Wired Word Lesson of the Week

The Wired Word

Topic for Sunday, July 19, 2026:

Nation Considers Role of Separation of Church and State:  This week we will discuss the release of a draft report from the Trump Administration's Religious Liberty Commission, recent actions by the Texas legislature to mandate Bible reading in K-12 public schools, and the "Rededicate 250" event on the National Mall to discuss Christian nationalist ideology, separation of church and state, religious liberty and the theological concept of free will.

In the News

Individuals are encouraged to read the news below related to this topic before the July 19th bible study to be prepared for an engaging conversation:

On June 26, the Trump administration's Religious Liberty Commission (RLC) submitted its advisory report, asserting that federal policy has countenanced bias against Christians in society and hindered religious liberty by overemphasizing the idea of the separation of church and state in ways the Founders never intended. The document recommends shifting government policies to favor stronger religious presence in the public square, public financing for faith-based agencies, and freedom for tax-exempt religious bodies to engage in political activity.

The Interfaith Alliance (IA) stated that the RLC, whose members are primarily conservative Christians, lacks the ideological diversity required of federal advisory panels. As such, it claims the RLC fails to address the concerns of large swaths of the population who follow other faiths or who have no religious affiliation, concerns such as Islamophobia, antisemitism in far-right circles, and criticism of Pope Leo XIV, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde and other clerics who speak against federal government policies and actions. 

Amanda Tyler, executive director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty (BJCRL) and the author of How to End Christian Nationalism, writes the RLC report "presumes to define what 'the vast majority of Christians' -- and in at least one place 'all Christians' -- believe. That is the federal government proclaiming what it deems to be orthodox. It is a stunning act of theocracy, [it] makes disagreement tantamount to blasphemy [and sends] signals that to oppose this government is to oppose God. This is not the hallmark of a free country; it is a country where political power has claimed religious authority."

TWW team member Frank Ramirez remarked, "We Anabaptists (Mennonites, Amish, Brethren and others) are very skeptical about any merger of church and state. Our experience has been people end up getting burned at the stake for belonging to the 'wrong' church."

Recently, the Republican-controlled Texas education board approved a measure that will make selections from the Bible mandatory reading for 5.5 million K-12 public school students beginning in 2030. Last year, the state legislature enacted a law requiring the display of the Ten Commandments in all public school classrooms.

These actions fit a theological belief known as the Seven Mountain Mandate, the idea that certain Christians should run all parts of society. In his book The Violent Take It By Force: The Christian Movement That Is Threatening Our Democracy, Matthew D. Taylor writes that "Christian supremacists believe that Christians -- by dint of being Christians -- are morally elevated above the rest of humanity and are empowered by God to govern civil society."

In mid-May, the administration hosted "Rededicate 250," a prayer event, on the National Mall, ostensibly to "rededicate America as one nation under God." The lineup of speakers were exclusively evangelical Protestants or conservative Catholics, except for one rabbi. No other streams of Christianity or non-Christian faiths were represented.

Critics of the event say it's impossible to rededicate a nation to God when it was never dedicated to God in the first place. While the Founders affirmed a generic belief in a divine Creator in the Declaration of Independence, the Bible and Jesus are not mentioned in the founding documents. Journalist Lindsay Winslow Brown writes that the Constitution doesn't "establish a religion, require worship, or name Christianity. The same Constitution bars any religious test for office." University of Notre Dame professor Dave Campbell said the Founders "had different views, but they did agree ... that there should be no established religion, which was very novel at the time, and there should be as much latitude given to the free exercise of religion as possible."

According to "Competing Visions of America: Politics, Religion, and American Identity," a new poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, 64% of Americans do not want to live in a primarily Christian nation, but prefer an America composed of many faiths.

Jerome Copulsky, author of American Heretics: Religious Adversaries of Liberal Order, said, "Religious liberty ... is an innate right, and it's irrevocable. It's an inalienable right." Amanda Tyler, BJCRL Executive Director, agrees that "soul liberty is not a privilege extended to approved religions. It is the birthright of every person."

More on this story can be found at these links:

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