God has been on so many people’s lips in recent months—on TV, on the radio, in newspapers, and periodicals, and even in the public square—that visitors from outer space might be forgiven for imagining the whole nation is caught up in the fervour of a full-scale religious revival.
There’s no fear of that, however. It is simply that we are in the midst of a presidential election—a time when politicians would cheerfully invoke the name of Lucifer, himself, if they thought if would bring them just a single step closer to the office they covet.
This being America, there’s no need for that. Our politicians have no need to sell their souls to the devil, because this is still a nation of people who, overwhelmingly, worship the God of the Old and New Testaments—hence, the unceasing appeals to the faith of our fathers.
Sure, it’s hypocritical, but hypocrisy, as Oscar Wilde once observed, is the tribute vice pays to virtue. And being routinely humbugged is part of the price we are obliged to pay for democracy.
The trouble is our politicians apparently take us for fools. For once in office, their tone changes. God is once again retired to the closet on the grounds that mere mention of his name in a public place somehow contravenes the First Amendment to the Constitution.
Actually, it’s high time our legislators—not to mention jurists, journalists, and lawyers—paid a little attention to what the amendment actually says.
It reads: ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or of abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.’
Only by the most perverse interpretation can these simple, unambiguous words be construed as inhibiting our freedom to witness for our faith in public places. The amendment enshrines the American people’s right to freedom of religion and freedom of speech as constitutionally-affirmed liberties.
Freedom of speech necessarily means that people are free to express any views they may hold—religious, political, economic, philosophical, or whatever. Exceptions to this rule are few and very narrowly defined.
When an influential political elite arbitrarily interprets the amendment as inhibiting the right to free speech about a topic that it finds objectionable, it is undermining the right to free speech about all subjects.
The amendment’s prohibition of the establishment of a religion cannot reasonably be construed as placing any inhibition on a religious group’s freedom to proselytise, preach, and worship in public places where other forms of free speech are practiced.
Quite to the contrary: The prohibition has to be viewed in its context. And this demonstrates that the whole purpose of the amendment is to ensure that each individual religious and secular group enjoys equal rights with every other religious and secular group in America’s market place of ideas.
Clearly, the intent of the amendment is to prevent government acting—either of its own accord or under popular pressure—to suppress the rights of people to express, propagate, and proselytise unpopular ideas. In fact, the whole purpose of the amendment is to protect unpopular speech. Popular notions need no protection.
The funny thing is that the folks who really seem to object to any public expression of religion are politicians—the folks who invoke God’s Name so freely at election times.
It only goes to show how human they are. Like the rest of us, they are happy to accept the help God offers, but are not so happy to be judged by his standards. GPH✠
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