Somehow, even after the past few decades of secularization, a significant portion of the country still believes we would all be better off if Americans were even less religious.
A new and extreme understanding of “separation of church and state” has taken hold, which prescribes that anything touched by the government must never mention God. This radical separationism has a hold on the news media and is dominant in the leftward provinces of social media.
The separationists are angry that a neighborhood playground gets government-funded mulch because the owner is a Lutheran church. They are furious about school choice programs that allow parents to spend their vouchers at religious schools. What they object to is the government treating religious institutions the same as nonreligious institutions.
The oddest thing about those making this demand — explicit discrimination against religion — is that many of them see themselves as the champions of the needy and powerless. Meanwhile, the church in America is responsible for a massive share of material aid to the downtrodden.
Scholars at Arizona State University surveyed thousands of religious congregations from dozens of denominations in four cities: Detroit, Philadelphia, Phoenix, and Miami. The researchers also pored over annual reports from churches and synagogues. They found that nearly every religious congregation, from Catholic parishes to Latter-day Saints wards to Jewish synagogues to Methodist churches, provided material support to the needy: Feeding the hungry, teaching English to immigrants, helping the poor pay their bills, supporting pregnant women and their babies, and so on.
The study found that almost all food pantries (86%) in Detroit were faith-based, with many housed in church and mosque houses. Four of the seven highest-ranked addiction recovery programs in Detroit are faith-based. About half of all the charities helping the homeless or those at risk of homelessness are grounded in a church, synagogue, or mosque.
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The ASU study was commissioned by three religious leaders — Rabbi Pinchas Allouche of Scottsdale, Arizona, Cardinal Raymond Burke, and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler — and so they had a bias. However, their findings echo the results found by the likes of Robert Putnam, whose Bowling Alone found that half of all civic activity begins in the church: “Half of all personal philanthropy is religious in character, and half of all volunteering occurs in a religious context.”
The secularists are getting their way, unfortunately, as more Americans are irreligious and fewer go to church. This is bad news if you care about the least among us.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
