Okies may be acclimated to bad weather, but when it rains, it pours. Ushering in the new month, Gov. Kevin Stitt issued a groundbreaking executive order in support of “religious freedom.” Oklahoma.gov proclaimed it’s going to “make Oklahoma the strongest defender of religious liberty in the nation,” but Executive Order 2025-08 shakes the very foundation of American government. Touted as anti-discrimination “against religious entities in public life,” the order “directs all state agencies to root out laws, regulations, and policies that exclude religious individuals or institutions from public programs, funds, or benefits.” It encourages “full review and revision of any state law or regulation that excludes religious entities … in public education, arts funding, and historical preservation programs.” While such an outright play may come as shocking, it’s actually a perfectly timed placement concerning the pieces being moved in preparation for Washington.
On April 30, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board v. Drummond. While Stitt has proudly supported St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School becoming a publicly funded charter school, Oklahoma Attorney General (AOG) Gentner Drummond has stood staunchly against it on the grounds that it would be treading on the very fabric of the nation’s founding principles concerning church and state. As one of Stitt’s most vocal opponents and a frontrunner in the 2026 gubernatorial election, Drummond sees the precedent that St. Isidore would set as the greatest threat to Oklahoma. Calling out the governor, he stated, “Gov. Stitt has been clear that he supports our tax dollars funding radical Muslim schools teaching Sharia Law. … It will only be a matter of time before taxpayers are funding schools dedicated to Sharia law, Wicca indoctrination, Scientology instruction — even the Church of Satan.” Drummond justified it by saying, “As a devoted Christian and a strong supporter of religious liberty, I can tell you that the only way to protect religious liberty is for the state not to sponsor any religion at all — just like our Founding Fathers intended.” However, animosity radiated from both sides through an amicus brief filed by Stitt with the U.S. Supreme Court stating his support of St. Isidore. Forewarning the court, he said that “The AOG’s open hostility against religion proves that ‘a trendy disdain for deep religious conviction’ lives on amongst some that appear before this court.”
One man’s neutrality is another man’s hostility. In his amicus, Stitt stated, “the Oklahoma Attorney General has deprived them of a true advocate by launching this attack against their religious liberty and educational freedom. Revealingly, the OAG has repeatedly justified the discriminatory exclusion of a Catholic institution from the benefit of a school charter with intolerance and open hostility toward other religions.” On a wider scale, the gates have been broken as Christian nationalists vie for greater influence over the state. With Oklahoma Freedom Caucus accusing its fellow Republicans of dropping the ball on supporting Christian values, they are now on the offensive. Launching a holy war “against the moral decay foisted upon Oklahoma” by “the left’s century-long assault on morality and decency,” its push for Evangelical-favored legislation proposed to the state Senate has only served to add pressure to the boiling pot. Despite Oklahoma seemingly being almost a one-party state, its Republicans still cannot come to mutual agreement when even the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy.
Ironically, the same religious conflicts within government leadership go back to biblical times. As the legislative and judicial assembly of elders, the Sanhedrin of the Second Temple of Jerusalem was divided between the conservative Pharisees and the secular Sadducees.
Branching off of the Pharisees were the radical Zealots who opposed foreign influence and as the historian Josephus described, “an invaluable attachment to liberty, and say that God is to be their only Ruler and Lord.” Yet in their wait for the Messiah, very few of any of the parties actually recognized Jesus Christ right before them. So shortsighted, too, is the “Church of Oklahoma” that its division into its own “denominations” only serves to further widen a divide by fighting tooth and nail for something that nobody seemingly asked for.
While the matter at hand may be the relation between religious institutions and government, the status quo has already been a healthy slew of benefits for organized religion, including being tax-exempt through IRC 501(c)(3). Furthermore, everybody has a dog in the fight beyond the status of St. Isidore itself. Stitt is attempting to trailblaze demolishing the barriers of church and state in the name of “religious liberty,” Drummond stands to protect the status quo by tamping down the flames in the name of “religious liberty” and Oklahoma Freedom Caucus has a fire in its eyes as it hopes to suppress “the other” with its own pipe dreams … for “religious liberty.”
Since the 2024 presidential election, everybody has been more than happy to show their hand. However, the real question ultimately boils down to what this is really all about. Is this great deluge of evangelical legislation a sign of pious return to what is morally right or simply a culture war against the “Godless leftist agenda influencing our institutions”? By blending the institutions of church and state, is religion bolstered with the state sanctified, or are both made a white-washed tomb of fruitless buzzwords? Is a moral crusade being waged, or is it merely a witch hunt against those who are “not like us”? Just as the attorney general forewarned, upsetting the state of religion through state religion has only upset a delicately balanced system that was already in favor of religion and especially in favor evangelical Protestant Christianity. Furthermore, if religion is supplemented by the state in public institutions, would all of the public be equal benefactors? When certain Protestant groups are unwilling to even acknowledge Roman Catholics as Christians, what does this mean for Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.? When there is a supposed equality coming from an unequally supported side, how easy would it be to experience persecution without the protections of neutrality? If anything, state-supported religion proved to be a disaster in the nineteenth century when Native Alaskans who practiced Russian Orthodoxy were heavily persecuted by Protestant missionaries such as Sheldon Jackson who sought to erase their entire culture.
Having said that, one of the greatest tragedies of this conflict is that everybody is fighting over religion while having lost sight of God. As my Liturgics professor poignantly said at one of my Eastern Orthodox seminaries, “Religion killed Christ, so Christ killed religion. Religion’s what made them nail God to the cross, so God came down and showed us what its really about.” If the greatest commandments are to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” why does it seem that all of this is doing neither?
This article appears in OKC Ballet Shorts.