American Religious Freedom Part II: The Present

This is the second installment of a three part series on the tradition of American religious freedom. For Part I: The Past, click here.

Today’s blog is posted under a bit of a misnomer, as it will be more about the recent past than the actual present. In addition, it will be less of a historical narrative and more of an exposition of certain truths essential to understanding the source and application of American religious freedom, with a few historical examples to reinforce the central argument. As I proceed through these points, I will argue not only that religious freedom must be preserved, but that institutionalized secularism is a force that counteracts the advancement of religious liberty, and liberty in general. I ask you to bear with me as I try to cram a plethora of ideas into a post of a manageable length.

First, it is essential to understand, as I wrote in the previous installment of this blog, that an understanding of the Founding Fathers’ belief in a Creator as the source of our natural rights is essential to grasping the true meaning of liberty as they conceived it. I stress this because when we do not believe in God-given natural rights that cannot be taken away by any power on Earth, we diminish the dignity of our humanity. If I do not look to God for my rights, but to man, then my liberty is subject to the whims of a fundamentally corrupt being, and my value as an individual is likely to be neglected. The Founders believed that our Creator knows and values each one of us, and this is why we are all individually endowed with certain unalienable rights that are as much a part of us as our very humanity. The role of government is not to bestow these rights, but to preserve them.

Opposite this perspective stands the doctrine (and I use that word deliberately) of institutionalized secularism, which seeks to remove all religious influence from public life, mostly through the power of the courts. This practice is based on a flawed perception of religion’s role in American history, and its result is the minimization of human dignity, the degradation of fundamental societal values, and ultimately the lessening of liberty.

For a powerful historical example, I turn to the mid-19^th century. Belief in the dignity of the human individual was the driving force for the majority of the abolitionist movement according to Dr. Wayne Grudem, a leading reformed theologian at Phoenix Seminary (listen to his lecture series on faith and politics here). According to Dr. Grudem, two thirds of abolitionists in the United States were Christian clergymen (this statistic from Alvin Schmidt’s How Christianity Changed the World). My point here is not that Christianity is the only force for good in America, nor do I believe that to be true. Rather, my point is that it was the belief in the dignity of the individual, fostered by the belief in natural rights imparted to every man by his Creator, that spurred on a movement, ended slavery, and changed America forever.

As a quick aside, to those who would point out that many slaveholders were Christians and that southerners often justified slavery on Biblical grounds, my response will be pithy. I do not believe I need to say much more than John Locke when he writes, “If [a man] be destitute of charity, meekness, and goodwill in general towards all mankind, even to those that are not Christians, he is certainly yet short of being a true Christian himself.” Now, there is no way for us to know the heart of anyone but ourselves. However, I find it hard to believe that any person who considered it proper and permissible to own chattel slaves could possibly have had a deep belief in the fundamental value of the individual, nor could he have truly understood that Christ came “that they may have life, and have it to the full” (John 10:10).

That being said, there is a movement afoot in America today that seeks to construct a “wall of separation” between church and state, removing any religious influence of any kind from the affairs of government. The argument for this position goes something like this: The influence of religion on government affairs will intrude on the free exercise of those who do not hold those particular religious convictions, and thus it cannot be allowed. The “wall of separation” implicitly argues that government will function just as well, in fact better, if religion is uninvolved in public life.

Now, this position is foolish in its belief that government can function without an absolute moral code. As George Washington said in his farewell address, “Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” Moreover, to consistently assert that government would be better off without the influence of religion, one would have to argue, for example, that slavery would have been abolished without any religious influence on government. I leave it to you to decide what would have motivated an adequate number of Americans to agitate for the dignity and humanity of black slaves, if not the adherence to an absolute moral code handed down by a divine Creator.

In addition, one would have to remove the faith of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a pastor, from the Civil Rights Movement. Without the influence of Dr. King and the involvement of churches, would the Civil Rights Movement have succeeded as it did in reinforcing the value of the American individual regardless of race? The preamble to the Constitution asserts that our government exists to “promote the general welfare.” It is an undeniable historical fact that in the most momentous occasions where the general welfare has been promoted by the U.S. government, the influence of religion, or at least a moral code derived therefrom, has been indispensable.

By far the most glaring recent example of judicial activism supplanting the influence of religion on public affairs was the 1996 Colorado case Romer v. Evans, in which the Colorado Supreme Court struck down a constitutional amendment after it was passed in a popular election by the people of Colorado. The amendment essentially refused to recognize homosexuals as a protected class. The court justified its decision to strike down the amendment by saying that the law was passed with too much religious influence. According to the court’s opinion, the consideration of one’s religious principles while voting in an election “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests” (wade through the original text of the Colorado decision here). Dr. Grudem calls this justification “foolishness,” and he makes a compelling argument for the freedom of people to consider whatever they want while voting. “The nature of a free society requires that people should be able to base their political convictions on whatever reasoning process or whatever authority they prefer.”

The Romer decision, along with any other government action intended to discount the legitimacy of a person’s religious convictions in their decision making, amounts to nothing less than an infringement on citizens’ right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment.

Historically speaking, religious freedom has been fundamental to the retention and advancement of American liberty in general. Because religion is allowed, in private and in public, to flourish without interference by the government, American morals are what they are, and individuals are valued as they deserve to be. It is because of the influence of religion on American history and philosophy that people of all races may vote without preconditions. Because of the general belief in the transcendent value of the individual, American women may vote, work, drive, and enjoy all other freedoms imparted to them as Americans. In addition, they can live without fearing the humiliation of polygamous marriages, oppressive dress codes, or cruel punishments as women do elsewhere in the world. I believe that our first president said it best: “Of all the dispositions which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable results.”

It is for this reason that institutionalized secularism is the single largest threat to American religious freedom today. We may not think much of a court decision here or there, but the ripple effect of degraded religious freedom will have enormous repercussions for our liberty as a whole, the state of our culture, and our well being as a nation.

In the third and final segment of this blog, I will address the issue of religious freedom as it applies to the mounting obstacles of globalization and radical Islam. For those who wish to read a more religiously universal assessment, rather than the Judeo-Christian focus of these first two parts, the upcoming installment will be of particular interest.

For further reading on the topics mentioned in this post, see John Locke’s “Letter Concerning Toleration,” the chapter “On Faith and the Founding” in Mark R. Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny, Alvin Schmidt’s How Christianity Changed the World, and Dr. Wayne Grudem’s lecture series on faith and politics.