In God We Trust

In 2007, then-presidential hopeful Barack Obama told a crowd of church members that religious good works make up “a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning. And it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life.” Obama’s statement was met with much criticism—people complained that he was compromising the constitutional separation of religion and political action in an attempt to cater to the Christian right.

Obama was right, however—religion is no stranger to the political realm, nor is this inherently a bad thing. For better or worse, the two are constantly intertwined. America is not a purely secular democracy, and this is something we need to acknowledge.

From its very beginnings, America has been rooted in religion. Though the Founding Fathers instituted a “wall of separation” between church and state, they are also known to have used religious rhetoric in documents as fundamental to our understanding of nationhood as the Declaration of Independence. Indeed, what is so striking about the Declaration of Independence is that the objective source from which human equality and the listed inalienable rights are derived is a Supreme Being, “the Creator.” The origin of our nation in religion is also manifest in many of the objects and traditions we today take for granted, like the motto on dollar bills and our celebration of Thanksgiving.

But religious sentiment persists even today, as the political arena makes abundantly clear. Our president and government officials swear their oaths on the Bible or other religious books, we have a National Prayer Day, and evangelical lobbying groups regularly make their way into the newspapers. In addition, the invocation of “faith” and “God” by political candidates is an everyday occurrence on the campaign trail, for reasons as much political as religious—a 2007 Gallup poll reports that less than half our nation would vote an atheist into the presidency. It is obvious that religion matters when the American public chooses its leaders.

For now, willfully maintaining that our nation is above religion can lead to dangerous results. Our nation is unhealthily divided over the issue, with some Americans frustrated by what they see as one particular religious group gaining dominance and others reacting to what they see as a secular onslaught on their faith.

Some argue that, if we acknowledge our less-than-secular state, powerful religious groups in America might use this as an excuse to dominate American politics. It is apparent, however, that they do this anyway. Freedom lovers worldwide who look on American secularism with adoration would be repulsed by the revelation of how great an influence religious and pseudo-religious parties have in the United States. Failing to acknowledge this relationship will prove detrimental to our domestic as well as our foreign policy.

Under the charade that we ourselves are a secular democracy, we condemn groups that adhere to a brand of democracy that—like ours—is not quite “secular.” And, in order to prevent religious parties from coming to power, we enable far greater evils, such as sustaining dictators like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak. The result is that we fail both to suppress religious groups and to promote democracy; religious groups merely become more popular, and Mubarak tightens his restrictions on freedoms. Yet our narrow mindset leads us to continue supporting the secular party even when indications that the religious party is more democratic come to light.

By shedding the pretense that we are secular, perhaps we can rid our foreign policy of one of its greatest hypocrisies. Furthermore, if we stop fervently brandishing secular democracy abroad, we can make more friends and fewer foes. Resentment of American foreign dominance will be tempered if we do not try to export, or impose, what we do not have ourselves—a strictly secular democracy.

It is time to recognize the importance that many people, including Americans, place on religion, even in government. Only an acceptance of our non-secular past will be able to define America in this way to itself and others.


Nafees A. Syed ’10, a Crimson editorial writer, is a government concentrator in Leverett House.