Reading Leonard Presberg’s column about the supposed abuses of the spirit of July 4th by malicious Christians, I kept thinking to myself, “What is he talking about?”

What specific examples can Mr. Presberg provide of a public school promoting Christianity, let alone one specific sect or denomination? Which politicians are claiming moral superiority because of their Christian faith and dismissing all others as “less than”? His only example of egregious Christian behavior was a personal anecdote of some parents saying that Jesus didn’t require their children to wear masks. Hmm. 

When you are arguing against a position, it’s proper to “steel man” your opponent’s argument by giving the best version of it. What Mr. Presberg did instead was to “straw man” conservatives and Christians as self-righteous buffoons without having the decency to provide any real quotes or evidence to back up his accusations. 

But moving beyond the sloppiness of Mr. Presberg’s screed, the substance of his argument doesn’t hold up very well either. 

Instead of living in an America where Christians are imposing their beliefs on school children, we see schools promoting aggressively secular ideologies like the LGBTQ version, where young children are forced to accept various LGBTQ ideas and lifestyles that often go directly against their private religious beliefs, be they Christian, Muslim, Jewish, or whatever faith (since most world faiths are not on board with the tenets of the LGBTQ lifestyle).

In fact, the Supreme Court just issued a decision that allowed parents to exempt their elementary age children from having to read pro-LGBTQ books because a local Maryland school board refused to let parents have that option. 

So, again, which side is imposing their views, Mr. Presberg?

Or take the nefarious actions of the Biden administration, whom Mr. Presberg no doubt supported. Their investigation and prosecutions of pro-lifers and traditional Catholics is well documented, up to and including armed raids on the homes of pro-life activists and incarceration of grandmas. Meanwhile, they barely lifted a finger to go after and arrest those who burned and vandalized churches and pro-life clinics. This hardly seems to be the dystopian Handmaid’s-Tale-like imposition of Christianity by the government that Mr. Presberg tries to conjure up. 

While Mr  Presberg dreams of a purely secular, maybe even atheistic form of government, he conveniently omits that our Founding Fathers were men of Christian faith and considered it vital for the nation that its citizenry build their lives and inform their decisions based on that same faith. 

In fact, his hero, Thomas Jefferson, was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, which refers to God four times in its relatively short length. And, significantly, it affirms that we are “endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” Not really a secularist, atheistic view point, is it?

States that have been atheistic have been some of the most tyrannical, murderous regimes in history. One need only look at the tens of millions of lives destroyed by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao to confirm this obvious point. 

For if our values are not based on God, then they have no solid, transcendent basis and are determined merely by the most powerful, often to the detriment of the most vulnerable and weak. 

And spare me the trite assertion that many wars were fought because of religion. The European countries and principalities that fought during the Reformation also fought before and after it. Mankind, unfortunately, will find many reasons to fight with each other, some of them good and some of them not. Just because religion is abused in such a way doesn’t mean religion itself is false or without merit. 

Many of those wars were not so much fought over specific theological differences as they were the result of the political conflicts created by certain countries breaking away from the Catholic Church. Definitely not a good moment for Christianity, but also not something upon which you can base a dismissal of the entire religion. It’s just more complicated than that. 

And while it is true that Christian churches and leaders justified slavery in America, which is to our shame, it is also true that the abolitionist movement was primarily a Christian one and that the Catholic Church began condemning slavery, especially racial slavery, as early as the 15th century.

To try to condemn Christianity because some of its believers supported of slavery is like condemning America wholesale because of slavery itself. We all make mistakes in our life on an individual level and on a national level. The question is, are you able to overcome them and do what’s right eventually? I would argue that we were able to do so primarily because of the Christian values enshrined in our founding documents which established the equality of all peoples and their unalienable rights given by God. Sometimes we didn’t always practice what we preached, but eventually we got it right.

One thing is for sure: Western civilization has achieved more than any other in terms of political freedom, economic prosperity, scientific progress, and general well-being. This is because it is founded on Christian principles. The countries that have tried to remove these Christian principles from their political and societal structures have failed catastrophically and produced some of the greatest horrors in the history of mankind.

So, I can’t be quite so sanguine about the utopian prospects of an atheistic secular state as Mr. Presberg is. I’ll stick with the divine inspiration and aspiration of our founding documents and our people in general. People of other faiths are of course welcomed and given the freedom to practice their faith as they see fit. We are not anywhere near being a theocratic state like Iran or Saudi Arabia and for Mr. Presburg to even hint at something like that is simply ridiculous, especially on the 4th of July!

God bless you, Mr. Presberg, and God bless the USA. 

TreyHoffman

Peachtree City, GA