Our friend Tony Perkins, President of the Family Research Council, gave us a heads-up about the astonishing comments made by Heidi Przybyla, a Politico National Investigative Correspondent, who recently stated on MSNBC that anyone who believes our rights are
derived from God is a Christian Nationalist.
She said "The thing that unites them as Christian nationalists...is that they believe that our rights as Americans, as all human beings, don't come from any earthly authority. They don't come from Congress, they don't come from the Supreme Court. They come from God."
You can watch her full interview here:
In response to Ms. Pryzbyla’s comments Tony and Brian Burch, President of Catholic Vote, wrote a letter to Politico asking that they and Ms. Pryzbyla apologize. Their letter pointed out her statement reflects profound prejudice toward American Christians who merely exercise their rights as citizens to be involved in the political process, just like anyone else.
Rather than apologize, Politico and Ms. Pryzbyla posted an article saying that her statements were taken out of context: "Due to some clumsy words, I was interpreted by some people as making arguments that are quite different from what I believe."
That's hardly an apology, wrote Tony in a letter to Family Research Council friends and activists, observing that Christians deserve more from Politico than to be accused of "misinterpreting" what the journalist clearly said.
Rather than accept this fake apology, FRC took action by running mobile billboards around Politico's offices in New York and Washington, D.C., demanding Politico stop their attack on religious freedom in America, which allows us to support and vote for candidates based upon our Christian faith.
The Family Research Council is also circulating a petition demanding a real apology from Politico, you can sign it through this link, and we urge you to do so.
What’s so astonishing to us about Heidi Przybyla’s remarks on MSNBC and her subsequent non-apology is the ease with which the smear of Christians glides through her remarks and right by her editors at Politico.
Any educated person – and Ms. Przybyla is educated, we’ve met and worked with her in our past life as a Capitol Hill Director of Communications – should recognize that it is not just Christians who believe our fundamental rights come from God.
While the Judaic tradition phrases it somewhat differently than does the Christian tradition, it comes down in the same place: Humans have what we call rights and liberties by the authority of our covenant with God, and no human instrumentality, certainly no state, can legitimately interfere with humanity’s God-given rights, liberties, protections, or obligations.
Recognition of those two traditions is enshrined in our Constitution, which is a rights protecting document, not a rights granting document. That’s why it says, “Congress shall make no law…” in the Bill of Rights’ First Amendment to the Constitution.
But more to the point of Tony Perkins’ objections to the smear, the phrase “Christian Nationalism” implies that the “Christian Nationalists” have a goal or motivation to create a theocratic state based on Christian principles. The absurdity of such an idea is obvious – no one on the Right that we know of wants the Pope to replace the President or the Southern Baptist Convention to replace Congress.
So, how is it that the imaginary “Christian Nationalism” movement has become the bête noire of today’s liberal media?
Liberals typically avoid answering such troubling questions by saying “I’m not a doctor” or ”I’m not a psychologist,” but we will take the plunge and hazard a guess.
If our rights and obligations come from God and not other human beings, and no human instrumentality can legitimately interfere with them, then according to the Judeo-Christian tradition other humans have no power over us. That mental freedom is poison to the principles of the authoritarian Left, to which many of today’s liberal journalists subscribe.
True, they can kill us, they can take away our freedom or our property, but their demands have no moral authority. And it was creating a place where only the authority of God’s laws would reign, rather than the power of princes and kings, that brought many of America’s earliest settlers to this land.
That yearning, imperfectly realized as it has been, was enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So, if you believe that your fundamental rights come from God – the Creator – and that government exists to protect them, not grant them, then I guess that makes you, like me, a Constitutionalist, not a Christian Nationalist.
Let’s not allow authoritarians on the Left to divide us by creating false religious dividing lines on the universal human truth that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
George Rasley is editor of Richard Viguerie's ConservativeHQ.com. A veteran of over 300 political campaigns, including every Republican presidential campaign from 1976 to 2004, he served as a staff member or advance representative for some of America’s most recognized conservative political figures, including Ronald Reagan, Sarah Palin and Jack Kemp. A member of American MENSA, he served on the House and Senate staff and on the staff of Vice President Dan Quayle. Rasley is a graduate of Hanover College and studied international affairs at Oxford University's Worcester College. He is an ordained Elder of the Presbyterian Church and a member of Faith Leaders for America.
Heidi Przybyla, Politico National Investigative Correspondent
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Brian Burch Catholic Vote
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