Protecting religious liberty is the foundation stone for protecting all liberty. The liberty of every American, whether religious or not, is at risk if even one American's religious liberty is abridged. There is a profound reason our religious liberties are delineated in the first sentence of the First Amendment.

In the twentieth century, hundreds of millions of people were killed by the totalitarian ideologies of Marxism, n.a.z.ism, and Fascism, each of which required the use of a powerful, centralized state authority to control every aspect of the citizens' lives. Those who resisted were eliminated, often by imprisonment or death. Religion was enemy number one and the first to go. The regimes tore down crosses, destroyed churches, hounded and coerced church officials, crushed free worship, and replaced religious texts with nationalist propaganda in schools. The enemy of dictatorship was G.o.d.

There are many parallels between the anti-religious governments of the twentieth century and the anti-religious elite of the United States in the twenty-first. But our country wasn't always ruled by secular absolutists. Before the United States entered World War II, President Roosevelt, the most successful liberal Democrat in the twentieth century, invoked the imagery of religious battle to describe who we were and who the enemy was: "Today the whole world is divided between human slavery and human freedom-between pagan brutality and the Christian ideal. We choose human freedom-which is the Christian ideal."

In less than a generation, the cultural elites have created a national amnesia about both our history and our G.o.dly heritage. Today, the Founders' original intent is all but lost in a post-modern world patrolled by the totalitarian impulses of self-appointed enforcers of political correctness.

Eleven score and fourteen years from the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Lincoln's injunction at Gettysburg remains as relevant as when he uttered it: "That this nation, under G.o.d, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government: of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

SOLUTIONS TO PROTECT RELIGIOUS LIBERTY.

Ensuring religious liberty is a sacred tenet of America's foundational principles. Below is a list of immediate steps to protect people of faith from further government encroachment on their liberties.

Restoring Our Crucial System of Const.i.tutional Checks and Balances

We must restore const.i.tutional limited government by reviving our system of checks and balances. Failure to invoke const.i.tutional checks and balances has allowed the Judicial Branch to legislate from the bench, imposing its judgments on the elected branches of government. This is the main reason why religious liberty is under such sustained a.s.sault today. Here's what we need to do:* Congress must exercise its const.i.tutional responsibilities to check the abuses of the Judicial Branch by restricting the jurisdiction of the courts where necessary and even by following President Jefferson's precedent of abolishing or threatening to abolish defiant courts, as per the Judicial Reform Act of 1802.

* The president and his attorney general must exercise their const.i.tutional responsibilities by only nominating judicial candidates who are committed to upholding the original intent of the Founders of our nation and to overturning the malignant decisions of previous judges that have violated those principles.

* The Senate must exercise its responsibility to a.s.sure that the only judges or justices that it confirms are committed to upholding the Founders' original intent.

* Citizens must ensure that candidates for the U.S. Senate commit to carrying out these policies once they are elected. And they must hold those who violate their pledge accountable and defeat them.

* Citizens must also ensure they elect candidates at the state and local level who are committed to resisting the preemption of their proper, const.i.tutional roles and functions by the federal government.

Freedom of Speech and the Right to a.s.semble

The liberties of both religious expression and speech in general are guaranteed by the First Amendment. We must preserve these foundations of our republic by educating Americans about their true meaning and relevance so they can defend their own rights. Therefore, the following measures should be pursued:* Repeal so-called "hate speech" legislation. Allowing the courts to broadly determine what they consider "hate speech" is profoundly dangerous to a free people. Congress has no const.i.tutional authority to regulate thought. Speech is already protected, and criminal activities are already legally defined, as are their punishments. Religious leaders who speak either from the pulpits and or by electronic medium are particularly vulnerable to state punishment for alleged violations of hate speech, even if that speech reflects their religious teachings. While religious leaders are most at risk, we cannot seek a free speech dispensation for one cla.s.s of people. Therefore, all Americans must be protected from this arbitrary abridgement of their rights.

* Protect personal religious expression. The individual has an inherent right to express her faith either in speech, religious displays, or on her person. The Founders clearly believed in freedom of religion, not freedom against religion. Congress and the state legislatures should ensure that an individual's rights to take a Bible to work, have a religious b.u.mper sticker on her vehicle, talk about her faith, or wear clothing or jewelry that contains religious symbols or expressions are not infringed.

* Bar public universities that enforce campus speech codes from using taxpayer funding. The forerunner to recently pa.s.sed "hate speech" legislation can be found in many of today's publicly funded universities. College campuses historically have been the incubator of ideas and the strongholds of free expression. Today, those same schools that once promoted freedom have inst.i.tuted intolerant rules and reporting systems designed to silence speech deemed politically incorrect.

* Ensure equal access to public facilities. People of faith and their organizations have as much right to a.s.semble as any other group. Therefore, religious organizations should have equal access to public facilities. Invoking the First Amendment's establishment clause as an excuse for denying access should not be tolerated. The use of a public facility by a religious group no more const.i.tutes an establishment of religion than the same use by the local garden club or any other non-religious organization.

* Keep the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) from becoming law. People of faith have the right to organize and seek like-minded people to fulfill their ministries. Religious organizations must be able to freely choose their members, employees, and leadership while remaining immune from state-imposed membership or employment quotas. It violates the Const.i.tution's guarantee of free exercise of religion to require that a person who does not hold the beliefs of the religious group be considered for membership, leadership, or employment. Faith organizations must not be forced to either abandon or dilute their mission to meet a government ideological quota.

* Congress and the state legislatures must protect the right of citizens and clergy in civil settings to pray according to their own religious traditions.

Limited Government

Because government power expands at the direct expense of individual freedom, the best way to protect liberty, particularly religious liberty, is to limit the size and scope of governments at all levels. To do that, we should:* Pa.s.s a balanced budget amendment. Pa.s.sing on our ma.s.sive federal debt to the next generation is immoral. The best way to stop the politicians from bankrupting our country and limiting freedom is to pa.s.s a balanced budget amendment to the Const.i.tution.

* Help the poor by expanding opportunity. Americans, who are far and away the most generous people in the world, have always been committed to helping those in need, but we must recognize that the government is not the best vehicle to render this a.s.sistance. Historically, the churches and other organizations Tocqueville called "intermediating inst.i.tutions" most effectively helped the poor because they ministered to more than their earthly needs. We need to relearn that model for helping those in need and unlearn our dependence on the welfare state. The Founders were clear on the right to pursue happiness, which speaks to self-reliance. Therefore, the government should foster the condition where the self-reliant have the best opportunity to prosper.

Healthcare

President Obama and Congress have put us on the road to nationalized healthcare. State-run healthcare services are typically intolerant of religious objections by medical workers to certain procedures. If national healthcare can't be undone, we must ensure the system maintains freedom of religious conscience. To protect the doctor-patient relationship and put personal or religious conscience over the policies of the state, we should:* Protect healthcare workers' right to conscience. People of faith have as much right to pursue careers in the healing arts as anyone. If conscience dictates, healthcare workers should not be required to either partic.i.p.ate in or refer procedures such as abortion.

* Put individuals ahead of "society." "First do no harm" is the physician's covenant to his patients. We must oppose the state's inclination to put the physician's obligation to "society" before his obligation to individual patients.

Education

The myth that the establishment clause requires government to purge religion from public life is omnipresent in our public schools, contrary to the express intention of the Founders. To protect religious liberty in education we should adhere to the following:* Since it is the prerogative and the responsibility of parents to choose the instruction that is best for their child, we must preserve the homeschooling option.

* Homeschooled children and their families should not be denied partic.i.p.ation in extra-curricular, school-related activities that their tax dollars help fund.

* No individual should be denied equal access to government employment or education based on the accreditation status of his credits, diploma, or degree. This is a situation often faced by homeschool and Christian-school students.

* School districts should be allowed to offer optional religious instruction including Bible study. Providing this option in no way const.i.tutes an establishment of religion.

* Parents should be free to choose the school of their choice, including religious schools. They should be given an education credit coupon (a Pell Grant for K-12) allowing them more options to choose a school that best fits their own values, not those imposed by the state.

* Parents must have the right to choose which value instruction their child receives and therefore must be able to opt out without qualification.

* Teachers should not be discouraged from or punished for using historical examples that involve religion in their cla.s.sroom. Nor should they be discouraged from answering questions about religion or discussing it objectively in the cla.s.sroom.

* Teachers and education workers should have the same protections of religious expression as any other citizen in a free society.

* Students should be allowed to study, on their own time, religious texts or engage in religious expression at school without fear of punishment or ridicule from school officials.

* Art, drama, and music cla.s.ses should not exclude religious themes.

* U.S. history cla.s.ses should study the influences of religion on the Founders and other historical figures. They should specifically study and explain the religious themes and foundations contained in our historical doc.u.ments, including the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration of Independence, and the Northwest Ordinance.

* Religious texts, including Bibles and scriptures, should not be banned in public schools.

* Federal regulation of local faith-based residential child-care facilities should be repealed and these responsibilities returned to the states where the Founders intentionally left them.

G.o.d IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE.

In a single generation, religious expression in the public square has become abnormal. This cultural shift is no accident. The secular Left, first through the media and the schools, then through the courts and now the legislative bodies, have effectively denied people the right of corporate and individual religious expression in public. The following measures will help counter the secular a.s.sault on public expression of faith:* Remove the financial incentive for secular groups like the ACLU to sue towns, counties, and states over establishment clause issues by eliminating the financial damages that can be rewarded in these cases.

* Congress should remove the jurisdiction of any court review of our nation's motto "In G.o.d We Trust" and the phrase "under G.o.d" in the Pledge of Allegiance.

* Congress and the state legislatures should pa.s.s laws stating that the display of crosses, creches, and menorahs do not const.i.tute the establishment of a religion by the state.

* Congress and the states should clarify that government employees have the same rights to express religious opinions as people who are expressing secular opinions. Moreover, they should be protected from hara.s.sment for wearing jewelry or other clothing that displays symbols of their faith.

RIGHT TO LIFE.

Few areas of public policy stir pa.s.sion like the life issue does. Listed first of the three unalienable rights of the Declaration, the Founders clearly intended the federal government's chief priority to be protecting life. People of faith have brought the issue of life-not limited to abortion-to the forefront time and again. At a minimum, we must acknowledge that life is a precious gift from G.o.d.

Americans, more than most other nations, place life in high cultural regard. Anytime a child is lost, a hiker is stuck on a mountain, or people are in harm's way, we move mountain and earth to save life. Valuing life from beginning to end is central to a healthy culture. To uphold life we should:* Ensure that taxpayer dollars are never used for funding elective abortions, which are cases that don't involve rape or incest or where it is necessary to save the life of the mother.

* Defund the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), which is using U.S. taxpayer dollars to help enforce China's mandatory one-child policy that compels, sometimes through force, millions of women to undergo abortions.

* Reinstate the "Mexico City Policy," which banned funding to organizations that promote and/or perform abortion overseas. President Obama rescinded it shortly after his inauguration.

* Protect the frail, the infirm, and the elderly from the state's arbitrary decision to terminate life.

WHAT YOU CAN DO.

* Pray-for our nation and its leaders, that G.o.d will continue to pour out his blessings on America.

* Register to vote.

* Learn about the issues, especially those that threaten religious liberty.

* Learn the religious liberty positions and records of elected officials and candidates for office.

* Vote in every election. No candidate will agree with you on every issue, every time, but vote for the candidates who most closely represent your views.

* Use your influence to educate and persuade others about the importance of being informed and voting.

* If you know someone who has leadership ability and understands the importance of protecting religious liberty, encourage them to run for office.

* If you have leadership ability and want to fight to protect freedom, consider running for office yourself.

* If you are concerned that a measure in Congress, your state house, or county or town board will adversely impact religious freedom, tell your elected representatives how you want them to vote.

* When you see or experience an encroachment on religious freedom, write a letter to the editor or an opinion article for your local paper, or call talk radio. If you don't speak up, maybe no one will. But if you do, you can frame the debate and help get good legislation pa.s.sed and bad legislation defeated.

* Organize a voter registration drive at your church.