Bishop Robert Barron, founder of Word on Fire and bishop of the Diocese of Winona‑Rochester, accused Sen. Tim Kaine of repudiating a foundational American principle when the Virginia Democrat disputed that rights originate with a creator during a Senate confirmation hearing.
In an opinion piece published on Fox News, Barron said Kaine’s remarks were “extremely troubling” and warned that treating rights as creations of government grants the state — rather than an outside moral order — the power to alter or rescind them. Barron invoked Thomas Jefferson’s wording in the Declaration of Independence, writing that rights are “endowed by their Creator” and therefore inalienable.
Barron’s column responds to remarks Kaine made during a confirmation proceeding before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, in which the senator said, according to Barron’s characterization, that the claim rights “come from the creator” could be likened to theocratic assertions and was comparable to governance in Iran. The hearing took place July 15, 2025, and the senator’s office describes him as a long‑time supporter of secular governance and religious freedom.
In his piece, Barron argued that the Framers conceived government as the protector, not the source, of rights. He said that if government were the origin of rights, “then it could take them away,” and he cited 20th‑century totalitarian regimes as historical examples where the rejection of a transcendent moral order preceded systematic denial of individual rights.
Barron framed his critique both theologically and civically, calling the phrase “under God,” used in national rhetoric such as Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, more than ceremonial and saying it expresses a political claim about the objective source of rights. He also noted that he has taken similar positions in past public exchanges, including a response to an MSNBC journalist the previous year.
The column is written as opinion and reflects Barron’s views as a religious leader and public intellectual. Barron urged readers to “celebrate our inalienable rights, and to resist this dangerous rhetoric,” saying the trend toward marginalizing organized religion has implications for democratic life.
Kaine, a Virginia senator and former governor, has long been identified with the Democratic Party’s positions on religious liberty and the separation of church and state. His remarks at the hearing contributed to an ongoing debate among politicians, legal scholars and religious leaders over whether rights are best understood as divine endowments, natural rights discoverable by reason, or legal constructs established and protected by constitutions and statutes.
Legal scholars and constitutional historians note that the American founding contains multiple strands of thought: natural rights language appears in the Declaration of Independence, while the Constitution establishes the institutions that secure rights in law. Those differing formulations continue to inform contemporary arguments about the proper limits of government power and the role of religion in public life.
Barron’s Fox News commentary adds to a broader public conversation ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in which questions about the philosophical and religious foundations of American rights have resurfaced in political and cultural debates. The senator’s office did not immediately provide a new response to Barron’s column.