A panel convened by Union Presbyterian Seminary’s Center for Faith, Justice and Reconciliation spent 90 minutes Monday, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, discussing the importance of protecting religious freedom while remembering King. President Joe Biden declared Sunday, Jan. 16, as Religious Freedom Day.
“We make our own history,” Eleanor Roosevelt said. “The course of history is directed by the choices we make and our choices grow out of the ideas, the beliefs, the values, the dreams of the people. It is not so much the powerful leaders that determine our destiny as the much more powerful influence of the combined voice of the people themselves.”
The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its appeal of a defamation case filed by a former employee of the Presbyterian Mission Agency.
Many of us have heard that the United States’ form of government was influenced by the practices and beliefs of Presbyterians who crossed the ocean to find religious freedom. Even today, our local municipal meetings and sessions of Congress mirror what takes place in church meeting rooms around the country as elected ruling elders seek to lead each congregation. While we may understand how the church influenced the form of government, we may not always know how traditional Reformed theology has influenced the beliefs that are the bedrock of the Constitution.
