Trump moved quickly to defend religious liberty in America to quell the immediate threats from the Obama administration, but faith in America has been under attack for decades.
Since the 1960s, secular elites in government, media, and academia—who are now part of the anti-Trump coalition—have been carrying out a campaign to erode the public practice of faith and religious liberty in America. They have fought to replace the traditional American pattern of religious freedom with a system of strict secularism. Essentially, the anti-Trump coalition has twisted freedom of religion into freedom from religion by casting faith as a source of oppression that should be removed from public life.
This inversion of the traditional American understanding of freedom is in direct service of the coalition’s goals and in perfect keeping with their rejection of other key components of American exceptionalism.
Part of what has made America unique in this world is our belief, set forth in our founding document, that our rights come from our Creator, not from the government. Thus, our nation’s belief in God checks the growth of government and helps keep us free.
For the anti-Trump coalition to succeed in creating bigger, more powerful government that submerges the sovereignty of U.S. citizens, it needs to remove the essential bulwark for freedom that strong religious faith provides.
In addition, because religious faith is a primary source for Americans to learn the precepts of traditional morality, some in the coalition seek to undermine religion as part of their campaign in support of unrestricted abortion rights and the supposed rights of increasingly fringe sexual identity groups.
THE JUDICIAL ASSAULT
A favorite tool of the secular elite wing of the anti-Trump coalition in attacking religious liberty is the courts.
In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for teachers, principals, or other educators to lead prayers in public schools. In 1980, the court barred schools from displaying the Ten Commandments on campus. Since these cases, courts have gone further. The high court said in 1985 that even a moment of silence could potentially be unconstitutional, and in 1989, it ruled that nativity scenes celebrating Christmas in government buildings were unlawful.
In 2002, a federal court even ruled that the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance ran afoul of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause—which prohibits the federal government from establishing an official religion. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court’s ruling, but the justices stopped short of clarifying that this phrase is in fact constitutional. This is profoundly troubling, after all, the official motto of the nation is still In God We Trust.
In addition to the courts, some in the anti-Trump coalition have also waged a wide-ranging cultural campaign that impacts every aspect of American society. The First Liberty Institute documented 1,400 attacks on religion in America in 2017. The Institute’s “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America” looks at instances of religious hostility across four categories: the public arena, which includes government, workplaces, markets, and other public spaces; the schoolhouse, which includes K–12 and collegiate institutions; attacks against places of worship by local communities, and local, state, and federal governments; and religious attacks within the military. The Institute reports that instances of religious intolerance increased by 15 percent since 2016—and 133 percent over the last five years.3
Some of these attacks include companies that have been threatened with consequences by government for refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception or abortion drugs and procedures. In one example cited by the Institute, elderly Americans at a senior citizens’ center were told they could not pray, listen to religious messages, or sing religious songs because the facility was a government building. In other instances of religious persecution, a high school football coach was fired for praying alone on the field after a football game, and a Navy chaplain was investigated for counseling his fellow seamen according to his religious beliefs.
More and more often, we are seeing the First Amendment, which was written to protect our freedom to practice religion, misused as a tool to strip religion out of our public lives. Not only is this push for a religion of public secularism a departure from the historic American approach to faith, it is a threat to our liberty and the principles on which our country was founded.
The Founding Fathers regularly—and intentionally—engaged in public religious observances, and they knew that faith was vital to our country’s survival. They understood that religious freedom underpinned all our other liberties and provided an important limit to the federal government’s reach into our lives.
Critics of Donald Trump question his piety. After all, they point out that he is a divorced, wealthy real estate tycoon, and casino owner. However, he does have a very personal faith. At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, he shared some of his personal beliefs, saying, “I was blessed to be raised in a churched home. My mother and father taught me that to whom much is given much is expected. I was sworn in on the very Bible from which my mother would teach us as young children. And that faith lives on in my heart every single day.”
This personal faith helped President Trump recognize how religious rights in our country have been diminished over the years—particularly during the previous administration—and he has worked to restore these rights. President Trump knows that America is strongest and most successful when its people are free to live and worship as they wish.
This is why the freedom of religion is an essential pillar of America—and a key to the American comeback.
FAITH AS THE FOUNDATIONAL BASIS FOR FREEDOM
Make no mistake, the Founding Fathers viewed religious liberty and faith as the basis for all our individual freedoms.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson cited “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” as the authority under which Americans had the right to claim autonomy from England. He went on to write “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”
This statement serves as the cornerstone of our individual liberties because it recognizes that our Creator is the ultimate authority over any government of human beings, and that we receive our rights from our Creator—not our government.
As Founder Alexander Hamilton wrote in February 1775, more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was ratified, “The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”4
These words from one of our Founders show that religious freedom was not some vague notion meant to simply ensure people had the ability to attend the church of their choice—or to choose not to attend religious services. The idea—the dictum—that government lacked the authority to infringe on fundamental rights was unique and vital to America’s founding.
The Founders believed this so thoroughly that according to Founder Samuel Adams, people didn’t even have the ability to surrender their own rights. In a paper Adams wrote concerning the rights of colonists in November 1772, he said, “If men through fear, fraud or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave.”5
President Trump understands this principle with perfect clarity. Once again, we saw this in his words at the second National Prayer Breakfast that he attended, in February 2018:6
Our founders invoked our Creator four times in the Declaration of Independence. Our currency declares, “In God We Trust.” And we place our hands on our hearts as we recite the Pledge of Allegiance and proclaim we are “One Nation Under God.” Our rights are not given to us by
man; our rights come from our Creator. No matter what, no Earthly force can take those rights away. That is why the words “Praise be to God” are etched atop the Washington Monument, and those same words are etched into the hearts of our people.
The belief that rights come from a divine source (and the acknowledgment that human beings were fallible) also led the first leaders of our country to ensure our government was accountable to the people. In “Federalist Paper No. 51,” the author (who is believed to be James Madison) wrote, “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary.”7
Now, the secular elite who make up part of the anti-Trump coalition like to claim the Founding Fathers were agnostic deists (or complete atheists who professed religious beliefs only for social and political reasons). Further, the elites claim the founding principles of America were products of the Enlightenment rather than religious belief. However, many of the Founders would have seen this as a false dichotomy. To them, the principles of the Enlightenment reinforced the belief that our rights came from our Creator. The principles of the Enlightenment and religion were not mutually exclusive.
This is simply left-wing fiction.
In an October 25, 2006, piece for the National Review, authors Michael and Jana Novak pointed out that “Among the 89 signers of the Declaration and/or the Constitution, nearly a dozen had studied theology, were ordained ministers, were preachers though not ordained, were chaplains to a militia unit, or were officers of national Bible societies and the like.”8
Within their analysis, the Novaks highlighted:
• George Washington’s insistence that chaplains accompany the men he was leading to defend the western frontier and his coining of the phrase “under God” in his General Orders to the Continental Army on July 2, 1776;
• Hamilton’s repeated pleas to receive the Holy Eucharist while on his deathbed;
• and Ben Franklin’s letter to the president of Yale, wherein he said plainly: “I believe in one God, creator of the universe. That he governs it by his Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal and will be treated with justice in another life respecting its conduct in this.”
In the letter, Franklin doubted the divinity of Christ, however, expressing doubt is very different from being faithless.
The Novaks chalk up the current academic mischaracterization of faith in early American leaders to the largely secular world of academia failing to understand the nuances and differences between religion today and religion from the eighteenth century.
That is a gracious, diplomatic view of the situation.
A more critical view would be that those secular academics are intentionally proselytizing their own atheist worldview and imposing it upon their students.
In either case, the consequences for removing foundational faith from American society would be dire.
Stripping religious freedom—and the notion that rights are endowed upon us by our Creator rather than government—from the American system would undermine the entire concept of American liberty. The Founding Fathers knew this, and so does President Trump.
ESSENTIAL MORALITY
Many in the anti-Trump coalition have completely misunderstood—or misrepresented—the Establishment Clause in order to drive religion out of the American system. They say that the Founders intent in prohibiting the establishment of a national religion was to shield American politics entirely from theological or religious ideals. This is the argument they have made for removing religion from our public institutions.
Chiefly, the secular elites point to Thomas Jefferson’s 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists Association in which he wrote, “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.”9
However, the separation Jefferson referenced stressed government’s inability to regulate religion. It was not intended to be a blanket prohibition against public religious activities. In fact, two days after writing the “Church & State” letter, Jefferson attended religious services at the United States Capitol. The service was led by Baptist Minister John Leland, who was himself a key helper to James Madison with the inclusion of the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment.
Further, as governor of Virginia, Jefferson regularly called on the commonwealth to pray and fast—and worked to institute laws for punishing those who disrupted worship services or broke the Sabbath.
In fact, Jefferson and the other Founders believed religion was the principle source of morality—and morality was essential for a free society. They included the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment because there was a healthy and diverse religious community guiding America—and they wanted it to continue to grow unhindered by government.
President Trump cited this desire for diverse religious practice as the basis for his executive order, saying, “The Founders envisioned a Nation in which religious voices and views were integral to a vibrant public square, and in which religious people and institutions were free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or retaliation by the Federal Government.”
Consider the words of John Adams, our second president, in a letter he wrote to Founder Benjamin Rush in 1811. Among other things, Rush had asked Adams to advocate for the establishment of “national social, domestic, and religious virtues.”
Adams’s response totally rejects the current assumption that the Founders did not want an established religion because they were irreligious. Adams wrote:
I agree with you in sentiment that religion and virtue are the only foundations; not only of Republicanism and of all free government: but of social felicity under all governments and in all the combinations of human society. But if I should inculcate this doctrine in my will, I should be charged with hypocrisy and a desire to conciliate the good will of the clergy towards my family as I was charged by Dr. Priestly and his friend Cooper and by Quakers, Baptists and I know not how many other sects, for instituting a national fast for even common civility to the clergy, and for being a church going [animal].
If I should inculcate those “national social, domestic, and religious virtues” you recommend; I should be suspected and charged with an hypocritical, [Machiavellian], Jesuitical, [Pharisaical] attempt to promote a national establishment of Presbyterianism in America. Whereas I would as soon establish the Episcopal Church; and almost as soon the Catholic Church.10
This passage perfectly illustrates the Founders’ belief that religion was essential to maintaining morality—and that the Establishment Clause was largely about not having the government favor one of the many faiths active in early America over the others.
The French diplomat and historian Alexis de Tocqueville noted the societal importance of religion in early America in his 1830 book Democracy in America. In the work, he said religion, “takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.”11
AMERICA’S GUIDING LIGHT
More pressing than any historical discussion about religious liberty and practice in America, the foundation of faith has guided and delivered our country through its most perilous challenges.
As mentioned, faith was largely what drove the Founders to declare independence from England, which immediately put them in a war with the most powerful empire in the world at the time. Religious convictions also helped them overcome this seemingly insurmountable foe and successfully complete the American Revolution.
While American soldiers stormed the beaches of Normandy, France—executing the largest amphibian invasion in history—on t
he evening of June 6, 1944, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the American people by radio. He did not dictate a report about the progress of the D-Day mission or explain the military strategy, he asked Americans to join him in prayer, saying:
Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.
Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.
They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.
This historically and spiritually important prayer rallied Americans to prepare for the brutal fight ahead. It was an animating force for American patriotism leading into World War II.
As an important side note, despite this prayer’s significance, the Obama administration’s Bureau of Land Management objected to a congressional proposal to include Roosevelt’s words on a plaque at the National World War II Memorial, saying it would “dilute this elegant memorial’s central message and its ability to clearly convey that message to move, educate, and inspire its many visitors.”12
This barring of Roosevelt’s prayer was Obama’s secular-socialist agenda at its sickest. To diminish and ignore the deep, spiritual, moral underpinnings beneath America’s efforts in World War II is irresponsible and contemptuous to every American who prayed along with Roosevelt as their loved ones faced great peril to destroy the evils that had come out of Germany and Japan. If nothing else, World War II was a battle between good, peace-loving children of God across the world and the worst agents of evil we had seen in modern history.
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