This CNN article by Rene Marsh details how the “wall of separation” between church and state is being systematically broken down. This should be setting off alarms everywhere for anyone who values freedom. The establishment of the “Religious Liberty Commission” (RLC) is not just a bureaucratic shift, it represents a basic undermining of the constitution that allows our pluralistic society to work. It’s starting the process to normalize the idea that the American citizen is not an individual defined by their reason, but a “subject” defined by how closely they align to a state sanctioned faith. By privileging supernatural claims over empirical governance, the administration is effectively creating a two-tiered citizenship where the nonreligious are pushed to the margins of American society. It’s a movement looking to go back to a world where power isn’t coming from the consent of the people but from the perceived favor of a deity.
The Encroachment of Religion into the Workspace
For every person interfacing with or working in the government it should be a neutral place governed by law, reason, and evidence, all working toward the public good. The addition of religious practice into federal proceedings by Executive Order 14291 ends this neutrality.
When President Trump suggests that we should “forget about” the separation of church and state as he said during the signing of the executive order, he is signaling to millions of federal employees that their workplace is no longer a secular environment. For the nonreligious worker or worker whose personal faith doesn’t align with the faith being displayed in the office, the RLC initiative is not an invitation, it is a coercive mechanism. When a department head leads a prayer or a government agency hosts “faith-based” workshops, it creates an environment of “exclusion culture” in the work place.
A worker who opts out of a “voluntary” prayer session mark’s themselves as a dissenter. In a system where promotions and project assignments are often subjective, the nonbeliever faces a “soft” discrimination that is nearly impossible to prove but definitely felt. Forcing a worker to endure religious rhetoric as a condition of their employment is a violation of mental and bodily autonomy, basically their personal agency. It treats the worker not as a professional, but as a captive audience for the chosen religious ideology.
A Legal System Looking The Other Way
A big red flag for everyone should be the failure of the legal system to act in a firm way against the theological creep into government. The Establishment Clause of the First Amendment has served as a shield for the nonreligious, making sure that the government could not improperly favor or promote religion. The current judicial landscape, shaped by decades of strategic placement, has moved from neutrality to accommodation.
The courts are no longer asking if a government action establishes a religion but instead framing every secular safeguard as an act of “hostility” toward faith and religion, the administration has hijacked the language of civil rights to dismantle the rights of the nonreligious.
The Classroom
In other posts we’ve highlighted the continued attempts to push religion into public schools. The U.S. Department of Education issued “guidance” warning schools they could lose funding if they have polices that block students, teachers and staff from praying. When schools become venues for prayer, the children are placed in an impossible position. They are forced to either conform to a ritual that contradicts their family’s values or stand apart and face the social stigma of being “godless” in a state sanctioned religious environment. This is not “religious liberty” it is the use of state power to favor one worldview over all others, including the worldview of those who find no evidence for the divine.
The “Religious Liberty Commission” and its associated policies represent a step backward from the values and protections afforded us by the constitution. When the government adopts the language of the pulpit, it loses the ability to make fair judgments and decisions based on facts and a common shared understanding. This is why we should all be concerned, a government that claims to be guided by a “higher power” is a government that is no longer accountable to the people. By allowing religious practice to infiltrate the mechanics of the state, we are trading a government of laws for a government of dogmas historically this has ended badly for everyone, believer and non-believer alike.
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