or change them.
The Freedom to Love God
The most important value that Jesus wanted to conserve was the commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and all your strength.”11 Love of God is above all things and is the guiding principle throughout the entire Bible. How to love God has been one of the thorniest issues any individual confronts.
Our nation was founded by many who loved God. Before the Constitution was written, the early colonies tried to legislate the love of God. They became repressive when they tried to impose laws about how this love was to be shown. The Massachusetts Bay Colony persecuted any who didn’t love God in the same way they did. They banished those who didn’t agree with them, particularly the Quakers. Besides being banished, Quakers were imprisoned, whipped, branded, burned, and enslaved; some had their ears cut off and their property confiscated; several were put to death for insisting on the right to worship in their own way.12
Puritan minister Roger Williams (who later helped found the first Baptist church in America) was banished from Boston because he believed that everyone had the right to think and worship as he pleased. In his pamphlet called “The Bloudy Tenent of Persecution, for the Cause of Conscience,” published in 1644, Williams said, “How ghastly and unbelieved … was the damage done and the number of innocent human beings slaughtered in the effort to make men and women worship God in some certain way.”13
He believed in separation of church and state so neither could control the other, and complete toleration by the government of all sorts of religion, even the religion of the Native Americans. Williams, the Quakers, and other tolerant Christians established freedom of worship and freedom from a state-sponsored religion.
Just as important as Williams’ ideals about religious freedom were his ideals about democracy. He believed that governing was not the work of the aristocracy, but that each family should have an equal voice in the government. Together with Anne Hutchinson and Samuel Gorton, he founded Rhode Island, which was one of the first colonies with complete religious freedom.
In 1657, the Flushing Remonstrance was created as a declaration of religious freedom in New York, and an affirmation of diversity. It is considered to be one of the precursors of the Bill of Rights, and declares, “we are bound by the Law to do good unto all men,” and guarantees that “love, peace and liberty” should be extended to all residents, including “to Jews, Turks and Egyptians as they are considered the sons of Adam … our desire is not to offend one of his little ones in whatsoever form, name or title he appears in, whether Presbyterian, Independent, Baptist or Quaker, but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them, desiring to do unto all men as we desire all men should do unto us, which is the true law both of Church and State.”
In the constitutional debates almost a century and a half later, the issue of religious freedom was still in the forefront. Those who preferred the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution felt the Constitution didn’t take religion seriously enough. They believed that society should be a “molder of character, rather than … a regulator of conduct.” Those who favored the Articles of Confederation believed that one religion should mold everyone into their same value system, and make laws to ensure that everyone behaved in a proper religious manner.
The writers of the Constitution didn’t want to legislate religion. They said, “little democracies can no more be ruled by prayer than large ones.” They recognized that “Men act mainly from passion and interest.… The Constitution was deliberately and properly designed not to try to stifle or transform those motives … but to channel them in the direction of the public good.”14 The Founders saw that diversity was a protection against the coercion that can happen from majority rule.
Thomas Jefferson said, “Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a censor … over such other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”15
Jefferson was concerned about the government getting too involved in individual opinions and belief systems. He said, “… religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions. I contemplate … their legislature should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”16
The writers of the Constitution didn’t want to legislate religion. They recognized that democracies cannot be ruled by prayer.
Abraham Lincoln said, “Most governments have been based, practically, on the denial of equal rights of men … ours began, by affirming those rights.”17 There was a constant tension between developing a country toward a theocracy, with a state religion, or toward a democracy, where diversity was accepted. Throughout our history, the impulse toward religious diversity could not be stifled. If anything, persecution strengthened the dissent and fostered the drive toward the separation of church and state.
Religious tolerance and diversity won, hoping to promote an open and accepting society.
Challenges to Religious Freedom
One of the clearest definitions between the Republican and Democratic values lies with the question of what part religion should play in a nation. The Democrats have had a fairly consistent policy to protect our religious freedoms. Republicans have, during some previous administrations, been protective of religious freedom. However, within the Republican Party is a group who wants to remove our freedom of religion. They are called the Dominionists, and they believe they are called to bring the government under the dominion of one particular brand of Christianity.
The movement was begun by D. James Kennedy in Florida in 1959. (Kennedy also helped found the Moral Majority in 1979 along with the Rev. Jerry Falwell and others.) Sarah Palin is a Dominionist. Others who are Dominionists or have Dominionist leanings are Sam Brownback, Ralph Reed, Michelle Bachmann, Ted Cruz, and Rand Paul.
Kennedy said, “Our job is to reclaim America for Christ, whatever the cost. As the vice regents of God, we are to exercise godly dominion and influence over our neighborhoods, our schools, our government, our literature and arts, our sports arenas, our entertainment media, our news media, our scientific endeavors—in short, over every aspect and institution of human society.”18
There is nothing wrong with bringing values into every aspect of our social and political life. That’s what we would want in a country that tries to serve the Good. But Kennedy was not talking about trying to make Christianity more prevalent in American political policy; rather, he promoted the sole use of the Dominionist brand of Christianity in making public policy—to the exclusion of not only other faiths, but also other interpretations of Christianity. This kind of exclusion and lack of protection for those unlike themselves is unconstitutional and unjust. I can imagine a prayer from a teacher or preacher that says, “Our Lord and Commander, we ask that you give your power to the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria, and help them to overcome the enemy as we fight this great Crusade to lead us to truth.”
I have heard prayers like this. To me, it’s a self-righteous prayer that makes nationalism a religion, rather than Christianity. It sees The Other as the enemy, rather than as The Neighbor, and it implies there will be hundreds, if not hundreds of thousands, of the enemy killed in the name of Jesus. It gives no room for my own Christian belief system as a pacifist.
I can imagine another kind of prayer, that would be anathema to most conservatives, and perhaps millions of other Christians as well: “Our Ground of all
