Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rust and president of NC Family, and each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina. Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for family values in your community, state, and nation. Thank you for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. I'm Mitch Prosser, Vice President of North Carolina Family, joined by our Director of Research and Education, Adamo Manfram.
Welcome to the ninth episode of The Truths We Hold. In honor of America's 250th anniversary and NC Family's 35th anniversary this year, we're taking a deeper look at the foundational values that have shaped our country and continue to shape the work we do here at NC Family. On this episode, we're taking a deeper dive into the God-given right of religious freedom and what it means for us 250 years after the signers stood so boldly and first adopted these foundational rights.
So, Adamo, as we talk about this foundational right of liberty, Let's kind of go back to the framing of the Declaration of Independence. And we've talked about these three unalienable rights that Jefferson gives us, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We've talked about how religious freedom kind of bridges the gap, if you will, between liberty and the pursuit of happiness. How does it do so? Sure.
So religious liberty, as we're sort of approaching our focus areas here under those three buckets, we're looking at obviously religious liberty is a liberty, so it's a freedom. And it's in the First Amendment, I think for good reason that it's the first and fundamental freedom, both historically in the sense that many of the early arrivers here in the colonies at the time came here to flee religious persecution. And so in their historic period, certainly saw the specific to their considerations value of religious freedom, but also inherently in what we've previously discussed, that these unalienable rights are things that actually can't be taken away fundamentally without killing the person. Religious freedom is the highest of that. We could go back all the way to the Old Testament and Exodus with the Israelites getting out of Egypt.
To go worship their God and what they faced in that journey. And so that highlights why we're primarily couching this here under liberty. But then, pursuit of happiness, and we'll go into more of this in further episodes. We today particularly struggle with finding happiness in the wrong place, but that's gone back in time immemorial, where happiness is really found in our relationship with God, and we know our relationship with Jesus Christ and ultimately our union with Him in the next life. And so, the freedom to pursue that is fundamental to happiness.
Like, that is where happiness will be found. And so, remembering that the right to religious freedom and the freedom to pursue God is, in fact, both the true good pursuit of happiness and somewhat, therefore, the fundamental liberty that you need to then live your free life. Right, absolutely. That's an excellent point. I think that our New England founders seem to have gotten it right more than one time.
Speaking of the people who founded the Plymouth colony and then kind of birthed into Massachusetts and then spread across the New England continent, they came here because of. Religious freedom, as you pointed out, and fleeing the tyranny of religious persecution in England and Europe. But again, they ask this fundamental question of the newly and duly elected president of the United States around 1800. His name's Thomas Jefferson, and it's ultimately something that has been contested over the last 200 or so years, and that is this question of the separation of church and state.
Now, there are those that would weaponize the separation of church and state that Jefferson mentions in his letter back to the Danbury Baptist when they asked him about a state or a federal religion, because several states did, in fact, have state religions, and I point out the one every time: Maryland, Maryland. It was founded by Lord Baltimore as a Catholic state, and there were Presbyterian states, and so on. It goes. There are those who have tried to weaponize the separation of church and state, saying that the church should have no influence whatsoever over the state. But what Jefferson was really getting at is he wrote to the Danbury.
Baptist to ease their concerns was to say that the state should have no undue influence on the church.
So let's work through that a little bit as we talk about religious freedom and the opposite side of the coin of the separation of church and state. That was meant to protect the church from the state. Right.
So I think we talked about that maybe in our second episode talking about government and the wrong interpretation, right? That church absolutely does have a voice into the state. We've talked about the wall builders and their strong focus on the fact that, in fact, the founders were primarily drawing from Christian, biblical, New Testament principles.
So the idea that New Testament, Christian biblical principles don't and shouldn't have a voice into government policy is absurd from day one. But there is a protection, you might think like a one-way valve, that the state does not thereby or in reverse or in both directions then get to say things into the church. Right.
Particularly as you mentioned, the different colonies having their distinct denominational religious Tests possibly and having their own, maybe you say, flavors of Christianity, and not wanting to have some sort of doctrinal disputes between colonies or at the federal level, but rather that the nation recognizes, again, the fundamental liberty of exercising, living, believing, and living out in the public square your faith, and then being able to speak that faith in the public square and into government, and that the government doesn't then get to come back and regulate and decide this is the right version of Christianity and this is the wrong version of Christianity. You know, centuries leading up to this time saw the negative outcome of governments making those decisions instead of the churches for and among themselves. Absolutely. And there's this notion today, and we've talked about how there's been this constant push against religious freedom. It first started with, you know, you can worship however you want, but you can't say what you want in the public square.
And now we're learning and we're seeing instances, even here in this country, where there is compelled speech even inside the four walls of the church. We're seeing this work itself out in. Education, that sort of thing. And this is a direct affront, if you will, on this religious freedom and the ability or the right for people to be able to not only worship but exercise their faith in that right of conscience as they see fit, as given to us, not only by the state, but ultimately an inalienable right given by God.
So, let's talk a little bit about what we're seeing today in this push for pluralism versus relativism. Do we live in a pluralistic culture? Do we live in a relativistic culture? What's the difference? What does that even mean?
Sure.
I would say, unfortunately, we seem to be experiencing more of a relativistic culture. What I would argue the First Amendment is affirming is a pluralistic culture to a certain degree in the sense that everyone is free to pursue their religion. And so that creates a plurality, whether you want to measure denominations or multi-faiths, including all the various, however you want to count the different things. But what I think the excessive liberals want to do with that is take that and make it relativistic, that you're free to believe. That, keep it to yourself.
And so, that all that can be left is what we all agree on. And so, everything outside of the shared things is just relative, which then means the more things they excise from agreement, those things get relativized. And that does create this relativistic, your opinion, my opinion, all that is is just opinion, and denies, again, going back to the freedom of the church to speak into the public square and assert that, no, we as a society affirm certain things. And I think another thing that that sort of waters down and loses is that not all religions are going to be equally compatible with the shape of our government. And again, going back to the founders, both in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that so many of the principles drawn there and the quotes from there and the ideas sort of codified there are from biblical New Testament principles.
Well, if that's the case, if our government was designed and built around a framework of New Testament principles, those who live a life according to New Testament principles are going to naturally be a better fit for that form of government. Government and those religions that advance, espouse, inherently generate, or necessitate or call for things that would be contradictory to New Testament principles are going to naturally be not as natural a fit for our form of government. Absolutely. And there are those that push back against this and say this is hegemonic in nature. There are those that say, well, you know, the incompatibility creates unfair advantage for some versus another.
I think it is worth noting that the establishment of a framework by our framers was very intentional. As the gentleman from Wall Builders, the Bartons, talk about often, the Bible was one of the most influential source texts for our foundational documents. In fact, as you and I were looking at our state constitution the other day, God has mentioned right off the bat in our Constitution, with the adoption, by the way, of some of the language from the Declaration of Independence. But it's imperative for us to realize that our framers intentionally built a Judeo-Christian ethic, if you will, if nothing else, or morality into our culture. And there are those that, those religious structures that would be incompatible with that.
I think it's important too to draw this distinction as well, because some would look at this framework, if you will, that we've mentioned and say, well, anything inside of that framework is simply Christian nationalism. And that's a catch-all. There are those that express a self-admitted Christian nationalism. They truly want a Christian nationalism to take place. But there are those that look at us as acknowledging this Christian framework that our country was built upon and say, if you believe that today, you're a Christian nationalist.
How do we confront or resolve that tension there between those two competing or accusatory ideas? I don't think there's a single universal answer to that because I think in any debate on the topic, it's going to come down to defining terms.
So you're going to have two people come together and then disagree on what Christian nationalism is. Means. And then, if they define it, then they might either both agree that that is a bad thing or that is a good thing. Because if you mean Christian nationalism is the people that wrote the Constitution and the Declaration were doing it from Christian principles, and we should continue to espouse Christian principles in policy and government and culture, then yeah, it seems to be a Christian nation. On the other hand, if you mean Christian nationalism is some kind of theocracy where the church itself wields the sword and doctrinal disputes are settled at the pointy end of a sword, then we certainly would not espouse that kind of Christian nationalism.
Yeah, that's correct. But I do think there are some that do. You're right. And so I think there are even those who would call themselves Christian nationalists that are describing the first thing I said. And so we're not necessarily opposed to acknowledging the Christian qualities of our founding and less and less so, but detrimentally to our current culture.
And so the label itself, because there isn't a universal what does that really mean, I think answering the what do we do with that term, again, can't be universally done because it's going to have to be like, well, Some people are using it as a pejorative. If they can get you to somehow fall into any bucket of Christian nationalism, then that makes you a bad person. And there are other people who think if you don't adopt any form of Christian nationalism, then you're a bad person because you're abandoning Christian morals in the public square. And so I think either of those are really an attempt to wield the label more than really get at what do we want for our nation, what do we want for our culture, what do we want for others for their flourishing and ours. That's exactly right.
And I think we've seen the weaponizing of words for a century or more, going back, as we mentioned a moment ago, to the separation of church and state, which brings up another interesting thought. We live in a virtue-based society, and there are those that have tried to wield the language of, well, the First Amendment, if you will, is a freedom from religion as opposed to a freedom to participate or exercise religious beliefs. How do we work that out?
So I think there is a freedom from mandated religion, but the purpose of that is in fact. A freedom for religion. Our freedoms are for us to use them and use them well, virtuously, as you mentioned. And so, getting at recognizing, again, the fundamental sort of first liberty of the freedom for religion, the freedom to engage our religions and live our faith, and hopefully bring that faith into the public square. Especially, again, as Christians, we believe in evangelization, not spreading the faith by the sword, but spreading the faith by preaching and by loving and baptizing, of course.
And so, by having the freedom to do that, we would expect that that would create more Christians by our practice of our faith, not by the enforcement of the government. Yeah, so by the very nature of a virtuous society, that should speak literally volumes to the religious beliefs that those that set up this form of government and this culture espoused from the very beginning. And that is why we, as citizens of this country, and as believers. Believers and citizens of the kingdom of God need to continually espouse these virtues in order for us to continue to have this virtuous society. The quote by John Adams: Our Constitution was meant for a virtuous people, and it's wholly inadequate to the governance of any other.
We could talk about Jefferson's quote: There, the government which governs best governs least because the people can govern themselves. And over and over again, we see these framers speaking in this manner, helping us understand. And so, over and over again, we are encouraged: we must be perpetuators of this system of government that we've been given.
So, if we believe that America is a good, just, wholesome place to live, then we must continue to pass that down as we teach those underneath of us. The best way I think we can do that is not just by our words, but by our actions and the two in tandem. Excellent points there. And I think a great place for us to wrap this episode. Thank you for watching this episode of The Truths We Hold, where we're unpacking and Taking a deeper dive at the foundational truths that we believe, not just here at NC Family, but I think many people across our great state and country believe.
So, thank you for watching this episode. Stay tuned for more episodes coming in the months ahead. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org.
That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks and may God bless you and your family.
