Why Is Religion Essential for Freedom?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is the need for religion in our constitutional republic. The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees freedom of religion. President George Washington and President Donald Trump believe religion is essential to freedom.

President Trump believes, according to his State of the Union address on February 24, that the United States could be in the midst of a spiritual revival. However, a recent Gallup survey says that the data is mixed. In his article published at The Daily Signal, Andrew Fowler states: 

Nevertheless, for the nation to prosper and bind together, religiosity is not only a crucial aspect of civil society, but vital to its sustainability. This sentiment was express by none other than the country’s first president, George Washington.

Fowler explained that Washington was “private in his own religious convictions and skeptical of fanaticism.” However, he gave a “prescient warning to contemporary and future Americans – on national and international affairs – definitively emphasized that ‘[o]f all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.’ Moreover, to ‘subvert’ such ‘great pillars of human happiness’ – like the freedom of religious expression – would be considered unpatriotic.” Fowler continued his explanation.

Indeed let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Fowler explained that Washington “was not the only Founding Father to stress religion’s intrinsic importance to the new republic.” He then quoted a famous statement by the future President John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He quoted a third Founding Father, Benjamin Franklin, as saying: “[God] ought to be worshipped” and “the most acceptable service we render to him is doing good to his other children.”

Fowler continued by quoting “Thomas Jefferson, the most notable deist among the Founding Fathers.” He “warned about the consequences of abandoning religious conviction entirely.” Jefferson advocated for a “wall of separation” between church and state, but he also said: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Fowler explained that the rationale of the above Founding Fathers “was not without historical precedent.” He continued by explaining that Christianity has served for centuries “as the basis for establishing institutions that we take for granted, such as universities, hospitals, economic systems, and – most importantly – the philosophy undergirding the truth that ‘all men are created equal.” It was Alexis de Tocqueville, a 19^th-century political scientist, who observed and then wrote in his “Democracy in America” that “religion is the ‘companion of liberty’ and a ‘safeguard’ in preserving the ‘pledge of freedom.’”

Fowler then shared his thoughts about how religion is doing in America today and the consequences that have followed.

Today, however, American religiosity is struggling – and the consequences borne from this sociological trend have reverberated across civil society and political dynamics.

In the early 1950s, 75% of Americans found religion to be “very important” in their lives. Now, that is 47%. Moreover, the March Gallup survey shows that “in each year since 2022, 28% of Americans have said religion is ‘not very important’ in their lives,” which is the “highest proportion” in this trend and “more than double the rate seen as recently as the early 2000s.” Concurrently, as a recent Pew Research Center survey discovered, the United States is “the only place” where “more adults (ages 18 and older) describe the morality and ethics of others living in the country as bad (53%) than as good (47%).”

The relationship between these trends may not be purely coincidental. Religious affiliation has historically declined since the 21^st century’s outset; meanwhile, the importance of one’s political party affiliation has risen and, in some cases, supplanted not only religion as an identifiable characteristic, but race, culture, and even language.

Additionally, in recent years, Americans have shifted their self-defining characteristics to better align with their politics; in effect, a political platform has increasingly informed one’s values and principles, instead of one’s beliefs being rooted by families, churches, and communities.

Psychologically, this identity shift heightens emotional reactions toward political criticisms since debate – or opposition – now challenges the core of a person’s personality. Even brain activity confirms political conflict has a similar effect as being physically attacked and/or threatened. It should be unsurprising then, as a result, America has seen increased polarization and even violence against political adversaries.

At the same time, American civil society has receded. Fewer opportunities exist for neighbors to gather together, regardless of political affiliation, and pursue a common goal. In the past, religious organizations and charities were cornerstones for such activity; today, however, as religiosity fades – which had been a motivating impulse propelling communal outreach – a void has formed. Indeed, the less religious are less likely to be civically engaged.

This massive disconnect between an individual and society at-large presents an existential crisis in the modern United States. Civilizations cannot survive without a firm foundation. In an American context, morality was not borne from thin air nor from moral relativism – but formed by Western philosophy and the Judeo-Christian religions.

President Trump is launching initiatives like “America Prays” and establishing the White House Faith Office. In addition, there are signs that the rising generations are seeking spiritual guidance. Will this trend continue?

Fowler offers “Washington’s fatherly advice” given in his Farewell Address as being “relevant to modern audiences: “when religiosity disappears from the public square, the moral framework supporting civil society wanes and weakens. A transcendent set of principles, however, unifies and moors the nation in common principles.”

Fowler suggests that this year -- America’s 250^th birthday anniversary – is a good time for Americans to return to what has been called the “indispensable” pillars that hold up society: “prayer, worship, and charity.” He wonders if faith is powerful enough to “reverse every sociological problem.” He suggests that religious commitment must be revived if we are to “renew the civic bonds that sustain, safeguard, and preserve a free society.”

This year is a suitable time for all of us to pray for America and for our political leaders.

 

Why Was the Lord with Joseph?

My Come Follow Me studies took me to Genesis 37-41 in a lesson titled “The Lord Was With Joseph.” The lesson was introduced by the following information. 

We know that God blesses people who trust Him and keep His commandments. But sometimes it doesn’t seem that way. Sometimes the person who trusts God is abused and abandoned by family members. Sometimes the person who bravely refuses to violate the law of chastity gets falsely accused anyway. When things like that happen to us, we might be tempted to become angry with God. We might wonder, “What’s the point of trying to do the right thing if it only seems to make life harder?”

Joseph, the son of Jacob, could have wondered that. At times, this faithful man prospered; at other times, it seemed that the more faithful he was, the more hardship he faced. But Joseph never left the Lord, and the Lord never left Joseph. That doesn’t mean the Lord prevented bad things from happening to Joseph, but through it all, “the Lord was with him” (Genesis 39:3).

This block of scriptures contains numerous principles, including (1) The Lord will be with me in my adversity (Genesis 37:1-28; 39; 41:9-45); (2) If I am faithful, the Lord will guide and inspire me (Genesis 37:5-11; 40; 41:1-38); (3) With the Lord’s help, I can flee temptation (Genesis 39:1-20); (4)  The Lord will help me prepare for possible hardships (Genesis 41:15-57).

This essay will discuss principle #2 about being faithful and receiving guidance and inspiration from God. First, I will share part of the scripture block – Genesis 37:5-11.

5 ¶ And Joseph dreamed a dream, and he told it his brethren: and they hated him yet the more.

6 And he said unto them, Hear, I pray you, this dream which I have dreamed:

7 For, behold, we were binding sheaves in the field, and, lo, my sheaf arose, and also stood upright; and, behold, your sheaves stood round about, and made obeisance to my sheaf.

8 And his brethren said to him, Shalt thou indeed reign over us? or shalt thou indeed have dominion over us? And they hated him yet the more for his dreams, and for his words.

9 ¶ And he dreamed yet another dream, and told it his brethren, and said, Behold, I have dreamed a dream more; and, behold, the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.

10 And he told it to his father, and to his brethren: and his father rebuked him, and said unto him, What is this dream that thou hast dreamed? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to bow down ourselves to thee to the earth?

11 And his brethren envied him; but his father observed the saying.

The Lord spoke to Joseph through dreams, and Joseph had a gift for discerning the messages sent from the Lord. God speaks to other people through dreams. I know this is true because the Lord send important messages to me in dreams for numerous years. However, I did not always understand the message. For example, I received information about my son through dreams while he was serving a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

In one dream, I saw my son go flying through the air. I assumed that he had been hit by a car. When I received his weekly letter, I learned that he had indeed gone flying through the air. He and his companion were riding bikes, and he did not see a 2x4 board that was lying across the bike path. He hit it and went flying.

The dreams that I received during those two years were sent to me so that I could “see” my son while we were separated. I believe that they were blessings sent to me for being obedient about maintaining a positive attitude about physical separation from my son. I stopped having such dreams soon after my son returned from his mission.

 

 

Do Children Have First Amendment Rights?

Families are stronger when parents teach their children to treat all people with dignity and all lives matter. Strong families strengthen their communities, states, and nations.

An elementary school student understood the value of all life. Her actions led to court actions. She saw a picture of “Black Lives Matter” and added the words “any life” to the picture. Somehow, this first-grade student understood that all lives matter, and an Appeals Court upheld her First Amendment rights. Fred Lucas reported on the situation in his article published at The Daily Signal. 

The 9^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of an elementary school student’s First Amendment rights after she was punished for adding the words “any life” to a picture of “Black Lives Matter.”’

The student, with the initials B.B., said she added the message while in first grade in 2021, inspired by a lesson on Martin Luther King Jr. She shared the drawing with a friend.

The school principal told her the drawing was inappropriate and punished her, according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the family in the case. The principal forced her to apologize, banned her from giving drawings to classmates, and excluded her from recess for two weeks.

The parents, who didn’t find out about the punishment until a year later, sued the Capistrano Unified School District in San Juan Capistrano, California.

“Today’s ruling affirms what should be obvious: Students don’t lose their constitutional rights just because they’re young,” Caleb Trotter, senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, said in a public statement Tuesday.

“The Constitution protects every student’s right to free expression. No child should be punished for expressing a well-intentioned message to a friend.”

A district court ruled in favor of the school district. But the three-judge panel of the 9^th Circuit vacated the lower court’s ruling and sent it back for further proceedings. The appeals court held that schools bear the burden of proving when a restriction on students’ speech is necessary.

The two sides in the case disagreed with the extent of the Supreme Court’s 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, which says that schools may restrict speech only in cases of significant disruption.

“We hold that elementary students’ speech is protected by the First Amendment, the age of the students is a relevant factor under Tinker, and schools may restrict students’ speech only when the restriction is reasonably necessary to protect the safety and well-being of its students,” the 25-page opinion says.

The court later added, “Consistent with our sister circuits, we hold that the age of the students is a relevant factor in evaluating the school’s restriction on a student’s speech. But age is not dispositive.”

 

What Will the FBI Find in Election Records?

The liberty principle for this Freedom Friday concerns election integrity – only eligible citizens vote and only one vote per citizen. Liberals say that there is no cheating in elections. Yet they shut down part of the government because they did not like the SAVE America Act, a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote and proof of identification to vote.

FBI convinced a judge that there were enough questions to allow an investigation into election records in Fulton County, Georgia, and the FBI took many boxes of records back to Washington. Now, the FBI took election records from Maricopa County in Arizona, “a contentious jurisdiction for elections….” Fred Lucas reported the following at The Daily Signal. 

The state Senate conducted a forensic audit of the 2020 election returns in Maricopa County.

State Senate President Warren Petersen, a Republican, confirmed the Senate complied with a federal subpoena for records related to the audit.

“President Trump is 100% correct,” Petersen posted on X.

“Late last week I received and complied with a federal grand jury subpoena for records relating to the Arizona State Senate’s 2020 audit of Maricopa County. The FBI has the records. Any other report is fake news.”

Just the News first reported Monday that an anonymous source said FBI agents are receiving terabytes of electronic election data from Maricopa County, based on a federal grand jury subpoena.

In a response to an inquiry from The Daily Signal, the Maricopa County Elections Department said in an email that it did not receive a subpoena….

Just the News reported that the election data in question covered multiple elections, including 2020 and 2024….

Why Does Mainstream Media Ignore Islamization in the US?

The nail bomb in New York City as well as other attacks by people from Muslim countries, plus the fraud in Minnesota, are a loud warning about who should be allowed into the United States. People of other religions do violent attacks and fraud, but Muslims do the majority of both.

This fact should be loudly proclaimed by media sources, but “America’s mainstream media mostly ignored Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s detailed warning about the growing threat of Islamization in the United States.” This warning “was issued a few days before Christmas” 2025 at a Turning Point USA event. Mark Tapscott reported the following: 

Conservative media like The Daily Caller devoted significant space to the speech, but a search of The New York Times website, for example, turned up no references to the former Democrat congresswoman’s remarks despite the fact that it included this stunningly direct admonition:

“There is a threat to our freedom that is not often talked about enough, and it is the greatest near and long-term threat to both our freedom and our security, and that is the threat of Islamist ideology. It is propagated by people who not only do not believe in freedom; their fundamental ideology is antithetical to the foundation that we find in our Constitution and Bill of Rights, which is that our Creator endowed upon us inalienable rights, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Gabbard pointed to a conference earlier in 2025 in which the Council on American-Islamic Relations “issued a call to action to use the American legal and political systems to overthrow the United States government. This Islamist ideology is a direct threat to our freedom because, at its core, it is a political ideology that seeks to create a global Caliphate that governs here in the U.S., in America, threatening Western civilization – [it is] governance by Sharia law.”

Sharia law is the civil and religious law prescribed by the Islamic religion’s Quran to regulate public and private life. Among much else, Sharia sanctions husbands treating wives as slaves, justifies Islamic men raping non-Islamic women, requires the death penalty for those who identify as homosexual, death by stoning for adulterers, and forces non-Muslims to convert or face death by beheading.

By failing to recognize and take decisive action to defeat this threat, Gabbard predicted, “we will find ourselves in a place where many European countries and countries like Australia have found themselves. Countries where you can get arrested for praying silently on a street corner, as happened in the U.K. countries where you can be arrested for putting up a social media post.”

“In places like Dearborn, Michigan, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, clerics are openly pushing this Islamist ideology, trying to recruit and radicalize young people. This is already underway in places like Houston. This is not something that may possibly happen. It is already happening here within our borders. Paterson, New Jersey, is proud to call themselves the first Muslim city. They are working to implement in their own governments these Islamic principles that are forced on people through the use of laws or violence,” Gabbard said.

The big mainstream media outlets like the Times weren’t talking about Gabbard’s warning last year, but other people across the nation have been and are now talking and acting.

As The Washington Stand recently reported, the newly organized Sharia-Free America Caucus in the House of Representatives was announced the same week as Gabbard’s address but has since quickly swelled its membership to 43 members, an unusually swift recruitment success … [without a complete pitch being made to enlist members].

Among those joining the caucus was Rep. Brandon Gill, R-Texas, whose district stretches from Oklahoma’s southern border almost to the far-North Dalas suburbs. Gill … pointed to Ndiaga Diagne, the naturalized U.S. citizen from Senegal who murdered three people and wounded more than a dozen in Austin, Texas, in the early morning hours of March 1.

“That was somebody who clearly had no business being in America, who was wearing a sweatshirt that said, ‘Property of Allah’ and a tee-shirt with an Iranian flag, who was clearly an Islamist terrorist. The American people are waking up and saying why in the world are these people in my community,” Gill said.

“The problem is across the country, and there are particular epicenters that include the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex, Minnesota, and then a few other localities and states, but this is fundamentally an immigration issue that needs to be tackled on the federal level,” Gil continued.

Traditionally, American immigration policy required new arrivals to assimilate fully, to adopt and support this country’s political principles of freedom of speech and religion, learn the language, and become independent, productive citizens.

“That hasn’t happened for a long time,” Gill said. “Political Islam is incompatible with the American way of life. We should not be importing people from the Islamic world. It is idiotic and suicidal.” ….

Asked about reports of growing numbers of Muslim candidates seeking local public offices in Texas, Gill said he was told recently by a constituent, “We ought to be aware that it’s happening everywhere. I can tell you in my district in one of the small towns, one of the very small towns, I was speaking to a city official in the past three weeks who was telling me they’ve got issues where there are Islamic centers popping up and who are wanting to blast calls to prayer. This is in rural North Texas. This isn’t big-city Dallas, this is happening everywhere and the time to stop it is now,” Gill declared.

 

What Is Holding Up the SAVE America Act?

The fight to get the SAVE America Act has escalated. Reuters reported that President Donald Trump threatened to not sign any other legislation until the SAVE America Act is on his desk.

The Republican-led House of Representatives passed the bill in February. However, it is a difficult battle in the Senate which is also narrowly controlled by Republicans. The Senate filibuster rule requires 60 votes to pass, and Democrats continue to refuse to vote for it.

Trump wants this bill passed, and he is pressuring Congress to get it done. He previously threatened to “impose similar voter eligibility rules through executive action, but parts of a similar executive order were blocked by a federal judge in 2025.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says that he supports the bill, but he has not taken any action to weaken filibuster rules in the Senate to get it passed. However, there is some talk that the Senate race in Texas may exert some pressure on him.

Democratic Party leaders say the legislation attempts to suppress the vote and undermine their electoral chances at a time when they are favored by independent analysts to take control of the House.

There are questions as to what holding out will do for Democrats when more than 80% of Americans support such a bill. Democrat comments make it sound like they want illegal aliens to vote in federal elections.

Who Is Victor Davis Hanson?

My VIP for this week is Victor Davis Hanson who is recovering from major cancer surgery to remove a malignant tumor from his lung. Recovery has taken a little longer because there were complications, including emergency surgery for an arterial bleed. The word is that he is recovering well as well as grateful for all the support that he has received during his recovery.

In his article published at The Daily Signal, Hanson discusses “Trump’s ‘Wars of Reckoning’ Send a Message to Iran, China, and Beyond.” 

Hanson is a historian, and he sees current events through the lens of history. He has watched how Trump runs a war and says that there is “a general pattern” for “a Trump way of war.”

·        [Geostrategic]

One thing that’s central to all of his action is they’re geostrategic. Pressuring the Panamanians to divorce themselves from China. Making sure the Venezuelan oil does not go to Russia or China by changing the government and kidnapping, capturing, Nicolas Maduro.

Things like that suggest that the current Iranian operation has targeted China, but it’s a major supplier of Chinese oil. China’s one of the biggest, if not the biggest, supplier of consumer goods, material goods to Iran. It supplies weaponry to Iran, and Iran has become a client more of China now than Russia. And it may be lost to China as Venezuela was, and maybe Panama was.

·        [Settling Old Scores]

You’re starting to see a pattern. These are wars of reckoning. People say, “Well, why are we attacking Iran?” and Trump’s way of reasoning, he’s settling up old scores. Panama was getting away with murder through a previous administration, maybe including his own, by stationing or allowing the Chinese to have strategic locations on the Panama Canal.

It was time to say, “No more.” Maduro was getting away with literally murder. Sending drugs, working with the cartels into the United States, sending hardened criminals into the United States as well, illegal aliens. And it was time to say, “You’re not going to cause a Castroite Latin American Communist Revolution. We’re going to stop it.”

And it was past time in Trump’s way of thinking. All of these wars are in that way. Same thing with Iran. They have killed more Americans, as we all have been told, than any other terrorist clique or operation. Going back even before the Iran-Iraq war, before our incursions in the Gulf War.

At the very beginning that government was birthed on the idea of taking American hostages and then subsequently blowing up our embassy, blowing up Marine barracks, involvement in Khobar Towers, using proxies like Hezbollah to hijack planes, assassinate Americans.

It was time, in other words, to even up the score. These take place during negotiations.

·        [Negotiation]

Notice that Trump was negotiating with Iranians during the summer hit on their nuclear facilities. He was negotiating with them in this current war. He was negotiating with the Venezuelans, and that is his characteristic.

He’s saying to these different entities, “I want a peaceful solution.” And even if he didn’t want a peaceful solution, the idea that he is negotiating lessens the criticism that they are preemptive, or preventative, optional wars. In other words, he can say, “Well, I wanted to make peace, but the negotiations broke down.” 

[Top-Down Attacks]

Notice their top-down attacks. They go after Qasem Soleimani in the first term, or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, or they go after Maduro or they go after Ali Khamenei. The idea is, everybody in the world should be on notice…. Of course, there’s no nation-building….

·      [No cultural imperialism]

There’s no cultural imperialism. No desire to say we were going to make democracies all over the Middle East. We’re not going to do that, and therefore, we’re not going to have boots on the ground … unless emergencies.

·         [Weird Exit Strategy]

There’s a weird exist strategy too that Donald Trump has in all of these. He determines when the war starts and when it ends….

·         [No UN Involvement]

An eighth aspect of the Trump way of war: There’s no effort to go to the United Nations. No United Nations, no International Criminal Court, no EU consultation. … nobody talked about NATO….

·         [Showcases U.S. Arms]

Nine, there are show cases for U.S. arms…. Everybody’s talking about the greatest, biggest, strongest warship in the history of civilization, the Gerald R. Ford….

·         [America First]

And finally, there’s no, I don’t know how to put it, but he’s not hiding U.S. self-interest. Of course, he talks about it’ll be much better for the greater Middle East, but we wouldn’t have gone to war if it hadn’t been for U.S. interest.

And what is U.S. interest? We’re sick and tired of the Iranians attacking our allies, but more importantly, as the biggest killer of Americans. We don’t want them to hijack planes anymore. We don’t want them to stage assassination attempts in New York or in Washington against either dissidents or foreign entities like the Saudi ambassador.

We don’t like them to capture hostages and torture them. We don’t like them sending lethal arms to kill Americans as they did during the Iraq war. We don’t want them to kidnap people in foreign countries or in Iran and hold them as hostages. We’re just sick of it. And it’s in our interest, in Trump’s way of war, to end it….

… War doesn’t change because human nature is immutable….

But how do you do it? What are the tactics? What is the strategy? What is the weaponry? Have change, and no one has changed them more than Donald Trump.