A growing trend of secularism in the United States has taken on frightening dimensions in the past few years. While there have always been those who opposed the incursion of religion into secular life, in the mood of preferential treatment of all minority groups that reigned under the Obama administration, the opposition to the practice of religion has become open warfare. Basing their objections to any outward sign of religious beliefs on the mantra of “separation of church and state,” these groups have bullied, intimidated, and when necessary, sued towns, businesses, other organizations, and individuals into compliance with their beliefs, and the liberal courts, filled with Obama appointees, have largely supported them.
Yet, “separation of church and state” comes, not from the Constitution, but from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson and addressed to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut and later published in a Massachusetts newspaper. In this letter, he echoed the language of the founder of the first Baptist church in America, Roger Williams, who wrote in 1644 of a “hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world.”
Jefferson wrote:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which[sic] 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 and State.”
He also quotes here from the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which reads only: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. . . .”
The problem that exists in the United States today, seems to be the valid interpretation of that First Amendment. What constitutes the establishment of a religion by the State? What constitutes the prohibition of the free exercise of religion? A cross or Star of David in a public graveyard? A Nativity Scene on a courthouse lawn? The display of the Ten Commandments in a State building, such as, for example, the Supreme Court Building where they have rested since the 1930’s. Opening sessions of Congress with prayer by a minister who is paid by taxpayers? “In God We Trust” on our money? The words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? The Atheists and agnostics among us would no doubt clamor that all of those should be done away with. And yet, again, that is not the will of the majority. In 2011, 65% of all Americans still wanted prayer back in our public schools.
But as we have learned under the previous administration, the will of the majority is often sublimated to the demands of the minority whether it be the Freedom From Religion group, the LGBT community, Black Lives Matter, or students on college campuses whose psyche is damaged by the thought of a conservative speaker on their campuses, whether they have to listen to that speaker or not. Liberals, who rush enthusiastically to take up the banner of these poor, downtrodden groups, scoff at us when we complain that Christianity is under siege in the United States. They laughed off Bill O’Reilly’s fight every winter against the “War Against Christmas.”
But the war against Christianity, yes, and Judaism as well, in the United States is a very real war, and one that only the addition to the Supreme Court of Justice Gorsuch and the election of President Trump may be able to slowly beat back. Let’s look at some examples of attacks against religious liberty:
In a bakery in the small town of Gresham, Oregon, a baker cheerfully served a gay couple whenever they came in to buy baked goods from her. When they asked her to bake a cake for their same-sex wedding, however, she declined, explaining that she could not participate in the wedding because it was against her religious beliefs. The couple took her to court and won under Oregon’s Anti-Discrimination Laws. The Supreme Court will take up this issue in its next session.
In Missouri, the State Park Service changed its regulations to require that any religious group who wanted to perform a baptism in public waters must first obtain a permit. They dropped the regulation after receiving a letter from Republican Representative Jason Smith.
Senior Master Sergeant Phillip Monk, a 19-year Air Force veteran at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, returned from deployment to find he had a new commander who was an open lesbian. She informed him that since support for gay marriage is Defense Department policy, anyone who doesn’t support gay marriage is discriminating against homosexuals. Monk, a practicing Christian who believes that marriage is between one man and one woman, was then asked if he agreed with her statement. He replied that he could not answer that question because to do so could put him in legal jeopardy for expressing his personal religious beliefs. A week later she relieved him of his duties and barred him from the training facility where he had been assigned. Then Monk and his lawyer from Liberty Institute were informed that Monk was under investigation for possibly violating Article 107 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), a crime for which he could have been court-martialed. This alleged violation was for publicly saying that he believes he is being discriminated against for his traditional Christian beliefs. Luckily, saner heads prevailed, and after the nationally televised controversy, instead of being court-martialed, Master Sergeant Philip Monk was honored by the Air Force and granted the Meritorious Medal for “outstanding service to the United States” (Breibart).
Not all attacks have had such good outcomes. The Catholic Charities in Illinois were forced to shut down their adoption services or be forced to place children with same-sex couples.
Besides acting upon their religious beliefs, the Catholic Charities were acting upon scientific research and the advice of the American College of Pediatricians. That being, as reported by the Daily Signal, that children do not fare as well when raised by same-sex couples as when raised by married, biological parents. They often experience higher levels of problems such as being arrested, using drugs, being depressed, or having a learning disability or other psychological or developmental problems. They are also less likely to graduate from high school and as adults are more likely to be unemployed, on government assistance, or in extra-marital affairs. Of the much touted studies that purport to show the opposite, they were found to have “dirty data.” Nearly half of the children they studied were in fact living in homes with both biological parents and not in same-sex marriages at all.
Under the Obama administration, conservative groups including the Tea Party, The National Organization for Marriage, and The Billy Graham Evangelical Association were targeted by the IRS. Although proof existed that the orders had come from the top, a couple of low-level agents were accused of having been “overly zealous,” and Lois Lerner, after refusing to answer questions before a congressional committee, was allowed to quietly retire on a taxpayer-funded pension.
Two men were arrested and taken to court in California for reading passages aloud from the Bible outside a DMV office. A Supreme Court Judge later dismissed the charges.
The Christian Service Center of Lake City, Florida had been feeding the poor with a food bank for 30 years when a USDA employee arrived to tell them that they would no longer receive food subsidies from the government unless they took down the pictures of Jesus that were on their walls. The pictures stayed and local churches provided the food that the government withheld.
The ACLU opposes Christian prayer in schools but endorses prayer time for Islamic students.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation demanded that the mayor of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin remove the signs along the highways into the town that read “The churches of Oconomowoc Welcome You.” The signs would make non-Christians unwelcome and uncomfortable, they claimed. A religious organization argued in rebuttal that signs welcoming people to the town from the Lion’s Club don’t make non-members of the Lion’s Club feel unwelcome. In addition, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty is also arguing in support of the signs based upon legal precedents (Lake Country Now). No decision about the signs has yet been announced.
Author Ilene Vick had to get a court order to get equal access to public library rooms in Putnam County, Tennessee to discuss her book, Personality Based Evangelism. An unconstitutional policy banned the use of library rooms for religious purposes.
The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) recently represented an astronomy professor in a lawsuit against the University of Kentucky. They had refused to hire him because some of the search committee members were concerned that he was an evangelical Christian.
A middle school in New York indefinitely suspended a student for wearing rosary beads for religious reasons in violation of a dress code.
A school in Hawaii invited parents to include messages to their children in the yearbook but refused to include one parent’s encouraging Bible quote.
A student was first told he could not use the Bible as a historical reference for an essay on Roman history. He was eventually allowed to do so.
A student at an elementary school wrote a poem in her journal that said in part “Love is the earth that God made.” Her teacher crossed out that line, telling her that she could not discuss God in class.
A principal in New York City refused to allow kindergarten students to sing “God Bless the USA” at their graduation even though they had been practicing it for months. He was concerned that the song would “offend other cultures.”
Displays of the Ten Commandments have been attacked in Texas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma and although many of the displays have been allowed to stay, the attacks continue. Nativity scenes have been challenged in towns across the U.S. A memorial to veterans in one town which bore a cross was objected to by a Satanist Church who wished to erect their own memorial. Afraid of a lawsuit, the town agreed, but the uproar from its citizens over the memorial which bore the pentagram caused the town to remove all the veterans’ memorials.
In schools, cheerleaders have been banned from quoting the Bible on their banners. A coach was suspended for holding after game prayers. A teacher was dismissed for answering a student’s question about the Bible and then giving that student a Bible to see for himself, surely what any good teacher would do.
Many of these “bans” are ludicrous and illogical. The others are just plain unconstitutional. Prayer and Bible study cannot be forced upon students in schools, but the Supreme Court has found that the Free Exercise off Religion Clause grants students the right to express their religious beliefs as long as that expression does not become disruptive. A Bible verse in a parent’s message to his/her child in a yearbook, the singing of the popular “God Bless the U.S.A.,” the wearing of rosary beads, the prayer of a coach after a game, the word “God” written in a poem by a young girl, none of these things can rightly be called disruptive and are therefore all protected under the Constitution.
The war against Christianity has become as well, a misguided attempt not to offend the Muslims among us. The past administration never used the term “radical Islamic terrorists” to refer to the terrorists of 9/11 nor to refer to any of the terrorists who have perpetrated attacks here and abroad since then, despite the undeniable fact that they all were radical Islamists. To identify them as Islamic, was, in the mind of our president, an unjust attack on the entire Muslim religion. And so, in addition to refusing to call a spade a spade, his administration bent over backwards for eight years to include, even to favor Muslims, often with unfortunate results.
Take the downing of a navy SEAL helicopter in Afghanistan in 2011. Although most if not all of the dead Seals were not Muslims, when a memorial service was held at Bagram Air Base as the coffins were loaded into the plane to be brought home, a Muslim Cleric, rather than a priest, a Rabbi, or a minister, was invited to say a few words. He spoke eloquently in Arabic, and it wasn’t until after the service that interpreters informed the Air Force that the Cleric had damned the SEALS as “infidels to Allah.” Way to go, Navy!
Despite the fact that 75% of all Americans still identify themselves as Christians, former President Barak Obama once said, “Whatever (the U.S.) once was, we are no longer a Christian nation.” And that was clearly the basis of his policies of governing. He sought, as did the governmental offices under his direction, to lessen the influence of Christianity on the moral fiber of America. Under a president Clinton or under either of the other two presidential candidates in the 2016 election, the de-Christianizing of America would have continued. Whatever you might feel personally about President Trump, he has begun to reverse that policy, and we as Christians must remain aware of the attacks as they continue and must support all efforts to protect the freedom to practice our religion without government interference as the Constitution guarantees. Let us remember the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for Evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”