Yesterday afternoon, the US Senate passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” President Trump’s signature legislative priority. The tally was fifty-fifty, with Vice President JD Vance casting the tie-breaking vote. The legislation now returns to the House, where voting is scheduled to begin later today.
Many are debating the contents and merits of the bill; I am interested today in the process by which it passed the Senate. When the group began voting on their forty-fifth amendment or procedural motion, this broke the record for the most votes during a “vote-a-rama,” a marathon session provided for under law governing the budget process in the Senate.
The process took so long in part because Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer forced the clerks to read the entire 960-page megabill on the Senate floor. The bill passed because Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski chose to support it after winning key concessions on federal health and food-aid programs for her state.
All of this—the marathon sessions, the scores of amendments, the forced reading, the pivotal significance of a single senator from a state of 740,000 residents, comprising 0.2 percent of America’s population—is a feature of American governance, not a bug. And that feature is foundational to our flourishing.
But with an enormous caveat.
Protesting outside George Washington’s home
In American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified our Nation—and Could Again, political scholar Yuval Levin demonstrates that the Founders intended a system of checks and balances so extensive that every dimension of the infant nation would be represented and included in its governance. This was vital for a country as manifestly diverse as ours, with immigrants from across the world and dramatic cultural differences between north and south, rural and urban, Protestant and Catholic and nonreligious.
Unlike most European nations, whose history and society were largely monolithic, America was founded on the principle of freedom for all, which means our governance must include all. As a result, discord and conflict have been part of our governance from its inception.
For example, when the US and Great Britain signed a treaty in 1794 preserving American neutrality in Britain’s ongoing war with France, public sentiment was vehemently negative. In preparation for Independence Day, my wife suggested that we rewatch John Adams, the Emmy Award-winning documentary about our nation’s second president. The scene in which the treaty is made public is telling: massive crowds gather outside President Washington’s home to shout their protests and burn objects in effigy.
This was the reaction against the man whose military leadership won our freedom as a country and became the only chief executive ever chosen by unanimous consent from the Electoral College. If the “father of our nation” could face such opprobrium, any American leader can.
And will. Our nation is more diverse now than ever, which means our elected leaders will be more diverse and the constituencies to whom they are responsible will be more conflicted with one another than ever.
All of this means that, on this Independence Day week, you and I have the privilege and responsibility of renewing our commitment to the patriotic role we can uniquely exercise on behalf of our nation.
An Oxford mathematician on the role of faith in society
Dr. John Lennox is Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University (emeritus) and an internationally renowned speaker on the interface of science, philosophy, and religion. In a recent address to the National Parliamentary Prayer Breakfast in Westminster (which I urge you to read in full), he claimed that removing God from politics would create a moral vacuum that secularism cannot fill.
His argument centers on two assertions.
One: “Everyone brings their faith in something into the public square.”
Dr. Lennox notes: “We all bring into our politics a whole set of beliefs that have been formed by a variety of influences,” religion only one among them. As a result, “If people of faith are to be kept out of the public square, then it will be empty.”
Two: “We need Christian faith in the public square.”
Dr. Lennox describes the “high moral ideals” of Western culture: “We believe in human equality, freedom, autonomy, and dignity. These values lead us to oppose slavery, racism, human trafficking, antisemitism, eugenics, infanticide, misogyny, and many other kinds of values. But these values are not given to us by science.”
Rather, as he notes, the atheist philosopher Jürgen Habermas recognized that such values are the direct legacy of the Judaic ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. Dr. Lennox cites historian Tom Holland’s agreement in noting that the letters of Paul, along with the four Gospels, are the most influential, impactful, and revolutionary writings to emerge from the ancient world.
Accordingly, the transformation only Christ can make in the human heart is the vital foundation of the morality so central to Western society.
“The end of life is to do the will of God”
Dr. Lennox concludes:
Christians are called upon to be salt and light in the world—to bear witness to the truth by reasoning in the public space, as Jesus and his apostles did, using persuasion and not coercion, never losing sight of the fact that those from whom they differ are fellow human beings made in the image of God.
Our “witness to the truth” is vital because you and I are “the” salt of the earth and “the” light of the world (Matthew 5:13, 14). The definite articles signify that there are no others. “Speaking the truth in love” is therefore the greatest gift of love we can give this nation we love (Ephesians 4:15).
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. agreed:
“I still believe that standing up for the truth of God is the greatest thing in the world. This is the end of life. The end of life is not to be happy. The end of life is not to achieve pleasure and avoid pain. The end of life is to do the will of God, come what may.”
Across this Independence Day week, how will you do “the greatest thing in the world”?
Quote for the day:
“Inside the Bible’s pages lie the answers to all the problems that mankind has ever known.” —Ronald Reagan
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