The nation has a "schizophrenia" when it comes to the issue of God, considering there are people who believe religion should not be discussed, former Secretary of Department of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson told Newsmax.
"When you stop and you think about it, our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence, talked about certain unalienable rights given to us by our creator, aka God," said Carson on Newsmax's "Prime News" Friday night. "We are one nation under God. In many courtrooms, it says, 'In God, we trust.' In every coin in the pocket in the building, it says, 'In God, we trust." And yet you have people saying you're not supposed to talk about God in public."
The United States, he said, needs to "go back to recognizing those values that created the kind of country that we have," he added.
His comments came after former President Donald Trump, addressing the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Nashville, Tennessee, predicted that conservative Christian values will have a major impact on the midterm elections and said that in the United States, "we don't worship government. We worship God."
Carson said, "Our faith teaches us to love your neighbor. When you throw that faith out, it is substituted by something that says cancel your neighbor — your neighbor — if they have a yard sign that's different than yours."
He added that he thinks Trump was correct, and he thinks that people will vote because they recognize the importance of the country choosing whether to be moral and "not one that necessarily judges everything and tries to create morality through law, but one that actually understands the underpinnings of morality and kindness and decency and fairness. And that's what we need, and I think we're moving in that direction."
Carson on Friday also responded to a Gallup Poll showing that the belief in God has fallen to its lowest level in 78 years, saying, "Read a lot of the Marxist ledger from over 100 years ago, or even just 50 years ago, and you see how they concentrated on the morality of America and how could they interfere with our faith in God and our love for our fellow man and our families."
Carson also spoke out about the importance of having a father in the home, as Father's Day approaches on Sunday.
"When I was practicing neurosurgery and my kids were little, I was so busy. I would never have seen them," he recalled. "I traveled a lot. I did a lot of speaking. And I made it a requirement that my family go with me. So all my kids have frequent flyer numbers for every airline.
"I traveled all over the world. And otherwise, they [would] have been saying, Mommy, that strange guy was in here last night. And it makes it a huge difference."
He further commented on the Juneteenth celebrations that are being held, noting that the holiday celebrates the emancipation of slaves, and that is "very important," but it is also important to build a future on successes.
"Slavery was a horrible mark on our society; there's no question about that," Carson said. "But I do emphasize in [my] book, it wasn't unique to us ... we need to decide now: Do we want to build our future on the successes that we've had, which have been many, or on the things that have happened that have been unfortunate?"
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