RNC Partner: Shred First Amendment, Make Christianity Nation’s ‘Official Religion’

It’s one thing when a religious right leader openly admits what we already know–that he and his compatriots would like nothing better than to shred the First Amendment and make Christianity the state religion. It’s quite another when a religious right leader who is a formal partner with the Republican National Committee says it. Well, that’s exactly what happened last night.

David Lane (courtesy The New York Times)
David Lane (courtesy The New York Times)

People for the American Way noticed that session of today’s Southern Republican Leadership Conference in Oklahoma City included a training session co-hosted by the GOP’s faith outreach arm and the American Renewal Project, an outfit that bills itself as a grassroots organization of “people of faith positively affecting public policy.” Last night, the American Renewal Project’s founder and leader, David Lane, gave us a lovely idea of what his idea of “positively affecting public policy” really is. He fired off an email to his supporters in which he openly called for the United States to be declared a Christian nation. The opening paragraph sets the tone.

“Did you realize that America’s Founders established Christianity as the official religion of America in the 13 Original state Constitutions? Then suddenly, following three and half centuries of meteoric rise and cultural distinction, a secular U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 pronounced that the Bible would no longer be the fixed point in which to structure and judge community.”

With apologies to Politifact, this isn’t just wrong, it’s Pants on Fire wrong. Not only did the First Amendment unambiguously forbid Congress from enacting any law “respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” but Article Six of the original Constitution explicitly barred religious tests as a qualification for federal office. Only two states–Rhode Island and Virginia–granted full religious freedom at the time the Constitution was ratified. The others had an official state church or required you to be a Christian (in some cases, a Protestant) to hold office. Most of those establishments were significantly weakened by the turn of the century.

While some state constitutions–including, sadly, that of my state of North Carolina–still require you to believe in God to hold office, those provisions have been unenforceable since 1961, when the the Supreme Court held in Torcaso v. Watkins that such provisions ran counter to the First Amendment. To religious right activists, Torcaso is on the same level of infamy as Abingdon School District v. Schempp–the 1963 case to which Lane refers. Lane and others of his ilk would like nothing better than to shred these decisions and all others that they see as standing in the way of a “Christian nation.”

Lane wrings his hands at how Christians have ceded the nation’s “commanding points” to secularists. He goes on to say that unless this country can “find the chart and compass” from colonial times that led to the decision to “establish Christianity as the official religion in America,” our nation’s survival hangs in the balance.

Believe it or not, this is pretty mild stuff for Lane. Earlier this year, the American Renewal Project helped cosponsor a trip to Israel for RNC delegates. Most of the attention was focused on the other sponsor, the American Family Association. Indeed, that attention resulted in the AFA dumping Bryan Fischer as an official spokesman.

However, Lane is every bit as extreme as Fischer. While helping Rand Paul reach out to social conservatives in 2013 while Paul fils was mulling a presidential bid, Lane penned an op-ed for WorldNetDaily in which he called separation of church and state “a fabricated whopper”cooked up by those evil libruls. He has openly called for using the Bible as the chief textbook in our schools. Not surprisingly, he is a vicious homophobe; he once agreed with a pastor who called gays “parasites” and has predicted homosexuality will lead to this nation’s destruction. In a March interview with The New York Times, he made no bones about his goal–to turn social conservatives into “an army” for the Republican Party.

And yet, he has been openly embraced by RNC chairman Reince Priebus and several Republican presidential hopefuls–including Paul fils, Ted Cruz and Mike Huckabee. His organization has sponsored “Response” prayer rallies that have been hosted by Rick Perry and Bobby Jindal, and is ramping up another one that will be hosted by Nikki Haley in Charleston this coming June. Believe it or not, there’s a lot more where this came from. People for the American Way has compiled an extensive dossier on him dating back to 2009.

So while the GOP claims for the cameras that it wants to broaden its base, behind the scenes it warmly embraces a guy who openly declares he wants to shred the First Amendment. Sounds like the GOP is still using the same playbook that may have peeled off Southern whites, but also turned off so many moderate voters elsewhere that any competent Democratic presidential candidate starts only 25 electoral votes from the presidency. In other words–they have learned and forgotten nothing from the last two decades.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.