Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
This is the first amendment to the United States Constitution. Proposed on 9/15/1789 and ratified on 12/15/1791, it guarantees, among other things, what we now call “freedom of religion” and “separation of church and state”. This is a topic which has gotten a great deal of attention lately, for various reasons. Let’s take a look at it.
Let’s look at just the first part, the part that deals with religion.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”
It says “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,”. This is referred to as the “Establishment Clause” and basically means that the government cannot adopt a state religion. It then continues “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. This is referred to as the “Free Exercise Clause” and basically means that the government cannot interfere with someone’s right to hold the religious beliefs of their choice. Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it? Well, it isn’t.
The Establishment Clause is probably the more straight forward of the two, although even its interpretation has been the subject of debate. The government cannot establish a state religion. So, the government cannot declare that religion XYZ is our official religion and you must identify with that religion. That is pretty clear but how far beyond that prohibition does the Establishment Clause go? That can get a little tricky.
Here is an example. Public schools are operated by the government. The teachers work for the school system. If a Christian teacher prays in class or at a school event, does that constitute imposition of a state religion on the students and should it then therefore be disallowed on that basis? many Christians would say that is ridiculous and that a Christian teacher should be allowed to pray. OK, then what about a Muslim teacher? If you are going to allow one then you have to allow the other. What about asking a Christian student to lead prayer? Is that OK, because it’s a student? Then what about a Muslim student? It isn’t as simple as it may seem when looking at it only from a Christian prospective.
You may say “I am a Christian so from what prospective should I look at it, if not from a Christian prospective?”. Certainly, as God’s children, we should look at the situation from His prospective. However, we must keep in mind that we have no state religion, including Christianity. Therefore, as Christians, legally, anything that is allowed for us must also be allowed for other religions. Keeping this fact in mind, as we look at this issue, we need to perhaps not have such an attitude of legal entitlement and not be quite so quick to shout that our religious rights are being infringed.
I absolutely am not saying that all religions are equal. They are not. There is one God. His Son is Jesus, the Christ, and a relationship with Him is the only way to have a relationship with His Father. It is only through Him that salvation comes and only through Him that all true wisdom comes. It is He who must guide us.
Not having a state religion does not mean that the government cannot be guided by a religion. On the contrary, governments must have standards by which to govern, standards of what is permissible and what is not, what is right and what is wrong, and those standards have to come from somewhere. It is an indisputable historical fact that the United States was founded on Christian principles. Not all of the founding fathers and early American politicians were Christians but the majority were Christians and sought to be guided by Christian principles. This can be seen in many early government documents and personal writings of politicians, as well as in some Supreme Court decisions. For close to 200 years, our government continued to govern on this basis and they did not attempt to hide the fact that this is what they were doing. We must get back to that if we expect God to bless us.
So, how do we do that? I think we have to start by understanding that we can be a Christian nation without having Christianity as the state religion. We do not and should not have a state religion and that includes Christianity. We cannot and should not require that a candidate be a Christian in order to run for public office. However, it is OK for a candidate for political office to be a Christian and even to be very vocal about their Christian faith. It is OK for us, as the people, to decide whether to vote for political candidates on the basis of what we believe about their relationship with Christ and their stand on Christian issues. Once in office, it is OK for them to openly use Christian principles to guide their decision making. It is OK for them to, at public government and pseudo-government gatherings, thank God for His provision and ask for His guidance and blessings. These things are not only OK but are desirable and necessary if we are to again experience the blessings of God on us as a Nation as we once did.
Think about it this way. At our house resides a Christian family but we don’t have Christianity as a house religion. If you come visit us at our house, we are not going to say that you cannot come in if you are not a Christian. We took our children to church and talked to them about Jesus but we did not force them to become Christians. Being a Christian is not a house requirement. But you had better believe that we pray to Jesus before meals, we acknowledge Him as the source of all good things in our lives, we ask for His guidance and provision, and we are open about our relationship with Him. If you come into our home, it is absolutely fine if you are not a Christian. However, if you are uncomfortable with the fact that we are a Christian family and you ask us to stop outwardly displaying our faith, we will respectfully decline. We are a Christian family and we will not suppress that, especially not in our own home, in order to make you more comfortable. If you don’t like it, you can go visit someone else in their home or go to your own home. It isn’t that we don’t like you but we are not going to change who we fundamentally are to better fit with who you are or who you are not.
Matthew 10
32 “Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.
33 But whoever denies Me before men, him I will also deny before My Father who is in heaven.
Jesus warned against denying Him and I believe that it is possible to deny Him through profound silence and inaction. In fact, I believe that many of us do exactly that.
In the United States, We probably still have more professed Christians than people of any other religion but I am not at all sure I would say that we are still a Christian nation. Fewer and fewer of us profess His name and fewer and fewer of those who do live as though He is truly our Lord. However, that can change. As part of that, we absolutely should be tolerant of those who hold other beliefs, in that we should welcome them and show them the same love that Christ showed to us. We should not try to force them to become Christians but we should show them what it means to be Christians. Part of that is not worrying about it if they are uncomfortable that we are Christians. There is a fine line between being tolerant of other faiths and denial of our own faith. Overall, as a nation, I believe that we crossed over that line long ago. We must cross back over it if we expect God’s blessings to continue on us as a nation.
The Free Exercise Clause is where things really get complicated. It basically means that the government cannot interfere with someone’s right to hold the religious beliefs of their choice. That part is simple enough. Someone can have whatever religious beliefs they want. The complicated part is figuring out how far the government can go in restricting the practice of those beliefs, in terms of turning those beliefs into action.
Some may say that the government shouldn’t be able to restrict the practice of religious beliefs at all. However, they have to be able to restrict it somewhat. Religious freedom is desirable but religion must be made to exist within a framework of laws by which we all must abide. For example, murder is against the law. However, some religions believe in human sacrifice and some believe in killing those of other religions. Obviously, we can’t let people go around killing other people just because it is their sincerely held religious belief that they should be allowed to do so. This is a very extreme example but I trust that you see my point. Freedom of religion does not mean and cannot mean absolute freedom to do whatever one’s religion allows or dictates. The state does have to have the ability to impose some restrictions on the practice of religious beliefs, including Christianity. As long as they are not exclusively targeting religion in general or Christianity specifically, then they are not infringing on our religious rights.
The government should submit to God but, regardless, we must submit to the government as part of our submission to Him.
Romans 13
1 Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.
2 Therefore whoever resists the authority resists the ordinance of God, and those who resist will bring judgment on themselves.
I recently wrote an article which focused on this passage so I won’t say a great deal about it here but it is clear from this passage that God has put those in government there and He expects us to respect and obey them. There is no other way you can look at it. God’s Word says what it says.
Acts 5
27 And when they had brought them, they set them before the council. And the high priest asked them,
28 saying, “Did we not strictly command you not to teach in this name? And look, you have filled Jerusalem with your doctrine, and intend to bring this Man’s blood on us!”
29 But Peter and the other apostles answered and said: “We ought to obey God rather than men.
Here, the apostles were commanded not to preach the gospel and they intentionally disobeyed, with Peter saying that it is more important to obey God than man. I think it goes without saying that God’s law is above man’s law and this passage clearly demonstrates that.
I think that what we can take away from these two passages is that we are to absolutely always obey the government, unless what they tell us to do directly contradicts the Word of God. We cannot simply ignore the laws of the government or the restrictions it puts in place whenever we feel like it in the name of doing God’s work. We cannot expect the government to give us some sort of special dispensation in order for us to do that work.
I’ll give you an example. I recently saw a post in which someone was complaining that a social media platform was checking Christian video posts for copyright infringement. That’s OK. If you are posting a video which contains copyrighted material, you have to have an agreement with the copyright holder for you to be able to legally have that content in the video. If you don’t have such an agreement, they will take the video down. They don’t know if there is a copyright infringement if they don’t check. This isn’t only true for churches. I know of multiple videos which have been taken down because of copyright infringement and those videos had nothing to do with any church or religion. The Christian church has to abide by the same laws as everyone else. In fact, we should do a better job of submitting than anyone, as part of our witness. The fact that we are made to submit does not mean that the government is picking on us.
One more thing regarding social media. Freedom of religion means that the government cannot single us out for persecution. It does not mean that the social media platforms cannot. They are for profit companies who are providing us a service and who most likely do not receive any government funding. We do not have “rights” when it comes to them. They can do whatever they want. I fear that, if they aren’t already, they will begin to discriminate against us and, as time goes on, they will do that more and more. Especially if they don’t make it really obvious that is what they are doing, then they can legally get away with it. This is not a battle that can be won in the court room and probably not even in the court of public opinion. This is a battle that can only be won on our knees before the Thrown. So, when it comes to this, we may as well stop complaining about social media on social media and start talking to God about the problem because He is the only one who can do anything about it.
The bottom line is that we, as Christians, should be model citizens. We should take back the government by voting, not by complaining. We should encourage Christians to run for office and encourage them to unashamedly live out their faith once in office. In the mean time, we should pray for and submit to those who are already in power. We should also actively and boldly live out our own faith. Ultimately, it is the responsibility of all Christians to change our world for Christ, not just that of the politicians. We were once a Christian nation and we can be again. Before Christ took a back seat in the government, He took a back seat in the hearts of the people they govern. We have to put Him back in our driver’s seat and then He will end up in the driver’s seat of the nation as well. Until that happens, we will be going down the wrong road but we’re still along for the ride and we need to be Godly passengers.
