Lawmaker in Kentucky Mixes Piety and Politics
LOUISVILLE, Ky. Tom Riner looks for God everywhere, and in places he does not find him, he tries to put him there.
or more than 30 years, Mr. Riner’s singular devotion has been to inject God into the public arena. It has guided him as he preached the Bible in the countryside of Nicaragua and Jamaica. And it steers him as he proselytizes the formerly homeless and drug-addicted people who live with him at his ramshackle church in one of the poorest sections of this city.
But this unrelenting mission has also frequently taken Mr. Riner and the Kentucky legislature, where he has been a Democratic representative for 26 years, across the constitutional barrier between church and state.
In December, an atheist organization and a group of state residents sued Kentucky over Mr. Riner’s most recent incursion: a 2006 law he sponsored requiring that the state’s homeland security office post a plaque recognizing God’s role in keeping the country safe.
The church-state divide is not a line I see, Mr. Riner, a Baptist minister, said of the lawsuit. What I do see is an attempt to separate America from its history of perceiving itself as a nation under God.
A mild-mannered man, Mr. Riner, 62, speaks in a near-whisper, clearing his throat with each sentence as though he would prefer to remain quiet. He declined a request to be filmed by a video crew because it would not be in keeping with scriptural teachings about humility, he said apologetically.
And yet, Mr. Riner’s intense and silent stares convey a focused will. His friends and adversaries recall the time in the 1970s when the musical Hair first came to this city, and Mr. Riner, upset by its nudity, quietly interrupted the show by climbing on stage, a Bible in hand.
Tom is as pious as he is persistent, said State Senator Kathy W. Stein, a Democrat from Lexington. He’s also prone to legislative stunts that are embarrassing and expensive for this state.
Since 2002, state and local officials have spent more than $160,000 in legal fees, having lost case after case to the American Civil Liberties Union for posting the Ten Commandments in public buildings, and they still owe $400,000 for a 2005 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that such displays should be removed.
Still, Mr. Riner soldiers on.
While many Kentuckians see the religious displays as an antidote to what they view as the growing immorality in society, Mr. Riner cites the displays as a bulwark against the drift by teachers and politicians away from the historical role that God played in the thinking of the nation’s forefathers.
If we don’t affirm the right to recognize divine providence, then that right will disappear, Mr. Riner said. It’s part of our history. Whether we believe it personally or not, it’s what America is.
In 2006, he had In God We Trust written in large letters above the daises in the Senate and House chambers. He wrote the new state motto in Latin expressing gratitude to Almighty God for the state’s civil, political and religious liberties.
Mr. Riner was also integral in passing a measure to erect a monument with the Ten Commandments in front of the State Capitol. And he sponsored the legislation that permitted the Ten Commandments to be displayed in other public buildings, as long as they appeared with other historical documents.
Mr. Riner’s law involving the homeland security office says that its initial duty should be stressing the dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the Commonwealth.
The plaque that the law required the office to post has an 88-word statement that begins: The safety and security of the Commonwealth cannot be achieved apart from reliance upon Almighty God.
Gov. Steven Beshear, a Democrat, said he intended to keep the plaque in place and to follow the law.
Al Cross, the director of the Institute for Rural Journalism and Community Issues, based at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, said Mr. Riner’s measures rarely faced resistance in the legislature.
Politicians are afraid of attack ads that will say they voted against God if they vote against measures like the ones that Riner puts up, Mr. Cross said.
He added that voters regarded Mr. Riner as a stickler for ethics, having sponsored bills for more disclosure by public officials.
That rankles some of his colleagues, Mr. Cross said. But those who know him well have no doubt about his sincerity.
Indeed, his sincerity is hard to miss.
Walking the grand marble halls of the Capitol in Frankfort, Mr. Riner takes the back stairs to avoid the lobbyists lingering near the elevators.
When he travels for work, he stays with missionaries or friends, rather than in a hotel with other state lawmakers.
At home, Mr. Riner seems more at ease tending to his other flock: a motley crew of the formerly destitute who live in Christ Is King Baptist Church, where he is the pastor.
You can relapse into drugs or fall down on your luck, he said standing alongside a former crack addict named Mike, who sleeps on a mattress in the church basement. But the only rule we have to staying here is never lie.
Each morning at 7:15, Mr. Riner hosts prayer meetings for whoever wanders by. A space heater warms the tiny church. The back alley is stacked with scrap metal that he collects to trade for money for poor neighbors.
The Riners are really an example of what one family can do in pursuit of their calling, said David Edmunds, a policy analyst for the Family Foundation of Kentucky, a conservative Christian advocacy group.
When Mr. Riner’s wife, Claudia, was a state representative, she sponsored a bill in 1978 requiring that classrooms display a copy of the Ten Commandments. In 1980, the United States Supreme Court ruled the bill unconstitutional.
In 2005, when Mr. Riner’s son Noah was the student body president at Dartmouth, he was criticized by the student newspaper for preaching his faith from a commandeered pulpit, after using a welcome speech to incoming freshmen to talk about Jesus.
But for all their devotion, the Riners miss a basic point, said Ms. Stein, the State Assembly’s only Jewish member. Just because the nation’s forefathers held certain views about God, she said, does not mean that all of those views fit today’s more diverse context.
Stopping the family pickup truck in front of the City View Park housing projects on Louisville’s West End, part of her husband’s district, Ms. Riner stepped out and pointed to several houses that had the Ten Commandments on wooden signs posted in their front yards.
Christian values are part of this country’s history, she said. Without God, this society would be anchorless.
As she spoke, the sign behind her read Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
In Kentucky, a homeland security law requires the state’s citizens to acknowledge the security provided by the Almighty God--or risk 12 months in prison.
No, there are no such law. The law simply required that homeland security office post a plaque recognizing God’s role in keeping the country safe.
That may be a stupid law, but it did not require any one going to prison for not believing in god, nor refusing to mount that silly plaque...
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