Preface

That a third edition of Rediscovering God in America is coming out ten years after its original publication is a testament to the staying power of the simple idea behind this book. In 2002, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the words “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance were unconstitutional. We believed a rebuttal was in order that would go well beyond legal argumentation. This rebuttal was to reveal the truth about American history as expressed in marble and concrete. It was to reveal what the generation that wrote our Constitution, and the following generations that defended it, actually believed about the role of God in American life. We know what they believed about the Creator and the public square because they built monuments in our nation’s capital that reflected these beliefs.

Thus was born the idea of a walking tour of Washington, D.C., that would take visitors from monument to memorial to reflect upon the expression of faith in God revealed throughout our nation’s capital. Originally, this walking tour was an appendix to Newt’s 2005 book Winning the Future. But the idea proved to be so popular, that we published Rediscovering God in America one year later as a stand-alone book that incorporated and built upon the ideas expressed in Winning the Future.

At the time, we did not know how successful Rediscovering God in America would become. We also could not have anticipated how its subject matter would shape so much of our thinking and creative work over the years that followed.

As a book, the first two editions have sold more than 100,000 copies. In 2007, we worked with David Bossie of Citizens United to turn the content of Rediscovering God in America into a documentary film with the same name. A year later, we produced a sequel documentary, Rediscovering God in America II: Our Heritage. Together, the two documentary films have sold more than 300,000 copies.

A little more than two years later, in 2010, we collaborated again with David Bossie and Citizens United to produce Nine Days that Changed the World, a documentary film about Pope John Paul II’s nine-day pilgrimage to Poland in June 1979. Although the film is about a Polish pope and events in Poland and Eastern Europe, its underlying theme is about the universal truth that religious liberty and freedom of conscience are cornerstones of a free society, which is the same message of Rediscovering God in America.

In this third edition, we have expanded the introduction to stress the larger stakes involved if we continue down the road of eroding religious liberty in America. It underscores how religious conviction has always been a source of national renewal and improvement and that we must reverse course if we wish to remain an exceptional nation. We have also added a chapter on the new Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C., which had not been built at the time of the first edition.

Since the original publication of Rediscovering God in America warned about the secular Left’s effort to drive God out of America’s public square, the situation has only gotten worse. Now, it’s not only the courts, but also the executive and legislative branches, as well as the administrative bureaucracies, which have acted to dramatically undermine our religious liberty. For example, President Obama’s landmark piece of legislation, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), threatens religious liberty through the health insurance requirements it places on employers. The ACA allows these requirements to be defined by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which has determined that the ACA requires religious organizations like the Little Sisters of the Poor to provide their employees with contraceptives, abortion inducing drugs, and other devices that violate their religious convictions.

At the time of this writing, the Little Sisters of the Poor have sued to protect their religious liberty and the Supreme Court has decided to hear the case. The stakes could not be clearer. If the Supreme Court fails to uphold the religious liberty rights of groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor to practice their faith as they see fit, many will decide to disband their ministries to the sick and the poor rather than cooperate with mandates that violate their faith. It will also be a clear signal that the judicial branch will be a very weak defender of religious liberty against hostile administrative agencies and overreaching legislators and executive branch officials.

Nevertheless, the courts remain the biggest long-term threat to religious liberty in America. Legislative actions and presidential decisions can be reversed in the next election, but hostile judicial decisions today have staying power far beyond what the Founding Fathers contemplated.

As you will note in these pages, the most revolutionary concept espoused by America’s Founders and enshrined in our Declaration and Constitution is that every life has equal value and worth. It is the same ideal that motivated the Founders to go to unprecedented lengths to protect religious liberty.

Indeed, our entire American system of government is premised upon a deeply religious ideal. The proposition that “all men are created equal” expresses a profound religious principle that recognizes God as the ultimate authority over any government. We are only equal if we are, in fact, created. Only if we assume we have a Creator can we assert that our rights have been “endowed” to us by God—and only then are those rights “unalienable.”

While constituting a government based upon these ideas was radical for the Founders’ generation, these ideas used to be the commonly accepted cultural understanding of our form of government. That this common understanding is being eroded was the original reason for writing Rediscovering God in America.

If all men and women are created equal, then not even the most powerful man, group, or government on earth has the power to infringe or trample upon our rights.

If all men and women are created equal, then all human beings are equally susceptible to the appeal of power and to the inherent temptation to dictate how others should live their lives. Thus, the best government is a limited one; one that restricts the rule of man by instituting the rule of law, which applies to everyone from presidents to parking lot attendants.

If all men and women are created equal, then every person is equally accountable to God and his fellow man to live a life of virtue, productivity, and personal responsibility. This life can only be realized in a society in which each person has the freedom to choose between right and wrong, as well as good and bad. For freedom to endure, it is vital to cultivate the values that make it possible to sustain such freedoms.

If all men are created equal, then each and every individual has equal dignity and inherent worth, regardless of his or her station in life, ethnic background, political beliefs, or personal achievements or failures.

An America that openly rejects faith and the faithful will undermine the surest supports of human dignity in American life. An anti-religious America will cultivate a utilitarian culture that elevates the powerful and crushes the weak. But an America that continues to welcome faith and the faithful as integral to American public life will give to the poorest and most forgotten segments of society the hope that they too have a right to pursue the American Dream.

—Newt and Callista Gingrich

McLean, Virginia

May 2016