The Patriot Post® · Secularism: The De Facto State Religion

For nearly a hundred years, American progressives have incorrectly argued that the principle of separation of church and state precludes an individual from expressing their religious perspective in politics. In fact, the First Amendment that prohibits Congress from passing law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” was not intended to exclude religion from politics, but rather, to protect the individual’s right of religious freedom, encouraging expression of the eternal virtues and morality common to Judeo-Christian tradition in our government and society.

Our nation’s founding irrefutably has its basis in a Judeo-Christian understanding of our existence – “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Our country’s founders held “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as bestowed gifts intrinsic to our creation, and established the protection of those unalienable rights as the immutable and absolute foundation of our government and society.

Also recognizing that a society founded on liberty unguided by virtue would devolve into immorality and injustice, they understood our God-given “unalienable rights” conferred a moral responsibility to abide by the unchanging Natural Law of God. John Adams wrote “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and virtue…. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington states in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Progressives also fail to acknowledge or comprehend that religion in this context refers not to worship but rather to a values system or a worldview. One’s worldview formulates a person’s existential and moral framework – how they understand life and the world around them, and how they judge right and wrong. In this sense, religion cannot possibly be excluded from education, or politics, or social institutions more generally. All are inherently founded in a values system. The question before us is which “religion” embodies truth or, less philosophically, makes for a healthy and successful society.

The progressive’s “religion” or worldview arises from a secular understanding of the world, attributing the life, wonder, beauty, and obvious order of the Universe to a random cosmic accident. Their “god” is a human conceived vision (idol) of perfect humanity; and this vision, by definition, is ever evolving and ever progressing as science evolves and progresses. In the secular religion, truth and morality are not absolute but relative to human progress. “Progress” of that moral code now allows abortion; allows confiscating property of some (the undeserving) and giving it to others (the deserving); assures us that “good” family structure is not limited to 1 mother and 1 father taking responsibility for the caring and upbringing of their children but also includes any loving couple, trio, or village. Secular morality has increasingly denounced and marginalized Judeo-Christian belief and its intrinsic absolute morality and truth, because such absolutism is inconsistent with progressive development of secular human perfection.

The human secularists reject expression of our foundational Judeo-Christian ideology and morality in our country’s society and politics, claiming violation of separation of Church and State. Rather they have increasingly imposed their principle of broad tolerance of varied and often conflicting beliefs as the neutral, non-religious and therefore legitimate political and societal position. They further deem affirmation of the goodness of one belief over another as a biased, extreme, and illegitimate position. For example, progressives hold both traditional marriage and family structure, and homosexual marriage and family structure as equally legitimate and good, and do not tolerate and decry as bigots those who profess that only traditional marriage family structure conforms to God’s instruction and plan for Man.

Illogically in the name of enlightened tolerance, progressives profess equal goodness of disparate and often mutually exclusive beliefs. For the secular humanist, goodness does not reside in one or the other beliefs but only in the concept of tolerance. Clearly for many of us, promotion of equality of goodness of conflicting beliefs is an extreme and not neutral stance.

The secular humanists have further imposed their religion on our education system. As a result, our children no longer learn of virtues such as love of God country and family; responsibility for self, family and neighbor; respect for elders and those in authority; industriousness, honesty, and living within one’s means. Rather they are indoctrinated with the “politically correct” policies of radical environmentalism, wealth redistribution, tolerance and equivalence of disparate beliefs. To the great detriment of our country and society, the secular “religion” is destroying the very morality and absolute nature of that morality which the founders held critical for a free, just, and prosperous society, and sought to promote by protecting religious rights as expressed in the Establishment Clause and in the actual intent of separation of Church and State.

Only by again properly understanding, affirming and enlivening in our society the Judeo-Christian principles underlying our country’s foundation and the resultant traditional American personal freedoms, economic freedoms, and values, will we truly address the societal and economic corruption threatening the prosperity, freedom, and ultimately the greatness of our country.