Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Bernie Sanders imposes a religious test for public office
Bernie Sanders imposes a religious test for public office
Nov 5, 2025 4:24 AM

This week the U.S. Senate held a hearing in which an explosive revelation was made that threatens to undermine the Constitution.

And no, I’m not talking about the Comey hearing (that was rather a dud). I’m referring to the confirmation hearing for the deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget.

You probably didn’t hear much about that hearing, or the nominee, Russel Vought. And you likely wouldn’t have heard about it still if Bernie Sanders hadn’t decided to impose a new religious test on anyone who wants to serve in the government.

Article VI of the U.S. Constitution states that, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” But Sen. Sanders and his protégé Sen. Van Hollen, D-Md. have implemented a religious test that requires government officials to espouse universalism, the belief that all humankind will eventually be saved whether they accept or reject Jesus.

The issue came up because Vought, an evangelical Christian who graduated from Wheaton College, wrote a defense of his alma mater’s statement of faith for the conservative website The Resurgent.

“Muslims do not simply have a deficient theology,” wrote Vought, pushing back against a claim made by theologian John Stackhouse. “They do not know God because they have rejected Jesus Christ his Son, and they stand condemned.”

This claim that Muslims who reject Christ “stand condemned” was brought up by Sen. Sanders during the confirmation hearing. “In my view, the statement made by Mr. Vought is indefensible, it is hateful, it is Islamophobic, and it is an insult to over a billion Muslims throughout the world,” said Sanders. “This country, since its inception, has struggled, sometimes with great pain, to e discrimination of all forms … we must not go backwards.”

Then, when he is allowed to question Vought, Sanders reiterates his claim. Watch the exchange in the video below.

A few minutes later, Senator Christopher Van HollenJr. of Maryland quoted from Vought’s article and said,

“I think it is irrefutable that these kinds ments suggest to a whole lot of Americans that, number one . . . you are condemning people of all faiths. I’m a Christian, but part of being a Christian in my view is recognizing that there are lots of ways that people can pursue their God. . . . It’s ments that suggest a violation ofthepublic trust in what will be a very important position.”

What Sanders and Van Hollen do not know is that most Christians throughout history have rejected universalism and subscribed to Jesus’s own claim that no one can go to heaven if they reject him (John 14:6). This isn’t a surprising claim to anyone with a passing familiarity to Christianity.

Just like his economic views, though, Sen. Sanders seems to have gotten his perspective on religion from a bumper sticker. He seems to think the “Coexist” bumper sticker he once saw on a ’96 Volvois a profound summation of world religions. That mustbe why he believesit is “hateful” and “Islamaphobic” for Christians to say that Jesus is the only way to salvation.

The fact that Sanders and Van Hollen are profoundly ignorant about both Christianity and Islam is neither surprising nor all that disconcerting. But for them to imply that anyone who holds a traditional Christian view on salvation is unfit for public office is repugnant and unconstitutional.

Although most of America has been distracted by the Comey hearing, we shouldn’t ignore this threat to our religious freedom. We must send a clear message to Washington: Such displays of anti-Christian bias by politicians like Senator Sanders and Van Hollenhas the potential to set a dangerous precedent and will not be tolerated.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Rev. Sirico and R.R. Reno to debate the merits of the free market
Over the past year there has been an ongoing debate carried out online in outlets like the Acton Institute blog, Public Discourse, and First Things magazine over the legitimacy of free markets. Many of us advocates of the free market have been dismayed at the openness—if not outright embrace—of socialism as a better option than free enterprise by conservative Christians. A prime example is the recent essay by First Things editor R. R. Reno revisiting Michael Novak’s 1990 classic The...
From the Reformation to Austrian economics
The implications of the Reformation are more than ecclesiastical or theological, says Timothy Terrell,professor of economics at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. They include shifts in economic thought as well, and Protestant ideas have had a lasting impact on our way of thinking about markets and liberty. There is, of course, no one religious—or irreligious—group that can claim to have birthed Austrian economics, and certainly Protestants, Catholics, Jews, atheists, and others have had a part in its development. However,...
Unemployment as economic-spiritual indicator — October 2017 report
Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight the latest numbers we need...
Renewed covenant or populism? Rabbi Lord Sacks on the West’s alternatives
The deepest division running through the West is not between Right and Left, or liberty and collectivism. Western civilization must choose this day whether it is grounded in a covenant or a degraded and authoritarian form of populism, according to the former Chief Rabbi of the UK. While receiving AEI’s highest honor, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks distinguished between two rival views of society derived from his exegesis of I Samuel 8. A social contract creates a government, while a covenant...
100 years of false religion
Today – November 7, 2017 – marks the hundredth anniversary of the Russian Revolution, touching off worldwide events mourning or celebrating the event. At its centenary, Communism deserves to be remembered as the most successful false religion to take root in the West in two millennia, unparalleled in the swiftness of its destruction and unequaled in its potential to generate misery from abundance. Communism determined to overthrow the entire Judeo-Christian cosmology 100 years ago today. Karl Marx’s promise of an...
Is education signaling or skill building?
Note: This is post #55 in a weekly video series on basic microeconomics. Do you learn about things, because the learning itself matters, or is education all about the signal you—and your degree—send out to the world? Is education really about building skills, or does it serve only to transmit intangible traits, like your level of talent or your persistence? In this video by Marginal Revolution University, economists Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok debate these questions and consider education’s effect...
Millennials in America have a troubling view of communism and socialism
“We discovered a rampant amnesia about the crimes munist regimes,” says Marion Smith, “and a growing inclination among younger Americans toward favorable views munism and socialism.” Their latest survey was recently released—and the responses are just as troubling: • 7 in 10 Millennials (like most Americans) either don’t know the definition munism or misidentify it for socialism. • 7 out of 10 underestimate number killed munism. Less than one third know more than 100 million people were killed munism. •...
Spain: Remembering the forgotten Red Terror
As the world remembers the hundredth anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, memorates the thousands of Christians martyred by the Communists during the Spanish Red Terror. Historian Stanley G. Payne calledthis periodthe “most extensive and violent persecution of Catholicism in Western history, in some way even more intense than that of the French Revolution.” Every November 6, the Roman Catholic Church in Spain remembers those martyred for their faith by socialists during this anti-Christian persecution, whichpeaked at the outset of the...
5 facts about the Russian Revolution
This week is the hundredth anniversary of the second Russian Revolution, one of the most transformative political events in the history of the modern world. Here are five facts you should know about the world’s most destructive revolution: 1. The second Russian Revolution (the Bolshevik Revolution) began on November 6 and 7, 1917. (Because the Russians were still using the Julian calendar, the date for them was October 24 and 25, which is why the event is often referred to...
Edmund Burke, free marketer
It’s not just millennials and other young people who are souring on free markets (44 percent according to a new poll) — there’s also a growing disenchantment among some conservatives. Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg explains the conservative angst as rooted, among other things, in the threat that upheaval in market economies presents to the “permanency, order, tradition, and strong and munities.” Conservatives who advocate for free markets should take this critique seriously and “rethink about how to integrate their...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved