We’re now only a week away from the day, that day July 4 when we will have all kinds of celebrations, including parades and fireworks. As we head toward the day, various groups are in the process of co-opting the day for their particular views of American liberty and freedom. By 1776, we were already a pluralistic society, with Christians and Jews, freethinkers and Native American belief systems.
New Jersey’s founding charter of 1702 guaranteed liberty of conscience, banning any establishment of religion. New Jersey is the most diverse state in the Union, both in population and religious organizations. Toleration has not always had an easy road in our history as a Nation, however, and still does not have one.
States like Texas will now have Bible verses read in schools. Whose Bible? A newly created Religious Liberty Commission calls for breaking down walls of separation between church and state, with more religious involvement in the public square. Again, we ask, whose religion? This led by a president who deports Christian converts back to Iran. What was it that Jesus called the Pharisees? I think the word was hypocrite.
Prayer for the Day
Holy One, we live in a time of uncertainty,
Finding that relying on only ourselves just doesn’t work;
We are afraid not only of the changing world around us
But of where our questions sometimes lead us.
Help us, O Merciful One, to be open to the unexpected,
For we feel adrift like boats without a rudder on a vast and open sea.
In the name of the One who lived to bring us hope,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.
Thomas Jefferson, Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association, 1801
This people honor me with their lips, but their hears are far from me,
In vain they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.
Jesus’ paraphrase of Isaiah on the hypocrisy of the Pharisees Matt.15:8-9