Religion in America: Has America Ceased to be Great?

   What makes a free society? Not only free in name, as ours claims to be, but in fact. What is the key to a truly free nation? Is it a coincidence that God is mentioned three times in Declaration of Independence? Or that our very Pledge of Allegiance states that this country is "one nation under God"? Is it surprising that our first right defended in the Bill of Rights is the right to religion? The founders made it very clear that our type of government is meant "only for a moral and religious people." We have seen a degradation of our morality. One needs not look far to see that. The role of religious freedom in a free nation is tremendous. If we do not defend that liberty, we do not defend any liberty.

The founders believed in freedom. Freedom of all kinds. Freedoms from, freedoms to, freedom in general-was the essence of their lives. But out of all the rights, all the freedoms, out of 189 rights proposed for the Bill of Rights, the first one lists the right to worship. What does this tell us about the founding era? We can tell that they valued religion highly. In the founding era we saw a huge fire of religion. Alexis De Tocqueville, a powerful writer of the early American model, said this of our country;

"I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there. In the fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there. In her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits, aflame with righteousness, did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." (De Tocqueville, Democracy in America)  

Even this French politician recognized that our strength as a society comes from our righteousness. Following this period of religious fervor we saw tremendous prosperity! Now we find ourselves often asking, "Where is the prosperity? Where is the American dream?" This is the answer. America is ceasing to be good, so America has ceased to be great.

We've seen a moral decay in modern America. This has caused a parallel decay in our greatness as a nation. We have also seen many attacks on our religion that have caused this. But do those attacks have a direct affect on our other liberties? Many people would argue that they have no relationship with each other. This is false. They are very intimately connected. Freedom of Religion is the first of our Liberties protected by the Constitution. All rights come from somewhere. They are either God-given or they are government-given. They are Natural Laws or they are Posit Laws. The main difference between these types of rights is the principle that if the government gives you a right, the government can take away that right. Remember, God gives each of his children unalienable rights such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (or property, an extension of your life). What happens when we take God out of the equation? Now our right to life is something that the government gave us. Consequentially, the government can then take away our lives. This as well as our property and our liberties.

Sound familiar? That's because our government is doing those very things (or are preparing to). At the center of every controversial topic we see this debate. Gun ownership, the right to protect your God-given rights, is one point that the government is attempting to remove-and thus make it easier to remove our God-given rights. Government demands that we pay them so that they can fund abortion; so they can take innocent lives. Every day we see more of our fundamental rights are being violated by our government. This is all the result of our nation disregarding religion more and more. When you take God out of your education and then teach children that the rights that the government protects came when the founders signed the Declaration, they will assume that the government can take them away. If we do not fight for our right to worship now, then we will not have that right later.

We have seen that as a result of morality and religion our nation has prospered. Right now, we are neither moral nor religious. But this does not mean we cannot return. We have not lost our rights. We need to stand for those rights that God, the ultimate being, granted each of us. We need to bring religion back into schools, into government. If we do that we can begin to rise from the muck and filth that now surrounds our politics. Let me echo the words of our great founder, John Adams, "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."