Whatever happened to religious liberty? The story you\u2019ll hear at a typical university goes something like this: America was founded on the principle of a strict separation between church and state, in which the government was to always maintain a kind of secular neutrality and treat all religions equally. However, being people of their time, the founders continued to prefer Christianity and to live in a way that was counter to their own founding principles. But by the mid-twentieth century, America began to lay hold of the true religious freedom promised in her founding principles, largely through the courage of a new Supreme Court. But now, radical religious fundamentalists are seeking to impose their religious ideals onto government, threatening to destroy our newly flowering liberty. But as dominant as this narrative has become, at least a few scholars are presenting an alternative story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Steven Douglas Smith<\/a>, Professor of Law at the University of San Diego in California, is one such scholar. His academic and legal interest in America\u2019s concept and practice of religious freedom has spanned decades. In 1995, Smith began challenging the standard historical narrative, in his first published book Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom<\/em>.[1]<\/a><\/sup> Now, twenty years later, Smith has offered an alternative story (a revised narrative) in The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom<\/em> that paints a different historical picture.[2]<\/a><\/sup> Smith argues that religious fundamentalists are not to blame for the loss of religious liberty. In Smith\u2019s revised narrative, the secularists themselves have taken up the fundamentalist position and methods, and they are culpable for undoing the nineteenth-century American settlement on religious freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 1. Steven D. Smith, Foreordained Failure: The Quest for a Constitutional Principle of Religious Freedom<\/em> (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995). <\/p> 2. Steven D. Smith, The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom <\/em>(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014). All parenthetical page number citations in this book review are from this edition. <\/p> Before he critiques it, Smith begins his book by summarizing the standard story of religious freedom in America, which he says includes five themes. First, Americans were \u201cEnlightened innovators\u201d (1). The founders who framed the Constitution \u201ccommitted themselves . . . to church-state separation and the free exercise of religion . . . [and they initiated] a novel and even radical \u2018lively experiment\u2019\u201d (1). Simply put, \u201cAmerican founders, freed up by the Enlightenment, boldly broke from [a] centuries-old pattern\u201d of \u201cpolitical and religious authorities . . . [imposing] religious orthodoxies on their subjects\u201d (1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, the First Amendment was \u201cmonumental\u201d and \u201cmeaning-full\u201d (2). The \u201cFirst Amendment\u2019s religion clauses embraced sweeping commitments to preventing government from sponsoring or intruding in religion, to ensuring that citizens of all faith (or of none) would be treated equally, and to keeping government religiously neutral and secular\u201d (2). Smith says, in the standard story, these commitments \u201cwere in some sense contained or implicit in the First Amendment from the outset\u201d (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, though the founders were indeed enlightened, they continued for a time to live according to the older principles of religion and civics. The \u201cprinciples embodied in the First Amendment were not realized overnight . . . [and] the new nation persisted for generations in practices that were fundamentally incompatible with constitutional principles\u201d (3). This was a \u201clong, dark interlude\u201d before the illumination could prevail across the land\u201d (3).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourth, the modern (i.e., twentieth-century) American legal court realized the implicit principles that had been previously contradicted or neglected. Smith says, \u201cBeginning in the 1940s . . . and especially from the 1960s on, a now more courageously committed Supreme Court acted to redeem the constitutional promise of religious freedom\u201d (3). It was not that the modern courts were innovative, according to the standard story, but that previous generations of American legislators and jurists were self-contradictory for one reason of another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifth, \u201cconservative religious\u201d citizens and activists in America are now retreating from those original constitutional principles (4). Smith writes, \u201cIn recent decades, the so-called Religious Right has become active and politically influential, and the American political system has accordingly experienced a retreat from or even degradation of the constitutional principles of religious freedom\u201d (4). In the standards story, religious fundamentalists are to blame for modern American threats to religious liberty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response to this standard story, Smith writes, \u201cIn good conscience I can concede, cheerfully, this much: the oft-told, much beloved story of religious freedom in America is not wholly false . . . And yet a collection of partial truths can combine, as we know, to make up a tale that is, in the aggregate, profoundly misleading\u201d (3). However, Smith goes on to say directly, \u201cAggregated, the standard themes add up to a story that is, if not flatly false, at least fundamentally misleading\u201d (6). Then he offers a \u201crevised version\u201d that he says is a \u201ccomplement to and corrective of the standard story\u201d (12).<\/p>\n\n\n\n In his revised view, Smith provides what he believes are the five themes of American religious freedom, in direct contrast to the five themes provided by the prevailing narrative. First, \u201cAmerican religious freedom [was] a (mostly Christian, marginally pagan) retrieval and consolidation\u201d of two medieval themes, \u201cfreedom of the church\u201d and \u201cfreedom of the \u2018inner church\u2019 of conscience,\u201d mixed with Enlightenment pluralism (7). Thus, though the founders may have been \u201cenlightened\u201d (i.e., bearing some marks of the philosophical developments of their day), they mostly argued <\/a>on the basis of historic Christian reasoning. In other words, their rationale was Christian (not secular), but distinctly Protestant (not Roman Catholic).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, \u201cthe religion clauses of the First Amendment were understood at the time as doing nothing especially noteworthy\u201d (8). Rather, as Smith described,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the central purpose of the clauses was simply to reaffirm the jurisdictional status quo . . . [namely,] matters involving the establishment and exercise of religion would remain the business of the states, as nearly everyone agreed they should be. (8)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, the First Amendment was not in any way intended to provide the foundation for innovation, nor to move toward religious disestablishment at the state level.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, \u201cthe revised story sees the [American] Republic\u2019s first century and a half as the period in which the country\u2019s distinctive and distinctively promising approach to religious pluralism . . . was worked out and progressively realized\u201d (9). During that time, \u201cprovidentialist interpretations\u201d and \u201csecularist interpretations\u201d of both religious freedom and the nation itself <\/a>were left unresolved and open to contestation (9). Thus, this period was not dark, but rather a particularly bright season of genuine religious liberty in America, wherein citizens with greater and lesser religious convictions could enjoy some features of American jurisprudence. No single group was a clear and comprehensive winner, but both claimed benefits and made concessions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fourth, \u201cWhen the [Supreme] Court decided to intervene aggressively in the nation\u2019s religious affairs . . . it in essence dissolved the principle of open contestation that had been central to the American settlement, elevated . . . the secular interpretation . . . to the status of hard constitutional law, and proceeded to impose that interpretation on the nation\u201d (10). Rather than maintain the undecided American settlement in which either religious or <\/em>secular arguments could win the day (depending on the case), secularists ascended the throne and condemned religious argumentation and rationale as heresy. This development was a reversal<\/em> and not a realization<\/em> of American religious liberty. Secularists declared victory over the religious and demanded that all play by secular rules in the arenas of civics and law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fifth, \u201cthe classic rationales for religious freedom, because they were and are theological in nature, are thought by many theorists and jurists to be inadmissible for purposes of public justification\u201d (11). Smith admits, as the standard story claims, that \u201cthe status of religious freedom is currently in jeopardy\u201d in America (11). \u201c<\/a>But,\u201d he says,<\/p>\n\n\n\n the threat comes not so much from religious conservatives who reject constitutional commitments as, perhaps paradoxically, from secular egalitarians who purport to be carrying out the commands of the Constitution’s (self-subverting) commitment to religious freedom. (11)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, the secularists in America today are not the heroes of religious liberty, but the villains who are destroying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith\u2019s revised narrative may be debated, and no doubt the standard story of American religious freedom has won the day. However, it would seem that Smith\u2019s conclusion is indisputable: the \u201cgenuine neutrality\u201d of government with regard to religion \u201cis impossible\u201d (130). It is so, as Smith argues, because \u201cthe seemingly irresistible appeal of neutrality turns out to rest on a spurious promise\u201d\u2014namely that neutrality is \u201clittle more than a sort of political optical illusion\u201d (130). As Smith points out, neutrality itself \u201cis consistent with some religious positions but inconsistent with others\u201d (130). So too, \u201cmany or most or maybe all laws and government policies . . . will be consistent with some religious (and secular) views but inconsistent with others\u201d (130).<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the Christianized culture of American civil order eroded, the Christian principles upon which secular neutrality relied from the beginning have become inadmissible in civil discourse and judicial argument. This has exposed the reality that there is no such thing as an irreligious person. The secularists may refuse to admit their own religion as such, but if it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, and swims like a duck, then we must acknowledge the proverbial duck for what it is\u2014a type of secular religion. Smith writes, \u201cUnder the constraint of professed commitments to neutrality . . . modern secular orthodoxies typically refuse to acknowledge their character as orthodoxies\u201d (137). In other words, if a group anathematizes some (or any) religious orthodoxies, then whatever you call the group doing the anathematizing, it is some form of competing religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When one honestly <\/a>observes the principles and practices of secularism, it takes the form and function of a religion. Smith makes this very argument, and he lays out three features of \u201csecular egalitarianism\u201d as a \u201csecular version of Christendom\u201d (i.e., a secular version of the church-state merger) (153). First, says Smith, \u201ccontemporary proponents of secular egalitarianism view equality as the foundation of our legal political order\u201d (154). Equality\u2014as defined by secular axioms\u2014is the dogmatic (i.e., religious) parameter within which all legislation and judicial judgment must reside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Second, Smith writes, \u201cthe proponents of secular equalities often seem serenely untroubled by doubt\u201d (154). <\/a>As much as any faith-filled religious devotee, secularists are quite committed to their fundamental assumptions without sensing any need to justify them. Secularists often accuse religious fundamentalists of believing in unjustified presuppositions, but it is the common secularist practice to do precisely this\u2014for example, \u201cequality\u201d and \u201cneutrality\u201d are paramount for secularists, but they offer no consistent definition and give no rationale to justify their importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Third, Smith concludes, \u201csecular egalitarianism . . . is not content to regulate outward conduct but instead seeks to penetrate into hearts and minds\u201d (154). Just like religious dogma, secularists demand both obedience and belief. For example, secularists are not satisfied merely with equal treatment under the law<\/em> for same-sex couples, they instead require that every citizen believe <\/em>that gay marriage is marriage. Likewise, the proliferation of hate crime legislation proves that secularists are not satisfied to condemn a murderer (or assailant, etc.) for their external crime, they also<\/em> require penalties for internal motives. In fact, they judge the intentions of the heart as more heinous than the crime itself\u2014as is manifest in the legal penalties for each.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These three features of secular egalitarianism\u2014doctrine, dogma, and devotion\u2014prove that it is as much a religion as any of those it aims to eradicate. One of the religious axioms of secularism may be that secularism is not a religion, but this is simply false. What is apparent is that secularists are effectively claiming religious superiority while simultaneously denying the status of a religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With all of this insightful history and judicial analysis, Smith leaves the reader quite disappointed by offering no recourse or solution. He seems to indicate that traditional Christians and those who take a providentialist (rather than secular) view of American religion liberty ought to at least take comfort in the fact that the Supreme Court has inconsistently applied the secular doctrines in recent decades (158). This is little comfort, however, when the high court is so easily swayed by the placement of a simple majority of justices. It seems only a matter of time before secular judges will more thoroughly and consistently apply the secular religion to American civics and law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Smith also says that \u201cthe fate of religious freedom will likely depend to a large extent on the fortunes of \u2018the church\u2019\u201d (i.e., Christianity) in America (164). He considers, \u201cif the church continues to be a vigorous and vital institution in society, religious freedom will probably be okay\u201d (164). However, Smith makes no mention of where Christian vigor or vitality should be aimed or how these might be exercised. Furthermore, many Christians in America are surely desirous of something better than \u201cprobably okay\u201d <\/a>regarding religious liberty. Such a sentence is laughable when one assesses the dangers facing traditional Christians in America right now\u2014from job loss to political ostracism and from social condemnation to academic restraint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite his insistence that things will \u201cprobably be okay,\u201d Smith concludes with a dire warning: \u201cif the right to religious freedom in [a] jurisdictional sense is not secure . . . then all other rights will be likewise imperiled\u201d (169). In other words, if beliefs and practices argued and grounded from an explicitly Christian perspective is not an enforceable legal right, then all other rights can be lost as well. Christians, therefore, ought to be far more aggressive in their fight and aim for something far more substantial than a religious liberty that is \u201cprobably okay\u201d (169). The stakes are too high. Christians may not only lose the freedom to live consistently as a Christian, but they may also lose their freedom to live as Americans\u2014at least in any way resembling the American freedoms that marked the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n With this book, Steven Smith has given conservative and religious proponents of religious liberty an alternative narrative that reassures them that they are not crazy. Secularists are indeed on the attack, attempting to eradicate all religions but their own. Such an offering by Smith is sure to be warmly welcomed, since it vindicates what many religious conservatives know in their bones and what some of them have discovered for themselves by reading from the primary sources. For this, Smith is due a great deal of gratitude\u2014indeed, his historical and judicial research and analysis are worthy of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And yet, what religious conservatives really want to know right now is what can be done. How can we preserve what religious liberty we have now? And how can we regain the ground already lost? Writers like Smith seem unable or unwilling to acknowledge the obvious: since neutrality is impossible, and since secularists \u201care not eager to accommodate religious deviations\u201d from their own set of dogma, then it must be time for Christians to (without apology or hesitation) refuse accommodation to the secularists (156). The curtain has been lifted, and the fundamental conflict has been exposed. This is a new religious war. All religious soldiers must come to their battlements (secular <\/a>devotees and Christians), and let the fighting <\/a>commence. God willing, it will be a bloodless battle, but a battle it must be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Religious freedom in America is often misunderstood as religion having no bearing on the state. But is that what our founders intended? Read on as pastor Marc Minter reviews Steven Douglas Smith’s The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom, showing how a right understanding of America’s history of religious freedom can help guide her future. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1049,"featured_media":33279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"Five Myths Secularism Wants You to Believe About America\u2019s Religious Freedom","_seopress_titles_desc":"Religious freedom in America is often misunderstood as religion having no bearing on the state. But is that what our founders intended? Read on as pastor Marc Minter reviews Steven Douglas Smith's The Rise and Decline of American Religious Freedom, showing how a right understanding of America's history of religious freedom can help guide her future.","_seopress_robots_index":"","inline_featured_image":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"[]","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[32,12,1977,38],"tags":[1395,398,2455,467,833,1074,82,84,2433,2456,1437,122],"scripture-reference":[],"post_folder":[],"ppma_author":[2448],"class_list":["post-33258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","category-concise","category-november-2025","category-theme","tag-america","tag-bible","tag-first-amendment","tag-government","tag-history","tag-kingdom","tag-political-theology","tag-politics","tag-reading","tag-religious-freedom","tag-secularism","tag-theology"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/willian-justen-de-vasconcellos-_Ex9xsGIKbk-unsplash-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-01-13 11:18:17","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"authors":[{"term_id":2448,"user_id":1049,"is_guest":0,"slug":"marc-minter","display_name":"Marc Minter","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/marc-minter.jpg","url2x":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/marc-minter.jpg"},"author_category":"1","job_title":"","church_city_state":"","last_name":"","first_name":"","church_site":"","user_url":"","description":"Marc Minter<\/strong> has served as the Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church Diana, in Diana, Texas, since 2014. He is married to Cassie and has two sons, Micah and Malachi. He has an M.Div. from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a Ph.D. student in historical theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary."}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1049"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33258"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33285,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33258\/revisions\/33285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33258"},{"taxonomy":"scripture-reference","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/scripture-reference?post=33258"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=33258"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christoverall.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=33258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
<\/h6>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\nThe Myth of Religious Freedom<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Recovering the American Tradition<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Illusion of Neutrality<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Religion of Secular Egalitarianism<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Is this a New Religious War?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n