(48) Freedom of religion in America

By Jay Kim

Everyone knows that the Christian faith played a profound role in the founding of the United States. According to history, the beginning of the U.S. was the Plymouth Colony, which was established on the Mayflower by the Pilgrims, who left England to escape religious persecution and arrived in New England in December 1620.

Their purpose was to build a new world in which they could practice their beliefs in peace. The belief that people should be free to believe and practice as they wish was carried over into the writing of the Constitution for the new nation after the revolution.

Nevertheless the Christian religion has held a dominant position since America’s inception, and the U.S. developed as a country based largely on Judeo-Christian values. In the 19th and 20th centuries the U.S. became a base for many Christian churches and organizations to send out missionaries throughout the world. As they worked in poor and uncivilized countries, many young missionaries often died from malnutrition and disease.

Some of these missionaries built new educational institutions and hospitals, as well as churches and orphanages, as in Korea at the end of the Joseon Kingdom. It is no exaggeration that their efforts made Korea one of the countries where Christianity flourishes most.

However, the influence of Christianity has weakened in the U.S. as time passed. As millions of immigrants came from all over the world, various religions spread and began to deeply penetrate into the traditional Christian culture of America. Not only in the U.S. but also in Europe, the number of people who have turned their backs on the Christian church has increased.

In fact, in the last 20 years, the number of Christians has decreased, while the number of atheists has increased fourfold. Younger generations increasingly resist Christian principles.

Movements arose to enforce strict observations that the government should not support or condone an official religion, which led to most public schools eliminating the habit of morning prayers.

Some also claimed that words from the Bible, pictures of Jesus, and the Ten Commandments should be removed from the walls of public schools. Their reason was that such coercion of religion violated the freedom of religion.

Several Republican lawmakers, including myself, decided to propose a school prayer amendment, and I took a lead on passing this bill as a sponsor. The content of the bill passed in 2002 can be summarized as follows:

"Nothing in this (U.S.) Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer. Neither the United States nor any state shall compose the words of any prayer to be said in public schools."

In other words, schools can permit a prayer time as long as each student prays quietly following his own private religious belief without being forced to join in the prayer of a Christian or any other religion. This was a compromise with the hard-liners that wanted to get rid of prayer time in schools, and it contained the implication that private schools could continue to force Christian prayer.

In fact, there are many problems inside the Christian religion. As the great church leaders like Billy Graham became weaker, scandals involving Christian televangelists broke out, and as TV showed corruption and fights inside the church, the integrity of the Christian religion fell.

Christian groups had great influence in politics and society. They have fought strongly against abortion and gay marriage, and for allowing school prayer in public schools. However, they have lost a measure of their influence these days, as the American society has become a multiethnic, multicultural society of multi-religion. Even the military seems to recognize homosexuality with the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Around 1830, Mormonism appeared in the U.S. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the main branch of Mormonism. Mormons settled mainly in Salt Lake City in Utah, after facing many adverse conditions during their move from the East to the West to avoid oppression from Christians. The hero of these people was Brigham Young.

One striking feature of the Mormon belief was a return to what they considered the Biblical practice of a man having multiple wives. This caused a great deal of friction between Mormons and others in the U.S., and moved Congress to pass the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act in 1862. The Mormon Church itself officially rejected the practice in 1890.

Even so, various pockets of fundamentalists continued the practice in various remote places even into modern times. Today, it’s against the law in all 50 U.S. states.

I remember magazine articles on the practice of polygamy among Mormon fundamentalists in the U.S. The articles contained several pages of pictures, and one of them was a picture of a shabby man with missing several front teeth with his six wives. The ages of his wives seemed to range from the 20s to the 40s, and they looked beautiful. After this picture, there were some men in the U.S who wanted to join the Mormon faith.

I was curious which wife the man who missed several front teeth has chosen to keep. As this issue has gradually disappeared from the interest and memory of the press and the people of America, I wonder what happened to these folks and their wives with children.

Jay Kim is a former U.S. congressman. He serves as chairman of the KimChangJoon US-Korea Foundation. For more information, visit Kim’s website (www.jayckim.com).