“ Reason and free enquiry are the only effectual agents against error . … Had not free enquiry been indulged , at the æra of the reformation , the corruptions of Christianity could not have been purged away .”
Calling the Church ’ s rule “ ecclesiastical and civil tyranny ,” John Adams noted :
“ The people grew more and more sensible of the wrong that was done them by these systems , more and more impatient under it , and determined at all hazards to rid themselves of it ; till at last , under the execrable race of the Stuarts , the struggle between the people and the confederacy aforesaid of temporal and spiritual tyranny , became formidable , violent , and bloody .”
Thus , Adams wrote , the Europeans who peopled the North American continent had likewise rejected the power of organized religion , particularly that of the Catholic Church :
“ It was this great struggle that peopled America . It was not religion alone , as is commonly supposed ; but it was a love of universal liberty , and a hatred , a dread , a horror , of the infernal confederacy before described ...”
The movement to impose religious authority on Americans has come from both Catholic and Protestant sources since the first European settlements in the 15th century .
George Washington refused to declare himself a Christian ; Thomas Paine wrote an entire book embracing atheism ; Ben Franklin famously fled Massachusetts as a teenager to escape the censorship and threats of imprisonment by religious leaders ; and Thomas Jefferson noted :
“ The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others . But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods , or no god . It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg .”
Today ’ s white Christian Nationalist movement , embraced by the MAGA GOP , is both historic and anti-American .
This is not to say that one can ’ t be religious and a patriot who supports America . I ’ m a proud Christian , was invited by Pope John Paul II for a private audience because of a book I wrote about the religious experience , and took refuge from His Holiness the Dalai Lama who , in our conversations ( as documented by Harrison Ford ), acknowledged the positive aspects of Christian mysticism .
In fact , there is a substantial movement of genuinely religious Christians embracing the policies of the Democratic Party , which generally reflect — in a secular fashion — the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount and Matthew 25 .
But when people who claim religious authority also seek political power to put their religious doctrines into law , both American traditions and common sense require their rejection .
From the tens of millions of dollars the Catholic Church spends every year in America to influence legislation and policy , to the powerful political infrastructure Protestant groups amassed as they seized the GOP in the 1980s , America stands at a critical threshold .
Will we go down a nationalist religious road similar to that now being followed by Modi in India and Netanyahu in Israel ? Could we end up as bad as Iran , Afghanistan , or 17th century New England ? Will Republicans trigger a new Dark Age ?
Or will we re-embrace the Renaissance and Enlightenment values and ideals of the Founders of this nation and hold to a secular democratic republic ?
At the moment , as long as we still have a vote , that decision is ours …
82 x The Trial Lawyer