The Importance of Keeping Politics Away from Faith

The country had a nice weekend Labor Day Weekend to either discuss or avoid discussions about Kim Davis, marriage licenses, and Kentucky. It may start becoming an issue again this week, but we believe it shouldn’t. In fact, a true conservative perspective would be to hope the story dies down as quickly as possible before more of our religious liberties are attacked.

It’s understandable why politicians, particularly GOP candidates Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee, would be so bent on keeping this issue alive until it’s seen all the way through to some sort of resolution that protects religious freedoms. Unfortunately, this is the wrong fight. I’m not faulting Cruz or Huckabee at all. The important thing here is the distinction between private and public rights and it’s a much more important fight to focus on the private aspects of freedoms rather than the public aspects.

That’s not a call to end the fight. It’s a call for a strategic retreat. The winnable battle is on the private side where citizens and their private businesses should be allowed to enact their beliefs as they see fit. That’s where the focus needs to be. Right now, Kim Davis is an unfortunate distraction.

It’s worse than that, though. Kim Davis represents a battle that could end up creating more unnecessary strife in the form of government regulations and laws that further prohibit personal expression of any sort for those in the public sector. At this time, regardless of who’s in Congress, the White House, or the Supreme Court, there is no basis by which faith can be introduced into the public service realm and this is a good thing. By allowing faith into the public realm, we’re opening the door to other forms of “expression” that could lead to government entities that are oppressive through faith. We must understand that this country was built on the basis of religious liberties and that a separation of church and state was unofficially established to keep government out of the church. Today, this is more important than ever because of the diversity of faiths that are now acceptable in America.

This could easily turn into a short book about why we must keep government service and faith completely separate, but in lieu of a novel I’ll wrap it up by saying this: the real war that must be won is to maintain a private citizen’s rights to worship freely and to make certain that those rights are extended to their private businesses. That’s the battleground on which the left is forming their ranks. That’s where they want to be able to prevent bakers, photographers, and even churches from maintaining the sovereignty of their private organizations. They want to mandate acceptance in spite of faith.

In the public sector, it’s not a lost cause but the battle must first be won in the private sector. Focusing on government employees will do more harm than good for the cause.

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