Image by Aaron Burden.

Fundamentalists were angered in 1973 when the Supreme Court confirmed the right to abortion and the rights of the LGBTQ community to live life as they choose. In their eyes, these human rights were seen as violating God’s laws. Moreover, they worried that with the decline in church attendance, America would become a godless and immoral society. To defend their beliefs and secure their influence on American culture, they became active in politics and, led by extremists like Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, immersed themselves in the Republican Party, which they now dominate.

Today, Republican leaders and party regulars fully endorse the Christian worldview. Just a few years ago, former Attorney General Bill Barr said, “Judeo-Christian moral standards are the ultimate rules for human conduct” and that “the fact is that no secular creed has emerged capable of performing the role of religion.” And the Christian-dominated Supreme Court also affirmed his belief in Christian morality with the Dobbs decision which allowed states with Christian majorities to impose their religious anti-abortion beliefs on their fellow citizens. Both fail to understand the nature of our Constitution or the origin of moral standards.

The Christian right has gained far too much power. Christian Nationalists like Pete Hegseth run the Trump administration. They maintain that America is a Christian nation and that they are the true patriots. They also claim the moral high ground, asserting that their Bible is the word of God, and supersedes the Constitution, the word of man. Like Barr, they insist that the Bible is the standard of morality.

But their claims are fundamentally flawed. America is a constitutionally secular nation, and the moral high ground has belonged to Secular Humanism for over 200 years.

Religion is belief in the absence of fact.........

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