The big difference -- and it would be a big difference -- would be in public education.
Schools would not be afraid of teaching the Bible in a positive -- and I don't mean 6-day creationist -- light, with fear of being tied up in lawsuits.
Nor would our educational institutions be afraid of specifically saying that our rights are God-given, and people will be accountable to God in how the live their lives.
I think this would mean a huge improvement in our schools and culture.
GETMAIN, I am most intrigued by your challenge. I think you will understand when I say "I need to think about it" before replying.
I will think about this problem. I hope to reply soon.
Meanwhile, this seems to be such an interesting question, wouldn't it be a good idea to open up this conversation to anybody else who wants to weigh in? We have a whole lot of thoughtful people here at FR.... This could get really interesting!
Thanks for writing!
(1) Nothing at all would change in terms of our formal governmental arrangements and institutions. The government is prohibited from establishing a state church – enforcing the Establishment Clause continues the prohibition.
Some people – myself included -- would argue the federal government has effectively established a state church, despite the clear constitutional prohibition – by exclusively promoting secular humanism, and banishing all competing doctrines from the public arena.
Under a system of liberty of religious expression, there would be greater diversity of viewpoints in the public square, and I consider that a wonderful thing. Monolithic Left Progressivism has had the monopoly on ideological fashion for far too long by now, and this has had a poisoning, corrosive effect on the social fabric that has bled over into frank corruption at every level of society.
Christians may be a majority in this country; but Christianity itself is divided into many different sects and confessions; plus we have Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jains, Sikhs, etc., etc., comprising our body social and politic. No way Christians are going to conspire together and plot against every one else, or try to “shove their doctrines” down other people’s throats. Speaking as a Christian, all I want is to be free to love and worship God, as He sees fit to call me so to do. I want to see respect for my religious symbols, just as I respect the religious symbols of other people.
(2) Though I strongly doubt much if anything would change in our political institutions, I think a flourishing of religious practice and belief would have salutary effects on society. It strengthens souls and it strengthens commitment to family, community, and nation. Society, as Plato observed, is Man written in larger letters. If personal morality and responsibility spread more generally throughout society, then that society is a far stronger, stable, and peaceful one.
(3) Religious belief is a sure-fire inoculation against the wooly-headed maunderings of our modern-day secular prophets of the Progressive Left. If you believe in God, then you cannot believe in Karl Marx. And if you believe in God, you cannot believe the following, excerpted from the Communist Manifesto:
“In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.
“From the moment when labor can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolized, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.
“You must, therefore, confess that by ‘individual’ you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.
“…Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.
“On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among proletarians, and in public prostitution.
“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital…we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social….
“But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus…nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce free love; it has existed almost from time immemorial.
“Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. (Ah, those were the days!)
“Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of free love springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.
“The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality…. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got….”
By the way, this is Karl Marx’s “Ten Commandments”:
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
It is the same “Ten Commandments” that Left Progressives everywhere admire. To empower these ideas (and notice how many have been empowered already, and are continuing to strengthen in power!!!), religion must “wither away,” like the State; for religion is the single biggest obstacle there is to the realization of Utopian, totalitarian dreams….
Which is why the Left in America – who sit on our courts and in our Congress – is so hostile to God and the Churches. Where God rules, they cannot. Period. And they know it.
It's really that simple.