New Poll: 50% of Americans don’t understand or value religious freedom.

Summit Ministries and Rasmussen Reports released the results of a survey asking people their views on religious freedom. Their headline reads, “Overwhelming Majority of Americans Support Religious Freedom, Oppose Key Provisions of Equality Act.” (June 22, 2021)

Their survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted on June 16 and 17, found that 82% of Americans say freedom of religion is important to a healthy American society. The survey asked two simple questions. The first asked, “How important is freedom of religion to a healthy American society?”

The second question asked, “Should churches and faith-based charities be required by law to hire people who oppose their religious beliefs?” The report heralded the finding that only 20% of Americans say churches and faith-based organizations should be required by law to hire people who oppose their religious beliefs.

However, what really caught my attention was the fact that the survey also reported another 30% were “not sure.” That is very concerning. The question did not ask if religious organizations should be required by law to hire people who might not agree with their religious beliefs. It asked if religious organizations should have to hire people who outright oppose their beliefs. Thirty percent think that maybe religious organizations should be forced to hire people who oppose their beliefs?

This tells me that Americans don’t understand religious freedom. We have a real problem on our hands if so many people (50%) don’t know that religious freedom actually means freedom. Instead, 20% think that, for instance, churches should be forced to hire atheists if they apply for a job, and 30% are just not sure.

That caused me to question the finding that 82% of Americans say freedom of religion is important to a healthy American society. I’m not questioning the accuracy of the polling. I’m questioning people’s understanding of religious freedom.

“Freedom of religion is more than freedom to worship.”

Remember, these were not different people being polled. The same people who overwhelmingly support religious freedom are split on the issue of forcing religious institutions to hire people who oppose their religion.

It very well could be that when the 82% said religious freedom is important, they were thinking of freedom to worship. Sure, they might have thought, people should be able to gather together and pray to and sing to whatever god they want. But freedom of religion is more than freedom to worship.

Religious freedom is not only the freedom to think what you want (in your head, your home, and your place of worship), it is also the freedom to act on it, to build community around it, and to hire people who will help in the teaching of, and living out of, those religious beliefs.

Rather than a survey proving the value Americans put on religious freedom, we should see it as an alarm bell alerting us that Americans need to understand what religious freedom really means. Students in public schools — the next generation of voters — need to learn the importance of religious freedom for a flourishing society. People will not defend what they do not cherish, and they will not cherish what they do not understand.

To help promote religious freedom in public schools, visit GoGateways.org/freetospeak.

Your donation will help Gateways teach students the importance of religious freedom. Give today.

A Largely-Forgotten History of the Civil Rights Movement

Whether you are a parent, a teacher, a pastor, or a Sunday school teacher, you should include teaching your children/students a mostly-forgotten part of the Rev. King's civil rights actions.

Below is an excerpt from a U.S. State Department website that reminds us of a largely-forgotten part of the non-violent protests for civil rights. I've linked the complete article, at our website. Click on the link below.

IMPORTANT REMINDER: You are not proselytizing for merely teaching your students about Dr. King's passionate insistence that his fellow protesters base their actions on Christian principles.

Excerpt from "The Martin Luther King We Remember" by Adam Wolfson and Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan

The Christian springs of King's statesmanship are abundantly evident. With the successful end of the Montgomery bus boycott, King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in order to take the civil rights struggle and his nonviolent message throughout the South. One of his most trusted aides urged him to drop the word Christian from the new organization. It was argued that such an explicit religious reference would alienate white Northern liberals, whose support would be crucial in the years ahead. King was adamant, however, and the word Christian remained. He also insisted that civil rights participants be guided by Christian principles. For example, volunteers in the Birmingham campaign were required to sign a "Commitment Card" that read in part:

I HEREBY PLEDGE MYSELF--MY PERSON AND MY BODY--TO THE NONVIOLENT MOVEMENT. THEREFORE I WILL KEEP THE FOLLOWING TEN COMMANDMENTS:

1. MEDITATE daily on the teachings and life of Jesus.

2. REMEMBER always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation-not victory.

3. WALK and TALK in the manner of love, for God is love.

4. PRAY daily to be used by God in order that all men might be free.

5. SACRIFICE personal wishes in order that all men might be free.

6. OBSERVE with both friend and foe the ordinary rules of courtesy.

7. SEEK to perform regular service for others and for the world.

8. REFRAIN from the violence of fist, tongue, or heart.

9. STRIVE to be in good spiritual and bodily health.

10. FOLLOW the directions of the movement and of the captain on a demonstration.

To read the full article CLICK HERE.

Luther Ray Abel writes “How Biblical Illiteracy is Ruining the Humanities”

Writing for National Review, Luther Ray Abel explains how the increasing unfamiliarity with the Bible threatens the study of the Great Books.

“I attend a well-to-do liberal-arts school in the Midwest. The professors are wonderful and the classmates impressive. However, I find myself consistently pained by one thing: Many have little to no familiarity with even the most widely known Bible stories.” [Read more…]

Understanding the Pursuit of Happiness this Independence Day

By Eric Buehrer

With Independence Day coming, it would be good to discuss with your family and students an often-misunderstood term in the Declaration of Independence.

The “pursuit of happiness” today in popular culture is not the kind of happiness America’s founders declared as an inalienable right. If we are to have a flourishing society in the twenty-first century, we must raise a generation that knows what it truly means to pursue happiness.

When the Founders referred to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, they were not advocating a license to simply pursue pleasure. It was understood to be the pursuit of a virtuous (morally upright) life under the authority of God. In that context, Liberty means the right to do as you ought, instead of the right to do whatever you feel like doing.

Imagine what America would be like if everyone was motivated by “love thy neighbor.” Love is not a feeling. It is a willing. It is a willingness to act for the good of someone. In today’s culture we have reduced love to mere passion, desire, feeling. However, true love, agape love, is an act of the will to do what is right for the good of another. That is a virtuous life.

The Pursuit of Virtue

The Founders understood true happiness was the result of living a virtuous life. Therefore, in order to pursue happiness one must pursue virtue. Thomas Jefferson, who penned the Declaration of Independence, later wrote, “Virtue [is] the foundation of happiness.”

Benjamin Franklin, who assisted Jefferson in drafting the Declaration of Independence wrote:

“I believe [God] is pleased and delights in the Happiness of those he created; and since without Virtue Man can have no Happiness in this World, I firmly believe he delights to see me Virtuous, because he is pleas’d when he sees me Happy.”

The Founders were also greatly influenced by Christian philosopher John Locke. He wrote of “the necessity of pursing happiness [as] the foundation of liberty” and explained that God “joined virtue and public happiness together, and made the practice thereof necessary to the preservation of society.”

To act on the Founders wisdom, we must return to the formula they outlined in the Northwest Ordinance of 1787:

“Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

While public schools cannot establish any particular religion, they need to educate students in the important principles that religion brings to society in helping its citizens live virtuous and fulfilling lives.

When the Founders wrote about “religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind,” they were referring to the three key elements for a virtuous and flourishing society — thus, a happy society. To be a self-governing people, each one of us must govern ourselves to love our neighbor as ourselves. This Independence Day is a great opportunity to remind ourselves that to pursue happiness we must pursue virtue.

 * * * * * * *

Eric Buehrer is the president of Gateways to Better Education and author of the professional development seminar, Faith, Freedom & Public Schools: Addressing the Bible and Christianity without Mixing Church and State. To bring the seminar to your community, call (800) 929-1163 or email kim@gtbe.org

St. Patrick's Day Commemorates a Christian Missionary

St. Patrick's Day is coming up and I'm sure your schools are going to be recognizing it with green and shamrocks and leprechauns. That's always fun. But I would encourage you to also teach your children and your students the real story of who Patrick was.

As a young boy he was captured and became a slave for the Irish. He then escaped after six years, became a priest, and went back to share the Gospel with his captors. The consequence of his life was 120,000 Irish converted to Christianity and 300 churches and monasteries were started. It's a fascinating story. St. Patrick's Day is the commemoration of the impact of a Christian missionary not only on the Irish, but on European and Western civilization. As Thomas Cahill writes in his book, How the Irish Saved Civilization:

"[A]s the Roman Empire fell, as all through Europe matted, unwashed barbarians descended on the Roman cities, looting artifacts and burning books, the Irish, who were just learning to read and write, took up the great labor of copying all of western literature-everything they could lay their hands on." 

"These scribes then served as conduits through which the Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian cultures were transmitted to the tribes of Europe, newly settled amid the rubble and ruined vineyards of the civilization they had overwhelmed. Without this Service of the Scribes, everything that happened subsequently would have been unthinkable." 

"Without the Mission of the Irish Monks, who single-handedly re-founded European civilization throughout the continent in the bays and valleys of their exile, the world that came after them would have been an entirely different one--a world without books. And our own world would never have come to be."

Below are some resources for you to use in your home or in your classroom.

Resources:

• Here’s a 2-minute video from the History Channel you can show in class.

• St. Patrick – Catholic Online

• How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill