Key points in this article:

• The U.S. has started to actively protect the rights of religious believers
• Patriotism and faith bring a country prosperity
• Japan must abandon its self-condemning view of history and regain faith

It is almost exactly a year since the inauguration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

In the U.S. there is a clear move towards protecting the rights of religious believers. We will look at how we can see Trump’s patriotism and respect for God through his political reforms.

Emphasizing the Importance of Faith and Morality

The Trump administration will create a new division of the Department of Health and Human Services to help health workers protect their religious and moral consciences.

The plan announced on the 18th, under the Office of Civil Rights, will help protect people who object to certain procedures such as abortion or assisted suicide due to religious or moral reasons.

Until now there have been many cases where health workers were forced to conduct medical procedures – such as abortion and assisted suicide – against their conscience due to the absence of a law that protected their right to refuse.

The new division, called the “Conscience and Religious Freedom Division”, will investigate such matters when a worker files a complaint.

“No one should be forced to choose between helping sick people and living by one’s deepest moral or religious convictions,” said Roger Severino, Director of the Office of Civil Rights. “The new division will help guarantee that victims of unlawful discrimination find justice”.

Trump’s Respect for the Founding Fathers

Trump has been advancing reforms that respect the rights of religious believers, including his deregulation against the prohibition of religions to participate in political activity, since May of last year.

Some have criticized that these advances were because he was getting support from right-wing Christians, but the real reason for Trump’s emphasis on religion is to turn our minds back to the Founding Fathers and to regain national self-esteem.

Trump has on many occasions mentioned that the U.S. is a country founded on faith. He gave a commencement address at the Baptist School Liberty University in May last year.

“America has always been the land of dreams, because America is a nation of true believers. When the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth, they prayed. When the Founders wrote the Declaration of Independence, they invoked our Creator four times, because in America we don’t worship government, we worship God.”

His proclamation of Religious Freedom Day (16th of January being the anniversary of the Virginia Statue for Religious Freedom) began “Faith is embedded in the history, spirit, and soul of our Nation”.

Patriotism and Faith Bring National Prosperity

On the matter of patriotism, in Japan the national sentiment is beginning to realize the problem of the self-condemning view of history since WWII. More people, especially amongst the younger generation, have started to embrace a patriotic spirit. It seems, however, that they are still not able to publically express their love for their country.

Additionally, the post-war materialistic education has given people a negative attitude towards faith and religion.

Without patriotism and faith, however, there is no national prosperity.

Love for their homeland is exactly what moves people to become of use to their homeland. This love for the homeland is at the root of the patriotic spirit, and is what leads to the desire to bring prosperity to one’s country.

And faith is what differentiates patriotism from ‘national particularism’. God loves all people in all nations, and following this love will ultimately pave the way to prosperity for all countries.

Religious countries are now in conflict with other countries because of a human misunderstanding in the interpretations of God’s teachings. In 8th century Japan when the Heian-kyo was established in Kyoto, Shinto and Taoism harmonized with Buddhism at its center. So began a millennium of peace without a single cause for a death sentence.

Having true national self-esteem requires us to abandon any self-condemning view of history and reembrace faith. Reforms are needed in scholastic education to erase anti-religious views, and a correct understanding of church-state separation is needed.

Japan must remove its allergy against religion.