The United States was the first, and some say the only, nation created through the belief that God, not government, has given to all men certain unalienable rights, and that government exists for the purpose of protecting those rights. For this reason, the government is a servant of the people, not the other way around. The Constitution and Bill of Rights were written to ensure the understanding and protection of those basic rights.
The vision for such freedom was born out of the Protestant Reformation when salvation became individual, not corporate. Also during the Reformation came the truth that in order to be saved we must have personal faith in God and His atonement, not that we are saved because we came from a Christian family, lived in a Christian nation, or were raised in an institutional church. This gave infinite value to the individual and made all institutions, including government, servants of God for ensuring peace and liberty for His people. This was a radical new concept for government that took several centuries to flesh out and become the basis for an actual government.
Freedom is required for true worship. For us to have true worship of God, we must have the freedom not to worship. This is why the Lord put the Tree of Knowledge in the Garden—there could be no true obedience unless there was the freedom not to obey. God wanted those who worshiped Him to do so because they loved Him and loved His truth, not out of compulsion. True religion is from the heart and cannot be forced or imposed. This is why we are told that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty” (see II Corinthians 3:17). This is why the freedom of religion is a foundational liberty upon which all of our liberties are based, and why there was insistence that the government would have no power to establish religion.
The term “the separation of church and state” is not found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but rather was coined by Thomas Jefferson in a letter. Consequently, there was no intention by the Founders to have a separation of church and state, but simply that the government would have no power to impose any religion on the people. We know from the other writings of the Founders, which were intended with these documents, that all who gave an opinion on it did not think that the Republic could last without a strong mooring to our Judea/Christian underpinnings. However, they also saw that these underpinnings would be artificial, and therefore weak, if the freedom of religion was not a necessary seedbed of true religion.
Being the first such government in history brought out many naysayers and critics who thought that such a country could not survive long without falling into anarchy and then tyranny. Certainly the maturing of the nation brought about many crises that seemed to threaten its very existence, such as the Civil War. The danger would swing from tyranny to anarchy, but through each crisis, the nation emerged stronger and more prosperous than ever. Living under the relative peace and prosperity in the U.S. soon became the desire of the world, and the world came to America until we became a nation made up of all nations, which added greatly to our strength.
Every generation has had its tests, and many of these were so severe that there were serious questions whether the Republic could survive. The generation before us had to face some of history’s worst and most deadly despots—Hitler, Stalin, and Mao being the major ones, but others like Pol Pot and Chauchescu who may have been even more cruel in their murder of men. After surviving the Great Depression, that generation had to fight World War II and then the Cold War, which threatened the destruction of the entire earth. Through all of this, the United States was left far stronger and more prosperous than they had received it.
We are going through a test now that threatens our continued survival as a Republic. Millions of Islamic jihadists have arisen whose ultimate goal is to destroy America and Western civilization and would consider it the work of God to kill Americans and Jews. At the same time, a new form of socialism has arisen within the nation that threatens the foundations of American economic strength, which is the initiative promoted by economic freedom. From within and without, we are facing ultimate threats, but we should not think this is unusual, but rather that it is now our turn. This is not something that we have to face but that we get to face.
The very foundations of the Republic are under assault, and without a doubt we could lose everything that all of the previous generations worked so hard to give to us. However, we can also come out of this much stronger and much better than ever. It really is our choice.
When I say our choice, it is the choice of Christians. Even though we must promote and defend the freedom of every religion as a core value of Christianity as well as our Republic, without the core of Judeo/Christian moral underpinnings, the Republic will not last. Even so, we must understand that the freedom of belief is not the freedom to practice. For example, people are free to believe in animal sacrifices as a part of their religion, but they are not free to practice that here. They are free to believe in polygamy, and even female circumcision, honor killing, the cutting off of the hands of a thief, etc., but they are not free to practice these things here.
Freedom is not unlimited, but it does have restraints. These restraints are in order to protect the freedom of those who would otherwise be victims of tyranny. Of course, where the lines of our freedoms will be drawn are fought over in each generation. However, our love for God demands that we love His people, all people, and protect the freedom without which they cannot rise to the greatest height a human can rise—to be a lover of God, and by doing this, loving one another as we should.
