From time to time, “presidential authority” becomes a hot topic. I don’t have to tell you that this is one of those times! What with this being Presidents’ Day weekend, and with First Parish’s “theme of the month” being Authority, the temptation to preach about Presidential Authority was pretty close to irresistible!

Concerns over the authority of the President cut two different ways. Sometimes, Presidents are criticized for their failure to exercise authority. Just this weekend, a group of historians rated such a lapse – James Buchanan’s failure to do enough to prevent the Civil War - as the number one, all-time, presidential blunder.

More often, of late, presidents are accused of overstepping their authority. That’s certainly been the case since 2001, with questions about national security and civil liberties. In protecting the country, just how far do presidential powers extend? What may the Executive Branch do on its own, without involving the courts or Congress?

We’re all familiar with the questions, but maybe it helps to restate them briefly. The most basic, probably, is the president’s authority to take military action to combat terrorism. If such authority exists, where does it come from? Is it part of the President’s “inherent” powers under Article II of the Constitution? Or is the authority derivative, not existing unless Congress consents, pursuant to its authority under Article I?

To some extent, Congress rendered that particular question moot, since it did consent to military action with its post 9/11 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). But that Authorization raises as many questions as it settles. Exactly what is included in the President’s authority, and what is excluded? In using military force, how far does presidential authority extend?

The questions raised include the following, all of which have been in recent news: When interrogating suspects, may the President disregard U.S. laws against torture? Can he hold “enemy combatants” – including United States citizens - indefinitely, without charges or trial? Or, most prominent in current headlines, may the President engage in domestic wiretapping - warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens when they’re engaged in international communication?

All of these questions cut across party lines, and through labels of “liberal” and “conservative.” Domestic surveillance is a good example. Back in December, when the Administration’s program was first revealed, liberal University of Chicago law professor Cass Sunstein seemed to be tentatively in support of it.

In a law school-sponsored web log, Sunstein said that the legal questions seemed “complex, not simple” - and he suggested that the President’s domestic wiretapping program might be legitimate, either because of his inherent Constitutional powers, or through the 2001 authorization to use military force.

But just the other day, a journalist blasted the wiretapping as a clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. His column was entitled, “No Checks, Many Imbalances.” This person roundly condemned what he called the “monarchical” doctrine of the Bush administration that “whenever the nation is at war, the other two branches of government have a radically diminished pertinence to governance, and the president determines what that pertinence shall be.” Was this perhaps David Cole, writing in The Nation? Actually, it wasn’t - it was conservative columnist George Will.

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What might be a religious perspective on these issues? Can there be a religious perspective? On the one hand, some would say that religion has nothing to do with national security – or any other public policy, for that matter. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment puts up a “wall of separation” between church and state, and churches shouldn’t even attempt to speak on such matters.

Others would say that churches have a right, even an obligation to speak. The other side of the Establishment clause is the Free Exercise Clause. When conscience demands it, religious people must raise their voice in the public square. Certainly this has been part of our own liberal Christian and Unitarian traditions.

As James Luther Adams, one of our guiding lights, has said, liberal religion “affirms the moral obligation to direct one’s efforts toward the establishment of a just and loving community…The ‘holy’ thing in life is the participation in those processes that give body and form to universal justice.” This obligation is rooted in the faith of the Old Testament prophets – and their faith in a God of freedom.

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The scripture readings this morning say something about prophetic faith. In the Hebrew scriptures, there’s the story of Naboth’s vineyard – and King Ahab’s terrible abuse of power. In the gospel, we have the story of Jesus on trial before the Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate. What these stories have in common, I think, is that they show a clash of two different world views – world views that came up against each other in biblical times, and still confront each other today.

Biblical scholar Walter Brueggemann, who spoke at First Parish in October 2004, gives us a shorthand for these two worldviews. On the one hand, there is royal consciousness. On the other, there’s prophetic imagination.

Royal consciousness was the dominant culture of the ancient Near East. 16th and 17th century European monarchs were also quite fond of it. Royal consciousness extols power for its own sake. It evaluates societies according to their opulence, their military might, their worldly power.

Royal consciousness equates the ruler –king, emperor, modern head of state - with the divine. Today we might call it imperial consciousness. It holds either that the monarch is a god, as Caesar Augustus was thought to be, or that God rules directly through the monarch, as in “the divine right of kings.”

Royal consciousness also equates truth with power, saying “might makes right.” It holds that the king is right because he is the king. Pontius Pilate asks, “What is truth?” (John 18:38). For him, truth is irrelevant – because it’s only power that matters. Royal consciousness, translated into our own context, says what disgraced president Richard Nixon said back in the 1970s: “When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.”

In the story of Naboth’s vineyard (1 Kings 21), it’s clear that Jezebel understands royal consciousness to a T. That’s not surprising; she’s a good, old-fashioned Near Eastern monarch! Her Israelite husband Ahab simply sulks when his subject Naboth denies his request for the vineyard – he thinks he has no other option but to accept. But Jezebel says, “What – aren’t you the King? You can do whatever you please.” She devises an outrageous scheme, an appalling perversion of justice, to get Naboth out of the way – and she carries it out.

Enter Elijah, armed with “the word of the Lord.” Elijah personifies the prophetic imagination, which is directly opposed to royal consciousness. Prophetic consciousness refuses to let anyone claim that they have God in their corner. If God’s in anyone’s corner, it’s the corner of the powerless, the voiceless, the hungry and the homeless.

The God of freedom cannot be controlled, cannot become the vassal of any earthly ruler. This God works, “not by might, not by power, but by my spirit” – and the spirit blows where it chooses.

Thus prophetic consciousness makes king and subject alike accountable to a higher power. The monarch never has absolute authority. His authority is always subject to the law, and to divine judgment. And this divine judgment regards all people as precious children of God. If the king tramples on them, the king will be called to account. In the Bible, it’s “everyone ‘neath their vine and fig tree, living in peace and unafraid.” In our Bill of Rights, it’s “the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects.”

Abraham Lincoln understood prophetic consciousness. During the most difficult days of the Civil War, he said, “it is quite possible that God’s purpose is something different from the purpose of either party.” When asked by northern clergy to pray for God to be on the side of the Union, Lincoln replied, “Sir, my concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side.”

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Where does that leave us with regard to present-day issues such as warrantless surveillance?

It occurs to me that prophetic consciousness is akin to what Paul Tillich calls “the Protestant principle.” This is “the divine and human protest against any absolute claim made for a relative reality” - whether that reality be the Pope, the President, or even a Protestant church.

The Protestant principle is not at all limited to Protestants – it was the Catholic Lord Acton, after all, who reminded us that “absolute power corrupts absolutely.” But it is the distinctive heritage of dissenting churches, whether Puritan, Unitarian, Universalist, Quaker, or other.

If we’re true to that heritage, then we will be naturally suspicious - our Protestant hackles will be raised - whenever the President or anyone else in authority claims he can disregard the law, or interpret it as he wishes. It’s not that anyone wants to keep the Executive Branch from doing what’s necessary to protect us in this perilous age. But we need someone else, outside the Executive, to help decide between what’s protection, and what’s dangerous intrusion.

One last thought: Even in our democracy, we’re always in danger of succumbing to “royal consciousness.” We’re always in danger of making idols out of wealth or national security – glorifying them for their own sake. And we’re always in danger of letting the government govern, without our active participation. We’re always in danger of acquiescing to things as they are.

Prophetic consciousness – whether embodied in our Constitutional democracy or our Free Church heritage – points to a different way.