Losing Our Religion

Last month in these pages (“Nobody Can Disappoint Like Family,” August 1st) I lamented Governor Sununu’s acquiescence to one of liberalism’s newest tenets. With his signature on SB263, “gender identity,” is now a legally protected status in our schools, on equal anti-discrimination footing with religious belief, sex, or race. Everyone must now accept another person’s self-identification under penalty of law.
Since the governor is okay with increasing the number of protected classes, giving special rights to certain defined groups, I suggest adding political belief to the list. While this would be nice for adults, it is an even more important protection for our children. Just try being a student possessing anything other than far-left views in today’s ultra-liberal classroom.
Before you dismiss this out of hand, look at the trends and project where we are headed. Religion is a protected class. Yet religious faith has been in decline for decades. We’re a different people than the ones who fretted about electing our first Catholic president. My parents’ “mixed marriage” – Catholic/Protestant – was an issue back then in a way it would not be today.
At the same time, political belief has grown in personal importance and intensity to the point where it has become a secular religion, complete with doctrine, testaments, beatitudes, sins, excommunicable offenses and opposition that, to the devotee, fully justifies violence. Onward, Antifa soldiers!
We are increasingly defined by our politics in the way we used to be defined by religion. Our political positions have hardened along well-defined dogmatic lines as our religious beliefs have fractured. A 2018 Pew poll found that 26 percent of Protestants and 28 percent of Catholics believe in a higher power but don’t believe in the God described in the Bible. It’s easier today to find a “spiritual but not religious” Congregationalist than a Scoop Jackson Democrat.
New Hampshire is one of 20 states where no religious group comprises a greater share of residents than the “religiously unaffiliated.” Fully a third of adults in our state report having no religion, according to a 2016 PRRI poll. Nationally, that number runs from 18 percent for the 65-and-older crowd, to 38 percent for 18-29-year-olds.
Gallup polling has tracked the increase in the “nones” – people who have no religious belief (different from the “unaffiliated”) for decades. That number grew from 6 percent to 20 percent from 1998 to today. So where are people grounding their moral and ethical sensibilities as traditional religions decline? I think the answer is political belief.
We see adults acting with religious fervor at political protests, spouting articles of faith and refusing to hear or debate the “blasphemy” of opposing views. They are beyond conversion, often beyond civil conversation. But children are the concern. They are no longer learning about morality and faith in Sunday school. Their belief systems are being formed and reinforced in school .
Merriam-Webster defines religion as “a cause, principle, or system of beliefs held to with ardor and faith.” Think about what’s been happening in our schools. “Faith-based” political propaganda has been replacing science- and logic-based learning since long before the Ten Commandments or Lord’s Prayer were banished.
As examples, students were cheered on as they skipped class to protest our Second Amendment rights. How many of them could explain how the gun-control policies they would force on adults would stop the next mass-shooter? How many of them could define “assault weapon”? How many could cogently relate the Founders’ debates on the issue? How would you predict these protesters would treat a student who came out to support her Second Amendment rights – enshrined in our Bill of Rights and any concept of self-defense, but out of step with today’s hive-minded sensibilities?
Children will lecture any adult who will tolerate their uninformed sanctimony about the evils of plastic straws or the fossil fuels that make their modern lives possible. Do these students know that most plastic waste is dumped by nations with a long history of ignoring international environmental treaties? Have they read the Associated Press report that “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed” – wait for it – “by the year 2000.”? That report was published in 1989. This climate con has been going on for longer than they’ve been alive.
It is impossible to quantify the harm caused by institutions that, from teachers to administrators to textbook publishers, toe the liberal line often at the expense of nuance or truth, or even openness to discourse. Articles about politicizing the classroom used to focus on colleges; now they report abuses in our K-12 system. Activism and “social justice” have shouldered out the great works of great men who had the audacity to be men but are now derided for their lack of 21st century sensibilities.
Brave is the student who would espouse a political view against not only a majority of his peers, but also the person grading his work. That brave student deserves support. That brave student deserves – and increasingly needs – to be part of a protected class. In this, New Hampshire should lead the way.

Ken Gorrell welcomes your comments at kengorrell@gmail.com