One of the great deceptions of the Marxist Left is the concept of separation of church and state, by which they really mean separation of church and society – that is, banishing religion from the public square so it becomes strictly a private activity with no public role. Granted, this is not a new phenomenon. After the twin Leftist revolutions in 1917 in Russia and Mexico, churches were closed and priests executed, one of the most famous victims being Padre Pro. Still, in America it is a relatively new phenomenon.
There’s only one problem with separation of church and state: It has no official sanction. Nothing in the Constitution requires it. The phrase appears in a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson. All it means is that government should neither favor one religion over another nor maintain a taxpayer-funded established church, as some of the Colonies did before independence.
In fact, the connection between religion and the American founding is truly deep. As Dennis Prager observed in an October 15 column on townhall.com, reprinted in the October 25 issue of The Jewish Press:
Were it not for the Jews and their Bible, there would be no Christianity – and therefore no Western civilization. The abolition of slavery was led by Bible-believing Christians. The Bible, not Aristotle, was their moral inspiration.
With regard to America, its Founders, even the less religious ones, were rooted in biblical morality. Two of the least religious, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, designed a Great Seal of the United States that depicted the Jews leaving Egypt. The only inscription on the symbol of American Liberty, the Liberty Bell, is a verse from the Torah (the first five books of the Bible). The insignia of Yale University is in Hebrew, and it, too, is taken from the Torah. The Princeton University seal features an open Bible. Until about 1800, students at Yale, Harvard and other universities were required to study Hebrew.
So, what are the consequences for American society as it becomes less religious? Some are obvious: wokeism, DEI, pushing the LGBTQ agenda and gender “transitioning” for minor children in public schools; allowing transgendered biological males to compete in women’s sports and share women’s locker rooms and showers; legalizing abortion up to the moment of delivery; and other such major departures from traditional morality, as well as increased crime.
Going further, there is a relationship between religion and morality. Speaking to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Massachusetts Militia in 1798, President John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Similarly, George Washington said in his Farewell Address, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports… And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.” These two statements serve to explain the decline in both morality and obeying the law that has accompanied the decline in religion.
We see a diminution of individuals’ civil rights, as exemplified by government attempts to curtail parents from expressing opposition to woke educational policies at school board meetings. Similarly, flouting the law has increased, as exemplified by the county officials in Pennsylvania who were counting illegal votes in defiance of a ruling by a state Supreme Court composed of five Democrats and two Republicans, to benefit losing Democratic Senator Bob Casey. In fact, one of them said she knows what she is doing is illegal, but she intends to continue her course of action, saying that people can break the law whenever they want.
Hundreds of jurisdictions across America, even entire states, have become sanctuary cities, which refuse to cooperate in enforcing federal immigration laws. And now Democrats led by Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker and Colorado Governor Jared Polis are setting up a national compact to resist Trump’s policies, in violation of Article I, Section 10 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides that “No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation.” They pledge not to enforce federal immigration laws. This is nothing more than a revival of Senator John C. Calhoun’s 1832 doctrine of nullification, by which he asserted the right of individual states to override federal laws within their borders (in that case a tariff), which shows how little Democratic thinking has changed over the past two centuries.
A particularly salient example is the administration of California Governor Gavin Newsom. During Covid, he closed houses of worship while allowing bars, big-box department stores, and other commercial establishments to remain open, and compounded the injustice by going out to eat with friends at the upscale French Laundry restaurant, with none of them wearing masks, in violation of his own edict. (Similarly, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi forced her hairdresser’s salon to open against the rules so she could have her hair done.)
Since then, Newsom and his comrades in the State Legislature have declared California a sanctuary for minor children manipulated into believing they are transgender so they can transition without even notifying their parents, and any parents who do find out and object can have their children taken away from them by the state. What is truly astounding is that apparently a sizable majority of Californians approve, judging from the decisive failure of an effort to recall the Governor.
The most egregious consequence of the Leftist rebellion against religion is the worldwide explosion of antisemitism, which has reached levels not seen since the 1930s, especially in secular Europe. My feeling that the primary reason is resentment at the role of Jews in promoting G-d’s laws at the expense of the human proclivity for sinfulness was reinforced by David Suissa’s article in the November 17 Jewish Journal lauding a new movie and book, Tragic Awakening, by Raphael Shore, which makes that very point. The film asserts that Hitler actually feared more than hated Jews, as our humanitarian ideals were a highly influential moral and spiritual threat to his social Darwinist ideals – survival of the fittest. Indeed, John Adams, the second president of the United States, wrote: “I will insist the Hebrews have [contributed] more to civilize men than any other nation. If I was an atheist and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations… The Romans and their empire were but a bubble in comparison to the Jews. They have given religion to three-quarters of the globe and have influenced the affairs of mankind more, and more happily, than any other nation, ancient or modern.”
Thus, we have a reversal of fortune. In Biblical times the Land of Israel expelled us for being too sinful; now, major elements of the U.S. seek to expel us for being too righteous.
I should add that the rebellion against religion also extends to anti-Catholicism. The Leftist hostility to the Roman Catholic Church has been expressed in efforts to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions, to require dioceses to provide their employees with health insurance that includes contraceptives, and to hire LGBTQ teachers for the parochial schools, not to mention such filth as the Los Angeles Dodgers honoring the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, a drag group who dress as nuns and mock Catholic symbols, during Pride Month. And there is a political assault on mostly Catholic pro-lifers. The Department of Justice has vigorously prosecuted cases of “interference with access” to abortion clinics, resulting in sentences as long as ten years for elderly women protestors imposed by sneering judges, while largely ignoring attacks by pro-abortion forces on pregnancy resource centers that offer alternatives to abortion.
Meanwhile, Canada, led by Leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is launching a major offensive against pregnancy support centers that don’t also provide abortion services by requiring them to disclose said refusal in all public communications, including websites, or face loss of their tax-exempt charity status. The Department of Finance has labeled them as “anti-choice” organizations that “are restricting the rights of vulnerable pregnant women to choose the reproductive care appropriate to them and their circumstances.”
In the longer term, the war on Judaism and Christianity is a boon to Islam, whose adherents are becoming an increasing percentage of the population, especially in Europe, through widespread immigration. For example, in Britain, Muslims comprise 15% of the population of London and 30% of residents of Birmingham. With the influx of Muslims has come the rise of “grooming gangs” that sexually abuse underage girls, as well as incidents of bombs in the London subway in July 2005 and the beheading of a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street. Nevertheless, Europe looks the other way out of fear of the Muslims. Even worse, they are disinclined to protect Jews from the mobs. All of this arises from the decline in religion. In a telling interview with Caroline Glick of JNS, Israeli journalist Zvi Yehezkeli, who once interviewed Yasser Arafat, related the story of a terrorist, Yassin, who was serving a life sentence in an Israeli prison. On Pesach, Yassin was eating matzah while his Israeli guard was eating bread. When he asked the Israeli why he wasn’t eating matzah, the guard replied that he wasn’t religious. Yassin then thought to himself that the Palestinians have a chance of winning because they believe while the Israelis don’t. In other words, abandoning religion weakens the West’s resistance. In response, Yehezkeli became more religious, as have many formerly secular Israelis.
In the final analysis, it took the tragedy of October 7 to awaken most Israelis, even on the Left, to the implacable nature of the Islamists. Will it take a similar tragedy, Heaven forbid, to awaken Americans?
