By Christopher Young,
Contributing Writer,
Formed in 1936, in Washington, D.C., Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty “is the only national faith-based group solely focused on protecting religious freedom for all, they file briefs in pivotal Supreme Court cases, advocate for and against legislation, testify in Congress and unite with others across faiths to ensure that every American has – and always will have – the right to follow spiritual beliefs.”
More from their website, https://bjconline.org: “We are attorneys, Capitol Hill insiders, ministers and scholars who work in the courts, with Congress and in the community to defend the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom for every person, including those who don’t claim a faith tradition.”
As we experience the chaotic political landscape in America today, it’s impossible to deny that many individuals, entities and organizations are willingly trading their principles to remain in or to acquire power. Nearly all these folks are European Americans. We see scores of law-and-order Republicans and scores of religious leaders hitching their wagons to a convicted former president; a fraudster, plain and simple, believing they can re-create America in their image, because after all, they believe this country is theirs.
In complete contrast, here is the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty working hard at every level of society to preserve the rights of religious freedom for all, not just some. Per a recent telephone discussion with BJC Communications Manager Karlee Marshall, in July of 2019 they began a campaign, Christians Against Christian Nationalism, saying that “the threat of Christian nationalism is not new. But this movement, which promotes the idea that to be a real American you must be Christian, is growing with a dangerous intensity. It’s not only behind the push for bills that advance a revisionist historical view of the United States and promote government-sponsored religious exercise; it also has inspired religious hate crimes, arson and deadly attacks on houses of worship. The same thing is happening abroad. There’s no time to waste. We need a strong response from the Christian community. We must loudly denounce Christian nationalism as a distortion of our faith and a divisive force in our country – one that poses a threat to religious freedom for all.”
Their campaign issued the following statement: “As Christians, our faith teaches us everyone is created in God’s image and commands us to love one another. As Americans, we value our system of government and the good that can be accomplished in our constitutional democracy. Today, we are concerned about a persistent threat to both our religious communities and our democracy – Christian nationalism.
Christian nationalism seeks to merge Christian and American identities, distorting both the Christian faith and America’s constitutional democracy. Christian nationalism demands Christianity be privileged by the State and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian. It often overlaps with and provides cover for white supremacy and racial subjugation. We reject this damaging political ideology and invite our Christian brothers and sisters to join us in opposing this threat to our faith and to our nation.
As Christians, we are bound to Christ, not by citizenship, but by faith. We believe that:
People of all faiths and none have the right and responsibility to engage constructively in the public square.
Patriotism does not require us to minimize our religious convictions.
One’s religious affiliation, or lack thereof, should be irrelevant to one’s standing in the civic community.
Government should not prefer one religion over another or religion over nonreligion.
Religious instruction is best left to our houses of worship, other religious institutions and families.
America’s historic commitment to religious pluralism enables faith communities to live in civic harmony with one another without sacrificing our theological convictions.
Conflating religious authority with political authority is idolatrous and often leads to oppression of minority and other marginalized groups as well as the spiritual impoverishment of religion.
We must stand up to and speak out against Christian nationalism, especially when it inspires acts of violence and intimidation – including vandalism, bomb threats, arson, hate crimes, and attacks on houses of worship – against religious communities at home and abroad.
Whether we worship at a church, mosque, synagogue or temple, America has no second-class faiths. All are equal under the U.S. Constitution. As Christians, we must speak in one voice condemning Christian nationalism as a distortion of the gospel of Jesus and a threat to American democracy.”
At https://www.christiansagainstchristiannationalism.org/statement you can join well over forty-thousand others who have signed the statement and made their voice heard to condemn the divisiveness of Christian nationalism.
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