Texas leaders need a civics lesson

All across Texas, public schools serve 5.4 million schoolchildren of all races, classes and creeds. During this contentious election cycle, Texas children in these schools will be learning about America’s electoral process and our nation’s constitutional promise. In their classes on civics, social studies and American government, these students will learn about freedoms that every American is guaranteed by our Bill of Rights.

As a Baptist pastor who serves Texas’ public schools at Pastors for Texas Children, I am grateful that these schools serve our state’s beloved children. I am also glad that they teach Texas kids about the constitutional values that Americans strive to live up to every day. We are not a perfect nation, but every child who learns about her constitutional rights in a public school brings us closer to being a more perfect union.

Right now, it is especially urgent that Texas kids learn about our constitutional vision of religious freedom and church-state separation. The Constitution’s framers wisely kept halls of government and houses of worship at a healthy distance from one another. This has been indispensably good for church and state alike.

Without undue government interference, churches like my small Baptist congregation in Fort Worth are free to practice our faith under the guidance of Scripture, the Holy Spirit, prayer, and the individual priesthood of every member in our fellowship.

Likewise, our local, state and federal governments are free — and constitutionally bound — to serve all of their constituents, not just those of a particular religious or spiritual tradition.

Church-state separation protects good governance, the inviolate right of conscience of all believers and the integrity of our nation’s democracy.

That’s why it’s particularly disappointing to me as a pastor, an American citizen and a resident of Texas to see our state’s leaders violate this constitutional guarantee. In place of our constitutional vision of religious freedom, these leaders have chosen Christian nationalism, a wicked ideology that threatens the nation’s public life and our churches’ public faith.

Christian nationalism “demands Christianity be privileged by the state and implies that to be a good American, one must be Christian.” It confuses American and Christian identity, putting our faith and our nation at risk. Although thousands of Christians have publicly rejected Christian nationalism, it still runs rampant in Texas and across the United States.

At the highest levels of our state, elected officials have betrayed the constitutional promises of religious freedom they swore to uphold when they took office. Gov. Greg Abbott, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton have promoted dangerous ideas that blur the constitutional line between religious freedom and the integrity of an independent government.

Abbott has made the ridiculous claims that “God’s influence in our country is threatened” and that “Christians are under secular attacks.” When local coronavirus health concerns closed schools, Paxton made exception for religious schools. Patrick has called for “biblically based” government policy. In 2013, Patrick told a Baptist congregation that “there is no such thing as separation of church and state.” Such falsehood isn’t just historically untrue. It is dangerous.

Unfortunately, Abbott, Patrick and Paxton have plenty of assistance backing up their Christian nationalist agenda. Wealthy right-wing donors have long bankrolled the rise of Christian nationalist extremism in Texas statehouse races, and their money has shifted the Texas Republican Party from the compassionate center to the radical Christian nationalist fringe.

Abbott, Patrick, Paxton and their network of donors and political influencers frequently try to pass off Christian nationalism as keeping America great or defending the Constitution. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this ideology threatens America and the U.S. Constitution, just as it threatens the liberty of Christians who want to practice our faith without facing government overreach.

If Christian nationalist kingpins in this state want to ensure our nation’s greatness and defend the U.S. Constitution, they should spend a little less time in the statehouse and a little more time in Texas’ public school classrooms. There, they would meet dedicated teachers and staff who are working day in and day out so Texas’ kids can learn about America’s fundamental and foundational principle of religious freedom. Maybe they’d even learn a thing or two themselves.