NPR’s Weekend Edition recently ran a story in which it highlighted “divisive” Presidential candidate Donald Trump for his use of the mantra that America should unify under “one God.”

Donald Trump has been repeating the phrase “One people under one God.” Critics say it could be interpreted as running counter to the American tradition of religious freedom.

The Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty — a liberal leaning Baptist organization — took up that cause, saying it “raise[d] religious liberty concerns” [emphasis added]:

America is committed to religious liberty. We celebrate our religious diversity and see religious pluralism as a great strength.

It is absolutely true that the United States of America is (supposed to be) committed to religious liberty.

But do we, as a nation, “celebrate” religious diversity? Do we, as a nation, see religious pluralism as a “great strength?”

Arguably, the nation does not, nor does it want to. Rather, as a nation we celebrate religious liberty, not religious diversity. That protects the right of every American citizen to choose and exercise their faith, or to have no faith.

To celebrate diversity, however, implies that, as a people, we praise people having multiple faiths. But people of any religion that believes itself to be the truth — Islam and Christianity, for example — do not “celebrate” the fact non-adherents are ‘infidels’ or ‘going to hell’.  And remember, most of the United States considers itself religious and at least culturally Christian.

Similarly, people of exclusive faiths do not see pluralism as a strength, in and of itself. After all, at its core pluralism is the acceptance of multiple — and often competing — truth claims. Those who believe there is only one truth claim do not find it a source of “strength” to have people believing the wrong truth claim.

There is room for nuance and semantics. Some people would claim to support diversity and pluralism when they really mean they support religious liberty. With such liberty comes diversity, naturally, as well as a national tolerance (at least officially) for other religions — which some people would incorrectly call “pluralism”.

The United States values religious liberty because liberty is a virtue.  By contrast, diversity is not inherently a virtue.

Consider: When an elementary school teacher asks her class to compute 2 + 2, each student has the liberty to provide an answer. That liberty may result in diverse answers — but only one will be correct.

To continue that analogy to the federal government, under the US Constitution the government won’t tell its citizens their answer is wrong. As a people, we may celebrate our right to choose our answer — the right to be wrong — and we may even tolerate our fellow citizens’ wrong answers.

But because many of us know the final exam is coming — where only the One True answer will be accepted — we neither “celebrate” nor find “great strength” in people going through life — or leaving this life — with the wrong answer.

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