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Greetings, honored justices!
I wish you well; but, alas, I wish that were the only reason for my writing.
If the United States of America were ever to cease from being a nation or otherwise fundamentally change so as to be essentially a different nation, which cannot be considered a good thing, the fault would be entirely your own.
I can even tell you the single thing that would have been most responsible for this to have occurred: religion (or rather the suppression of it.)
You have insisted that our governments, and all our public entities supported with public money, cannot favor one religion over another (or even religion over non-religion.)
Honored justices, indeed, this one statement more than any other will explain the decline and fall of Western Civilization itself, if it goes that far.
The reason I am so certain of this is that religion, properly defined, has been at the source of our nation’s founding and Western Civilization. And this is where the problem lies.
A religion is a set of beliefs about reality, a worldview. A worldview is a description of how life works, what is true, what is false, what is right, what is wrong, what is good, what is bad, what are the rules (if there are any.) A religion is a worldview that believes that there is a God and then purports to give information about God; because if there were a god/God, this would certainly have an effect on life as it pertains to human beings.
So everybody has a worldview. And if they believe in God, it is called a religion.
Governments and nations all have worldviews as well, a basic core or system of beliefs that guides the government’s laws and policies, a nation’s culture, a country’s identity.
To deny a nation the right to define itself with a worldview that includes God is not only wrong but destructive.
But, but, but . . . .
what about the First Amendment?
The best way to answer that question is with a question. Wouldn’t it be fair to assume that the people who wrote and ratified the Constitution and Bill of Rights would have understood what they meant and then acted in ways consistent with their meaning, rather than promoting practices that were found to be unconstitutional by you 150 years later?
That very first Congress authorized the printing of Bibles for use in public schools. The Congress hall itself was used as a church on Sundays for over 100 years, starting from our country’s earliest days.
Religion is not a list of personal preferences, as one’s taste in music, one’s favorite authors, one’s favorite food, or chocolate over vanilla. It is a claim to truth.
Our nation’s Founders saw that in the Bible and Christianity.
Every nation has laws against murder, but that is very different from teaching our children that life is valuable because humans are created in the image of God.
Our nation teaches us to tolerate other people, which essentially means to ignore them. Christianity and the Bible teach us to love other people, to actively seek their good.
In the early days of our country, people who didn’t believe in God were not even allowed to serve on juries, or in most cases even run for public office. Or if they could, they would never have won. Why? Nobody trusted them. It was the belief that God held people accountable for their actions that gave people their integrity, and those who didn’t believe in God and an afterlife were seen as more likely to act in their own self-interest.
Some people have contended that all things religious should be taught in the home.
I have to ask, what home? We have taught our daughters as a nation that it is more important to have a career, or a job, than to have a family. And our economic policies have made it harder for our women to stay at home, even if they wanted to.
And our men are less likely to marry and raise their children than at any time in history.
Why?
Worldview. Marrying and raising children together is a Biblical and Christian principle. Certainly, you don’t have to be Christian to have a wonderful family. But without Christianity, it wouldn’t be taught as ideal, but one option among many. True, some other religions teach that as well, but only religions.
So for a government to be neutral toward religion is really saying that a nation must necessarily say and live and act and teach that for all practical purposes, there is no God. And the biggest consequence of this is that government now assumes the role that God used to play in people’s lives. Yes, people can still believe what they want in their hearts; but the government becomes the nation’s keeper rather than each of us his brother’s.
When our nation was founded (and you should know this), the big question about religion was whether or not churches were to be a function of the federal government, as it was in Europe. The answer they gave was no. That is what was meant in the First Amendment by establishing religion.
And the simplest proof of that was the very actions of that First Congress: establishing Congressional chaplains, calling for a national day of prayer, paying for missionary work among the Indians, printing Bibles for public schools, even opening every day’s business with prayer.
Christianity defined the (unwritten) rules for our nation: God, love, honor, work, responsibility, family, honesty, integrity. Now our nation, our culture, our government tries to make new rules to define our existence: self-actualization; fairness; equality; tolerance; government as benefactor, ruler, protector.
The result is a nation without a sense of responsibility, whether for others or even for one’s self.
We embrace multiculturalism because we don’t value our own. We no longer know what made us who we are, or why we ever were like that.
A nation has to decide what kind of nation we will be and what principles define us and guide us. Christianity used to define us. You decided that we could no longer do that, contrary to our entire previous history. And what you left us is a secularism, bereft of any personal accountability, duties, obligations, or restraints, apart from that owed to our government or imposed on ourselves by ourselves.
To tell our government to be neutral towards religion is to tell us to draw without lines, to write without words, to speak without language, to build a house without walls or foundation.
I have written elsewhere about the four myths of a secular government in America. It is available on my blog, poligion1.blogspot.com, but I will send you a copy.
As I said, I wish you well; but I strongly urge you to reconsider your church-state rulings because you have removed the rudder from the ship of state.
Thank you.
Respectfully,
Larry Craig
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