WASHINGTON, DC, July 2 — According to several authorities on the subject, the progressive socialists in America do not discriminate against any particular religion; like their communist forbearers, they seek to do away with religion, period.
Bear in mind, Joseph Stalin banned religion in establishing the Soviet Union. Historian Steven Merritt Miner, author of Stalin’s Holy War: Religion, Nationalism, and Alliance Politics says, “He saw this as a way of getting rid of a past that was holding people back and marching towards the future of science and progress.” Sound familiar?
The New Jersey Board of Education went so far as to shock their community by doing away with Christmas, Hanukkah, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The kids would still get their holidays, according to the board, but they would be known as “days off.” The unanimous decision to remove the holiday names from the academic calendar was allegedly in response to a backlash over an effort to rename the Columbus Day holiday to Indigenous People’s Day. But there were those who believed the intent was to limit the observance of religious holidays. For whatever their reasoning, it was an insult to those citizens who celebrate religious holidays. And so, the decision was reversed.
Kelly Shackelford, president and chief counsel at the First Liberty Institute notes that: Since 1940, litigation on religious liberty has exploded at an alarming rate in nearly every area of religious life: “school prayer, legislative prayer, release time education, religious land use, distribution of religious literature, conscientious objection, wearing religious head coverings in military service, the Pledge of Allegiance, religious beard length and so forth.”
The Bill of Rights Institute says that the first Supreme Court case involving Freedom of Religion was heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1879 and it wasn’t until 1940 when another case came before the Court.
As unlikely as it is, there is a danger that in the end the socialist movement might get its way by ridding us of any official recognition of religious holidays. Fortunately, the majority still rules and is not ready to throw in the towel.
As the Heritage Foundation put it: “freedom to live according to vastly different religious beliefs has allowed men and women of different faiths to live, work, learn, and worship peacefully side by side. Any effort to repress our freedom to worship, teach, and live out our beliefs is an attack not just on human dignity, but on the very foundation that has made America strong.” The organization points out that religious congregations — 350,000 of them — help some 70 million citizens annually, providing more than $44 billion of services annually such as schooling, pregnancy resources, soup kitchens, homeless shelters and adoption resources.
Perhaps it is time for us, as a nation, to recall the words of the late President Ronald Reagan: “The time has come to turn to God and reassert our trust in Him for the healing of America – our country is in need of and ready for a spiritual renewal.”