As America has become more secular, it has become less free
By: Dennis Prager
The author is right. There is a direct connection between a belief in God and the freedom we have as citizens. Today as Americans move away from God, freedom wanes. Those who believe man grants other men “rights” instead of God being the source are quick to cavalierly seize these rights and restrict them in Orwellian fashion. It is almost always a Godless regime that imposes dystopian nightmares upon its population. God is all that the Declaration of Independence states Him to be. The creator, the one who gave us our inalienable rights, He who sees us as equal creations in his sight, the one we appeal to for the justness of our cause. Without God and a belief in Him there is no freedom.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Here is something any honest person must acknowledge: As America has become more secular, it has become less free.
Individuals can differ as to whether these two facts are correlated, but no honest person can deny they are facts.
It seems to me indisputable that they are correlated. To deny this, one would have to argue that it is merely coincidental that free speech, the greatest of all freedoms, is more seriously threatened than at any time in American history while a smaller-than-ever percentage of Americans believe in God or regularly attend church.
The United States became the freest country in the world, the sweet land of liberty, the recipient of the Statue of Liberty, the country whose flag freedom fighters around the world have often waved. This freedom was rooted in the deeply religious nature of its founding ideals. America was founded by God-centered individuals to be a God-centered country. The claims that America’s founders were mostly deists and that America was founded to be a godless secular society are not true.
Some of the Founders were not orthodox Christians, i.e., they did not believe in the Christian Trinity or in the divinity of Christ. But none of them were deists (with the possible exception of Jefferson). Deists believed in a creator God who was not only uninvolved with his creations, but he also did not even know them, let alone care about them. After creating the world, the deists’ God abandoned it. The deists’ God was Aristotle’s “unmoved mover.”
Every major Founder (again, with the possible exception of Jefferson) believed in the God of the Bible who heard prayer, acted in history, judged people in the hereafter, demanded ethical behavior, and without Whom morality did not objectively exist. Most importantly, they all believed that in order for a functioning democratic republic not to descend into tyranny, it was necessary to link freedom with God.
Whatever Jefferson’s view of God was, he was as influenced by the Bible as every other Founder. He and Benjamin Franklin proposed that the great seal of the United States depict Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt: Moses raising his rod to divide the sea; Pharaoh, in his chariot, overwhelmed by the waters; and the divine pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night. The seal’s proposed motto: “Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Jefferson and Franklin believed that freedom and obedience to God were synonymous. No God, no freedom.
The Founders linked freedom inextricably to God. That is why the inscription on the Liberty Bell is from the Bible: “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.” The verse comes from Leviticus, the third book of the Bible. The Founders knew their Bible. The present adult generation of Americans is more ignorant of the Bible than any in American history. And most young people know even less. I suspect that most students at Harvard could not identify Leviticus, let alone cite any of its verses.
The bell was named “the Liberty Bell” by the abolitionists. Their opposition to slavery was based entirely on the Bible. Their motivating principle, “All men are created equal,” came from the Bible. They did not get it from the ancient Greeks, who would have scoffed at such a notion.
Freedom permeates the Old Testament: The Bible begins with the story of Adam and Eve, a story about man’s assertion of his God-given freedom … freedom even to disobey God. The primary story of the Old Testament is the Exodus, a story about God liberating slaves.
For the Founders, the most obvious reason freedom was dependent on faith in God was that only if God is regarded as the source of freedom could men not rightfully take it away. If men are the source of the freedom, men can rightfully retract it. This is precisely what is happening today. Freedom is being destroyed primarily by those who scorn the idea that freedom comes from God.
The rule that the end of religion means the end of freedom does not mean that secularism would not be a welcome replacement for totalitarian theocracies such as Iran. But eventually that, too — a secular Iran — would lead to tyranny. Wherever God is delinked from freedom, freedom ultimately withers. When Christianity died in Europe, it was replaced by fascism, Nazism and communism.
Freedom is central to the Bible. This is especially apparent in America, which until now has linked its unparalleled commitment to freedom to God and the Bible. But freedom is peripheral to leftism. That is why freedom in America is threatened as never before: The foundations upon which freedom rests — God, the Bible, Judeo-Christian values — are threatened as never before.
Every American coin bears two inscriptions: “In God We Trust” and “Liberty.” Every generation of Americans prior to the 1960s understood why. Most Americans today, including secular conservatives, do not.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is “The Rational Bible,” a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, “No Safe Spaces,” was released to home entertainment nationwide on September 15, 2020. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
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BECAUSE of THE BRAVE
I guess you didn't get the memo that your orange god considers us suckers and losers.
Because he’s not God and he didn’t say that.
trumpturd feels the same way about his supporters. Sees them as the great unwashed.
He's just fleecing the suckers for their donations.
A fool and his money . . .
This line, by itself, shows just how much bullshit the seeded article is.
Most of the founding fathers were Deists, not Christians.
this seed is an example of what happens when someone is taught to believe that 60 minutes of sitting on a woodbench with a bunch of other nicely dressed morons will cleanse them of all their transgressions from the week before. an individuals right to be free from any religion probably should have been made clearer to those hiding behind the first amendment and using it as a shield to promote an unamerican theocratic ideology. the thumper cult fringe are the most protected minority in america today, which will soon end.
Halelujah!!!!!!! Praise Jebus!
And how do you propose to end our freedom of religion and free exercise there of clause any time soon.
It is very pro American to believe in and express said belief in God.
Obviously, that is not true. One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.
Millions of Russians are devout Christians. Is it pro Russian "to believe in and express said belief in God"? Or, maybe, pro Mexican? There are lots of devoutly religious Mexicans. Are you being pro Russian or pro Mexican when you "believe in and express said belief in God"?
[deleted personal insult and no value]
Especially when those anonymous people's religious education goes no further than Sunday school. And when those anonymous people have never actually read their own religion's textbook.
Another 'I'm being repressed" 'article'
"I'm being censored"
Ho-hum.
Next?
Just a Jewish perspective of the lack of freedom an America without God would bring upon the national and the people. The founding fathers were right. All tge good that we are as a nation and as people is because God…
Please name one freedom that would be lost under a secular nation... Just one.
prager is a fake.
Dennis Prager is a great person. And he’s right about this and many other things as well.
During the early stages of the pandemic secular political leaders shredded and then trampled all over the constitution and freedom. Some still are saying to shut up and obey and to check our freedom and liberty.
Dennis Prager is a right-wing extremist propagandist. He is never right about anything other than that he is very far right, and very wrong.
Prager speaks for a tiny minority of Jewish people. For the most part, he speaks only for himself.
Our rights, of course, do not come from a god or from any supernatural being. Our rights were derived through a long history of human development, which culminated in the form of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights at the time of the founding of the United States, and which continue to evolve.
Theocratic dominionists seek to redefine history according to their own narrow ideological proclivities.
Dennis Prager is a mainstream conservative pundit and op Ed writer. He is a very wise person and is right about a great many things. There is nothing far to the right about him at all.
Our rights came only from God. He as our Creator created us equal in His sight. He is the author of our free will and inalienable human rights. We are one nation, under God and it is In God We Trust.
If Prager is a "mainstream conservative", conservatism has definitely gone off the deep end.
He is far from a very wise person. He is a radio talk show provocateur. Whenever I listened to him on the radio he was so ridiculous I realized that he had nothing worthwhile to contribute, and that listening to him was a complete waste of time.
You can believe that your rights come from whatever supernatural creature you want.
My rights, and the rights of all of my fellow Americans, and the citizens of other countries who enjoy the freedoms that we do, developed through the history of human civilization. Those who do not have the benefit of the rights we do are in that circumstance because the societies they live in developed differently than ours.
Under your theory, the restrictions on their freedom that some people are subjected to must also come from a supernatural creature.
And, as everyone knows, the phrase "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954, during the Cold War, as a propagandistic effort to distinguish the U.S. from the officially atheistic Soviet Union.
Still no examples from you? More claims with nothing to back up those claims.
BTW, freedom is the exact opposite of what the bible preaches. At it's base, the bible tells you what you can and cannot do, and failing to do what it says results in eternal punishment and torment. THAT IS NOT FREEDOM!!!
Then YOU have the right to own slaves, murder your children for acting up, and considering women as inferior.
Those RIGHTS are clearly pointed out multiple times in your bible.
That's nice. Prove it!
Name 1 freedom anyone has lost!
Yeah, he always runs away when I point out how immoral the bible really is. 1st time I had to provide the verses for him, now he just disappears.
Cue Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Lol
"Whatever Jefferson’s view of God was, he was as influenced by the Bible as every other Founder. He and Benjamin Franklin proposed that the great seal of the United States depict Moses leading the Jews out of Egypt: Moses raising his rod to divide the sea; Pharaoh, in his chariot, overwhelmed by the waters; and the divine pillar of fire that led the Israelites by night."
That great seal would have been based upon many a yarn lost in translation. Yam Suph as an example is Reed Sea not as the Greeks translated into Red Sea. Then there is Moses who may well have been the Pharaoh Akhenaten who believed in one God.
It would have been an awesome great deal.
God Bless America
It is worth pointing out that the headline of this article is totally counterfactual. In fact, the more religion plays a role in society, it often leads to restrictions in freedom. The most immediate example is the Texas anti-choice bounty hunter law, which adopts the mores of a particular religious sect to the detriment of the freedom of the women of Texas. History is replete with examples of the imposition of restrictions based on religious tenets. From American history, "blue laws", banning business and other activities on Sundays, in furtherance of sectarian religious principles, is another example. There are many, many more.
That statement is patently absurd. Everyone knows non-believers who are just as free as the most devout believer. It is, however, a clear appeal to theocratic dominionism. Claiming that belief in a supernatural being is the only source of freedom inexorably gives rise to the supremacy of theocracy in the minds of religious dominionists. It is truly a danger to everyone's freedom.
The headline and the statement are exactly right.
The headline and the statement are, to put it plainly, a crock of shit.
Everyone knows it, and you know it, too.
Bwahahahahahahahahahaha
