Yes, we Americans do have religious freedom, more than we practice in fact. Last Monday, January 16, carried the designation of "Religious Freedom Day". A little recognized occasion it is often lost in the commemoration of MLK Jr Day. It does exist, however, and began under the presidency of Bill Clinton. It deserves greater recognition and dissemination through a broad based educational effort. A description of the day and suggestions for how to observe it may be found at www.religiousfreedomday.com.
I had not heard of the day before this year. I have never heard it announced in one of my churches. I never heard of it while volunteering in a public school over a period of four years. I have never heard my Baptist state convention promote it. A quick search of Baptist Press articles showed the last one on the subject was an opinion piece written in 2007 indicating to me the subject is not a huge, newsworthy topic even in the conservative press.
Why is it not a major topic? One of the universal complaints I find in the churches I serve is the terrible thing our government did by taking Bible reading and prayer out of our public schools. The government has taken steps to remove state and school administration mandated Bible reading as a devotional exercise and prayer out of the daily routine. I for one have no problem denying our public school children the necessity of having to hear devotional readings from the Quran, the Teachings of the Compassionate Buddha, the Book of Mormon, the Book of the Dead, or the Bhagavad-Gita. If we insist in our free country that our children hear the Bible read each day, those same children will also be required to hear readings from other works considered sacred by their adherents. You cannot have it both ways in a free country!
My suggestion is to make the most of the freedom we have. As the old saying goes, "As long as there are tests in school, there will be prayer in school." I can vouch for that. There is no law anywhere that says a student cannot bring a Bible to school and read it for personal benefit when it does not distract from the classroom efforts of the teacher. A student can read the Bible during lunch, in a study period, or standing in an open hallway. Anyone who tries to interfere can be accused of harassment.
Far more important than having prayer and Bible reading in our schools is having prayer and Bible reading in our homes and in our churches, yes in our churches! Before we condemn the government for taking state-mandated prayer and Bible reading out of the public arena, we need to see how much we do in our private settings. Religious Freedom Day should judge how much time we spend in our homes with the Bible open. The Day should judge how much time we spend in prayer (beyond the cursory "Thanks for the grub, God."). The Day should judge how important it is to us that our children see that prayer and Bible reading are important to their parents. We can do this without fear that someone will break into our homes and arrest us for practicing our faith or be waiting outside our church doors with guns and hand grenades to kill us all.
Think for a moment about the last time you were in a Christian worship service. How much time was spent reading the Bible? How much time was spent in prayer? What was the subject of the prayer? Where are our people when it comes time for small group Bible study? Are all the ones who want our public schools to read the Bible taking advantage of the freedom to study it themselves at home and other places?
Worship for the Christian is a process of personal acknowledgment of who God is and the individual's place before God. That process can take the form of silent waiting, singing, listening to both the reading of the Bible and its explanation/application. It will include prayer that is both personal and guided. Yet with all this, how much comes through our traditional worship services that says the Bible should be the handbook on life for every believer and that prayer is the method of communicating with the most important Person in your life. Better use it!
Religious Freedom Day for the American Christian should be a day on which we celebrate our freedom to read the Bible and not be forced to read someone else's holy book. We should celebrate that we can pray and not worry about someone spying on us to see what we are doing. We should celebrate that we have the freedom to try to convince all those other people who read something else that they are missing out on the Truth, and we don't have to worry about being locked up in jail or beheaded for doing it. We must educate our membership at all levels of our religious organizations about the freedoms and responsibility we have as free American Christians. We just need to be compassionate and live out our freedom the way our Lord taught and practiced it.
