On this day in 1911, Nelle Reagan gave birth to a baby boy who would later become our nation’s 40th president. Volumes have been written on President Ronald Reagan’s wit, wisdom, and legacy. One of the many memorable and widely quoted phrases of Reagan’s career is, “If we ever forget that we are One Nation Under God, then we will be a Nation gone under.”
The original context of the statement is even more relevant today than it was when Reagan first said it in 1984. He was commenting on the enactment of the “Equal Access Bill,” a law that was passed in response to several court decisions that had essentially removed any reference to religion from public schools.
In his remarks leading up to the famous quote, Reagan noted, “In 1963, the Court banned the reading of the Bible in our public schools. From that point on, the courts pushed the meaning of the ruling ever outward, so that now our children are not allowed voluntary prayer. We even had to pass a law – we passed a special law in the Congress just a few weeks ago – to allow student prayer groups the same access to school rooms after classes that a Young Marxist Society, for example, would already enjoy with no opposition…
“…Once religion had been made vulnerable, a series of assaults were made in one court after another on one issue after another. Cases were started to argue against tax-exempt status for churches. Suits were brought to abolish the words ‘Under God’ from the Pledge of Allegiance and to remove ‘In God We Trust’ from public documents and from our currency. . . Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience…without God there is the coarsening of the society, and without God democracy will not and cannot long endure…”
More than 40 years later, the expansion of the Establishment Clause past its original intent, to the detriment of the Free Exercise Clause, has been curtailed through an overdue course correction by the U.S. Supreme Court. Attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom won the landmark case of Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer, in which the Supreme Court ruled in Trinity Lutheran’s favor that the state of Missouri could not exclude religious organizations and individuals from generally available public benefits simply because of their beliefs.
In another decision bolstering the Free Exercise Clause, the Court ruled in favor of Jack Phillips in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission. The Court condemned the Colorado Civil Rights Commission’s hostility toward Phillips’ religious beliefs. And in 303 Creative v. Elenis, the Court clarified that the Free Speech Clause prohibits government coercion of citizens to speak messages they don’t believe.
Considering the cases since its passage, Reagan’s remarks on the Equal Access Act seem prescient, if not prophetic. As people of all faiths can agree, the right of conscience—to live and speak truth—must always be vigilantly guarded. It brings to mind, on this, the 115th anniversary of his birth, another of his most famous admonitions:
“[Freedom is] never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”
And so, my colleagues at Alliance Defending Freedom are still standing in defense of the same rights and fundamental truths Reagan identified as under threat, and others he could not have imagined. Just last month, we represented Madison Kenyon, Mary Kate Marshall, and Lainey Armistead as we assisted the states of West Virginia and Idaho in their defense of state laws protecting women’s sports. State laws may have been the subject of the oral arguments in State of West Virginia v. B.P.J. & Little v. Hecox, but make no mistake, truth was on trial. The truth that men and women are equal in dignity and value as bearers of the Imago Dei, but fundamentally different in biology.
In the case of Foote v. Ludlow School Committee, Massachusetts parents are currently waiting to hear if the U.S. Supreme Court will take up their case. School officials enacted a gender-identity policy that excludes parents from any knowledge or involvement in key decisions regarding their children’s care, blatantly violating parents’ fundamental right to direct their child’s upbringing, healthcare, and education. Hopefully, the Court will take this case and unmistakably declare parental rights are fundamental rights, implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, and government exists to protect those rights, not invade the sacred space between parent and child.
At a presentation of a section of the Berlin Wall at his Presidential Library in 1990, Reagan said, “Never give up the fight for freedom–a fight which, though it may never end, is the most ennobling known to man.”
As our clients’ courage emboldens others to bravely take a stand, there is hope that freedom will be secured for yet another generation. And whether they realize it or not, these ordinary Americans of extraordinary perseverance are winning one more for the Gipper.
Lathan Watts is vice president of public affairs at Alliance Defending Freedom and its sister organization ADF Action.