Are Biblical Values Under Attack in the U.S.?

Earlier this month a friend sent me an email that was mainly Dennis Prager’s June 30 article titled “Court Calls an End to Judeo-Christian America.” (That piece on Investor’s Business Daily’s website can be read here.)

Prager, a nationally syndicated radio talk show host and columnist who was born in 1948 to Orthodox Jewish parents, began his article with this assertion: “The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on the redefinition of marriage seals the end of America as the Founders envisioned it.”

Prager’s piece is just one of numerous articles declaring that Christianity and/or biblical values are currently under attack in the U.S.—especially by the Supreme Court and by the President.

In a June 16 WallBuilders article, David Barton posted a screed under the title “America’s Most Biblically-Hostile U.S. President.”

Barton lists 96 incidences of President Obama’s “attacks on Biblical persons or organizations,” “examples of the hostility toward Biblical faith that have become evident in the past three years in the Obama-led military,” the President’s “open attacks on Biblical values,” and finally “numerous incidents of his preferential deference for Islam’s activities and positions.”

Prager and Barton of just two of many who think this way. But how can Christians who see things differently respond to such strong charges? Following is the heart of the response I sent to my friend:

The court certainly did not call for an end to Judeo-Christian America, although its ruling was contrary to what many people, such as Prager, think a Judeo-Christian America looks like. There are many Christians, however, who believe that the Supreme Court's ruling makes America more Christian, not less so.

Prager writes, "From well before 1776 until the second half of the 20th century, the moral values of the United States were rooted in the Bible and its God." But were those moral values compromised when freedom and equality were given to former African slaves and their descendants who lived in America? Some thought so. But I believe America became more Christian when freedom and equality were granted to Black people living in the country.

Were those moral values compromised when the right to vote was given to women (50 years after it was given to Black men!) and when there came to be more freedom and equality for all the women in the country? Some thought so. But I believe America became more Christian when freedom and equality were granted to women living in America.

The Constitution had to be changed to make greater freedom and equality a reality for Blacks and women. Was that a change in the moral values of the nation?

In some way it was, for many thought slavery and the subjection of women were taught in the Bible and that being faithful to the Bible meant being for slavery and for the subjection of women. But I think that was an incorrect interpretation of the Bible—and a position used by whites and then by men to maintain their position of power.

In much the same way, the Supreme Court decision about same-sex marriage grants freedom and equality to a segment of our society that has been discriminated against, vilified, and treated in many mean-spirited ways.

That decision is in opposition to the position of many Christians—just as the decisions to allow Blacks and women to be free and equal were. But I firmly believe that that decision is not contrary to the will of God or the teaching and spirit of Jesus.

The Gospel is always good news for those who are fettered and mistreated.

Barton Up the Wrong Tree

Maybe I had heard of him before, but my real introduction to David Barton came at the annual meeting of the Missouri Baptist Convention in the fall of 2004. Barton (b. 1954), who is not a Baptist nor from Missouri, was the keynote speaker at the final session of that convention. It didn’t take me long, though, to disagree with what I heard Barton say.

It was mainly with regard to his views on the separation of Church and State that I thought that Barton was “barking up the wrong tree,” to use an old Midwest idiom. (You can find some of my criticism of his ideas in “Fed Up with Fundamentalism’s Attitude toward Religious Freedom,” the sixth chapter of my book Fed Up with Fundamentalism.)

Barton’s newest book is The Jefferson Lies: Exposing the Myths You’ve Always Believed About Thomas Jefferson (2012). Unfortunately for Barton, his book, which had become a bestseller, contains so much questionable material (so many lies?) that the publisher decided last month to cease publishing it.

According to Barton, “Lie #1” about Thomas Jefferson is that he fathered Sally Hemings’ children. He concludes that there is “absolutely no historical, factual, or scientific evidence to tarnish the sexual morality of Jefferson” (p. 193).

However, even though Barton twice cites the Thomas Jefferson Foundation (TJF) Research Committee Report on Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings (2000), he fails to mention that according to their website the TJF and “most historians believe that, years after his wife’s death, Thomas Jefferson was the father of Sally Hemings’ six children.”

But I am not all that concerned about whether or not Jefferson fathered Sally’s children. As always, it is a politician’s public positions, not his/her private life, that is of greatest importance.

Of all the “lies” Barton discusses, I am most interested in “Lie #5: Thomas Jefferson Advocated a Secular Public Square through the Separation of Church and State.” There Barton claims, among other things, that the whole “history of the separation doctrine centered around preventing the State from taking control of the Church. . . . Throughout history, it had not been the Church that had seized the State but just the opposite” (p. 121).

But state churches and church-dominated states have persecuted minorities through the years. Catholic states in Europe persecuted Jews and “heretics” by the Inquisition, the Reformed Church influenced the Zurich city council to persecute the Anabaptists, the Anglican Church as the established church in England persecuted the Nonconformists (as well as Catholics), the Anglican-dominated colony of Virginia persecuted Baptists (among others), and so on.

Then there is the whole question of the freedom from religion, which Barton and his supporters seem to be opposed to. His desire to protect the privileged status of Christianity and to suppress the equality of non-Christians in American society seems to be the main reason for his calling the separation of church and state a myth (as he has done through the years; he authored a book first published in 1989 under the title The Myth of Separation).

Religious freedom, though, must be for all people and must also include freedom from religion. For that reason, I strongly favor the proper separation of Church and State (as I believe Jefferson did). That doesn’t necessitate the separation of faith and politics, but it certainly does mean freedom of, or freedom from, religion for all citizens.

Note #1: Warren Throckmorton and Michael Coulter’s Getting Jefferson Right: Fact Checking Claims about Our Third President has recently been published to rebut Barton’s book.

Note #2: I have recently been involved in an ad-hoc group seeking to revitalize the Kansas City chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.