Countless people, presidents included, consider their own religion a matter of private concern. Why is that? Should religion be a matter of private concern?
The most famous example of this was President John F. Kennedy. He was under fire for being a Catholic. When he spoke to mostly protestant religious leaders at the Houston Ministerial Association on September 12, 1960, he said this:
“That is the kind of America in which I believe. And it represents the kind of presidency in which I believe — a great office that must neither be humbled by making it the instrument of any one religious group, nor tarnished by arbitrarily withholding its occupancy from the members of any one religious group. I believe in a president whose religious views are his own private affair, neither imposed by him upon the nation, or imposed by the nation upon him as a condition to holding that office.”
Eisenhower, too, became known as a religious man. His relationship with religion was a little more complex. Here is what Christianity Today says about it:
Eisenhower made it a priority in his administration to promote belief in God and religion, in very general terms. He saw religion as a spiritual resource in the Cold War conflict with Communism. He added “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and promoted the National Day of Prayer. He spoke frequently about the importance of “a deeply felt religious faith”—most famously when he said, “Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don’t care what it is.”
Most Americans came to see Eisenhower as a very religious president, though some critiqued him for being specific about his faith. He seemed to promote a generic American religion, which had nothing to do with Jesus or any particulars about God or any theological content. He seemed to have, one person said, “a very fervent believer in a very vague religion.”
Liberalism defines the individual as supreme. What matters is individual liberty. What does it mean to be liberal? It means that whether you find yourself on the right or the left, you value individual autonomy. To maintain individual autonomy we must say, “I do me, you do you.” Otherwise, someone will end up establishing a dominant religious belief to which others surrender, even if it is against their will. So, ultimately liberalism leads to the privatization of religion.
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Music:
Little Lily Swing, Tri-Tachyon, Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 International, https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Tri-Tachyon/the-kleptotonic-ep/little-lily-swing
Sorry, Comfort Fit, Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Germany (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 DE), https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Comfort_Fit/Forget_And_Remember/03_Sorry