Breakpoint
Author: John Stonestreet and Andrew Carico
230 years ago, President George Washington delivered one of our nation’s most significant public speeches. His Farewell Address was delivered in the fall of 1796 as Washington prepared to leave office. Written by Washington and aided by James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, the address provided guidance to our young nation. In one of the most significant lines ever written by a President, Washington declared: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”
Washington understood the vital connection between the success of America’s republican form of government and the flourishing of religion and morality. Piety, religion, and morality were seen as necessary to help people preserve liberty. Reflecting on the anniversary of Washington’s address only makes recent events at an Iowa city council meeting all the more alarming.
Earlier this month, in Ottumwa, Iowa, a resident delivered a Satanic prayer to open a council meeting, capped off by “Hail Satan.” This was immediately followed by the city council members turning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, including the words “under God.” The clash of worldviews could not have been more obvious.
The Supreme Court has ruled that such invocations in legislative sessions are acceptable if open to any religion. Americans enjoy robust religious liberty protections in the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, honoring what many Founders called the “sacred rights of conscience.” And as Robert Louis Wilken described in his book, Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom, religious liberty is a distinctly Christian idea.
Hence, we have quite a dilemma: Does the idea of religious liberty as defined by the American Founders square with the protection of a Satanic prayer at the opening of a local government legislative session?
For guidance, we can look to former Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, author of the heralded “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.” Story noted, when reflecting on the First Amendment, that “piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well-being of the state.” He goes further, stating that,
It is impossible for those who believe in the truth of Christianity, as a divine revelation, to doubt that it is the especial duty of government to foster, and encourage it among all the citizens and subjects.
Story goes on to say that while Christianity ought to be encouraged by the state, the state should not “force the consciences of other men.” In other words, for Story, the limits of religious freedom is somewhere between encouraging but not compelling Christian belief and practice.
An important point for our Iowa friends is that Satanism is not an actual religion. It’s a conscious mockery of all religion. Local media reported that “The Satanic Temple of Iowa is ‘a resolutely non-theistic’ religious organization that follows seven core tenets.” For Christians thinking through how to respond to this issue, one possibility is to make an originalist argument about what religion was understood to be at the time of the Founding and for much of American history. This would include all things religious, like non-Christian faiths, but allow exclusion of Satanists and other aberrant groups (think of the infamous Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster). Groups designed to be a farce fall out of an originalist understanding of a religious assembly.
Moreover, Scripture teaches that Satan is the arch anti-theist who harms the common good and corrupts the consciences of all men. Religious freedom was established to serve the common good and protect the conscience. The Bible describes Satan as a murderer, devoid of truth, who “when he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). That kind of criminal activity forfeits freedom.
Finally, Christians should constantly contend with all non-Christians, for “the faith that was once delivered to the saints” (Jude 1:3). That would include Satanists. Scholar Mark David Hall put it this way:
Christians today can embrace a robust view of religious liberty for Christian reasons. Americans (like all people) still have a duty to worship God, and they must be permitted to do so in spirit and in truth. If some of our fellow citizens embrace false religions, we should attempt to convince them of the error of their ways . . . Good, open dialogue between adherents of different faiths is far more likely to result in a civil society than attempting to use the power of the state to impose one religion upon others.
Promoting actual “religious” liberty, even amidst other religions, does not mean elevating falsehoods. Christianity can be freely proclaimed as the one true religion if citizens are allowed to freely adhere to it. Such an understanding of religious liberty at all levels of government would go a long way toward promoting the prosperity that, as Washington told us, religion and morality support.