The New Secularism and the Death of a Nation

We will live or die, sink or swim, according to our beliefs. The progressive is poised to remove religion from the public, arguing that this has always been a secular nation. However, the “secularism” of today bears little resemblance to the secularism that had once made this nation great. A few quotations might bring this fact home.

In his Notes on Virginia, Thomas Jefferson, arguably the most un-Christian of our Founding Fathers, observed:

• Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not violated but with his wrath?”

Instead of removing or marginalizing our Judeo-Christian foundations, Jefferson, along with the other Founding Fathers, insisted that these were necessary for the preservation of our liberties.

His words were prophetic. As we have seen the weakening of the influence of the church and the strengthening of those who hate it, we have also seen the removal of our liberties by a new militant and secular religion. Here are just a few of many examples:

1. Christians fired for expressing their ideas about marriage, even outside of their job.

2. Mayors threatening to not allow businesses to come into their towns because of the owners’ beliefs about marriage.

3. Women threatened with dismissal from graduate counseling programs because they expressed disapproval of same-sex marriage.

4. Businesses fined, the owners required to go for “re-education,” and threatened with closure because they wouldn’t perform acts that their faith forbade.

It had been the vision of secularism to allow everyone a seat-at-the-table with free expression. In contrast, the “secularism” of today forbids Christians a seat. Instead, they must conform to a new religion if they want to be heard or even to work.

This “secularism” claims to be neutral, unlike other religions, and maintains that the “separation between church and state” requires that the Christian voice be kept silent in the public. However, this hadn’t been the thinking of our leading secularist, Jefferson:

• No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be.

Historian Robert Royal affirms that the secularism of the Founders was never supposed to impose a new monopolistic religion:

• The generation that led the American Revolution knew clearly that a secular government designed to take care of secular affairs did not mean a society in which secularism was in effect the official religion. Church and state were separated so that each could do it job better. (The God that did not Fail, 207)

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington warned that the nation’s welfare depended on its religion:

• Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for prosperity, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Meanwhile, today’s secularists are naively convinced that morality and law can easily be maintained apart from the roots that had sired them.

Washington’s words have also proved prophetic. As the Christian faith has been degraded in the West, especially beginning with the early sixties, crime, drug use, depression, and loss of economic vitality escalated.

The new “secularists” have also rejected other lessons. They are convinced that our social problems are best addressed by big, powerful and over-reaching government – the very thing that the Founders had feared most.

• That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. (Declaration of Independence)

How long can a free people endure “a long train of abuses and usurpations… to reduce them under absolute Despotism” to a new and militant religion? How can a vast segment of a nation tolerate coercion designed to force them to violate their most precious faith? How can this not produce contempt for the government that coerces them in this unjust manner?