Faith and Freedom: Reclaiming America's Christian Roots | 4.20.25

The prominence of faith in public life in the U.S., particularly the Christian faith, is coming under renewed focus. This comes as the new administration makes moves to roll back what conservatives say has been an attack on Christianity and an abuse of the notion of the separation of church and state.
In this Easter Sunday episode, we talk with Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts about the role of the church and faith in public life and why he believes it's time to re-embrace the nation's Christian values. I'm Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief John Bickley with Georgia Howe.
It's Sunday, April 20th, and this is an Easter edition of Morning Wire. Joining us to discuss the role faith and particularly Christianity plays in public life here in the U.S.
is Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation. First of all, thank you so much for joining us.
Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
So it's Easter weekend. You recently published an op-ed arguing that the U.S.
is a Christian nation at its core and that we should embrace this fact. I want to talk to you about that premise.
First, how important is it that our founding was based on Christian values? Well, 100%. We wouldn't have the United States without Christianity, which is not to say that we ought to be dismissive toward the wonderful and unique religious pluralism we have in the United States, to put a fine point on that.
Obviously, people of other faiths, particularly those who are Jewish, were also vital to the American founding and they're vital to the United States today. But the worldview that created the ideology, the philosophy which undergirded the founding of the United States was explicitly Christian.
And I think revitalizing that in the 21st century is essential as we revitalize most of the institutions in the United States. And what are some of those values that you believe are core that maybe have deteriorated or need to be revitalized? The one which is profoundly the case and has been for the last two generations is a proper understanding of freedom.
From the understanding of freedom that most Americans understood at our founding, they would say that freedom is the right to do what we ought, which confers a moral obligation to community, a moral obligation to other. In other words, not to be overly academic in this explanation, what it leads to is a civil society that is healthy, a civil society that has institutions like schools and professional associations, eventually media, obviously, all of which mitigate the differences that Americans have.
What has happened, however, over the last two generations is a redefinition of freedom, which is unhealthy, which is the freedom to do whatever the heck we want. Eliminating that and coming to refocus on freedom as what we ought to do gets us to aspire to something greater as Americans.
And for some Americans who may not be overtly religious, that's simply the American dream, which is excellent. But for others of us who are explicitly religious and acknowledge and respect the religious pluralism in our country, it really does create a healthier country because ultimately what you're doing is minimizing the role of government, particularly in government doing things that we as individuals, as families, as communities should be doing instead.
Speaking of that, how does that not turn into laws that restrict people? So, for example, maybe sexual, moral issues. Practically, how do you help encourage a more Judeo-Christian view on this in terms of responsibilities without becoming legalistic with a zealous ironclad commitment to religious liberty as exemplified in the law and let's just be really blunt here the the ideology that has run roughshod over religious liberty is the radical left we don't have an example in modern american history of those of us on the political right attacking the religious liberty of anyone.
In fact, the conservative justices on the Supreme Court have been just as zealous in protecting that of non-Christians as they are of Christians. So I have 100% confidence that that will continue to be the case for those of us who are politically conservative.
But the second thing is, in in a lot of ways, it is the very thing that allows our lawmakers, our policymakers to keep this focus on religious liberty, that if we focus on living out whatever our religious tenets are, and not just in our individual lives, but very importantly, in our communities, that might be mass attendance for serious Catholics, it may be church attendance for people of other faith, that ultimately what's going to happen is that even people who don't go to church, even people who would say, you know, I'm not explicitly religious, benefit because the institutions in society allow us to air these differences. And ultimately, the pluralism that has been present in the United States since our founding will re-flourish.
And it's going to be something that benefits everyone in society and really helps to sustain freedoms and rights across the board. So you're saying that this begins with maximizing religious freedom, making sure we don't curtail those freedoms, thus encouraging more participation in religious activities, more empowerment of the churches.
Is that the foundation of this? That's right. And there's an irony there, right? At the very least, a strong correlation between two things.
One, the attack on religious liberty, which, for example, we saw under the Biden and Obama administrations, and the decline in religiosity of Americans, broadly defined. So in other words, to the very heart of your point, if we either, because we are religious people, revitalize the practice of our beliefs, or if we're not religious, at least acknowledge that according to religious liberty and the pluralism of the country, that is the right of other Americans to do as they see fit, that actually is going to prevent the overreach of government in abrogating those religious liberty freedoms.
Now, the focus on separation of church and state, this has been much debated, obviously, over the centuries. And even the source of this, a lot of people think this is in the Constitution.
It's not. Do you see the perspective on that changing? Do you see this moving in a particular direction in recent decades?

Both in my career as a public policy leader and also as an American history professor, I've never encountered a more egregious misunderstanding about any important part of the United States than the separation of church and state. In fact, the whole reason for that, the long jurisprudence on this until the 20th century, the long custom, was that separation of church and state meant that you kept the state out of running the church's business.
And what's happened as we have seen the political ascendance of the radical left, which of course aims at undermining religious institutions, is the complete 180 degree turn toward a misunderstanding in which we're saying there can't be any religion even expressed publicly. We're not even talking about in laws or in policymaking, but I, as the president of Heritage, according to this misthinking, shouldn't even talk about religion in public.
That's the logical consequence of this terrible misunderstanding, and so do your question.

I think ultimately what's happening because of the presence of still strong religious institutions and religious leaders of all backgrounds, Christian, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, and others, is a revitalization of this. In other words, it's getting back to a proper understanding that if you don't have healthy religion in this country, government and politics will become your religion.

And we've lived through over the last generation the bad fruit that that reaps. Yeah, that void is certainly filled in rapidly by the government.
Now you mentioned the Biden administration and its handling of religious freedom. A lot of frankly, just egregious examples of this.
I wanna talk about some specific ones, pro-life people and the FACE Act, the way the FACE Act was used against pro-lifers. Can you expand on that? I know you've addressed this in the past, and do we see a reversal on that? Yeah, the bad news, and it is bad news, but thankfully now good news story.
The bad news is that under the Biden administration, the FACE Act was used to run roughshod over the right of pro-lifers to just be present peacefully at a safe distance outside abortion clinics. We're not talking about a protest.
We're talking about, for example, my friend Mark Houck of Pennsylvania, standing outside peacefully an abortion clinic, not obstructing the people wanting to go in. I mean, that was their legal right.
We may disagree with it, but that's their legal right, certainly, to go in and out. And the local law enforcement and then the FBI using the FACE Act to arrest Mark.
And ultimately, for someone not familiar with that story, the short version of the story is that all the charges were dropped. I mean, this was just totally baseless.
It is one of the most egregious examples of the Biden Department of Justice clearly identifying pro-lifers using the FACE Act. You know, our legal experts at Heritage, including Roger Severino, who's the expert on the FACE Act, said there's, in modern history, never been a greater violation of religious freedom there.
But the good news is not just because Donald Trump is president of the United States and is not using the FACE Act for those purposes, but more importantly, Americans have the ideology of common sense that whatever you think about abortion, you shouldn't be using that particular piece of legislation for that purpose. There is a right to free speech, including outside abortion clinics.
Right. And we also saw on the flip side of that, not much interest in pursuing those who had vandalized churches or pro-life centers.
Again, really kind of disturbing and egregious examples from the Biden administration. Hopefully we will see a reversal of that.
But is there a danger that this goes too far and ends up swinging the other way and that we sort of have a special status for Christians among federal employees or how they're handled in situations like face act cases? There's a zero percent chance that will happen because of two things. Number one, the political right in modern American history has never had that as a goal.
We simply want to have a level playing field, which simply means we honor our religious liberty laws and jurisprudence. But the second reason is with Donald Trump as president, J.D.
Vance as vice president, these are men who might happen to know personally who have no interest in that. And so the chatter from the radical left and some of their associated media outlets that that's what the objective is, is not 50% wrong.
It's not 20% wrong. It is 100% wrong.
There's literally a 0% chance that will happen. Now, in your op-ed, you also talk about the U.S.
role on the global stage in terms of influence with religious freedom. You argue we should be leading on that front.
In what ways do you see us being leaders for other nations when it comes to religious freedom? Well, in two ways. There are many, but two primary ways.
The first is to use the bully pulpit of the presidency for that matter of being a congressional leader. So for Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, who, of course, are also great men, to talk about the plight of Christians, in particular in the Middle East.
We have seen over the last generation the near elimination of Christians in most Middle Eastern countries. In fact, as I point out in a recent op-ed, the only country where we've seen an increase in the Christian population is in Israel.
And there's a reason for that, because the Israeli government protects religious liberty. So that bully pulpit, just identifying this, speaking to the American people and allies around the world about this, actually for Christians on the ground, some of whom I'm in touch with directly, is a real benefit.
But the second thing is we have to make sure that the different parts of the administration, an apparatus like USAID, which thankfully is dying a well-deserved death, that through the State Department, that we're actually supporting religious liberty. not a particular faith, I want to be clear, but religious liberty, the natural right of any individual to practice their religion in any government or any nation.
And we haven't been doing that. In fact, we've been doing the opposite under USAID, using billions of dollars of American taxpayers' money to actively undermine the plight of Christians in those countries.
Thankfully, that's come to an end. Now, you mentioned Israel.
Do we see any other positive trends in some other countries in terms of religious freedom and growth in Christian communities, etc.? Africa is the real hope there, not just socially and culturally, which, of course, are far upstream of politics. There's a real revitalization and expansion of Christian communities throughout Africa.
There are exceptions like Nigeria. But the second thing is, and we know this in Heritage because of all the meetings we have with ambassadors and heads of state, there's a real growth in Africa or move toward a Western understanding of protecting religious liberty.
And so what I see in Africa

in the convergence of those two trends is something that probably will expand beyond their continent. I mean, the best case scenario here would be that European leaders, most of whom are actually hostile to their Christian foundations, might be reminded by African friends of what their cultural inheritance is.
I'm actually really optimistic about this, especially with all the

great... foundations might be reminded by African friends of what their cultural inheritance is.
I'm actually really optimistic about this, especially with all the great work that the Trump administration is doing. Final question, specifically related to Catholicism.
We've seen some reports that we actually are seeing a growth among younger populations in interest in Catholicism. What have you seen in your studies? Two things.
One is a trend among older generations, particularly baby boomers away from Roman Catholicism. And then secondly, to underscore the point you make, an overwhelming trend among a little bit of my generation, Generation X, but especially millennials and younger generations toward not just Roman Catholic churches, but those diocese and Catholic parishes that have, in a broad sense of this term, conservative liturgy.
I'm not talking about conservative politics. I'm talking about traditional liturgy.
We see this anecdotally as a family in the Diocese of Arlington and the daily masses I attended, Washington, D.C., but the macro-level trends in studies done by various institutions are also very clear. I want to say that even for someone who is not Roman Catholic, this ought to be seen as being a real sign of hope.
Because ultimately, what younger Americans are saying, whether they're entering the Catholic Church or the Orthodox Church, the Protestant Church, maybe returning to their family tradition of Judaism, is they're looking for belonging, they're looking for meaning. And for us at Heritage, as a non-sectarian institution, of course, which also honors the religious practices of all of our friends and colleagues, this is really hopeful for the future of America, because it's going to make the federal government a lot less important.
So again, returning to a foundational American value there.

Kevin Roberts, thank you so much for joining us.

My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

That was Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts,

and this has been a special Easter edition of Morning Wire.