Religion Belongs in the Public Square

On Easter Sunday, Artur Pawlowski, a Polish pastor at a church in Canada, posted a video in which he demanded a group of police officers leave his church. The officers intended to break up the service for violating COVID-19 restrictions. Pawlowski told them not to return without a warrant.

Unlike many Americans, the Poles know exactly what happens when the state is permitted to violate religious liberty after spending decades under totalitarian rule in the twentieth century. Unfortunately, too many Christians in America refuse to follow Pawlowski’s example and instead make concessions to an overreaching state and decadent culture. 

The philosopher George Santayana once said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” All over the world, we are witnessing history repeat itself as totalitarian, atheistic regimes oppress Christians of all denominations. Meanwhile, many religious Americans stay silent on this matter, preferring to misuse scripture to achieve the self-serving political ends of radical social movements. 

Ignorance of the global atrocities committed against men and women of faith exacerbates this disturbing reality, and it has concerning implications for the future of religious liberty in the West. 

Recent reports revealed that in China, Christians are being secretly detained and forced to either renounce their faith or suffer prolonged torture. This is the most recent development in a long trend of the Chinese Communist Party targeting Christians. Last summer, Bitter Winter, a magazine focusing on religious freedom, reported that Chinese government officials ordered people to remove religious symbols and imagery such as crosses, and replace those with portraits of Mao Zedong and Xi Jingping, two murderous tyrants. 

The reasoning for the CCP’s actions is clear. A communist state can only maintain control if people look to the government, and only the government, for salvation. When people turn to Christ for salvation, it obstructs everything an oppressive regime could hope to accomplish as it undermines extreme state control. 

The tactics exposed in these new reports are used against underground churches, known as “house churches” in China. However, the CCP knows that the suppression of all traces of religion would backfire as it did for the Soviet Union in the later years of the Cold War. To avoid the same error as the last Evil Empire, China chooses to tame organized religion, hijack it, pervert its doctrines, and abuse it to advance their stranglehold on the public. The regime accomplishes this with its “Administrative Measures for Religious Clergy” which was published in English for the first time by Bitter Winter. These guidelines allow religious institutions to operate under the condition that the clergy support the country’s socialist system, place the likeness of President Xi Jingping in their house of worship, and agree to be included in a database of religious leaders. Anyone not in the database is in violation of the law, and is subject to torture. 

Persecution of people of faith, and Christians in particular, is nothing new. China’s current methods echo similar abuses by a different world power of the past, the Roman Empire. Around 3000 Christians were slaughtered in the Colosseum for refusing to renounce their faith, and this composes only a fraction of the total number of Christians martyred under the Roman Empire.  

What began in Rome continues today around the globe. China’s abuses are especially concerning because of the size, power, and growing global influence of China, but there are other examples of persecution and violence toward Christians throughout the world. The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom published a report in 2020 that designated Burma, China, Eritrea, India, Iran, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Vietnam as “countries recommended for designation as countries of particular concern” and listed Afghanistan, Algeria, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Central African Republic, Cuba, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Sudan, and Turkey as “countries recommended for the State Department’s special watch list” based on the violations of the religious liberty of Christians in these nations. 

Americans mistakenly act as if Christians will always be immune to attacks on faith in this country. We tell ourselves that the tragedies occurring in China and around the world could never happen here. After all, our Constitution includes freedom of religion in its First Amendment. Perhaps we are so comfortable in our safety and freedom that we ignore threats to it, whether those threats exist around the world or on our soil. And by ignoring threats, we neglect the civic duties and virtues necessary to preserve our freedom. 

Too many Americans misunderstand the First Amendment. A common assumption is that it is intended to separate religion from politics, but this runs contrary to the beliefs of the Founding Fathers. 

John Adams once said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 

It is accurate to recognize that it is unconstitutional for government to force people to follow a certain faith, but to suggest that the First Amendment was designed to erect a barrier between religion and politics is completely untrue. American ideas of liberty, justice, and the common good are based on religious values, and public policy should be grounded in those same values for those ideas to thrive. 

Unfortunately, the churches and schools of our civilization fall short when it comes to cultivating virtue, a necessary endeavor to sustain constitutional self-government. In fact, those institutions often work against the interests of a free society. 

Conservative Christians are often told to “keep religion out of politics.” However, when misinformed liberal activists take scripture out of context to support neo-Marxism, they are embraced by the mainstream media. A perfect example of this is Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia whose sermons and political statements echo the twisted liberation theology. The media portrayed Warnock as a brilliant spiritual leader, but Warnock is not a true Christian, and anyone familiar with his political views knows they are radical and incompatible with Judeo-Christian values. Nevertheless, it is considered perfectly acceptable for him to bring religion into politics as long as it supports the mission of the radical left. But conservatives are told that traditional religion should be relegated to the private sphere.

The left in America uses similar tactics to China when it comes to perverting religion for ends that are diametrically opposed to that religion’s true values. And the left shows a willingness to continue in China’s footsteps by punishing religious institutions that do not cave to the progressive worldview. 

In a 2019 town hall on CNN, Democratic Presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said the quiet part out loud, declaring that he would strip religious institutions of their tax exempt status if they refused to go along with left-wing ideology on marriage and gender. Never mind that left-wing gender ideology contradicts traditional Christian teachings or that many of the churches and schools O’Rourke claimed he would punish are charitable toward their communities. The left’s priority is conformity, which can only come through coercion. O’Rourke lost, but other liberal politicians have demonstrated that their priorities follow this line of thinking. The Democrat-supported Equality Act, which could punish individuals for living and working according to their faith, is proof of this. 

Several churches, specifically certain mainline protestant denominations, have altered their doctrines to conform to progressive standards. Some of them have taken stances on marriage or gender that conflict with Christian teachings. Others stay silent on crucial issues such as abortion to avoid controversey or even promote “woke” ideas in the culture to fit in with the modern age. The United Methodist Church recently went against this trend by voting to preserve its traditional stance on marriage, however, even this decision will likely lead to a split within the church. It is no coincidence that as some churches embrace radical beliefs, those same churches see their membership decline, as mainline protestant churches have for years. At the same time, evangelical protestant denominations along with the Catholic Church, both of which have mostly avoided the mistakes of other churches, have seen more steady membership. 

It is not a good look for some religious institutions to bend the knee to left-wing social movements built on false narratives of oppression while those same groups ignore the true oppression of Christians overseas. As some Americans aid the radical left, falsely believing social protest alone makes them virtuous, they blindly contribute to the dismantling of religious liberty. That is the end goal of a movement that seeks government control and will only permit religious figures that promote that message, just like in China. 

It may sound like a stretch to suggest that the violation of religious freedom occuring in China could happen in the United States, a nation with far more freedom. But the seeds have been planted for something similar to take place. We have the First Amendment, but the First Amendment must be understood and respected for its protections to be effective, and we are already seeing the undermining of First Amendment rights all over the country. It may not take the form of government-sanctioned torture, but there could very well be coercion that leads to Christians being ostracized from the public square for their beliefs. 

It is obvious that President Biden will not take any meaningful action against China for their transgressions. I’m sure he will find a way to chalk up China’s assault on Christianity to “different norms” as he did when asked about China’s human rights abuses toward Uyghur Muslims earlier this year. His administration is on board with the movement that seeks to push faith out of any area of politics where it does not fit his party’s agenda. This is proven by his appointment of Xavier Becerra to be the Secretary of Health and Human Services. Becerra has spent years in court trying to force nuns to violate their own beliefs by providing contraceptives and defending a California law that forced pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions. 

Thankfully, Becerra lost in both cases. But now he holds a cabinet position in the Biden administration. All religious Americans and proponents of freedom should be deeply concerned by what the country might look like if people like Biden and Becerra get their way on matters where religious beliefs come into conflict with government mandates. In such a scenario, we would see the complete erosion of religion in public life, and it would be by coercive means, because government mandates can only be carried out under the threat of force. To say it would be like China would not be as far of a stretch as it sounds.

Seeing oppression abroad and witnessing a growing threat of it at home, what should American Christians and supporters of religious liberty do in the political realm? Start by acknowledging the atrocities overseas since the mainstream media and the government will not. Speaking out will hopefully pressure the government to take a tougher stance. When it comes to American politics and culture, stand firmly by your beliefs and do not cave to popular pressure. Religious citizens should demand a seat at the table because they are entitled to one in the view of the Founding Fathers if we are to preserve our constitutional republic. Traditional, conservative, and Judeo-Christian ideas may not be the most popular at the moment, but they are right and need a strong voice. 

There will always be tragic examples of persecution around the world and domestic threats to freedom in the United States as there always have been. However, this repetition of history is no excuse for complacency. It should be a call to action to make sure these dangerous movements do not succeed in the long run, and men and women of faith in the United States have a moral responsibility to stand for what they believe.