(A News and Sentinel Op-Ed - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

As frustrating as it might be to hear politics preached from the pulpit, even more troubling is to find politicians attempting to legislate religious adherence. “Montani Semper Liberi,” “Mountaineers are always free,” our State motto proclaims, hearkening back to our origins and the rejection of slavery at the time of the Civil War. Those founders of our State wrote carefully to protect the freedoms of all West Virginians with our Constitution. In Article Three, our “Bill of Rights,” they laid out a defense of religious liberty even more strongly worded than that in the U.S. Constitution. Of all the freedoms enumerated in our founding document, Section 15 titled, “Religious Freedom Guaranteed,” is actually the longest paragraph of all 22 such items.

How distressing it was this week to see the proposal of House Resolution 3020, calling for an amendment to our state Constitution to declare the Christian Bible the official “divinely inspired, inerrant foundational document for our society and government,” an “accurate historical record of human and natural history,” and “the utmost authority for human moral behavior.” The original proposal has been refiled as House Joint Resolution 31, so that if passed, it will put the proposed constitutional amendment on statewide ballots in 2026.

There are many superficial problems inherent in the proposal. Should the Biblical texts be read in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek, respectively? If not, what translations are acceptable and who gets to decide? Should the Bible’s teachings replace history and science textbooks in schools? Should all of the laws and rules contained in the Bible be added to our legal code immediately, or will the sponsoring Delegates get to decide which Biblical laws still count today? Look out, adulterers, that’s a death penalty crime!

The biggest problem, however, is much more severe: while sponsoring Delegates Dillon, Coop-Gonzalez, White, Anders, Butler, Mazzochi, Howell, Clark, and Moore are entitled to their own religious views, as are all of our citizen neighbors, they are not entitled to declare what we must believe.

The sponsors of this resolution know full well that their goal is directly in violation of both the spirit and the letter of the laws of our State; that’s why they’ve proposed it as an amendment to the Constitution. Many proposals are floated each session of the Legislature, most of which won’t become laws. Delegates write them to make a statement to the public about what they believe, even if they know they won’t gain passage. This isn’t one of those: it will likely pass, and then an official religious litmus test will be on the ballot. I hope I’m wrong, and that their fellow legislators who believe in and defend our freedoms will defeat this resolution.

For any West Virginian, like me, or my congregants, or our fellow Jews across the State who do not hold the “New Testament” as part of our religious tradition, in the eyes of those sponsoring delegates we’re not welcome here. Nevermind that our congregation, Temple Shalom, founded in 1849, predates the founding of the State; according to those sponsoring delegates, our failure to practice Christianity should, in their eyes, cost us our citizenship. That kind of argument has been made before, quite famously in Nazi Germany, that Jews aren’t welcome, that any minorities are a threat to the rest of the population, and that everyone who is different from a chosen few should be excluded. If such an amendment would pass, would every West Virginian be forced to convert to Christianity? If so, to which denomination? As I and others would certainly refuse, should my driver’s license be revoked? Should Temple Shalom lose our tax-exempt status as a valid religious institution if we aren’t keeping with the “official” religion of the state? In a world where anger and outrage all too often carry the day, it is not too bold to say that either we believe in an America where all citizens deserve equal protection under law, or we believe in an America where a political majority is thereby empowered to tyrannize any minority at any time.

The late Reverend Martin Niemoller, living in Germany, famously supported the Nazis during their rise to power, but later changed his position and was persecuted by them. After the war, as a confession he reflected, “first they came for the socialists, but I wasn’t a socialist, so I didn’t speak out. Then they came for the trade unionists, but I wasn’t a trade unionist, so I didn’t speak out. Then they came for the Jews, but I wasn’t a Jew, so I didn’t speak out. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out.” If freedom of religion can so easily be revoked, what other freedoms will follow? We still have freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom to gather, and freedom to vote; let us put these gifts to better use before it is too late. They are coming for me right now; if we don’t all speak up, they will be coming for you next.

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Rabbi Joshua Lief leads Temple Shalom, in Wheeling, W.Va.