CV NEWS FEED // Vice President JD Vance spoke at the International Religious Freedom Summit Feb. 5 about how Church fathers shaped the concept of religious liberty as modern society knows it and about what the Trump administration’s vision for that liberty entails.
Religious freedom, Vance said in his address, “is the bedrock of civil society in the United States of America and across the world.” Faith helps cultivate healthy communities, he said, and “at home and abroad it fosters a love for one’s neighbors, it inspires generosity and service, it calls us to treat one another with dignity, to lift up those in need, and to build nations grounded in moral principle.”
Understanding the foundational importance of religious liberty, the Founding Fathers made it the first protected right in the Constitution, Vance noted. Their understandings of religious liberty came from the Christian Church fathers, whom Vance described as the US founders’ “own intellectual forebears.” He said that the Church fathers can be credited with “the very notion of religious liberty” that is known today, which includes free will and the inherent dignity of every person.
Principles outlining what religious liberty entails are also in the Gospel, Vance said, quoting Jesus’ words to “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, and unto God that which is God’s.”
In the early Church, theologians and apologists had to respond to the religious persecution that occurred, Vance said.
“Early Christians of course suffered greatly,” he said, “and unfortunately many Christians still suffer today at the hands of oppressive state power.”
In response to the 3rd century Christian persecution, Tertullian of Carthage appealed to the Roman Consul for the freedom to practice one’s own religion, Vance said. The vice president noted that Tertullian is credited as the first person to use the phrase “religious liberty.”
Noting another Church father’s defense of such freedom, he said that the Emperor Constantine received advice from another Christian apologist about how “religion cannot be imposed by force,” Vance said, quoting the early Christian document the Divine Institutes.
John Adams, the first vice president of the US, referenced the Church Fathers in his personal writing, as did Thomas Jefferson, who owned a copy of Tertullian’s works, Vance said.
“This is the legacy that has guided America’s political principles from the founding to this very day,” Vance said.
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