where religion and politics meet

Everybody has a worldview. A worldview is what you believe about life: what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what are the rules, are there any rules, what is the meaning of life, what is important, what is not.

If a worldview includes a god/God, it is called a religion. If a bunch of people have the same religion, they give it a name.

Nations have worldviews too, a prevailing way of looking at life that directs government policies and laws and that contributes significantly to the culture. Politics is the outworking of that worldview in public life.

We are being told today that the United States is and has always been a secular nation, which is practical atheism.

But our country could not have been founded as a secular nation, because a secular country could not guarantee freedom of religion. Secular values would be higher than religious ones, and they would supersede them when there was a conflict. Secularism sees religion only as your personal preferences, like your taste in food, music, or movies. It does not see religion, any religion, as being true.

But even more basic, our country was founded on the belief that God gave unalienable rights to human beings. But what God, and how did the Founders know that He had? Islam, for example, does not believe in unalienable rights. It was the God of the Bible that gave unalienable rights, and it was the Bible that informed the Founders of that. The courts would call that a religious opinion; the Founders would call that a fact.

Without Christianity, you don’t have unalienable rights, and without unalienable rights, you don’ have the United States of America.

A secular nation cannot give or even recognize unalienable rights, because there is no higher power in a secular nation than the government.

Unalienable rights are the basis for the American concept of freedom and liberty. Freedom and liberty require a high moral code that restrains bad behavior among its people; otherwise the government will need to make countless laws and spend increasingly larger amounts of money on law enforcement.

God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments were always important parts of our public life, including our public schools, until 1963, when the court called supreme ruled them unconstitutional, almost 200 years after our nation’s founding.

As a secular nation, the government now becomes responsible to take care of its people. It no longer talks about unalienable rights, because then they would have to talk about God, so it creates its own rights. Government-given rights are things that the government is required to provide for its people, which creates an enormous expense which is why our federal government is now $22 trillion in debt.

Our country also did not envision a multitude of different religions co-existing in one place, because the people, and the government, would then be divided on the basic questions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Our Constitution, which we fought a war to be able to enact, states, among other things, that our government exists for us to form a more perfect union, ensure domestic tranquility, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. It could not do this unless it had a clear vision of what it considers to be true, a vision shared with the vast majority of the people in this country.

I want to engage the government, the culture, and the people who live here to see life again from a Christian perspective and to show how secularism is both inadequate and just plain wrong.

Because religion deals with things like God, much of its contents is not subject to the scientific method, though the reasons why one chooses to believe in God or a particular religion certainly demand serious investigation, critical thinking, and a hunger for what is true.

Science and education used to be valuable tools in the search for truth, but science has chosen to answer the foundational questions of life without accepting the possibility of any supernatural causes, and education generally no longer considers the search to be necessary, possible, or worthwhile.

poligion: 1) the proper synthesis of religion and politics 2) the realization, belief, or position that politics and religion cannot be separated or compartmentalized, that a person’s religion invariably affects one’s political decisions and that political decisions invariably stem from one’s worldview, which is what a religion is.

If you are new to this site, I would encourage you to browse through the older articles. They deal with a lot of the more basic issues. Many of the newer articles are shorter responses to particular problems.

Visit my other websites theimportanceofhealing blogspot.com where I talk about healing and my book of the same name and LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com where I am posting all my other Bible studies. Follow this link to my videos on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb-RztuRKdCEQzgbhp52dCw

If you want to contact me, email is best: lacraig1@sbcglobal.net

Thank you.

Larry Craig

Friday, March 25, 2022

religion and Supreme Court nominees

Our country is in the midst of confirmation hearings for a new Supreme Court justice.  It’s a good time and a needed one for us to look again at the interplay of religion and politics.

Some people think that asking this nominee and questions about religion as improper and unconstitutional.  Article VI of the Constitution that says: “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

I’m not sure we are understanding that article correctly.

For example, the earliest State Constitution of Tennessee (1796) has the two following statements: 1) Article VIII: No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishment, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State, and 2) Article XI: That no religious test shall every be required as a qualification in any office of public trust under this State.

Requiring a belief in God and an afterlife of rewards and punishment was not considered a forbidden religious test.  This is significant, because lawmakers at that time understood better than we today the intent and wording of their laws. 

These beliefs were also assumed for being a witness in a trial, and even for the ability to take the oath of office.

A person who did not believe in God was considered untrustworthy.  A belief in God included the idea that people will be held accountable in this life or the next for their lives, and anyone who didn’t believe in God they thought would have little qualm about being dishonest for personal advantage.

And while specific religious beliefs or tests may not be required as a condition for holding office, people who are to vote for or confirm such people have every right to know what that person believes and how it governs their lives. 

Religion is not something extraneous to a person’s character and conduct, like their taste in food or music or movies.  Religion is a worldview that answers all your most important questions in life: what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what is true, what is false, what are the rules?

Our country is founded on the belief that all people are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, including the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If a person does not believe in God, how can they believe that people have unalienable rights?   And I venture to say that not all religions even believe that you have an unalienable right to life or the pursuit of happiness.  At the time of the founding of our nation, multiculturalism and pluralism were not even remotely thought of as likely descriptions of American society.

A Supreme Court nominee may not be disqualified for their religious beliefs or lack of them, but those who are entrusted with their confirmation certainly should and need to inquire about the person’s worldview to decide if they want this person to sort through our highest legal and Constitutional questions.

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