American Tributes – Josh Hawley: ‘Religious Liberty Invented America’
As part of Breitbart’s America 250 coverage, we proudly present American Tributes. This special section showcases original videos sent to us from members of Congress, the Cabinet, and the Administration… all thematically connected by one simple premise: love of country.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) focused on America’s foundation of religious liberty in his video to Breitbart News to commemorate the country’s semiquincentennial.
“When I think about America at 250, I think about the religious beliefs, the religious commitment, the incredible courage of religious believers that founded this country and has defined this country from the very beginning,” he said. “You know, it’s often been said—it’s 100 percent true—that America didn’t invent religious liberty. Religious liberty invented America.”
“There’s nothing more foundational to our country, nothing more foundational to our Constitution, than the right of conscience and the right of religious liberty, the right to follow that conscience and to worship God. And you think about it, that has been at the very foundation of who we are as a people,” he added. “It’s what gives us our right of freedom of association; it’s what gives us our right of freedom of press; it’s what gives us our right of freedom of assembly. All of those things started with the right to religious liberty, the right to worship God. It’s why this country was founded in the first place.”
Indeed, religious freedom has been intertwined with the story of America since the Separatists, along with the rest of the Pilgrims, settled Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620.
Over 150 years after the Pilgrims settled Plymouth, the Declaration of Independence, which becomes 250 years old on July 4, famously declared in its second paragraph that a creator has endowed all men with “certain unalienable Rights,” including “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” And ratified more than a decade after the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights guaranteed religious liberty under the First Amendment.
Hawley noted in the video that progressives have repeatedly attacked religious liberty in recent decades and called for returning God to the “center of the public square.”
“Sadly, what we’ve seen for decades now is an attempt by the left to erase this fundamental part of our history, to pretend that America is just a secular country, we’ve never had anything to do with religious faith, religious faith is a threat to the American way of life. No, religious faith is at the foundation of the American way of life,” Hawley said. “Religious faith is at the foundation of our personal and individual rights as Americans, and it’s time that we reclaimed that heritage. It’s time that we put religious faith, that we put God back at the center of the public square.”
“We should say to believers, ‘You ought to be able to go and pray in public, you ought to be able to go and pray in the classroom, you ought to be able to put up the Ten Commandments in a classroom or in a public building.’ Why? Because it’s our heritage, it’s what we were founded on, it’s what makes us unique as a country, and by the way, it’s what secures the rights that we hold most dear,” he added. “The religious liberty is what made America—it’s what’s going to save America and keep us strong for the next 250 years, and that’s what I’m looking forward to fighting for.”
