Keep speech free

In reference to Pastor Carl Johnson’s Easter semon in the May 4 article “Kittanning Pastor’s Notre Dame Fire Remarks Drawing Ire,” I would support Pastor Johnson.

The issue is fundamentally freedom of speech; whether the speaker is preaching from a pulpit, orating at a townhall meeting or teaching in a classroom is irrelevant. Such speech is guaranteed by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Even more pointedly, Pastor Johnson explained himself as he continued with his message. Political correctness can be so very debilitating to free expression. It is a short, slippery slope from articulating dissent of the status quo to the smear of “hate speech” these days.

Voltaire, no friend of Christianity, supposedly penned these classically enduring words during the 18th-century European Enlightenment: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Pastor Johnson is also to be lauded for applying his Christian faith to the social and political mileau of the day. So many pastors do not do this. Reformed theologian and Pastor Karl Barth said it best when he affirmed that the minister should proclaim the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. It takes courage to make such a proclamation.

Freedom of speech is absolutely crucial to the proper functioning of a democracy, a republic and, indeed, the church.

WARREN L. SMITH

Monroeville The writer is a North American Lutheran Church Pastor Emeritus.