Download Third Place 2008 PENN STATE ESSAY CONTEST Matthew Boyas

Third Place
2008 PENN STATE ESSAY CONTEST
Matthew Boyas
Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death
Through each window of Hillcrest Elementary School, passersby can see groups of
young children standing up, their hand over their hearts, facing the American flag. What is
intuitive to most American adults is becoming engrained in the minds of the American youth:
“One nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all.” But what is God’s role in
our indivisibility? What is God’s role in the protection of our values of liberty and justice? In
fact, God’s role is nothing more than a motivational tool for the people; the United States can
survive with him, but it can also most certainly survive without him.
The roots of American religion occur in the seventeenth century when Britain began
colonizing the New World. Many, if not most, of these colonies were founded on the principles
of religious freedom, and the best example of colonial religious freedom is probably the colony
of Pennsylvania, deemed by some modern historians “Penn’s Holy Experiment.” Penn was the
son of an English general whom the British monarch held in extremely high regard and owed a
parcel of land in the New World. But, unfortunately, William Penn did not follow in his father’s
footsteps in the least bit; he disregarded English laws and became a religious activist, joining the
radical Quaker “cult.” So, as a result, when Penn’s father died, the English monarch was more
than willing to grant Penn his father’s tract of land in America for the purposes of establishing a
colony; the religious activist was too far away from England to wreak havoc on the British
religious status quo. When Penn arrived in the New World to set up his colony, he decided to
open the colony as an outpost for all Christians, and Penn’s Holy Experiment was born.
The claim that the United States of America was founded a Christian nation has some
validity to it; while the British colonies were founded on terms of religious freedom, though, as
in Pennsylvania, the religious freedom was freedom for all sects of Christianity and not for every
religion in the world. However, as the colonists attempted to differentiate themselves more and
more in England during the American Revolution, the terms “religious freedom” became to refer
to freedom for all religions; whether someone believes Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or the tribal
religion of Timbuktu, the United States became a refuge for everyone, for England did not have
religious freedom, and the difference was a way for the American people to say, “Look at us!
We’re different from England and deserve to be independent!” So in fact, the religious root of
the United States is a deeply engrained belief in freedom for all, and not a deeply engrained
belief in any one religion. And the fact that the Constitution specifically forbids the formation of
a national religion and guarantees religious freedom for all only supports this claim.
So given the fact that our country was founded on principles of freedom and that the
United States today is a conglomeration of close to every religion in the world, why is religion
such an important factor in politics? Why do we care? We care because of affiliations between
tragic events and religious groups. An Islamic fundamentalist group spearheaded the September
11 attacks, so naturally all Muslims are going to attack the United States. We could never elect a
Muslim to office; Christians have not terrorized the United States like the Muslims have, so
Christians are a safer choice for American public office. But in fact, Christians have done their
fair share of terrorizing our country. The KKK, a white Christian extremist group, viciously
attacked Black Americans during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. There have been
countless Christian priests registered as sex offenders. In the early twenty-first century, a school
board in Dover, Pennsylvania, attempted to add something to their ninth grade biology
curriculum: Intelligent Design. Opposing the well-supported Darwinian hypothesis on evolution,
the board attempted to teach students the religious belief that a higher being created life.
While the United States was founded on religious principles, those religious principles
were principles of religious freedom, but religion still plays a large role in politics today. But in
truth, since America was founded on principles of religious freedom, why should a candidate’s
party affiliation matter to the election process? By choosing our representatives in government
based on misguided religious opinions, the people of the United States are religiously
persecuting groups of society, something that is illegal according to the United States
constitution. The only way to remove all religious influence from society and completely fulfill
our colonial and constitutional roots of religious freedom is to reduce the influence of religion in
our lives, starting with the Pledge of Allegiance.