Religious liberty, as articulated by the Founders, was never a universal license for every religion or religious practice under the sun. And that’s because they recognized that only the Christian faith — across its many denominations — would ensure the fidelity and virtue that is foundational to self-government.
This article is a lightly-edited transcript of the “Here’s the Point” podcast by Ryan Helfenbein, executive director of the Standing for Freedom Center.
There has been a lot of online chatter recently among evangelicals about what the true nature and meaning of religious liberty is all about. In case you’re wondering, no, this isn’t the first time this issue has been discussed. It’s an old idea and people living in earlier times were much wiser and more courageous than the ones living today. As America grows older and ever distant from its original founding, much of the original meaning and intent in the Constitution has been blurred, especially when it comes to religious liberty (and I’ll add the obligatory) for all.
Did the Founders really intend for 80-foot Hindu statues to be erected in public, Satanist shrines in capitol buildings alongside displays of the Ten Commandments, or Halal to be served with Catholic fish on Friday in the local public schools? Was that their intention behind religious liberty? And why would religious liberty be there in the first place if it were to only give rise to the kind of religious expressions that would only serve to undermine the entire experiment in American liberty?
In answering these questions, we can’t forget the famous answer Benjamin Frankin gave to Elizabeth Powell just outside the Constitutional Convention: “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.”
Our men of history were quite knowledgeable of history and knew their place in it. The Greeks formed and fashioned society in such a way that every institution was a fundamental support to the nation itself. America was no different. While our Constitutional Republic was designed for freedom and for checks and balances, no institution or people were given a matchbook with license to burn it all down. And the entire purpose behind self-government and ordered liberty was to lead to stronger institutions, not weaker ones.
John Adams famously said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.”
There can be little doubt about what religion or morality Adams was referring to.
And Adams gave us plenty of context clues. He wrote in a diary entry on August 14, 1796:
“One great Advantage of the Christian Religion is that it brings the great Principle of the Law of Nature and Nations…. No other Institution for Education, no kind of political Discipline, could diffuse this kind of necessary Information, so universally among all Ranks and Descriptions of Citizens. The Duties and Rights of The Man and the Citizen are thus taught, from early Infancy to every Creature.”
We are told the First Amendment enshrined a sacred “separation of church and state” in American law, but did it actually? The amendment actually reads:
“Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…”
So clearly, that settles it because there’s no way religion would ever be involved in politics. Except it was involved. For more than 150 years of our great nation, Christianity was the centerpiece.
Prayers and sermons were given at the outset of Congress. Christian worship services — and Christian worship services only — were held in the U.S. Capitol building on Sundays for the first 70 years. In the first five decades of our republic, Congress appropriated money for Bibles to be purchased and Protestant missionaries to be funded to the Native Americans.
Even as the federal Constitution didn’t establish a state church (Anglican or Catholic), the majority of the original state constitutions made a declaration of faith in God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — and clearly articulated Christian religious tests for holding public office. South Carolina was clear that Protestantism was the established religion of the state. Massachusetts required towns to support Protestant teachers in schools to promote faith.
The original Constitution of Maryland had this to say:
“It is the duty of every man to worship God in such a manner as he thinks most acceptable to him; all persons professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty….”
Don’t you think that if religious liberty meant religious pluralism, as many do today, including well-meaning evangelicals, it would have been clearly articulated in these documents? Didn’t they leave room for Hinduism, Islam, or even Scientology to be added later?
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, writing in his Commentaries on the Constitution in 1833, answers that question. He said the quiet part out loud: “…the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience….”
He went further, explaining that the First Amendment’s real object was “not to countenance, much less to advance Islam, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects.”
In case you didn’t hear that last part, you may want to pause and play that back again — just a few times until folks at the ACLU, Freedom from Religion Foundation, and most rank-and-file evangelical thought leaders educated in post-1960s government schools can comprehend.
Christian religious liberty, as imagined by the Founders and included in our founding documents, was never a universal license or accommodation for every other religion or religious practice under the sun. The Protestant nation at our founding included Protestants, Catholics and Hebrew congregations. The first mosque wasn’t built in America until 1921.
Religious pluralism — as an idea and practice — was never implemented or tested until President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, transferring the lion’s share of our immigration system to Eastern (non-Christian) nations over traditional Western European nations.
Christian religious liberty — the original arm of our republican government — as imagined and defined by the Founders was not just for freedom itself but for fidelity and virtue that was foundational to self-government. It was a feature — and not a bug — for the entire software of our American operating system to thrive and flourish.
But the serious problem and failure came later in the 20th century, when the original arm of religious liberty was amputated and replaced by activist judges with a far less authentic religious freedom prosthetic. While the prosthetic is designed to replace and mimic the original arm by appearance and functionality, it is not a sure and steady hand, and it can never be confused for being a part of the original body. There is no bone or marrow underneath. It doesn’t share the same lifeblood. It is made entirely of plastic. It has the form or shape of the original arm but none of its substance, and it functions nothing like the real McCoy.
The prosthetic — much like religious freedom today — actually makes religion a less reliable feature for our American system. And that was entirely the intention of modern secular judges. That’s what pluralism under the guise of religious freedom does. And it gives more influence to secularists trying to downplay and undermine the Christian influence on the nation, especially in our governmental system.
Now this is the moment where some would advocate that religious freedom still affords the Christian faith public standing, even alongside Islam and other sects in America, that preaching the Gospel means we have the freedom to advocate the one true and living God, Jesus Christ, boldly and freely, even while we cannot tell mosques where to be built. They have studied the prosthetic of religious freedom but do not know the original arm of our body politic.
Others would suggest that what we need today is to make further cuts. Why not amputate freedom altogether by cutting off other arms and limbs and just enforce a totalizing Christianity from the state level? We need a Christian Franco, they say. And while that might sound like an interesting thought exercise or a funny meme online, we are not living in a society where such a benevolent ruler exists. Where would he come from? And will he also be wearing crusader-larping apparel?
The Founders didn’t build a prosthetic. They built a real arm that shared the same lifeblood as the rest of the body. The real reason Christians are debating this idea in 2026 is because we are coming to a reckoning that the prosthetic of religious freedom that promotes pluralism doesn’t seem authentic to American and actually undermines our project. Factcheck: True.
But no one should blame the Founders; they should look to our courts and activist judges. We would be foolish to lay the blame anywhere else and equally foolish to believe that we can’t somehow correct it as we have done with many bad rulings in the past.
Religious liberty is not a flaw in the Founders’ design and unfettered religious freedom was never the feature. It was always “a Republic, if you can keep it,” not a liberal democracy.
The story of American freedom is still being written, and every generation must decide whether to carry it forward. If this article helped you see why biblical truth, religious liberty, and self-government belong together, help the Standing for Freedom Center equip more Christians to stand with courage, speak with clarity, and keep the torch of freedom burning. Make a gift today.
