The Louisiana Freedom Caucus’s response to the Biden administration’s desecration of Easter Sunday, while certainly well-meaning, is a little bit of a disappointment. On the positive side, there is a rousing denunciation of the Biden proclamation of the Transgender Day of Visibility:
. . . we find it abhorrent that the Biden Administration would select the holiest day of the Christian year—Easter—to proclaim a day of commemoration for something else. As believers, we find it as an affront to our sacred tradition of worshiping our resurrected Lord that the Biden Administration would co-mingle Easter with another event entirely.
But it also veers off into the morass of relativism:
After almost 250 years as a republic and as the lighthouse for freedom around world, the United States has grown into a mosaic of faiths where all are protected and all should be respected and treated equally under the law. Certainly, people of the Christian tradition are a majority in this country, but our very ethos mandates we accept people of other faiths to live and practice in peace and without governmental interference. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Bahai’s, Zoroastrians and so many others have the same rights as Christians in this country. And so do people who have no faith traditions. Agnostics, Atheists, Deists and others have the right to practice, or not to practice, but most importantly, to be left alone to do as their conscience and tradition dictates.
This is one of the major downsides to life in the United States, this naïve view of human society, that people of any and all religions can coexist peacefully together if they ‘love freedom’ or some such thing as that. Let us look at some of the aspects of the religious faiths mentioned above to demonstrate the falsity of this idea.
Hinduism, if lived consistently here in the States, would produce the following:
- A rigid caste system;
- The honoring of a god of destruction, Shiva;
- Self-immolation of widows (Sati Pratha); and
- The acceptance of LGBT rights.
Islam, if lived consistently, would beget
- Sharia law;
- Subjugation of Christians and Jews;
- The denial that Jesus Christ is the Son of God;
- Marriage of children to adults;
- Barbaric criminal punishments;
- Violent war against people adhering to faiths outside of the House of Islam; and
- Polygamy.
In Zoroastrianism, we find the belief that evil is either co-eternal with good, or is the child of the supreme god.
And while it is not mentioned, religious freedom as defined above also implies that satanism must be fully respected also, with its literal sacrament of abortion, etc.
All of this is inconsistent (to say it mildly) with the inheritance of the States from western Europe – Christianity, English common law, the laws of Emperor St. Justinian, etc. Nor do multiple religions live peacefully together for very long, as the lives of Jews and Muslims are demonstrating in the US since the Hamas war began, just as in India clashes between Muslims and Hindus are endemic. But it is very consistent with the childish notions about humanity dreamt up during the Enlightenment by figures like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Sidney, et al., who, disillusioned by the butchery of the Thirty Years’ War (1618-48) fought by the western European Christians amongst themselves, tried to find another organizing, unifying principle for society apart from religion. The idea of human freedom became that principle for them, which necessarily meant that Christianity and all other older religions had to be demoted to a secondary level of importance, privatizing religion, banishing it from public life.
These principles are at the heart of the idea of religious freedom that the LA Freedom Caucus crows about in their response to the Biden regime. But as we have seen, they are counterproductive. Allowing all religious faiths to fully live out their beliefs would lead to chaos – or, rather, it already has generated a lot of chaos, as confusion about what is true and what is right abound today, leading to other social maladies like despair, atheism, and suicide.
They also undermine beneficial legislation that conservatives are advancing (or have passed) in the LA Legislature – to post the Ten Commandments in public schools, to allow Christian chaplains to be present in public schools, to ban trans mutilations of minors, etc. Those very acts violate the principle of religious pluralism the LA Freedom Caucus is pushing in their reply, as they clash with, for example, the Hindu’s acceptance of the trans ideology.
There is no need to continue to live in fretful timidity and perpetual regret over the misdeed of the Thirty Years’ War. Rather, the West should repent, dust herself off, and begin again the good works that will unite her to God. The States here in the US that still see themselves as Christian must regain their confidence in promoting Christianity in all spheres of life – at home, at school, at work, at play, in public spaces, and also within the halls of government. Viktor Orban has been doing a great job of this during his years as Prime Minister of Hungary. Patriarch Porfirije of Serbia warmly praised him for this in 2022:
Patriarch Porfirije started his address by noting that each individual and each community lives according to its own value system. With these values, he said, they organize private, social, and cultural life, form public morality, set priorities and standards, build relationships with others, and nurture their authentic identity: ‘Today, however, we are faced with waves of new value systems that are often aggressively imposed on a global scale with the aim of eradicating every existing natural and civilizational order, to establish a new paradigm. In this vortex, the intention is to destroy the foundations of identity and the very pillars of individuals and communities, to make everything relative, fragile, and fluid. You, on the other hand, stand for the Christian value system that springs from the Gospel, which God established. These are the values that created both the Hungarian and the Serbian people, the values that created Europe as we knew it until yesterday, as we lived in it until yesterday. In that we are the same; there is no difference between us.’ The Patriarch pointed out that very few public figures use the words God, faith in God, the Church, spirituality, Christian values, the unity of all Christians, or the mission of the Church in their political vocabulary but that Orbán does so regularly: ‘The word “soul,” otherwise completely forgotten in contemporary discourse, is present in your public statements and in your commitment. Specifically, the phrase “the struggle for the soul of Europe” confirms your uniqueness. These words, when you say them, are not political platitudes, demagogic phrases to win votes. No! You, Mr. Orbán, live as you speak. That is why you are a statesman who deserves the trust of your people. That is why the eyes of many other Europeans are often turned towards you, Your Excellency. And my Orthodox Serbian people listen carefully to the position you take on any issue, especially the most difficult social, economic, and even political problems of our time, which shake Europe and the modern world.’ The Patriarch concluded by stating that the relations between the Hungarians and the Serbs today are the best they have been for centuries and that Orbán additionally deserved the award for his contribution to the excellent relations between the two nations: ‘We invoke God’s blessing on your Hungarian people. We pray to God for you, Mr. Orbán, for your associates, and especially for your family. May Christ the Lord, through the prayers of Saint Sava of Serbia and Saint Stephen, King of Hungary, preserve and improve the harmony of Hungarians and Serbs for many blessed years.’
Just how far Louisiana’s State government is from imitating PM Orban is revealed starkly in a comment of Rep. Dodie Horton about her Ten Commandments proposal:
Horton’s legislation calls for the Ten Commandments to be displayed on a poster that would be purchased by private funds. She says several religions follow the Ten Commandments… “This is not preaching a Christian religion. It’s not preaching any religion. It’s teaching a moral code that was placed that was sat down by the first law giver.”
The Ten Commandments certainly does promote a religion, and Rep. Horton shouldn’t be squeamish about saying so. The first four commandments, given by God to Moses, are specific instructions about religious observances that man is to keep vis-à-vis the Holy Trinity – of course they are preaching a religion! But, once again, this is where we are as a society because we have yet to shake off our drunken Enlightenment stupor.
The Orban example, by contrast, is the template that the Freedom Caucus and the rest of Louisiana’s government officials should follow in the future – not a mawkish tolerance for contradictory faiths but a confident declaration of the truth of Christianity, of the immeasurable benefits it has brought mankind. Anything less is a betrayal of all the Christian martyrs who suffered horribly and were executed for their steadfast declaration that Christ is the True God, and that there is salvation in no other god or religion.
As it was in the past in Christendom, so it ought to be again here in the States: Adherents of other religious faiths may live among us, but only those aspects of their faiths that do not contradict traditional Christian morality should be allowed to be practiced.