Religious Liberty is the Preserver to Keep America Afloat

At an ecumenical prayer breakfast in Dallas back in 1984, President Ronald Reagan said,

“Without God, there is no virtue, because there’s no prompting of the conscience. Without God, we’re mired in the material, that flat world that tells us only what the senses perceive. Without God, there is a coarsening of the society. And without God, democracy will not and cannot long endure. If we ever forget that we’re one nation under God, then we will be a nation gone under.”

Those words swirled in my head, as I had the honor to attend the Rose Garden ceremony as President Donald Trump announced the formation of a presidential commission to protect religious liberty. The commission members are:

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, chair
Dr. Ben Carson, vice chair
Ryan Anderson
Bishop Robert Barron
Carrie Boller
Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York
Rev. Franklin Graham
Allyson Ho
Dr. Phil McGraw
Eric Metaxas
Kelly Shackelford
Rabbi Meir Soloveichik
Pastor Paula White

In his executive order announcing the commission, Trump stated,

“It shall be the policy of the executive branch to vigorously enforce the historic and robust protections for religious liberty enshrined in Federal law.  The Founders envisioned a Nation in which religious voices and views are integral to a vibrant public square and human flourishing and in which religious people and institutions are free to practice their faith without fear of discrimination or hostility from the Government.”

The commission will protect parental rights, conscience and school choice. It will also address anti-religious bias and government overreach and advise the White House on policies to safeguard religious liberty.

The present struggle over religious liberty, and the need for such a commission, boils down to two competing sides. The first side believes they have a fundamental right protected by the First Amendment to practice their faith freely and openly in society. The second believes religious liberty is not a fundamental right, and any mention or practice of faith in the public square is a dangerous conflation of church and state.

Unfortunately, for the past 60 plus years, any public display of faith by an individual or community – prayers by elected officials, religious content in public schools, and many other expressions of religious conviction – has come under attack.

The result has been, as Reagan so eloquently noted, a coarsening of society with Americans now warring against each other rather than standing together in a common bond of unity, regardless of their faith.

If there is a real attack on democracy, it is because of this lack of respect for religious liberty.

President John Adams warned us of this in 1798 when he told the Militia of Massachusetts: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Daniel Mark, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University and an Orthodox Jew, understands this. He has written that religious freedom is under attack because traditional beliefs are a threat to radical autonomy. He concluded: “We need to discover – or recover – a proper account of rights. This begins with a proper grasp of the good of religion, and finally, all of the goods that constitute human flourishing.”

Or in the words of another great American, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1953 inaugural address:

“We who are free must proclaim anew our faith. This faith is the abiding creed of our fathers. It is our faith in the deathless dignity of man, governed by eternal moral and natural laws. This faith defines our full view of life. It establishes, beyond debate, those gifts of the Creator that are man’s inalienable rights, and that make all men equal in His sight.”

He then added a short sentence that succinctly sums up our nation’s current state: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

It is no coincidence that the roots of our present poisonous public discourse can be traced to the abandonment of religious liberty. If we are to preserve our fragile union, it is critical that we set aside our differences and restore religious liberty for all. Otherwise, as Adams, Eisenhower and Reagan warned us, we will lose it all.

That is why I see the establishment of this commission by President Trump as a hopeful first step to bringing about that restoration so that we can once again, be “One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”