Commentary

Each day the California Legislature is in session, both houses have their chaplain offer an invocation before they start their business. Although most of these prayers are nondenominational spiritual thoughts, they demonstrate Californians’ innate respect for their Creator, consistent with the preamble in the state’s constitution: “We, the People of the State of California, grateful to Almighty God for our freedom, in order to secure and perpetuate its blessings, do establish this Constitution.”

California’s constitution also declares that we have “inalienable rights” independent from the state itself and guarantees the “free exercise and enjoyment of religion without discrimination or preference.” Yet it’s difficult to talk about policy and political issues in the context of religion when the apocryphal “separation of church and state” declaration is the reflexive response by most people, effectively ending those conversations. While Thomas Jefferson’s well-considered opinion in a letter to his Baptist friends is a helpful adage, it’s not scripture.

Why then do we avoid open discussions on the intersection of faith and public policy?

Law professor Frederick Gedicks observed the following in his studies on religion in public life: “Secularism has not solved the problem posed by religion in public life so much as it has buried it. By placing religion on the far side of the boundary marking the limit of the real world, secularism prevents public life from taking religion seriously. Secularism does not teach us to live with those who are religious; rather, it demands that we ignore them and their views. Such a ‘solution’ can remain stable only so long as those who are ignored acquiesce in their social situation.”

Historian Paul Johnson further noted: “One of the keys to understanding the twentieth century is to identify the beneficiaries of the decline in formal religion. The religious impulse—with all the excesses of zealotry and intolerance it can produce—remains powerful, but expresses itself in secular substitutes.”

However well-intended fervent politicians can be, replacing our priestly class and faith traditions has not improved the state.

Still, California’s 39 million residents reflect a vibrant tapestry of major religions, including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Islam, indigenous faiths, and others, each contributing a rich history, tradition, and set of moral codes that shape our state’s conventions, laws, and culture.

Faith motivates great statesmen to build dynamic societies that match our mountains, as Irving Stone wrote and as is memorialized on the exterior of California’s State Treasury Building.

No matter their faith tradition, I view my fellow citizens as children of God whose revealed divinity is diminished by the growth of aggressive government intervention trespassing into our pews, homes, and firesides.

In his 1922 “The Limitations of the Law” speech before the American Bar Association in San Francisco, then-Vice President Calvin Coolidge concluded: “It is time to supplement the appeal to law, which is limited, with an appeal to the spirit of the people, which is unlimited. Some unsettlements disturb, but they are temporary. Some factious elements exist, but they are small. No assessment of the material conditions of Americans can warrant anything but the highest courage and the deepest faith.”

Is it possible to fix our many societal problems without acknowledging a serious void of faith in the public square?

Science fiction writer John C. Wright saw the issue clearly when he wrote: “In the same way politics is downstream of culture, culture is downstream of religion. In the same way a man’s actions are dependent on his beliefs, his beliefs are dependent upon his primal and fundamental assumptions that form his character.”

Ultimately, we can allow everyone the freedom to believe as they wish about the guiding influences of the universe without dictating their worship practices. Just as we seek celestial guidance in the hallowed halls of Sacramento, we can extend this practice to our other government offices in their policy creation.

Religion is “more like a response to a friend than it is like obedience to an expert,” according to British theologian Austin Farrer. California law need not force men and women to observe any specific doctrine, canon, or creed, but the hope of the future can only be understood in the context of the faith that inspired our founders.

Indeed, children cannot revere or replicate what they don’t know. Issues of faith can be taught and discussed in a kind, ecumenical way from childhood into adulthood.

Government indelibly locks people into a system of rigid justice. Conversely, faith provides a space for vision, purpose, charity, hope, love, and compassion. While mercy cannot rob justice, it makes sense to constrain governmental control and incentivize a more flexible faith in public policy formation.

So if you were to ask me for a simple recipe to fix our significant political, social, and cultural problems, I would say—before you go to the Capitol, go to church and say a prayer.