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.