Robert P. George on Fidelity Month

Utah Governor Spencer Cox and Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders recently designated June as “Fidelity Month,” a time of rededication to faith, family, and country. Fidelity Month began as a grassroots movement started by Robert P. George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University. 

We recently sat down with Professor George to talk about what Fidelity Month is all about. This interview has been edited for length and clarity, and Professor George has approved the edits.

Public Square Magazine: For readers who may not be familiar with Fidelity Month, what is it and how did it start?

Robert George: Back in the spring of 2023, I happened to read a report in the Wall Street Journal. It included polling data showing that the belief of Americans in certain core values—values that had traditionally been sources of unity and strength for Americans—had very considerably diminished over the past decade or decade and a half. I’m talking about values such as religion, family, and patriotism. And these values have indeed been sources of our unity and strength in the United States of America because we are not a nation who can look to a common racial heritage or ethnic heritage, or even a common religious tradition or cultural heritage for our unity and strength. We Americans come from many, many different racial and ethnic backgrounds. We come from different traditions of faith. Our cultural histories are very different. So what do we have in common? What binds us together? Especially when times get tough—what are our sources of unity and strength?

Historically, they’ve been a shared commitment to the principles of our civic order, the principles of our Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution. But also, very critically, they’ve been a shared belief in the importance of fidelity to God. Whether we’re Jewish or Christian, whether we’re Protestant or Catholic, Orthodox, LDS, we share, at least historically have shared, a commitment to the idea that there is a superintending deity: a God who creates us, indeed creates us equal, and endows us with certain unalienable rights. These rights don’t come from government; they don’t come from kings or parliaments or presidents or congresses; they come from a more than merely human source. And therefore, no merely human authority can legitimately violate those rights or take them away. So we’ve had that in common historically.

Also, historically, despite our differences in ethnicity, race, religion, and so on, we’ve shared a belief in the importance of the family, and the importance of fidelity in marriage—faithfulness to our spouse, to our children. And we’ve had in common—again, despite our many differences—a shared commitment to the country; a shared love of our homeland and a willingness to serve the nation in times of need. And not just the nation, but also our local communities. We’ve had in common the belief that when it comes to our local civic life, we should be contributors and not just takers. We get a lot of benefit from our local community, but we should also be contributors to our local community. So I was alarmed by these polling data that showed that belief in these traditional values had very significantly eroded.

In fact, the polling showed that one value had increased in importance in the minds of Americans, and that was money. Religion went down, family went down, country went down, but the belief in the importance of money went up. Now, I’m all for people being prosperous. I want everybody to be financially secure. I want people to have enough money to take care of themselves and their families, and have a few luxuries, and all that. But money, as important as it is, is not on the same scale of importance with God, family, and country.

So, I really was concerned. And I thought, “How can we go about the business of reviving and restoring our fellow citizens’ commitment to the principles that once were the sources of our unity and strength that once bound us together?” How do we rebuild faith in God, a deeper commitment to spouses and families, a sense of the importance of patriotism and love of country? So, I said, initially to myself, well, we have a day for this, and a week for that, and a month for the other thing. How about having a month that’s dedicated to fidelity? To fidelity to God, fidelity to spouses and families, and fidelity to our country and communities.

And so I did what you do these days. I went online. I went to my Facebook account and my Twitter account, and I announced: “By the power vested in me by absolutely no one, henceforth the month of June will be Fidelity Month.” And that’s how it all began. And then, fortunately, people read the social media posts, and a number of people said, this is a great idea. We want to get behind this. And the next thing you know, we had Fidelity Month up and going. It’s entirely a grassroots movement. It’s not a top-down directed thing. There’s no budget, there’s no staff, there’s no administrative structure, there’s no president. I guess I’m the founder, since it was my idea, and I floated it on social media, but there’s no official structure for Fidelity Month. But it’s grown as a grassroots movement.

And I was really delighted, that for this month, for June of 2026, the governors of both Utah and Arkansas have proclaimed, officially, their states’ recognition of Fidelity Month, as has Michigan’s House of Representatives. So, it’s a growing movement.

PSM: This seems to be catching on. Why are people interested in this idea?

Robert George: Because at the end of the day, there are some things that money can’t buy. And there are some things that are more important than money. That’s not to deprecate the importance of material things. As I say, I really do want everyone to prosper financially. I want everyone to have a materially good life. But that’s a secondary consideration, or should be a secondary consideration. And I think even if things have gotten a bit out of whack, and people are tending to value material things over the more-than-merely-material things, people feel the want or the need for something greater, something beyond ourselves, something beyond the material.

And that’s when faith in God, the importance of fidelity to the family, the importance of patriotism and love of country and community come to the fore. Of course, people sometimes just need reminding. There’s an old saying that people more often need reminding than instruction. And I think that’s true in this case. People know in their hearts that there are some things that money can’t buy, there are some things that are more important than the material things of life, and they have a pretty good idea of what those things are. But sometimes, folks need to be reminded. So Fidelity Month is a reminder for all of us.

PSM: For you, is there an important distinction between “fidelity” and related concepts like “commitment” or “loyalty”? Was it important for you for this to be Fidelity Month?

Robert George: Well, there are certainly related concepts that are very important, and that are aspects of fidelity in some cases, but I think the term fidelity is the right term. What we need to revive is faith. Now, part of that is what we usually mean by faith, namely, faith in God. But we also need greater (and richer) fidelity in marriage and in the family. And we also need a revival of patriotism—fidelity to our country and communities. Being faithful involves being grateful—and that is another related concept. We’re faithful when we’re grateful. And fidelity does require gratitude, and gratitude does prompt fidelity, or reinforces fidelity. We should be grateful to live in this country, where we have, by the standards of history and cultures, an almost unique measure of liberty, opportunity, and security. Most people, in most places, at most times, would give their right arm for the opportunity to live in a place like the United States of America. And we don’t often appreciate enough what our country makes available to us and makes possible for us. Therefore, sometimes we’re not grateful; but we should be.

PSM: I think many people can easily get on board with the idea of fidelity to God and fidelity to family, but fidelity to country might be harder for some people. When many people hear patriotism, they immediately link it to nationalism. Could you walk us through how you think about patriotism?

Robert George: When some people hear the word “patriotism,” what they think is being evoked is a kind of chauvinism. But patriotism is not that. Patriotism is not thinking, because I’m an American, I’m better than you because you’re Japanese, or Indonesian, or French, or whatever. Even the concept of American exceptionalism, which I think is an important concept that I’ll talk about in a minute, is not a matter of beating on our chests and saying how wonderful we are and how much better we are than other people. That’s not it at all. Patriotism is simply a matter of being grateful and therefore being loyal. In other words, faithful to the country.

Now, let’s talk about American exceptionalism. That’s a very important part of the American story. In what way, or ways, is the United States of America an exceptional country? Again, it’s not that we are morally superior to people who are Chinese, or Ukrainian, or Ugandan, or Ecuadorian. We’re made out of the same flesh and blood as everyone else. As with everybody else, we have the same faults and failings and foibles. What’s different, and at the founding unique, about the United States of America, is that we are not a nation founded on blood or soil or throne or altar. Our unity and our strength is not founded on or rooted in shared racial heritages, or religious backgrounds, or convictions, or cultural or ethnic histories. Rather, it’s founded on our shared commitment to the civic principles of the nation, which then are supported by the institutions of civil society that themselves reflect the importance of faith in God and fidelity within the family.

And patriotism itself is concern for one’s community—recognizing that one is not an island or an atomistic individual. So that’s the respect in which America is an exceptional place. No, it’s not that other people don’t believe in God, or think the family is very important, or believe in patriotism. People, wherever they are, should love their country for the gifts that their country gives them and makes available to them. They might not love their regime, they might not love their government. But patriotism is not love of your government. And it does not require us to adopt the position, “my government right or wrong.” Patriotism is love of one’s country.

Now, for those of us who are religious believers, certainly for those of us who are Christians, we recognize that love of country is secondary. Our first loyalty is to God. And our second loyalty is to our family. But to recognize that our first loyalty is to God and our second loyalty is our family is in no way to suggest that we don’t also need to be grateful to, and loyal to, our country and our community. It’s true that love of country can go haywire. And the nation can become an idol. But anything can become an idol. Anything can replace God. We have to be careful of that, no matter what the other thing is. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t properly contribute to, believe in, uphold, and be loyal to our country and our family.

PSM: I’m curious what threats you see to fidelity both in culture and in the ways that laws are changing. Where are these threats coming from, in your view?

Robert George: There are plenty of threats; there are always plenty of threats. As I said, anything can become an idol. The human condition is such that human beings—we frail, fallen, fallible creatures—are always vulnerable to the temptation to put something in God’s place, to put something first above God. Those of us who are Christians, of course, believe that there is nothing that comes above God or before God. The trouble is, we can put other things first. We can put money first. We can put fulfilling or satisfying our desires ahead of God—making our desires into idols. We can put fame or celebrity first, replacing God with those idols. Power, wealth, status, all of those things can become idols.

And we today, in 2026, here in the United States and throughout the world, are as vulnerable to those temptations to idol worship as anybody has ever been in the history of the human race. We are as prone to idol worship as were the people who bowed down before stone outcroppings or worshiped golden calves in ancient times. So that’s number one.

Number two, obviously, there are serious threats to marriage and the family today. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been in the forefront of combating those threats, for which the Church deserves enormous credit, and I hope I never fail to give credit to the Church for its witness in this area. It has a beautiful teaching, the Proclamation on the Family, about the importance of marriage and family life. And I think it’s important that the LDS Church and the LDS faithful not only uphold the family within the LDS community, but also witness to the entire world on the importance of the family and the importance of marriage. Marriage is the foundation of the family, and marriage is properly understood as the conjugal union of husband and wife.

Now, what are the threats? Well, the threats are everywhere. Promiscuity. The divorce culture. Everything that came out of the sexual revolution. You can date the sexual revolution in different ways. You know, once you start trying to trace these things back, the next thing you know you’re in the Garden of Eden with the serpent and the apple and Adam and Eve. But certainly in the 1940s Alfred Kinsey’s widely hyped and quite phony and fraudulent so-called sexuality “science” became a kind of justifying theory for breaking traditional norms of sexual morality. And then in the 1950s, we had the mainstreaming of pornography, so-called softcore pornography, beginning with Hugh Hefner’s Playboy magazine and his whole empire. Then the 1960s counterculture normalized promiscuity and made it socially acceptable. With that came the rise in out-of-wedlock childbearing and massive fatherlessness, especially in some of the most vulnerable communities, or sub-communities of our country. And then the sexual revolution continued to the point at which you now have people claiming that being male or female is not an objective biological reality. Instead, it’s said to be a matter of some subjective alleged “gender identity” that you have invisibly somewhere inside you. So, there are very significant threats to the family today.

And then with patriotism and love of country, it’s so easy to fall into thinking, well, my country owes me, or my community owes me, but I owe nothing back. I’m here for them to serve. And I need to just focus on getting everything I can from the common stock or the common pool. And, I don’t have any responsibility to give back, to serve, to do my part, to be a contributing member of the community. And I think, again, we have to fight back and push back against such attitudes. We need to remind people of the importance of being contributors and not just takers.

PSM: I’m curious, if you could have this grassroots movement grow in an ideal fashion, which institutions would be the most important for this to take hold? I know it’s exciting to see some states adopting it, but what about families, religious groups, or other groups? How do we spread it to those who maybe aren’t already inclined toward faithfulness?

Robert George: I like grassroots building. I want this to be a grassroots movement. I don’t want to try to direct everything from the top. So, I’d like to see it begin in the family, with Mom and Dad teaching the kids—not just by precept, but by example too. Precept is important. It’s important for parents and teachers and pastors to preach a little bit, to talk. But even more important is setting an example. So, Mom and Dad, set the example for your children of worshiping God and putting God first. That’s what my parents did for me. It’s the greatest gift they gave to me and my brothers.

Second, parents should model fidelity in their love and concern for each other. And by fidelity, I want to make clear, I mean more than merely avoiding having adulterous affairs. That’s important, obviously. But that’s only the beginning of fidelity, not the whole of fidelity in marriage. The whole of fidelity in marriage means serving your husband or wife. Serving your spouse. That’s why we think of marriage, rightly, as a vocation. Vocation is not a career; vocation is not a job. Vocation is a way of serving, and in marriage, husband serves wife and wife serves husband. Marriage is a way of serving. And of course, husband and wife, as father and mother, serve their children. So, I think it’s important for men and women as husbands and wives, mothers and fathers, to model fidelity in its richest sense in marriage.

Third, parents, again, by precept and example, can model patriotism. They can take their civic responsibilities seriously and thereby encourage and teach their children to take their civic responsibilities seriously. Vote. Contribute to campaigns. Get behind the causes you believe in. Contribute time as well as money to serving the civic interest. Be willing to run for office. It doesn’t have to be President of the United States. How about the local school board? How about the county commission? Or support friends and neighbors who you think would be good office holders in their efforts to be a county commissioner, or a school board member, or mayor, or whatever it is.  I think those are some of the ways, and they all involve teaching by both precept and example. People can begin in the family to promote fidelity.

Then, what’s next? Churches and synagogues and mosques and other houses of worship all over the country should be promoting these values. I would love the churches—all denominations and traditions, because they basically share the same set of principles—I’d love to see them get behind Fidelity Month, recognize Fidelity Month. The pastor should preach a sermon about fidelity at least once during the month. Preach on fidelity. Maybe you could do three Fidelity Month sermons: One on faithfulness to God, one on faithfulness in marriage, one on patriotism and love of country, and why that’s legitimate and not idolatrous, unless you go about it in an idolatrous way.

And then the local political community, the town. I’d love to see every town in this country proclaim Fidelity Month—and every state. I’m very grateful to Governor Cox in Utah, and to Governor Sanders in Arkansas for being the first two governors getting the ball rolling here to recognize, on behalf of their states, Fidelity Month. Let’s have more governors do that. I’d love to have a President of the United States recognize Fidelity Month. So, I’d like all of our institutions—religious, civic, commercial, philanthropic, and the institution of the family to recognize Fidelity Month.

And remember, this is all about reminding people of what they already know. We’re not teaching something new. This is not some new ideology. It’s not some new philosophy, it’s not some new theory. It’s just reminding people that there are some things that really matter, that ultimately matter.

You know, I sometimes say to my students, and to my kids (and to myself, to be honest with you) that there are some things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much. And then there are other things that really matter. So, what are the things that matter, but at the end of the day, not all that much? Things like wealth, power, influence, status, prestige, celebrity. Those aren’t bad things. It’s not bad to want those things. In fact, they can be good things because you can use them for good. You can use money for lots of good things. You can use power, if you have it, in a good way, for good things, to do good things. You can use influence for good. You can use celebrity for good.

But those things, though they matter, are not, at the end of the day the things that really matter, because things like wealth, power, status, influence, prestige, and celebrity are not ends in themselves. They’re not things that we want just for their own sake. They’re things that are means to other ends, and they have their value only as means to other ends. And they need to be contrasted with the things that really matter, the things that are not mere means to other ends but are desirable for their own sakes—things like faith, family, friendship, knowledge, beauty, integrity, honesty, decency, and compassion. Those are the things we want, not just as extrinsic instruments to get something else that they will make it possible for us to obtain or attain. They are the things you want for their own sakes. They are the things that really matter. They’re the things that ultimately matter.

David Brooks has a good way of illustrating the difference. He asks, what do you want on your tombstone someday? We all have just a short period of time on this earth. If you live 100 years, that’s a really old age, but it’s a blink of an eye in the history of the cosmos. What do you want on your tombstone for whatever number of years you have? Do you want it to say something like, Summa Cum Laude, Princeton? Goldman Sachs partner? No. What you want is something like “faithful husband, loving father and grandfather, loyal friend.” From the perspective of death, we can see more clearly the difference between the things that really matter, such as family, friendship, faith, knowledge, beauty, integrity, from the things that matter but not all that much.

PSM: Are there other ways that people can get involved if they are interested in doing more?

Robert George: Yes. I’d like everybody to go to the Fidelity Month website, www.fidelitymonth.com, because there at the website, you’ll be able to see what you personally can do to be part of this grassroots movement. There aren’t going be people upstairs who are doing stuff. Everything about Fidelity Month is grassroots, so if you go to the website, you can see what you can do to promote Fidelity Month.

Number one, you can say the Fidelity Month Prayer, which is a prayer that people in all traditions of faith can, in good conscience, say to ask God’s blessing on us, that we may be truly faithful to Him, faithful to our spouses and families, loyal and faithful to our country. Number two, you’ll be able to access the Fidelity Month logo for free. Use it for the month of June for your social media accounts. Use it on Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, or whatever social media accounts you have. Number three, it has suggestions about what you can do in your local community, like hosting a speaker for Fidelity Month, maybe at your church, maybe at your community center, or having a panel discussion. You can also go to the merch section of the website, and you can buy at cost (we don’t make any money on it, it’s just sold at cost) the Fidelity Month flag, or a Fidelity Month cap or tee-shirt. Those things help to get the message out. People see the cap, they see the shirt, they see the flag, and they ask, hey, what’s that about? And boy, there’s your opportunity to witness to the importance of fidelity. And there are many other suggestions about how just everyday people, just ordinary folks, in every walk of life, from every tradition of faith, with every background, can spread the word about fidelity and be part of this movement to remind people about the things that really matter.