Mission Statement
We hold it as a sacred principle of civil society that all persons are endowed with the liberty of conscience, and that no earthly authority may lawfully command the soul, compel belief, or diminish the civil rights of any person on account of religious conviction, political persuasion, or moral understanding.
The Covenant Institute is founded to defend the equal dignity of all people in matters of faith, conscience, assembly, and civic participation. We affirm that Church and State are separate pillars of human order. The Church concerns the duties of the soul before God. The State concerns the duties of citizens toward justice, peace, and the common good. Neither pillar should be used to oppress the other, nor should either become an instrument by which one class of citizens imposes its private convictions upon the liberties of another.
We believe that every person possesses the natural right to choose his or her own religious and political convictions, provided that such convictions do not deprive others of their equal liberty. One may stand firmly in faith, conscience, and conviction without claiming dominion over the conscience of another. Civil society is not preserved by uniformity of belief, but by the disciplined restraint of power, judgment, and prejudice in the public square.
We further recognize that the great monotheistic traditions confess the sovereignty of God, though they may differ in their understanding of the path by which humanity approaches the Divine. It is not the office of citizens to usurp the judgment of God, nor to determine by civil force whose path is most pleasing to Divine Authority. That judgment belongs to God alone.
The mission of the Covenant Institute is therefore to educate, advocate, and assemble in defense of religious freedom, civil liberty, and equal protection for all. We seek to cultivate a society in which religious and political differences are neither feared nor weaponized, but understood as matters of conscience to be protected by law, tempered by humility, and judged finally only by the Divine. Our purpose is to teach the necessity of tolerance, the discipline of civil restraint, and the moral duty to protect every person’s freedom to believe, worship, speak, and assemble without coercion, exclusion, or condemnation by the State or by fellow citizens.