In times as troubled as our own, one would think that praying for the country ought to be entirely uncontroversial. The “Congressional Free Thought Caucus,” however, begs to differ. In a letter they sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson last week, its members expressed their outrage at the National Prayer Breakfast recently hosted in the United States Capitol. According to these “free thinkers,” the event violated “the constitutional principles of religious freedom and church-state separation.” They even hysterically describe it as a “human rights issue.”
For these members of Congress, any kind of prayer in a government building infringes on their sense of a neutral public square. But as Punchbowl News’s Jake Sherman pointed out, the National Prayer Breakfast has been going on for decades and includes both Republicans and Democrats among its patrons. All the same, the members of the caucus insist that the event is an affront to the liberalism at the heart of the American project, and demand that the Speaker discontinue the event.
Ineffective as this aggressive push for total secularization will doubtless prove to be, it nonetheless illustrates the dangers of liberal ideology. The American Founders highly valued religious liberty, but most would have been aghast at these members of Congress. They believed strongly that religion played an essential role in the life of our republic by providing a moral framework for our politics. Although that view still holds sway in American life, the very existence of this radically liberal “Free Thought Caucus” demonstrates how much more secular society has become.
George Washington was among the Founders who most forcefully insisted on a religious framework for the American public square. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity,” he mused in his Farewell Address, “religion and morality are indispensable supports.” He firmly believed that good citizenship requires “a sense of religious obligation” because “virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.” Religious faith calls forth a spirit of self-sacrifice that is essential for a republican experiment.
As commander-in-chief of the Continental Army and later as president of the United States, Washington took concrete steps to bolster religion’s role in the young republic. Take, for instance, his general orders to the army for July 16, 1775, in which he enjoined “all Officers and Soldiers, (not upon duty) to attend Divine Service, at the accustomed places of worship” in recognition of a national day of prayer and fasting proclaimed by Congress. He issued such commands frequently during the war. And after the states ratified the Constitution and Washington assumed his position as chief magistrate, he continued to issue proclamations for days of prayer and thanksgiving throughout his term. The idea of the National Prayer Breakfast would not have been foreign to the Virginian whatsoever; indeed, the strident protest from members of Congress is what would shock him today.
Other leading statesmen of the Founding followed Washington’s lead and worked to promote religion in the public square. John Adams, for instance, imbued his own presidential rhetoric with an even more explicit piety, ending his inaugural address with an actual prayer and later famously declaring that “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People.” Even the skeptical Thomas Jefferson, who coined the “separation of church and state” phrase to which the “Free Thought Caucus” clings, never fully banished religion from its central role in the republic – as president, he even periodically attended religious services held in the U.S. Capitol Building itself.
Hillsdale College historian and Providence contributing editor Miles Smith has ably outlined the full extent of the Founders’ commitment to a pious public square in his recent book Religion & Republic. Rather than interpreting all of these displays of faith as a license for theocratic Christian nationalism, or returning to tired narratives about the Early Republic’s secular liberalism, he asserts that the Founders practiced a kind of “Christian institutionalism.” American social and political institutions were rooted in a deep Christian tradition, and statesmen had an obligation to recognize and uphold it.
Unfortunately, the kind of radical liberalism the “Free Thought Caucus” represents has been undermining that sense of Christian institutionalism for decades. From court decisions outlawing prayer from public schools to even more troubling hostility to religious families, secularists have weaponized the concept of neutrality to chase people of faith out of public life. Simply put, they pursue this agenda because they have an altogether different view of the purpose of government than the American Founders. These liberals reject of a republic that promotes virtue and preserving freedom with a view to a high sense of human dignity in favor of a vision of society merely as a kind of low, material contract.
To be sure, not everyone who makes an appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast has high motives. President Donald Trump, for instance, treated this year’s event as an occasion to dole out a cushy role as head of the new White House Faith Office to longtime supporter Paula White. The Florida-based televangelist is a self-proclaimed “apostolic leader” of the charismatic movement and a noted proponent of heretical prosperity theology. Her crude displays of spiritual enthusiasm and wild “prophetic” pronouncements would have scandalized restrained churchmen of the eighteenth century such as Washington or Adams.
But these vulgar excesses do not negate the Founders’ wisdom about faith in public life. In fact, the best way to beat back the tide of Christian nationalism is to reassert the older tradition of Christian institutionalism. Many conservatives have turned to populist leaders out of their distaste for groups such as the “Free Thought Caucus” which sneeringly deride their sincere religious commitments. They understand that this country’s Christian heritage and even their freedom of conscience are under threat, and so they turn to the only faction offering what seems to be a muscular defense of these principles, however flawed it may be.
Conservative leaders can offer an alternative to combative religious factionalism by more fully rooting their vision for America’s future in her Founding. Instead of cowering in the face of the attacks of “free thinkers” or simply rolling their eyes at inordinate zealotry, they should offer a fuller account of the way of life and the institutions they seek to preserve. Just protecting freedom of conscience is not enough – they must demonstrate what it means to exercise their own.
