A call to faithfulness

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LINDSAY MAST: Today is Tuesday, June 24th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Fidelity Month.

Back in 2023, Roman Catholic legal scholar and political philosopher Robert George proposed what many saw as an alternative to so-called “Pride Month”. George thought June ought to be “Fidelity Month” in America.

MAST: Fidelity Month celebrates a season of recommitment to God, our families, our communities, and country. Robby George is Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton. He joins us now to talk about the effort.

Professor George, good morning! Thank you for joining us.

ROBERT P. GEORGE: Oh, good morning. It's good to be with you. Lindsay

MAST: Tell me about when you first had the idea of Fidelity Month? Where were you and what was going on at the time?

GEORGE: I was having breakfast. It was early in the spring of 2023 I was having my morning cup of tea and four biscotti cookies. That's my breakfast. And the Wall Street Journal happened that morning to be reporting on some recent survey data, people from the general public had been asked questions about what they thought was important in life. These are questions that had been put to people by this survey organization for many years now.

And what was striking about those survey data was that it showed that Americans’ belief in the importance of, for example, God and religion in their lives had significantly diminished from where it was 10 or even five years ago. Similarly, Americans’ belief in the importance of marriage and the family had diminished. And finally, it reported that Americans’ belief in the importance of patriotism and service to one's community or communities had also diminished.

The one thing, the one value that had seen an increase in Americans’ belief in the importance of turned out to be money.

What alarmed me more than that was for almost all of our history, really, until very recently,what bound Americans together, despite our many differences, united us. What provided our sources of unity and strength were shared beliefs, shared commitment, shared values. Number one, of course, our shared commitment across racial and ethnic lines, across religious lines, across cultural lines, our shared belief in our system of government, in our constitutional republic, in the system of ordered Liberty bequeathed to us by our founding fathers. But number two, in supporting that first sort of foundation of our common life,you had shared belief in the importance of God and religious faith and of marriage and the family and stable marriages and good families, and the belief in patriotism.

MAST: But you didn’t choose to call it “Values Month,” you chose “Fidelity Month.” So talk to me about this term fidelity.

GEORGE: Fidelity is the active part of the equation. We can say family is important. We can say God is important. We can say country is important. Now, what do we actively do? What should our behavior be?

That's where fidelity comes in. Because God is important. We should be faithful to God, following our consciences according to our own traditions of faith. We should be faithful, conscientious believers. If we're Christians, let's be better Christians. If we're Jews, let's be better Jews. If we're Hindus, let's be better Hindus. Let's honor God again within our own understanding of what God requires of us, but let's do that join with our fellow citizens, who may not be of the same specific creed as us. Same with spouses and families. Being a husband or being a wife is a vocation, and a vocation is a way of serving. A true marriage is where the spouse is understanding that they have a vocation to marriage, serve each other, put each other's interests and needs ahead of their own, put the needs of the children ahead of the desires of the parents. So true fidelity to marriage and family means being a better husband, being a better wife, being a better mom, being a better dad.

And all of us can work on that, because it's a never ending process. Same with fidelity to your country. Fidelity, to your country, your country into your communities. It's the active part again, it's what we do.

Now, some have been called on and have answered the call to serve in the military. Some have given what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion, sacrificed their very lives for our liberties, for our our country. Not all of us are called to do that, thank God.

But all of us are called to be more active citizens, to pay attention to government affairs, to be active as a voter, to get involved in the causes that we think are important to promote the common good and the rights of that are set forth in our Constitution.

MAST: You’ve set aside today, June 24th, as a Day of Prayer and Fasting. You have a prayer on your website that you encourage individuals and churches to pray. But I’m curious–Professor George, what are you personally praying for today?

GEORGE: I'm praying for our nation, that we as a people may be faithful, ever faithful, more faithful, to the principles that made this a great country, that made us one nation under God. We have very often in our history, strayed from those principles. From the very beginning with slavery, we strayed from that principle, if all men are created equal, if all men are created equal, how can you enslave some men, men being human beings, of course. How can you put some people in slavery and then proclaim equality? Well, that contradiction took us a civil war, and then generations of labor after that, effort, work, struggle after that, to be faithful to what we proclaimed our belief in. And today, similarly, we are not living up to our beliefs in many domains. Our precious unborn brothers and sisters are not being given the full and equal protection of the laws. You know there are, there are still injustices in this country that need to be rectified. Let's pray for the wisdom and the courage to act to rectify these injustices, to bring our nation more perfectly into line. We'll never be there 100% in this veil of tears. We're all fallen and fallible and frail, but let's get closer, as close as we can, always moving forward toward our ideals of liberty and justice for all. So I'm going to be praying for our nation, for them. I'm going to be praying for our people. It will be individual people believing in those principles more fervently and acting on those principles more with greater determination.

And then, of course, for our leaders, they are the people we entrust with power to act on our behalf and in our name, and I believe they need the support of our prayers. I'm going to be praying for all of our leaders, even those I would race to the polls to vote against, because they need that prayer support as much as any other leader does. So that's what I'm praying for.

MAST: Robert P. George is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and the founder of Fidelity Month. Professor George, thank you so much for joining us.

GEORGE: Oh, it's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. Lindsay.

MAST: This was a small part of a longer interview with Professor George. We discussed much more about how to live out the values of Fidelity Month. We’ll run the full interview over the weekend on The World and Everything in It podcast feed.

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