Hidden Religion in Washington. D.C.

In 1938, Congress passed the Fair Labor Standards Act, which restricted child labor. Congress believed that children possessed an intrinsic value above monetary quantification. In 1964, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act, which forbade discrimination on the grounds of race, color, or national origin. Congress believed that all human beings were created equal and therefore due equal treatment under the law.

In 1990, Congress passed the Americans with Disabilities Act, which forbade discrimination against those with disabilities. Congress believed that physical abilities, or lack of them, do not constitute the essence of a person. His essence, by extension, comes from some other source, and the government is not it.

Religion, we often hear, should have no bearing on politics: the wall between church and state shall not be breached. Yet these three laws, to which we could add others, flow directly from a central Christian belief: that the human person is created by God. By fashioning all men and women in His image and likeness, God has endowed human beings with an innate dignity that no other person or entity may violate.

We take it for granted today that the government’s functions include protecting citizens’ rights, many of which, including those protected in these three laws, are pre-political, that is, they are part of persons’ nature, not grants of government privilege. We fail to realize that many of these rights are political expressions of the prior Christian belief that all persons are equal because they are all children of the one Father in Heaven. As a result, one person or group cannot be greater than any other, nor exploit any other.

“Political problems,” wrote Russell Kirk, “at bottom, are religious and moral problems.” In other words, our beliefs and morals shape our politics, not the other way around. Beneath every hotly contested political topic of today or yesteryear – immigration, tariffs, welfare, health care, DEI, the Cold War, supply-side economic theory, segregation, slavery, westward expansion, independence from Britain – lie beliefs that shape the approach and policy. There is no such thing as a “neutral” politics devoid of prior beliefs and principles.

Sometimes these beliefs are tenets of Christianity, such as the inherent dignity of the person, which has given rise to the push for legal equality. I doubt that vociferous secularists who decry any odor of religion in public life would reject equality because it is “tainted” by religion.

Other beliefs are philosophical, such as certain economic and geopolitical theories. And sometimes beliefs come from a distinctly modern kind of religion that eschews traditional forms such as churches or hierarchies. These beliefs stem from ideologies, systems of ideas abstracted from various theories and harmonized into programs to direct a nation (or the world itself) toward preconceived ends. Like revealed religion, ideologies have dogmas and exist to save human beings from the sins of the world.

Just as Christian beliefs lie hidden in Washington, modern ideologies lie hidden there, too. Expressive individualism, the belief that the individual and his sexual freedom are the most important considerations of society, drives abortion and family law. Gender ideology, the belief that gender is a construct of the mind divorced from nature, drives school curricula, medical laws, and cultural practices from library collections to the bizarre “drag queen story hour.” Diversity, equity, and inclusion, the belief that every sector of life must have proportional representation of society’s ethnic makeup, drives Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which governs employment practices across the country.

Washington, in fact, is filled with religious beliefs – we need only look more closely to find them. Given how much fighting we do over politics and policies, Americans have a two-tiered view of religion. When religion pertains to supernatural beliefs, they are relativists holding that all religions are created equal, varying paths to the same goal. But when religion impacts daily life or politics, they defend them absolutely. The Culture Wars, in essence, are wars over how religion – whether revealed or ideological – impacts society at large.

This perspective recasts ongoing battles over religious liberty. The Constitution prohibits the establishment of a state-sponsored religion. It does not, and cannot, prohibit public expressions of religious beliefs, for they are ubiquitous, of varied sources, and fundamental to human reasoning. Doing so not only discriminates against certain religious beliefs which are somehow deemed inferior to other beliefs. It prevents politics and policy from freely taking place as well.

Yet preventing Christian beliefs from public manifestation was, beginning in the 1960s, the goal of the Supreme Court, which deliberately conflated expression of beliefs with state-sponsored religion. In its view, acknowledging God’s existence and sovereignty could no longer be considered an act of reason. Rather, it confined this acknowledgment within the province of revealed religion alone.

The Roberts court has gingerly moved to correct this misinterpretation, but it has been hesitant to address the broader issue: in the public arena, religious beliefs are as valid as any other belief, whether they come from revealed or ideological sources. In May, it missed an opportunity to do so in St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, which upheld a lower court ruling that Oklahoma cannot fund a sectarian charter school.

Revealed religion has to have the same rights as the hidden, ideological religions in Washington. Given the many goods Christian-based laws have generated in this country, our nation would be wise to again recognize Christianity as legitimate — and poignant — source of public action.

AUTHOR