

There is another resolution that King, among others, has sponsored. Resolution 131 "requires the Architect of the Capitol to engrave the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and the National Motto of "In God we trust" in the Capitol Visitor Center." Apparently, there was a horse trading bargain to advance this Resolution in exchange for the slave plaque which King objected to. So be it. Trades and compromises are how laws are made and the process is not pretty.

Yet King seemed really mad that the recognition of the motto was used as a bargaining tool--so mad he could not support the worthy cause of erecting a plaque that was exclusively about the slave construction crews: "Our Judeo-Christian heritage is an essential foundation stone of our great nation and should not be held hostage to yet another effort to place guilt on future Americans for the sins of some of their ancestors. Christian abolitionists gave their lives by the hundreds of thousands to end slavery. Great American leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. worshipped God just as our Founding Fathers did. We must never forget this important aspect of our heritage or use it as a political bargaining chip."

Indeed, King is right that slavery was ended--and its horrible aftermath of racial discrimination challenged--by good religious (and non-religious) folks fighting against the stain of human bondage. And, truth be told, people like Lincoln and Dr. King were also fighting against folks holding slaves and racially discriminating who often used religion to justify treating some humans as inferior to others. Religion has a scarred history when it comes to slavery.

Yet what surprises me most in this is not that King voted "no"--he stuck to principle, perhaps very foolishly. Fine. But King was a sponsor of another measure, Resolution 125, which would have instructed "the Architect of the Capitol to design and place an educational display in the Capitol Visitor Center to explain the significance of the naming of Emancipation Hall." Resolution 125, presumably, would have resulted in precisely the kind of plaque that Resolution 135 brought about. Like 135, Resolution 125 also points out that the "United States Capitol was built in large part with the labor of slaves...[and] Emancipation Hall in the Capitol Visitor Center was named to honor the slaves who helped build the Capitol and the process that freed them."

Yet Resolution 125 goes further and points to the 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, signed by Abraham Lincoln, as built on two authorities: "The Constitution and Almighty God, which is evidence of Lincoln's faith and his belief that all men are created equal in the eyes of God."

So King seems to not mind at all that there is going to be a plaque about slave labor in the Visitors Center. Rather, he presumably would want to link this recognition to Lincoln's "deep understanding that the abolishment of slavery was critical to the spiritual health of our Nation when he acknowledged that America would have to account for its transgressions against the people it had enslaved."

If that's the case, then King's "no" vote is a lot more complicated and ambiguous than a contrarian or a simple-minded bigot. He seems to have a vision for a robust explanation of the origin of the Capitol through slave labor that was linked to the Emancipation as an act of spiritual obligation respecting human dignity.

But voting against the final version, which enjoyed overwhelming support, was a stupid move that makes him look insensitive, to say the least. I'm willing to bet that his God would not have minded if he had swallowed his literal and firm stance on his principles in this instance.

I wish that more of Resolution 125 had ended up in Resolution 135. Instead of exclusively providing a thorough history of the slave contributions to the construction of the Capitol, as 135 does, Resolution 125 goes much further and actually calls out the nation as terribly sinful and shows how human dignity was preserved in Emancipation. 125 issues a resounding apology for slavery, asserting that Lincoln understood that "America would have to account for its transgressions against the people it had enslaved."

How magnificent Resolution 135 would have been to both detail the historical contributions of slaves and recognize the terrible magnitude of the way the Capitol was built.

Those stones at the foundation and on the top of the Capitol dome didn't get there by themselves. It's good that 399 Representatives voted to teach visitors about this fact. But Resolution 125 would have gone much further in acknowledging this ugly stain in our history and the spiritual crisis slavery represented (and the crisis that racial discrimination still represents).

Not all Resolutions are perfect and King should have broken free from his insistence on principle and joined his colleagues in recognizing the historical contributions of the stone-hewing slaves who built the Capitol--our legislative hall of freedom.

Dr. Michael Kessler is Assistant Director of the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University.

By Michael Kessler |  July 10, 2009; 10:07 PM ET

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