The 4 Myths of a Secular Government in America
It is often said that religion and politics don’t mix. We are also told that our government and
accordingly the public square must be neutral on matters of religion. It cannot favor any one religion over
another. Hearing these statements so
often, one is greatly tempted to believe they are true.
There is one slight problem.
These are meaningless statements.
People who use these expressions have a limited
understanding of religion. They have particular
religions in mind and particular doctrines of that religion that are subject to
different interpretations, and politics and government, especially in a
multi-cultural society, they contend, must be entirely separate from
religion. And, of course, there are
atheists and others with no religion whose views must be held with the same
regard as everyone else.
But what exactly is a religion? In common usage it is a set of beliefs and
practices involving God. However, that
is a far too limited view of what a religion is. A religion purports to describe reality, all
of it. It offers its explanation of the
origin of the world, the nature of human beings, the meaning of life, the rules
of life, what is true and what is false.
In other words, a religion is a worldview. Everyone has a worldview. It may not be thoroughly thought out. It may have inconsistencies, blatant
falsehoods, and obvious distortions. But
everyone has one.
People live out of what they believe, about life,
themselves, other people. Some
worldviews are called religion, because God is a part of it. And some worldviews don’t include a God, but
they are still worldviews. And just like
people live out of their worldview, so do governments.
This is why so-called secular governments keep growing. There is no God for people to rely on, so
government has to fill that void by being the great protector and provider for
its people.
In older dictionaries, the idea of religion necessarily
included a god. But not now. It can be simply “a cause, principle, or system of
beliefs held to with ardor and faith.”
The most non-religious (atheistic) governments in the world
are communistic. There is no god, but
there is the government to see that everybody behaves and is taken care of, so
to speak.
As countries become less religious, they become more communistic,
or socialistic. The common idea is
collectivism. The void gets larger, and
the government grows to fill that void.
Christians believe in a Trinity, that is, they believe that
God exists in three persons, not as three separate Gods, but the three distinct
personalities make up the one God. There
is a secular trinity as well. The
government is like God the Father, the provider, protector, and judge of the
people. Science takes the place of the
Son. The work of the Son makes the
Christian life possible, and science is the servant of secularism energizing
and supporting the cause.
True science is just the principle of observing and
measuring and experimenting to determine how nature works. But science becomes and has become a religion
when it says that only what can be measured and observed is real and objective
truth. There is nothing beyond or
outside the observed universe. This is a
religious statement just as much as “In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth.” Christian dogma has
been replaced with naturalist dogma.
The third part of the secular trinity is relativism. This is the spirit of the age. There is no Lawgiver outside of nature, and
that involves simply physical laws. So
anything called truth beyond that is individualistic. If it works for you, who is to say that it is
wrong? Cultures have formed, and they
are all equal expressions of individual initiative.
But new dogmas have come into being, and the government is
the enforcer of these new beliefs. The beliefs
(rules) are simple and few: Tolerance and fairness (or equality). Tolerance allows individuals to live their
own truth within their own world, and fairness mediates among the masses,
because it is only inequality which promotes division and hostility between
people.
So secularism is a worldview and essentially a religion, a
religion without a god, but a religion nonetheless. It doesn’t require weekly worship
services. Political rallies every
election year are enough.
So to say that a government can be secular is just
semantics. It just means naturalism,
practical atheism. It’s not a matter of
religion or no religion, but what religion.
A religion with a god or one without.
There is no middle ground.
The second myth is that our government was intended to be a
secular government. There are two
problems here.
One is that we have forgotten our history and reinterpreted it
and our historical documents. When the
First Amendment was written, the issue before them was the idea of a national
church as was common in Europe . This was rejected, but individual states had
state churches, and that was written into the various state Constitutions.
A common quote from one of the Founding Fathers was that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is
wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
Our
government, our nation, requires a religious and moral people to exist simply
because the majority can vote for anything they want, and they will and they
have. It is human nature to seek power
and influence and to live beyond one’s means, and those are two of our
government’s biggest problems. Those who
are in power do what they can to stay in power, and they spend other people’s
money beyond their means to do it.
Our
founders knew that if the people lost their religious and moral foundation,
this form of government would not last.
It would die a slow death through massive government debt.
The 4 Myths of a Secular Government in America
Not
to decide is to decide. There is no
neutral ground. A government cannot be
neutral to religion. A religion as
commonly defined is simply a worldview that has a God. When secularists insist our government was
intended to be and must be neutral to religion, they are insisting that our
government presume a worldview without a God, essentially a secular
religion.
Government
becomes the Father of all, the great protector and provider, science is the
son, the servant and savior of the world, and relativism the spirit of the age.
So
the first myth is that a government can actually be secular, as in without a
religion. The answer is no. It’s like when people say they don’t believe
in organized religion. Everyone and
every government have a religion, whether or not they call it that.
The
second myth is that the United
States
Prior
to our relativistic, postmodern era, like when our country was founded, this
would have been seen as an absurd statement.
There is a God, Jesus is His Son, and the Bible is God’s Word to humans
to tell us how all this is supposed to work.
Today
religion is viewed as a choice, a preference, a taste. I prefer vanilla ice cream over strawberry. You may prefer strawberry. That is your right. Vanilla is not better than strawberry. So
I cannot criticize your choice of strawberry or your character or
morality for doing so.
Our
founders understood religion as truth. All
our schools, public and private, taught their students truth, so they would
grow up to be virtuous and thus happy and productive citizens of our
country. How could they do this without
being taught the truth about life and themselves? If anything, the role of government was to
promote the virtue and happiness of its citizens. How else would or could a republic endure?
When our country opened up the northwest territories (now
Illinois though Ohio) to settlement and the possibility of statehood, our
government wrote the Northwest Ordinance, which noted that “Religion, morality,
and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,
schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."
When
schools teach nothing about God, they are not teaching truth, so they are not
teaching virtue and reality. They are
promoting lies and falsehoods about life.
A free country would not remain free for long without virtue. If the citizens are not virtuous, the need
for government grows to maintain order and to provide for the general welfare
of the people. And when it is seen that
the government can give things to people, then there is no end to what people
will expect from it.
From
the founding of our country in the early 1600s up until the mid-20th
century, religion was considered an essential part of a child’s education,
public or private. As our government
grew, public education came to be considered an extension of the federal
government
With the rise of post-modernism came the rise of relativism
and multiculturalism. With the rise of
civil rights came an immigration policy that no longer favored any people
groups, so our nation soon saw a rise in many religions. None was considered any truer than another,
and to prefer one was seen as arbitrary, inconsiderate, and discriminatory. So the push for secularism was also meant to
be accommodating to immigrants of different faiths. But if we become whoever or whatever anybody
wants us to be, then we lose what it was that made us what we are.
The third myth is that our country was not intended to be a
Christian country.
Now there are two ways that a country can be considered
Christian: de jure and de facto. De jure
would be if Christianity were written into the Constitution or other laws
of the land. De facto is the actual condition or state of the country.
Many of the people who came and settled in America came
from countries that had national churches, and this was rejected by our
founders, though the states were allowed to have state churches. Many or all of them did, at least for a
while.
Not every single person in America was Christian, of course,
or even believed in God, but the nation was Christian. Everything closed down on the Lord’s Day
(Sunday). Christianity was taught in the
public schools. Public schools were not
an extension of the federal government.
Most public functions were done at the township level.
Children learned to read from The New England Primer, Noah
Webster’s American Spelling Book [the Blue Back Speller], and the McGuffey
Readers, books all replete with references to God and the Bible. The New England Primer contained the Shorter
Catechism.
It was only in 1948 that religious instruction or activity
in public-school facilities was found to be unconstitutional, after only about
300 years of continuous practice and about 160 years after our country’s
official founding. Part of the thinking,
of course, was that non-religious people would feel discriminated against or
otherwise marginalized.
But the first myth is that a government can be neutral to
religion. To forbid religious activity
or instruction in public schools naturally morphed into any religious
expression, including any reference to God, so public schools and even public
life came be God-free zones to eliminate any impression of government
endorsement of religion.
But there is no neutral ground. Not to prefer one religion is to prefer no
religion. Not to acknowledge God is to
acknowledge no God.
Does it make a difference?
Certainly. With the absence of
God in public schools, there is an absence of a concept of truth. Everybody knew right and wrong before. Now everybody gets to decide for themselves
what is right and wrong.
The Declaration of Independence recognized God [our Creator]
as the source of the rights for which our country was prepared to fight. Thomas
Jefferson appealed to Congress for funds to evangelize the Indians. The first Congress published a Bible to be
used in the public schools, and church services were held in the U.S. Capitol
building for almost 100 years after Independence .
They knew they needed a religious and moral people for this
to work, and they intended on having one.
The 4 Myths of a Secular
Government in America (Part 3 of 3)
So the
first myth is that a government really can be secular, as in no religious
preference or impulse. The second myth
is that our government was intended to be a secular government. The third myth is that our founders did not
intend for our country, and government, to be Christian.
The
fourth myth is that our government (actually the people, because we run the
country) does not have the right and obligation to choose a guiding worldview under
which our country conducts its business.
Why? Because, as we have said, there is no such as
neutral ground. Not acknowledging God is
just as much a religious statement as acknowledging Him. And the consequences are significant.
Not to
acknowledge God is to run a country like there is no God. As countries mute the voices of religion, the
government expands and continues to expand.
It is
not coincidental that communist countries are atheistic. When a country is officially atheistic, it
becomes communistic. The government
controls everything, because it replaces the functions that a God would serve
among the people. People need a
protector, a benefactor, a safety net, someone to look after and out for them.
Without
a belief in a personal God, collective values replace individual ones. Collectivism becomes the ruling mantra. Fairness and equality are the highest
goals. Better that everyone be lower
middle class and just like everybody else than for anyone to soar above the
rest.
Communism
is extreme. People don’t want that. But law by law, regulation by regulation,
court decision by court decision, a country moves inexorably in that
direction. As government expands, the
people become poorer (and more equal) to pay for the increasing government
expenditures.
But
this doesn’t apply for everyone.
Government work, called public service, becomes a higher calling,
because public servants work for the general welfare of the masses, while
private sector jobs work for profits, which are seen to be now greedy, because
it is for one’s personal welfare rather than for others. True, jobs are created in the private sector,
but they are not as good as government jobs, because in the private sector,
employers exploit their workers for their own advantage. And government jobs pay more, because, well,
all jobs should pay that much.
And
government can afford it, while private job owners don’t think they can because
they are just plain selfish.
In the
old days, when people acknowledged God, in the real world (private enterprise),
you have to earn your money through hard work, productivity, and enhancing value,
like when a person takes slabs of wood, creates a bookcase out of it, and sells
it for more than the cost of the original lumber to cover his costs and feed
his family.
In
government, more so for the federal government, you can control money in a world
of its own rules. You can even print
it. Money really does grow on trees in
government. You can actually spend what
you want and not have to pay it back.
You can vote your own pay increases and benefits. You can dole out favors to all those who can
benefit you. You don’t have to win the
lottery. This is even better.
In a
lottery, you get all the money at once, unwanted publicity, a fixed amount, and
you can lose it. In government it is an
unending stream of revenue.
The
temptations become irresistible. As
Michael Savage aptly put it: Politicians
aren’t there because they want to cut the spending; they are there to control
the spending.
Government
aid is encouraged to more and more people, including new immigrants, to
encourage dependency on the government in order to support the need for more
government.
And with
the easy access to and social and governmental acceptability and support for
abortion, people are choosing smaller families.
Populations grow older, and government expands to take care of people
who have fewer people to take care of them.
So the
result is a new two class society. Where
before there were rich, poor, and middle class, there now become only two:
private sector employees, or the new poorer middle class, and public sector
employees, the new richer upper middle class.
They don’t need to become filthy rich, because they have that continuing
stream of revenue.
No,
government is prohibited from telling people how to do their religion, but
because people have full freedom to express their religion and religion
promotes the valuable qualities of virtue and self-reliance (God-dependency
rather than man-dependency), government can and should promote religious faith
among its people.
This
is one reason why the First Congress had Bibles printed to be used in public
schools. They were largely Christian and
believed in the supreme value of the Bible for forming a moral and happy
people.
The
change in our immigration laws to encourage immigration from all those nations
that don’t share our heritage was an intentional move to dilute that Christian
heritage and ultimately to silence it.
When
our nation was blatantly Christian, the new country quickly achieved a
prosperity that surpassed the long established nations of the world. The United States became a world leader
in almost every category, from educational performance to per capita wealth to
gross domestic product.
As our
country has turned away from God, largely encouraged and accelerated by court
decisions removing God from public schools and public life, that dominance has
markedly diminished, and our country has been in decline by many different
markers.
I
believe the single worst thing that our country has done has been to say that
our government, our public sector including schools, must not acknowledge or
promote God in its business. This
changes everything about how a country runs and how well it runs.
People
who think our country is doing great just haven’t lived long enough to see from
where we have fallen.
