With the overturning of Dobbs, the majority of the Supreme Court of the United States decided to impose their religious views on the entire country. This is a violation of their oath to uphold the Constitution, and a clear slap in the face to all the founders who believed the separation of church and state was imperative to the success of the nation.
On a highway near me, there is a business with the sign that says John 3:16. This is also one of Tim Tebow’s favorite facial Bible verses.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 )
The other favorite with evangelicals is this one:
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 4:16)
As over-the-top as the gospel of John is, with Jesus proclaiming his godhood over and over again, as he never did in the other Gospels, he never demands that anyone follow him. He merely offers.
Fast-forward 400 years we come to St. Augustine of Hippo, perhaps the most important early Christian theologian whose impact we still feel today. St. Augustine believed that man had free will to sin, but no free will to not believe in Christ.
According to PRL Brown, in St. Augustine's Attitude to Religious Coercion,
“He went on to justify religious coercion with a thoroughness and coherence which is quite as much part of his character as is his candour: and so Augustine has appeared to generations of religious liberals as ‘le prince et patriarche des persécuteurs.’” (the Prince and Patriarch of the Persecutors)
St. Augustine was the theological father of the Inquisition. Better to torture a man to death and save his eternal soul from damnation then allow his assured damnation for his not being right with God.
Obviously, the founding fathers roundly rejected this. Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes on the State of Virginia:
The error seems not sufficiently eradicated, that the operations of the mind, as well as the acts of the body, are subjects to the coercion of the laws. But our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted, we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
The clear conflict we have now is between those who seek to impose their religious views on an entire nation, through the coercion of law, and those, like Jefferson, who reject such an imposition. (I think “render unto Caesar” Jesus would agree as well.)
Even intellectual bumpkins like Lauren Boebert have learned what they are supposed to say: there is no separation of church and state in the Constitution. She is, of course, ignorant in an epic way, but she has correctly deduced what this radical Supreme Court is telling us.
If this goes unchallenged, they will have their way.