Mars Hill Forum #20: ACLU Response to the Six Pillars of Biblical Power

John C. Rankin

In October of 1995 I was defining the six pillars of biblical power in a Mars Hill Forum at Worcester State College in Massachusetts. Our topic was secular humanism and public education, and in this forum I gave an address and was then cross-examined by two panelists.

Ron Madnick was executive director of the Worcester Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and by profession he was “an agnostic Jew.” As I defined the six pillars in my presentation and subsequent interaction, at one point Ron said to me, “Well, those principles are not just Christian.” I said, “I agree – they are biblical.” In other words, he loved the language and content of the six pillars, and when he grasped how I was not trumping a definition of Christianity (especially in the political sense) over the prior Hebrew and pre-Hebrew realities of the Bible, he seemed glad to claim his Jewish heritage.”

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