Freedom of Religion

Freedom of Religion

Excerpt from Trump's America by New Gingrich

In 1962, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for teachers, principals, or other educators to lead prier in public schools. In 1980, the court barred schools from displaying the Ten Commandments on campus. Since these cases, courts have gone further. The high court said in 1985 that even a moment of silence could potentially unconstitutional, and in 1989, it ruled that nativity scenes celebrating Christmas in government buildings were unlawful.

In 2002, a federal court even ruled that the phrase « under God » in the Pledge of Allegiance ran afoul of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause – which prohibits the federal government from establishing an official religion. The Supreme Court overturned the lower court's ruling, but the justices stopped short of clarifying that this phrase is in fact constitutional. This is profoundly troubling, after all, the official motto of the nation is still In God We Trust.

In addition to the courts, some associations have also waged a wide-ranging cultural campaign that impacts every aspect of American society. The First Liberty Institute documented 1,400 attacks on religion in America in 2017. The Institute's “Undeniable: The Survey of Hostility to Religion in America” looks at instances of religious hostility across four categories: the public arena, which includes government, workplaces, markets, and other public spaces; the schoolhouse, which includes K-12 and collegiate institutions; attacks against places or worship by local communities, and local, state, and federal governments; and religious attacks within the military. The Institute reports that instances of religious intolerance increased by 15 percent since 2016 – and 133 percent over the last five years.

St-Joseph Cathedral. Photo by Elena.

Some of these attacks include companies that have been threatened with consequences by government for refusing to provide insurance coverage for contraception or abortion drugs and procedures. In one example cited by the Institute, elderly Americans at a senior citizens' center were told they could not pray, listen to religious messages, or sing religious songs because of religious persecution, a high school football coach was fired for praying alone on the field after a football game, and a Navy chaplain was investigated for counseling his fellow seamen according to his religious beliefs.

More and more often, we are seeing the First Amendment, which was written to protect our freedom to practice religion, misused as a tool to strip religion out of our public lives. Not only is this push for a religion of public secularism a departure from the historic American approach to faith, it is a threat to our liberty and the principles on which our country was founded.

The Founding Fathers regularly – and intentionally – engaged in public religious observances, and they knew that faith was vital to our country's survival. They understood that religious freedom underpinned all our other liberties and provided an important limit to the federal government's reach into our lives. We must recognize that religious rights in our country have been diminished over the years and the country must work to restore these rights. America is strongest and most successful when its people are free to live and worship as they wish.

This is why the freedom of religion is an essential pillar of America and a key to the American comeback.