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The recent decision of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to reverse its earlier ruling adversely affecting religious broadcasting is a victory for freedom and for the many citizens throughout Oklahoma and around the Nation who wasted no time in raising attention to this important issue.

I was one of the many senators and representatives in Washington who received volumes of phone calls, letters, faxes and e-mails from constituents protesting the FCC’s sudden and arbitrary December ruling. I am greatly appreciative to those constituents because their voices helped make the decisive difference in undoing this vivid federal government attempt at overregulation.

Four days after Christmas, while Congress of out of session, the FCC released an order saying that certain religious broadcasts on noncommercial television stations would no longer qualify as "general educational" programming. In its own biased language, the FCC argued that programming "primarily devoted to religious exhortation, proselytizing or statements of personally held religious views and beliefs generally would not qualify as general educational programming." It also said that church services would similarly not qualify.

This would have had the effect of muzzling numerous religious broadcasts, since such stations have always been required to devote 50 percent of their regularly scheduled air time to educational programs. This stunning directive to overturn long-existing FCC policy was issued without public comment or Congressional approval.

On Jan. 13, I and four of my colleagues in the Senate, wrote to the chairman of the FCC, strongly urging him to withdraw the directive, which we said was contrary to the right of free speech and religious expression, guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution. We noted that the government simply does not have the authority to suppress religious speech in the underhanded manner being attempted by this ill-considered FCC action. All of us stood prepared to take legislative action to reign in the FCC.

After numerous additional voices -- including many conscientious citizens from Oklahoma -- weighed in in protest, the FCC commissioners themselves voted on Jan. 29 to undo the agency’s order. Shortly thereafter, I joined a number of senators in introducing the Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom Act, S. 2010, a bill designed to prevent the FCC from taking any similar arbitrary action in the future.

Reversing the FCC on this issue was a significant victory for religious freedom and for the power of individual citizens to make a difference on an important matter of public policy.

We must also understand that this episode offers a significant insight about the modern perils of uncontrolled government regulation. Over 200 years ago, our Founding Fathers had the enduring wisdom to craft a governing framework designed to protect individual liberty from the inevitable excesses of government power. They knew from experience that governments, left unchecked, tended always to accumulate power at the expense of liberty.

The very First Amendment to the Constitution sought to protect the fundamentally important freedoms of religion and speech, and the free exercise thereof. Two centuries later, with the eternal vigilance of a free people, the struggle to protect these freedoms continues. As we again celebrate the birthdays of those giants of our past, Washington and Lincoln, may we never lose sight of the significance and importance of these efforts.