Founding principles

Untwisting the falsehoods about religion and government

Should people of faith have any influence on our state and nation? Is their influence dangerous? These are increasingly frequent questions, sometimes being asked outright and sometimes merely implied.

The term “Christian Nationalism” is being used with increasing frequency these days, and those repeating it may be more dangerous than the perceived evil they’re attempting to attack. I was reminded by a visit to Israel last year, where I observed firsthand suffering during wartime and terrorist attacks, of the danger of religious persecution, which the Jewish people have endured for centuries.

“Christian Nationalism” (branding sincere, patriotic Christians as dangerous) is a religious smear, both un-American and simply wrong. The pejorative term seeks to cast sincere, politically conservative Christians who disagree with leftist ideology as seeking a theocracy in place of our constitutional republic, as was charged by a prominent columnist in one of North Dakota’s major newspapers.

Frankly, I haven’t heard any North Dakotans, and certainly none of the legislative colleagues with whom I served for 28 years, espouse such a conviction. Criticism of the influence of people of faith is not absent in our state, however. A Newsweek headline recently repeated a statement by North Dakota’s governor in his veto message of a bill. He accused and criticized the legislature, of which he was a member not many years ago, of attempting to “legislate morality” — implying that this would be a horrible thing.

The idea is apparently that Christians and other people of faith are free to practice their religion in our nation, but they need to be quiet and keep it to themselves, and certainly not attempt to influence their culture or public policy based upon the shared moral principles that have permeated our nation since its founding.

The First Amendment’s guarantees are not limited to the right to “practice their religion at places such as houses of worship, their homes or private religious schools,” as one published attack in The Forum opined. In fact, that description essentially describes the practice in the former Soviet Union, where many churches existed, but open expression of faith in the public square was forbidden by the atheistic regime.

Our Founders advanced freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. The First Amendment guarantees that people of any faith — or of no faith — may live out their convictions in American society, and also that America will not be a theocracy — that there will be no national “state church” as was common in the nations from which many early Americans came.

Freedom of speech guarantees that Americans can openly express their faith, even among those who may disagree. There is also no “religious test” for holding public office precisely because we have freedom of religion.

Some challenge these historical truths by boldly asserting that there is no mention of Christianity in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. That’s technically true, but misleading. There is a clear statement of faith in the Declaration, which notes that “all men are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

The Founders espoused these “self-evident” “truths” and that these rights come from God, not government. They established a government to guarantee these God-given rights and freedoms. They understood that if our rights come from the government, the government can also take them away. If they are from God, they are unalienable.

Incidentally, the oft-repeated phrase “separation of church and state” is not in the Constitution, contrary to the mistaken assertion of those often repeating it. They then twist its meaning. The phrase was coined by Thomas Jefferson, shortly after assuming the presidency, in a letter to the Danbury Baptists (a minority sect who feared religious persecution in the new nation). Their right to freely practice their faith, Jefferson assured, would always be protected because the Founders had erected “a wall of separation between church and state.” The wall in Jefferson’s metaphor was to protect freedom of religion from infringement by the government, not to imply that government or society should somehow be devoid of religious faith or its influence.

It is also disappointing that some cherry-pick misleading historical tidbits or quotes to falsely imply that America has always been devoid of Christian principles. Countless Founders’ quotes clearly espouse our nation’s underpinnings of faith and its importance, even in the public square.

That America was founded on the Judeo-Christian ethic was undisputed throughout most of our nation’s history. That doesn’t make us a theocracy. It means that it is presented to be accepted or rejected by each individual. Americans are free to choose any religion they wish to practice or none, but all benefit from the common moral values we share and their influence on our laws and public policy.

Our nation is not isolated from the tenets under which it was created. “Legislating morality” could be a charge leveled against many, if not most, of our laws. After all, concepts like “Thou shall not kill” and “Thou shall not steal” — basic tenets of both the Jewish and Christian faiths — have underpinned our laws and basic understanding of right and wrong since our nation’s inception. Let’s hope they always will!

Fear-mongering and revisionist history are both dangerous trends that are prevalent today. As Golda Meir once reportedly said, “One cannot and must not try to erase the past merely because it does not fit the present.”