Archives | Anvil House Books

Archives for : Archives

The Separated Church – Part IV

Posted by :webmaster On : April 3, 2015

In the first part of the twentieth century many liberal Protestant churches abandoned their biblical roots by acceptance and incorporation of humanistic tenets into their liberal social gospel. God became irrelevant as the liberal church focused on saving society as opposed to saving man. Social life, good deeds, and membership replaced sin, salvation, and death to self. In 1930, Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the face of the ascendant liberal, progressive Protestantism that he observed while completing a Sloane Fellowship at Union Theological Seminary in New York City.

Anyone who has seen the weekly program of one of the large New York churches, with their daily, indeed almost hourly events, teas, lectures, concerts, charity events, opportunities for sports, games, bowling, dancing for every age group, anyone who has heard how they try to persuade a new resident to join the church, insisting that you’ll get into society quite differently by doing so, anyone who has become acquainted with the embarrassing nervousness with which the pastor lobbies for membership—that person can well assess the character of such a church. All these things, of course, take place with varying degrees of tactfulness, taste, and seriousness; some churches are basically “charitable” churches, others have primarily a social identity. One cannot avoid the impression, however, that in both cases they have forgotten what the real point is.[1]

As progressive Protestantism took center stage in many of America’s mainline churches during the first three decades of the twentieth century, those dissenting churches (fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals) effectively went underground with their creedal doctrines. They developed a fortress mentality and substantially abandoned their biblical role to influence and inform society of truth and morality including government, education, economics and business, the arts and media, and popular culture in general.

Although the life-changing message of Christ is always relevant to fallen man in a lost and dying world, by mid-century the faithful church had comparatively few voices carrying an unadulterated gospel message to a hostile culture that no longer deemed itself fallen. As the Boomers gained prominence in the late 1960s, the humanistic influence began to seep into what we have loosely labeled as fundamentalists, evangelicals, charismatics, and Pentecostals.

As the once humble conservative Christian churches attained a measure of social acceptance during the last half of the twentieth century, many began to replace the power of the gospel message with man’s market-driven ideas as a means of accomplishing Christ’s charge to make disciples. As a result, many in the faithful church gradually substituted man’s ideas and methods in place of unchangeable biblical truths and authority. When the church moved into the last decades of the century, the biblical message of these churches was increasingly compromised and/or softened, the churches began finding common ground with the unbeliever (mixing the light with the dark), and nonjudgmental love was substituted for repentance and turning from sin.

In 1998, the late David Wilkerson described the cultural seduction of the modern church in the United States by what he called the gospel of accommodation.

Accommodate means to adapt, to make suitable and acceptable, to make convenient. A gospel of accommodation is creeping into the United States…sweeping the nation, influencing ministers of every denomination, and giving birth to megachurches with thousands who come to hear a non-confronting message. It’s an adaptable gospel that is spoon-fed through humorous skits, drama, and short, nonabrasive sermonettes on how to cope—called a seeker-friendly or sinner-friendly gospel…The gospel of Jesus Christ has always been confronting—there is no such thing as a friendly gospel but a friendly grace.[2] [emphasis added]

An accommodating gospel is the way of cheap grace. Wilkerson spoke to the leadership of churches and warned of the consequences of their deception.

It’s cruel, pastor, to lead sinners to the Cross, tell them they are forgiven by faith, and then allow them to go back to their habits and lusts of the flesh, unchanged and still in the devil’s shackles.[3]

In The Market Driven Church, Udo Middelmann wrote of the worldly influence of modern culture on the church. He captures well the sad state of many American churches.

In the course of a very few decades much of the church has embraced the way of mass culture in its drive to reduce everything to play and attractive entertainment. It has bowed to the demands of a consumer society and offers a message that more often detracts for the moment than comforts for the long run. Adjustments in content and form to match the perceived needs of future possible converts eat away at the content necessary to understand God, the fall of man, and redemption. Marketing priorities preside. The product is matched to the customer’s expectations. There is little room for…God to set forth judgment and conditions for redemption.[4]

The market driven church has adapted its methods and message to appeal to modern man, whose whole perception has been altered by a culture that allows him to expect entertainment, fun, and easy success.

It appears that many modern accommodating church leaders must believe Christ’s ministry could never be successful in the twenty first century. They assume the way of Christ is too hard, too narrow, and too dull for the modern generation. It offers little to maintain their congregants’ interest or capture the attention of a post-modern generation. Therefore, the Bible’s old-fashioned, austere message is judged to be out-of-tune with the times and must be modernized to win friends and make converts. Christ would have to revamp his message by softening the rhetoric to make it seeker-friendly. His ministry must be overhauled and reorganized around sound business principles. It should identify its purposes and be driven by specific goals whose achievement in numbers and dollars can be properly measured and success gauged. He must also replace that scruffy band of disciples and hire a first-rate public relations firm to survey the market and construct a ministry theme to best attract and connect with the community’s wants and needs. Next He must hire a hall, employ a well-educated and socially acceptable ministry team, and mount a multi-faceted media campaign to enlist members into His new church—The Church of the What’s Happening Now. In time the spiritual side would take care of itself if we can just get them in the doors and make them better adjusted. Then the Holy Spirit will be free to do His thing as long as He doesn’t lay any guilt trips on them.

But as Bonhoeffer wrote, “…they have forgotten what the real point is.” The point is that the church must declare the eternal truth of God and His relation to man. This was done in every generation from the first century church to the present in cultures that were uniformly hostile to the message of the church. Instead of evangelizing the world, the world is evangelizing the church. To a large degree the value systems of the church and the world have become indistinguishable. The church has abandoned its role as “…a holy, powerful remnant that is consecrated and available to God…”[5]

With church attendance in decline and agnosticism and atheism on the increase, the modern church must do something other than market their services in competition with what the world has to offer. “The Christian community has to return to absolute dependence on the Holy Spirit. It is the Spirit who made the early believers such a powerful witness for Christ in the pagan Roman Empire.” Through unequivocal dependence on the Holy Spirit and the powerful proclamation of the Word of God to a hurting, lost, and dying generation, people will be transformed which is the prerequisite for transforming society.[6]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer-Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 106-107.
[2] David Wilkerson, “The Dangers of the Gospel of Accommodation,” Assemblies of God Enrichment Journal. http://enrichmentjournal.ag.org/199901/078_accommodation.cfm (accessed September 2, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Udo W. Middelmann, The Market Driven Church, (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Books, 2004), p. 124.
[5] Jim Cymbala, Fresh Power, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2001), p. 22.
[6] Jim Cymbala, Storm, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014), p. 76.

The Separated Church – Part III

Posted by :webmaster On : March 27, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity

Paul in his second letter to the Thessalonians describes the great apostasy that will occur in the last days.

Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, we beg you brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited, either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. [2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, RSV]

Paul is telling the Christians that the coming of the Lord will not occur unless the rebellion comes first. This is called the great apostasy which occurs just before the coming of the Lord. Apostasy refers to the faithful who renounce, desert, or become traitors to their faith.

In Part II, we noted that the Laodicean church was the worst of the seven Asian churches. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Its great sin was that it was lukewarm—neither hot nor cold. Its indifference arose from self-conceitedness and self-delusion. In spite of humanism being the “…most severe enemy that Christianity ever had,”[1] many American churches have begun to mirror the exaltation of self which is the central theme of this man-made philosophy. They do not deny God as do the humanists but treat God as if he were distant and uninvolved in their daily lives. As a result, many modern churches have become like the Laodicean church. They are lukewarm and indifferent to His presence and power. In accord with the central tenet of humanism, their focus is on the self and its well-being in this life rather than being concerned with the soul and its eternal destination.

This focus on self stands in direct contradiction to the admonition that Christians must die to self. [See: Galatians 2:20; 1 Corinthians 15:31] The church has succumbed to the humanist lie through the abandonment of sound doctrine. In his second letter to Timothy, Paul warned, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate to themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” [2 Timothy 4:3-4. RSV]

During the colonial era and for 150 years after the founding America, the Christian church was infused with a sound doctrinal foundation which anchored the republic. But as the humanistic spirit arose in the institutions of American life at the beginning of the twentieth century, the church’s role in society was diminished due to a loss of cultural authority and acceptance. To counter humanism’s onslaught, mainline Protestant leaders began embracing secular human sciences to lend credibility and cultural relevance to the tenets of their religion.[2] But such acceptance brought compromise of its creedal doctrines which resulted in a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltness, “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV]

An eyewitness account of the decimation of doctrinal standards by mainline liberal churches in America was given by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer had passed his doctoral examination in theology at the University of Berlin in late 1927. After a year in Barcelona, Spain, as the vicar for a German congregation, he returned to Germany in 1929. However, in 1930, with a Sloane Fellowship in hand, the brilliant twenty-four year old theologian traveled to Union Theological Seminary in New York City. There he was to experience firsthand the massive battle raging in the 1920s and 1930s between the liberals and fundamentalists.[3]

Theological liberalism was led by the most famous liberal preacher in America, Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor of the prestigious Riverside Church of New York which was built for Fosdick by John D. Rockefeller to further Fosdick’s “progressive” modernist views. While still at First Presbyterian Church of New York City in 1922, Fosdick loosed an initial blast with his sermon “Shall the Fundamentalists Win?” in which he denigrated the “…historic assertions of the Christian faith, including the virgin birth, the resurrection, the divinity of Christ, the atonement, miracles, and the Bible as the Word of God.” In defense of the historic faith, as described by the fundamentalists, was Dr. Walter Duncan Buchanan, pastor of the Broadway Presbyterian Church, six blocks south of First Presbyterian. Fosdick and Rockefeller’s lieutenants such at Time magazine’s Henry Luce mounted a massive assault to once and for all time rid the church of any fundamentalist tendencies.[4]

To Bonhoeffer, it was obvious that the professors and students at Union heavily favored the liberal views of Fosdick. Bonhoeffer was appalled at their lack of serious scholarship with respect to truth and academic inquiry. He wrote,

There is no theology here… They [Union students] talk a blue streak without the slightest substantive foundation and with no evidence of any criteria…They are unfamiliar with even the most basic questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level.[5] [emphasis in original]

Bonhoeffer described the theological atmosphere at the seminary as hastening the process of secularization of Christianity in America. He found no better in the liberal churches of New York.[6]

Things are not much different in the church. The sermon has been reduced to parenthetical church remarks about newspaper events. As long as I’ve been here, I have heard only one sermon in which you could hear something like a genuine proclamation [of the gospel]…The fundamentalist sermon that occupies such a prominent place in the southern states has only one prominent Baptist representative in New York, one who preaches the resurrection of the flesh and the virgin birth before believers and the curious alike.

In New York they preach about virtually everything, only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ, the cross, sin and forgiveness, death and life.[7]

The liberal churches of the early twentieth century were no longer separate from the world but had become completely infused with the spirit the Laodicean church. Its hard-hearted indifference was nourished by its own self-conceit and self-delusion. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. It was neither hot nor cold. Jesus Christ, the cross, sin, forgiveness, and death and life were irrelevant to its existence.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer-Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 85.
[2] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 252.
[3] Metaxas, pp. 94, 101.
[4] Ibid., pp. 101-103.
[5] Ibid., p. 101.
[6] Ibid., p. 105.
[7] Ibid., p. 106.

The Separated Church – Part II

Posted by :webmaster On : March 20, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity

Near the beginning of His Sermon on the Mount, Christ admonished His disciples about their mission in a dark and desolate world.

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how shall its saltness be restored? It is no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men. You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid. Nor do men light a lamp and put it under a bushel, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven. [Matthew 5:13-16. RSV]

When considering Christ’s instruction that the church should be salt and light to the world, it appears to conflict with His instruction at the end of His Sermon on the Mount in which the church is commanded to walk a separate path from that of the world. Throughout its history, the church often has had difficulty with balancing these seemingly contradictory commands. The early church was no exception.

In the first chapter of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, while in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, John was instructed by Christ to record what he saw in the book and send it to seven churches in Asia. One by one, John revealed each of their works (good and bad) and their heart.

Ephesus (Revelation 2:1-7) A typical first century church, they had many great works and had labored and endured without growing weary. Their sin was that they had left their first love. It was not a matter of rejection but neglect. Fervency and zeal for Christ were no longer present and without which they were in jeopardy. There only hope was repentance and doing their first works again.

Smyrna (Revelation 2:8-11) Best described as the persecuted church. They suffered tribulation, poverty, and slander. They were encouraged to not fear the coming suffering, imprisonment, and for some even death because a crown of life awaited the faithful.

Pergamos (Revelation 2:12-17) It was labeled as the church where Satan dwelled. This church mixed with the world. They were faithful in spirit but filthy in flesh. They communed with persons of corrupt principles and practices which brought guilt and blemish upon the whole body. When those corrupt members of a church are punished, so too will the whole church be punished if they allow such corruption to continue.

Thyatira (Revelation 2:18-29) Although commended for their charity, service, faith, and patience, evil progresses and idolatry was practiced in the church. The church contained unrepentant and wicked seducers who drew God’s servants into fornication and offering sacrifices to idols.

Sardis (Revelation 3:1-6) It was representative of the church that is dead or at the point of death even though it still has a minority of godly men and women. The great charge against this church was hypocrisy. It was not what it appeared to be. The ministry was languishing. There was a form of Godliness but not the power.

Philadelphia (Revelation 3:7-13) It was a church of revival and spiritual progress. The church had proved itself faithful and obedient to the Word. As its name implies, it was a church of love and kindness to each other. Because of their excellent spirit, they were an excellent church. They kept the word and did not deny His name. No fault was attributed to the church, only mild reproof for having only a little strength or power.

Laodicea (Revelation 3:14-19) The worst of all of the seven Asian churches, Laodicea had nothing to commend it. Its great sin was that it was lukewarm—neither hot nor cold. Its indifference arose from self-conceitedness and self-delusion. It believed itself rich and in need of nothing but in reality was wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Christ reminded them of where true riches may be found, without which severe punishment would follow.[1]

The seven Asian churches found in Revelation were not the only first century Christian churches. However, they were selected by God to give timeless instruction for His people throughout the centuries to the end of the age. We must not make the mistake of assigning the sins of the Asian churches to any one age or to a particular church. Although the Laodicean church is a description of the final state of apostasy which the visible church will experience, one need only need to review the sins of the other churches to know that those sins are prevalent in every age.

Two thousand years after the assorted sins of the early Asian churches were exposed by God through John, the church is still having difficulty with Paul’s charge to be separate from the world. On the one hand we have some modern day religious legalists like the prideful Pharisee, about whom Luke wrote, who boasted of his separateness. The Pharisee trusted in himself that he was righteous. With smugness, a haughty spirit, and perhaps a condescending eye turned to the man that stood nearby, he prayed his prayer of thanksgiving. “God, I thank thee that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week, I give tithes of all that I get.” [Luke 18:11b-12. RSV] On the other hand, it is apparent that in all of church history the church far more often errs on the side of worldliness than legalism.

In reality, it is not a contest between the church’s separateness from a wicked world or spreading salt and light to a lost and dying world. Sin is sin in whichever camp it resides—failure to be separate or failure to be salt and light. The absence of one shall surely sound the eventual death knell of the other.

In Part III, we shall examine the beginning of the great apostasy in the modern American church of the early twentieth century.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Matthew Henry, Commentary on the Whole Bible, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1961), pp. 1970-1974.

The Separated Church – Part I

Posted by :webmaster On : March 13, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity

The separateness of the church from worldliness and the wicked is a consistent theme which runs throughout the Bible, particularly in the New Testament. One of the clearest statements to the believer regarding God’s command to be separate is found in Paul’s second letter to the Corinthian church.

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God…Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them…” [2 Corinthians 14-16a, 17a. RSV]

Life is a journey and the separateness of which Paul spoke is not achieved by a one-time inoculation of holiness. To be holy or set apart is both a singular event at salvation and a continuing process. We must contend for separateness as described by Christ near the end of the Sermon on the Mount. “Enter by the narrow gate, for the gate is wide and the way is easy, that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. For the gate is narrow and the way is hard, that leads to life, and those who find it are few.” [Matthew 7:13-14. RSV]

If the way of Christ is hard, why would the world listen to and embrace such an austere, demanding message? To follow Christ is to die to self and the things of this world. Apart from the Bible, we may find the answer in one of the greatest works of literature of all time.

Born in 1628 near Bedford, England, a young boy grew up to follow his father’s trade as a metal worker. At age sixteen he was caught up in the English civil war and almost killed while battling the forces of Charles I. Following his military service, he was in great confusion and struggled with guilt. Eventually he found spiritual peace and became a Christian as a result of reading Martin Luther’s commentary on Galatians in which grace triumphs over law. He joined a Protestant church and soon became a lay preacher and polemicist. He was a Nonconformist which meant that he did not adhere to the doctrinal tenets of the Anglican Church. In 1660, Charles II was restored to the English throne which also restored the power of the Anglican Church over all religious life in England. In that same year the thirty-two year old young man was persecuted and arrested for unlicensed preaching. His first wife died in 1656, and he remarried in 1659. Soon after his imprisonment, his second wife gave birth to a child that died within a few days. Because he would not recant and conform his preaching to the Anglican model, his first imprisonment lasted twelve years.[1]

John Bunyan had chosen Christ’s hard way. Having lost personal liberty as well as the liberty to preach, prisoner Bunyan picked up his pen and wrote one of the classic allegorical works of all time—Pilgrim’s Progress. Using a dream as the means for telling his story, Bunyan begins with a description of a pilgrim called Christian.

…behold I saw a man clothed with rags, [Isaiah 64:6] standing in a certain place, with his face from his own house, a book in his hand, and a great burden upon his back. [Psalms 38:4] I looked and saw him open the book, and read therein; and as he read he wept and trembled, and not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, “What shall I do?”[2] [Acts 16:30-31]

Christian went home but tried to hide his distress from his family. When he could be silent no longer, he told his wife and children of his experience.

…I your dear friend am in myself undone, by reason of a burden that lieth hard upon me; moreover, I am for certain informed that this our city will be burned with fire from heaven, in which fearful overthrow both myself, with thee, my wife, and you my sweet babes, shall miserably come to ruin, except (the which, yet I see not) someway of escape can be found, whereby we may be delivered.[3] [emphasis added]

The burden that lay hard on our protagonist was sin. It was neither a new burden to Christian nor exclusive to him. Sinful man carried the burden since that shameful day he was banished from the Garden, and all of his unredeemed decedents have continued to carry that burden to this present hour.

Christian’s moment of truth occurred when he opened the book and began to read. His abominable sin nature was fully and startlingly revealed to his heart and mind, and he saw the inevitable and eternal destruction that awaited him at the end of life. He had carried the burden of sin his entire life, often shifting it from one shoulder to the other to gain a measure of comfort for he knew that of his own accord he could lay his burden down. Sometimes he attempted to ease his discomfort by padding his shoulders with the things of the world as he carried the wearisome weight. But in his moment of truth as he read the book, he saw the utter loathsomeness of his burden in a new light. He now saw that it was part of his very nature. Even more intolerable was his rejection of the immeasurable love of Christ whose death on the cross had made it possible for Christian to lay down his burden. He was imprisoned by sin and awaited final condemnation that would banish him to eternal torment. The book revealed that at the end of life there would be no character witnesses to stack up his good points to offset the bad. There would be no excuses to be given or extenuating circumstances to be considered. There would be no summing up of arguments to a jury of his peers to lessen the sentence of death. At the end of his life he would stand before the supreme judge from whom there is no appeal. In utter despair our hero knew that he was guilty and destined for eternal damnation. In utter despair he could only cry “What shall I do?”

Every man or woman who ever lived is convicted of sin by the Holy Spirit, but man’s final destination is decided by what he does with that knowledge. His conviction is not man-made and does not come from a guilty conscience, shame, fear of punishment for sin, or even agreement with the scriptures as to right and wrong. Although these often accompany the heavy load of sin, conviction comes only from the work of the Holy Spirit. Teaching His disciples just before His betrayal, Jesus spoke of the coming of the Spirit and His mission.

Nevertheless I tell you the truth: I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convince the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no more; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged. [John 16:7-11. RSV]

The Holy Spirit’s first mission is to deal with sin. Because the sinner does not believe in God regarding sin and righteousness, the Holy Spirit reveals the truth of sin to convince the heart of the sinner of his sinful life. Conviction of sin is a call to salvation and separateness from the world (holiness). Christians answer that call at the moment of salvation. He is a new creation and is separated from the world, but the work of separateness must continue as one takes the narrow path.

As with all mankind, Christian chose a path that eventually led to his day of judgment. The prosecutor in our drama unfolding in this celestial courtroom is the Holy Spirit. The Supreme Judge of the Universe turns to the Holy Spirit and asks, “Did you perform your office work by speaking with Christian of sin and righteousness and judgment?” The Holy Spirit replied, “Yes, Father. I did.” At that moment the gavel of justice was raised in preparation to seal the verdict and impose the sentence of death. Pausing, the Father turns to Christian’s defense counsel, the Son of Man, who sits at the Father’s right hand. “Son, do you have anything to say in Christian’s defense?” Jesus reached for a large book with His nail-pierced hands that bear mute testimony of His authority to present a defense on Christian’s behalf. The Son opened the book and searched its pages. He smiles as he looks at the Father. “I have no record of Christian’s sin. Whatever they were has been washed away by my blood. Only his name is written here in the Book of Life.”

Like Christian, we are mere sojourners in this world. We may choose the hard way or the easy way. One is narrow and leads to eternal communion with God. The other is broad but leads to destruction and eternal damnation.

We have spoken of the church’s separation from the world. But here we must address a seeming contradiction. Although Christians are sojourners in this present life, they are also commanded to be salt and light to a lost and dying world. [See: Matthew 5: 13-16] It is in the balancing act of being separate and being salt and light that the church often has difficulty. This is the subject of Part II.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] John Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress, (New York: Signet Classics, Introduction Copyright by Roger Lundin, 2002),pp. x-xii.
[2] Ibid., p. 12.
[3] Ibid., pp. 11-12.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part III

Posted by :webmaster On : March 6, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

We ended Part II with the thoughts of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison as to the importance of interpreting the Constitution according to its plain meaning and intent of the authors. George Washington also wrote of the importance of adhering to the prescribed methods for changing the Constitution.

If, in the opinion of the people…the constitutional powers be at any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way the Constitution designates. But let there be no change by usurpation; though this in one instance be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”[1] [emphasis added]

Joseph Story was the leading Constitutional scholar of the nineteenth century and in 1833 wrote in Commentaries on the Constitution that the Constitution “…was to be understood in terms of its plain, commonsense meaning” and must not be changed by the caprice of men.

The reader must not expect to find in these pages any novel construction of the Constitution. I have not the ambition to be the author of any new plan of interpreting the theory of the Constitution, or enlarging or narrowing its powers, by ingenious subtleties and learned doubts…”[2]

For 150 years original intent was the courts’ coin of the realm when interpreting the Constitution. But that dramatically changed in 1947. The beginning of that change occurred seventy-seven years earlier when Christopher Columbus Langdell became president of Harvard Law School in 1870 and developed the theory of legal positivism which was adopted and applied by other leading lawyers and jurists that followed him including Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.[3] Since 1947, legal positivism has replaced original intent as the standard for interpreting the Constitution. The essence of the theory is summarized as follows:

1. There are no objective, God-given standards of law, or if there are, they are irrelevant to the modern legal system.

2. Since God is not the author of law, the author of law must be man; in other words, the law is law simply because the highest human authority, the state, has said it is law and is able to back it up by force.

3. Since man and society evolve, therefore law must evolve as well.

4. Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law (Note again: Judges “make law).

5. To study law, get the original sources of law – the decision of judges; hence most law schools today use the “case law” method of teaching law.[4]

The Founding fathers including those who drafted the Constitution held a biblical worldview. In this worldview, eternal truths were revealed to man by God through his creation and His revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. In the Christian worldview, the Supreme Being (God) created matter out of nothing and formed the universe. He impressed certain principles upon that matter, laws of nature from which it can never depart. However, man was His special creation and was allowed to choose to follow or depart from those principles as they relate to human nature. Those principles are truths that are intrinsic and timeless, and are essential elements needed to provide a coherent and rational way to live in the world. These truths are called by various names: permanent things, universals, first principles, eternal truths, and norms.[5]

These absolutes became the basis for American law and were expounded upon by men such as William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Law of England. Blackstone wrote:

This law of nature…directed by God Himself…is binding in all the globe, in all countries, and at all times: no human laws are of any validity, if contrary to this; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority, mediately or immediately, from this original.[6] [emphasis added]

The American Constitution’s biblical origins and the Founders’ unbending devotion to original intent in its interpretation were hindrances to the proponents of legal positivism. In his book The New Freedom, Woodrow Wilson disparaged the Founders’ notions of original intent and argued that progressives should be allowed to apply the Darwinian principle in interpreting the Constitution.

And they [the authors of the Constitution] constructed a government…to display the laws of Nature…The government was to exist and move by virtue of the efficacy of “checks and balances.” The trouble with this theory is that government is not a machine, but a living thing. It falls not under the theory of the universe, but under the theory of organic life. It is accountable to Darwin…Government is not a body of blind forces; it is a body of men…Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice. Society is a living organism and must obey the laws of Life, not of mechanics, it must develop. All that progressives ask or desire is permission—in an era when “development,” “evolution,” “is the scientific word—to interpret the Constitution according to the Darwinian principle; all they ask is recognition of the fact that a nation is a living thing and not a machine.[7]

Wilson’s profoundly humanistic understanding of man jettison’s the Founders’ concern for the universal wickedness of fallen man and therefore dispenses with the need for those pesky “checks and balances” so important to the Founders. The Darwinian understanding of man is that he basically good and ever progressing. Therefore, as men and society evolve, so must their constitutions and laws.

Not content with a fluid interpretation of the Constitution to meet the needs of an evolving society, there is a new breed of activist judges that have gone beyond legal positivism to legal realism. Such realists are using the legal system to promote their own ends while using positivism as the “basis for denying divine law and/or natural law.” Judicial realism is another name for judicial usurpation of legislative power. Legal realists such as Charles Evans Hughes, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court during most of Franklin Roosevelt’s administration, believe that, “We are under a constitution, but the Constitution is what the judges say it is.”[8] Put another way, judges don’t just interpret the meaning of the Constitution; they decide what they believe the Constitution ought to say. They become social policy makers who craft decisions based on what they think as opposed the wishes of the people and their elected representatives. Prophetically, Thomas Jefferson warned of such an activist judiciary, “The Constitution… is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please.”[9]

The basis for liberals’ plea for separation of church and state rest only on eight words taken out of context in 1947, but they are now used to blast any hint of America’s Godly heritage from every facet of American society. Theirs is not a true separation of church and state but creation of an invisible church subservient to the state. However, the history and importance of separation of church and state is far longer and greater than its misapplication to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. The separation of the spiritual realm from the secular was instituted by Christ. The separate but complementary roles of church and state were designed and ordained by God. Therefore, the battle is not merely between church and state but just one battle on the far larger battleground of humanism versus Christianity. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the renowned German theologian who was martyred for his stand against Nazism, called humanism “the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had.[10]

The sad state of American jurisprudence with regard to a real separation of the dual realms of church and state occurred because of two major failures by the Christian church in America. We shall call the first failure an abandonment of the public arena which occurred in the late 1800s and early 1900s with the rise of the “social gospel.” The social gospel movement started within the church but was used by secularists for left-wing social reform. Fearing a gospel of “salvation by works,” many conservative and evangelical churches developed a “ghetto mentality,” backing away from society and burying themselves in prayer, Bible study, converting the lost, and personal morality and holiness.[11] But in doing so, they also became the silent church that also buried its responsibility to be salt and light to the government and culture at large. [See: Matthew 5:13]

The second failure of the church in maintaining the dual realms of church and state we shall label as acceptance. Contemporaneous with the abandonment of the public arena by conservative and evangelical churches in the late 1800s and early 1900s, many mainline churches felt the effects of a loss of cultural authority as secular humanism advanced on the coattails of science and rationalism. In order to retain a measure of cultural authority and acceptance in the face of humanism’s onslaught, mainline Protestant leaders began embracing secular human sciences to lend credibility and cultural relevance to the tenets of their religion.[12] But such acceptance brought compromise of its creedal doctrines which resulted in a profane and powerless church that had lost its saltiness, “…no longer good for anything except to be thrown out and trodden under foot by men.” [Matthew 5:13b. RSV] And because of the church’s abandonment of society or the compromise of its message, the humanistic worldview reigned supreme and subsequently spread into every facet of culture.

The leaders and many of their bureaucratic subordinates in the institutions of American life now present what appears to be the face of an almost invincible monolithic humanism. In the presence of such a daunting challenge, Christians and others in America may ask how society can return its laws and Constitution to reliance on the original intent of the Founders when the rules for interpreting and enforcing those laws and the Constitution are made up by judges as they see fit to protect and promote their humanistic worldview. Our first priority is to correctly identify our adversary. The Apostle Paul paints a vivid picture of the enemy and his lair. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” [Ephesians 6:12. RSV]

Even though it is a spiritual battle in this life and the heavenlies, we are not meant to be mere uninvolved spectators banished to the sidelines by a hostile society. In this earthly life, Christians are His “boots on the ground,” and our marching orders are to actively spread salt and light into all arenas habited by a lost and dying world.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution-The Faith of Our Founding Fathers, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 1987), pp. 392-393.
[2] Ibid., p. 393.
[3] Ibid., p. 394
[4] Ibid.
[5] Larry G. Johnson, Ye shall be as gods – Humanism and Christianity – The Battle for Supremacy in the American Cultural Vision, (Owasso, Oklahoma: Anvil House Publishers, 2011), p. 392.
[6] William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, Vol. 1-Book I & II. (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1910) p. 27.
[7] Eidsmoe, p. 390. Quoting: Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom, (New York: 1914), pp. 44-48.
[8] Ibid., pp. 395-397.
[9] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 195.
[10] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 85.
[1] Eidsmoe, p. 407.
[12] Johnson, p. 252.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part II

Posted by :webmaster On : February 27, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

1947 was a busy, exhilarating, and optimistic year in America. The final days of World War II ended sixteen months earlier with the defeat of the Japanese Empire. Miracle on 34th Street was playing in the movie houses across the nation, and a solid-state semi-conductor called a transistor was invented in the Bell Laboratories. An unknown object crashed in the desert near Roswell, New Mexico. Thousands of former soldiers and sailors were in their second year of a G.I. Bill-financed college education, and the first Boomer generation children were barely over a year old.

But in 1947, many Americans also sensed an increasing undercurrent of unease and foreboding. The post war euphoria was short-lived as 1947 was the beginning of the four-decade long Cold War with the Soviet Union. The two superpowers were now separated by the “Iron Curtain,” so labeled in March 1946 by Winston Churchill in his famous speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. The West was being challenged by an aggressive Soviet Union and a monolithic block of “satellite” states under soviet domination, eastern European countries formerly under the control of Nazi Germany. The House Un-American Activities Committee held nine days of hearings into alleged communist influence and propaganda within the Hollywood motion picture industry.

Amidst the tumultuous events of 1947 there was also one little-noticed occurrence—a seemingly insignificant ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that would eventually have a monumental impact on the course of religious liberty and freedom of speech for almost seven decades lasting to the present day. Known as Everson v. Board of Education, the case revolved around the authorization by the Ewing Township School Board for reimbursement of parents for fares paid for the transportation by public carrier of children attending public and Catholic schools. The school board made the authorization pursuant to a New Jersey statute authorizing district boards of education to make rules and contracts for the transportation of children to and from schools other than private schools operated for profit. Therefore, parents of children attending not-for-profit Catholic schools qualified for reimbursement under the New Jersey statute.[1]

In a 5-4 opinion, Justice Hugo Black spoke for the majority of the Court in their finding that upheld the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals’ decision which struck down the New Jersey statute:

No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion. Neither a state nor the Federal Government can, openly or secretly, participate in the affairs of any religious organizations or groups, and vice versa. In the words of Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect “a wall of separation between church and State.” Reynolds v. United States, supra, at 98 U. S. 164.

… The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. New Jersey has not breached it here.[2] [emphasis added]

The particulars of the case were relatively unimportant except to Plaintiff Everson and the citizens of Ewing Township, New Jersey, but the larger ramifications of the decision would spread into almost every facet of American society by overturning one-hundred fifty years of legal precedent, legislative actions, and its citizens’ quiet enjoyment of their religious liberties. The Court’s decision was contrary to the intent of the Founders with regard to the Establishment Clause and the meaning of Jefferson’s metaphor in his January 1, 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.

The Establishment Clause derives its name from the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[3]

The First Amendment protections for religious liberty were extremely important to the citizens of the newly-formed nation. In England, the established state church had been an onerous foe of those whose religious beliefs differed. Facing religious oppression in Europe, the original colonies were primarily founded by those seeking religious liberty. By the 1760s, the colonists had experienced this freedom of religion for almost one-hundred fifty years, but in those final years before the Revolution, they received a rude reminder of former times of religious oppression by one denomination over another when King George III appointed an Anglican bishopric to oversee the religious affairs of Puritan New England—the very reason the Puritans had left their homeland.[4]

At the time of the writing of the Constitution in 1789, although the states encouraged Christianity, no state allowed an exclusive state-sponsored denomination. A dozen years after the drafting of the Bill of Rights which included the First Amendment, rumors still circulated that the new American government would designate a state-authorized denomination. These rumors were so prevalent that the Danbury Baptist Association wrote to President Jefferson about their concern that a particular denomination would be established as the official denomination. It was in this context that Jefferson wrote to the Baptists at Danbury, Connecticut, to assure them that the rumor had no basis in fact. In an attempt to assuage their fears, he said,

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God; that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship; that the legislative powers of the government reach actions only, and not opinions—I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between church and State.[5] [emphasis added]

Jefferson’s belief that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal government’s establishment of a national denomination is confirmed by his letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, a fellow-signor of the Declaration of Independence.

[T]he clause of the Constitution which, while it secured the freedom of the press, covered also the freedom of religion, had given the clergy a very favorite hope of obtaining an establishment of a particular form of Christianity through the United States…especially the Episcopalians and Congregationalists. The returning good sense of our country threatens abortion to their hopes and they believe…any portion of power confided to me will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly.[6] [emphasis added]

Jefferson’s metaphor of “a wall of separation” meant only the establishment of one particular denomination as the state-authorized denomination. Also, Jefferson’s wall was intended to be a one-way wall to protect the church from the state and not the other way around. But modern court rulings have perverted the original intent of the Establishment Clause to allow, in their own words, the construction of a “high and impregnable” wall between church and state.

The Supreme Court’s Everson decision divorced the First Amendment from its original intent and “…reinterpreted it without regard to either historical context or previous judicial decisions.”[7] In effect, the Supreme Court took eight words from Jefferson’s letter to the Baptists out of context and used them without support of sound judicial precedent to dramatically diminish religious freedom in the United States. Subsequently, the ruling has been used for additional judicial chicanery by the proponents of a humanistic worldview to systematically and completely remove religion and especially Christianity from all spheres of American public life.

Jefferson would have strenuously objected to the 1947 Supreme Court’s departure from original intent with regard to the First Amendment as can be seen in his admonishment to Supreme Court Justice William Johnson.

On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed.[8]

James Madison’s regard for the importance of original intent also mirrored Jefferson’s beliefs.

I entirely concur in the propriety of resorting to the sense in which the Constitution was accepted and ratified by the nation. In that sense alone it is the legitimate Constitution. And if that be not the guide in expounding it, there can be no security for a consistent and stable, more than for a faithful, exercise of its powers…What a metamorphosis would be produced in the code of law if all its ancient phraseology were to be taken in its modern sense.[9] [emphasis added]

In 1947, the Supreme Court produced Madison’s dreaded metamorphosis as original intent was dumped for modern invention. As the Establishment Clause has been reconstructed by the Court’s Constitutional revisionists, the illegitimate modern interpretation of Jefferson’s wall of separation produces the same consequences as Churchill’s infamous Iron Curtain—the suppression and ultimate destruction of religious liberty.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] The U.S. Supreme Court, Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947). Everson v. Board of Education of Ewing Township, No. 52. Decided February 10, 1947.
https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/330/1/case.html (accessed February 5, 2015).
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Constitution of the United States of America, (Washington, D. C.: National Archives and Records Administration).
[4] M. Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom, (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1994), p. 217.
[5] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), pp. 51-52.
[6] Ibid., p. 51.
[7] Ibid., p. 27.
[8] Ibid, p. 28.
[9] Ibid., p. 28.

The REAL separation of church and state – Part I

Posted by :webmaster On : February 20, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Humanism, Progressivism

Ask the average American to define the meaning of the oft-repeated phrase of “separation of church and state” and usually you will receive a blank stare. Following a brief pause, they may start giving examples like: “It means we can’t have prayer in schools.” “The government can’t sponsor any event that is connected with a church.” or “The Founders wanted to keep church and faith out of government.” If one follows up with a question as to the origins of “separation of church,” answers will include: “It was invented by Thomas Jefferson.” “It is part of the Declaration of Independence.” “It was established by the Supreme Court.” And a few will identify its source as the U.S. Constitution.

Not only are most Americans substantially ignorant of our nation’s history, they are grossly uninformed about the form and operation of American government. What little understanding of government they have usually originates from listening to the nightly news, political pundits, Hollywood and media celebrities, Internet headlines and sound bites, and an educational system vehemently opposed to the central cultural vision of the Founders. Few concepts within American governance are so important and so misunderstood as that of separation of church and state.

The original Constitution was signed by Congress on September 17, 1787 and subsequently ratified by the states. The Bill of Rights was adopted by Congress on September 26, 1789 and became part of the Constitution when Virginia became the tenth state to ratify the Amendments on December 15, 1791.[1] The First Amendment reads as follows:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.[2]

The Founders were strong proponents of separation of church and state. But the confusion as to its meaning over the last seventy years derives from the modern revisionists’ misrepresentation of the Establishment Clause as opposed to those who argue for the original intent of the Founders that had been observed by custom and the courts for over 150 years.

It is clear from the words and actions of the Founders that the intent of the Establishment Clause was to prohibit government from establishing one denomination as the official or preferred church. Modernists have reinterpreted the Establishment Clause to be a separation clause that effectively purges any hint of religious activity and influence in the public square which has come to mean any of the spheres of American life.

To understand the concept of separation of church and state and why the Founders so valued it, we must look back in history. The idea that a group of people bound by a religious allegiance with its own history, beliefs, and traditions could exist within a society but remain independent of the governing political entity was a concept unknown to the ancients. This radical concept that a distinction must be made between the roles of church and state arose from Christianity at its very birth.[3] It was evident in Christ’s challenged to the politically-connected religious leaders (Pharisees and Herodians) when they attempted to entrap Him with questions as to man’s loyalty to man or God. “Then he said unto them, ‘Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’” [Matthew 22:21a. RSV]

For the next three hundred years the church fathers maintained this separation but endured severe persecution as a consequence. In 313 AD, Roman Emperor Constantine legalized Christianity, but he soon began intruding in church affairs. In 353-356, Hosius, bishop of Cordoba, Spain, reprimanded one of Constantine’s three sons (Emperor Constantius II) for intruding in church affairs by attempting to get Western bishops to oppose Athanasius of Alexandria for supporting those who rejected the Arian heresy. Hosius invoked Christ’s words in Matthew 22:21 which were preceded by a warning to the Emperor. “Intrude not yourself into ecclesiastical affairs…God has put into your hands the [secular] kingdom; to us [bishops] He has entrusted the affairs of His church.”[4]

Because of Constantine’s legalization of Christianity and in spite of the church’s early resistance to government interference, the church began a thousand year period in its history when church and state were intertwined to varying degrees. At the beginning of this period, government attempted to interfere with and bend the church to its will. However by the Middle Ages, it was the church who attempted to bend government to the will of the church. This was a corruption of God’s design for each realm.[5]

Out of the mixing of church and state came abuses such as the Crusades and the Inquisition. In spite of their motives to further His kingdom, the church had violated God’s plan because Christianity is not a religion that can coerce faith for it is a matter of the heart.[6] This intermingling of the spiritual and secular realms corrupted the roles of both church and state. A few men such as John Wycliffe and John Huss in the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries recognized this corruption and called for changes in the church which was in dire need of fundamental reform. They also recognized that such reform would only occur with the recognition that the Bible was the final arbiter of faith and not the church.[7] These early stirrings of reformation exploded in the early sixteenth century when Martin Luther nailed his ninety five theses to the door of the Wittenberg church. The turmoil within the church produced one of the doctrinal pillars of Protestantism–the priesthood of the believer.

Alvin Schmidt presents an excellent summation of Martin Luther’s understanding of the distinct roles of the two realms in the early sixteenth century.

He [Luther] especially criticized the papacy’s role in secular government, seeing it as violating what he called the concept of the two kingdoms (realms). It was the church’s task solely to preach and teach the gospel of Jesus Christ…the government’s task was to keep peace and order in society by restraining and punishing the unlawful. The secular government can only compel people to behave outwardly; it can never make a person’s heart spiritually righteous. Only the preaching of the Gospel (the spiritual realm) can do that. In the spiritual realm the Christian functions as a disciple of Christ; in the secular realm he functions as citizen. Although the two realms are separate, the faithful Christian is active in both because God is active in both. In the spiritual realm he is active in proclaiming the gospel, whereas in the secular kingdom he is active by means of the law and the sword, or government.[8]

The early colonists and their descendants still had fresh memories of the church-state conflagrations that swept Europe in the century prior to their first arrivals on the eastern shore of America. They well understood the need for separation of church and state, but that separation was a freedom of religion and not a freedom from religion as interpreted and imposed by modern Constitutional revisionists. For the colonists and Founders, separation of church and state was an institutional separation and not an influential separation. Institutional separation meant that government has certain roles and duties in which the church must not interfere (keeping peace and order in society by restraining and punishing the unlawful by means of the sword). Yet, the church has every right and duty to influence government. Likewise, the government does not have the right to interfere with the roles and duties of the church (teaching and preaching the gospel and influencing society).

There are numerous documents that attest to the Founders’ sentiments of the right of the church to influence society. Perhaps one of the best examples of the attitude of the Founders was expressed by Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (appointed by James Madison, the fourth president and delegate to the Constitutional Convention which speaks volumes about Story’s understanding of the Founders’ meaning and intent with regard to the Constitution and its Amendments). Speaking specifically of the Establishment Clause, Story wrote:

…We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general and especially to Christianity which none could hold in more reverence than the framers of the Constitution…Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution and of the Amendments to it, the general, if not universal, sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State…An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation (condemnation), if not universal indignation.[9]

To confirm the continuing existence of this strong religious sanction that still held sway over the nation forty years after the Constitutional Convention, we look to the words of Alexis De Tocqueville’s 1835 Democracy in America, one of the most influential political texts ever written about America.

Americans so completely identify the spirit of Christianity with freedom in their minds that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive the one without the other…

In France I had seen the spirit of religion moving in the opposite direction to that of the spirit of freedom. In America, I found them intimately linked together in joint reign over the same land.[10]

Tocqueville went on to say that the peaceful influence exercised by religion over the nation was due to separation of church and state.[11] Unlike the modernists’ separation of church and state, Tocqueville’s separation was a separation of the spheres of power and not a separation of government from ethics and moral guidance supplied by the moral suasion of Christianity and the church.

The Founders did not prohibit but encouraged the church’s influence upon government, and for one hundred fifty years the church played a vital role in helping the state be the state by continually asking if the state’s actions were justified as a legitimate fulfillment of its role. Since 1947, the courts have sided with the modern Constitutional revisionists who deny the church has a right to influence the state and society in the public square. This denial is the subject to be discussed in Part II.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Michael Kammen, ed., The Origins of the American Constitution – A Documentary History, (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), p. xxix.
[2] The Constitution of the United States of America, (Washington, D. C.: National Archives and Records Administration).
[3] Alvin J. Schmidt, How Christianity Changed the World, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2004), pp. 265-266.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid., p. 266.
[6] David Barton, Original Intent – The Courts, the Constitution, & Religion, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 2008), p. 86.
[7] B. K. Kuiper, The Church in History, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1964), pp. 143-145.
[8] Schmidt, p. 266.
[9] David Barton, The Myth of Separation, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuilder Press, 1989), p. 32.
[10] Alexis De Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Gerald E. Bevan, Trans., (London, England: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 343, 345.
[11] Ibid, p. 345.

Progressive Protestantism – Declining Faith

Posted by :webmaster On : February 13, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity

The Reverend John M. Buchanan is the editor/publisher of Christian Century, the leading voice of mainline Protestantism and what some call Progressive Protestantism. Buchanan likens the current decline in many Protestant denominations to the equivalent of a rummage sale. “Things that are old and worn out get sold to make room for a new things. Every 500 years there’s a major shift.” He points to the Protestant Reformation of 500 years ago and claims that we’re due for one of those major shifts. “I think we’re in the middle of a rummage sale. We’re trying to figure out what comes next. And I think something new is going to emerge out of this. We don’t know what it is yet.”[1] For a brief overview of Christian Century and Progressive Protestantism, see recently published culturewarrior.net articles: Strange Fire – The American church’s quest for cultural relevance – Part I [2] and Part II [3].

In spite of the decline of Protestant denominations in America and much of Western civilization, Buchanan believes that even though there are large number of those without religious affiliation, he states that people are still spiritual in that “…they believe in God, they pray, they read religious books, and they try to do the right thing with their lives.”[4] But Buchanan’s assumption that man’s seemingly “spiritual” nature is a sign of hope completely misses the fundamental nature of man and his separation from God. It is because man is lost that those spiritual longings rise to the surface in every age and every culture. One hundred eighty years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville described these spiritual longings.

…the imperfect joys of this world will never satisfy his heart. Man alone of all created beings shows a natural disgust for existence and an immense longing to exist; he despises life and fears annihilation. These different feelings constantly drive his soul toward the contemplation of another world and religion it is which directs him there. Religion is thus one particular form of hope as natural to the human heart as hope itself. Men cannot detach themselves from religious beliefs except by some wrong-headed thinking and by a sort of moral violence inflicted upon their true nature; they are drawn back by an irresistible inclination. Unbelief is an accident; faith is the only permanent state of mankind.[5]

Every man is born with an inherent stain of sin that separates him from God. Buchanan’s hope is merely recognition of man’s spiritual condition and his yearning to be reunited with God. Simply stated, religion is man’s search for God, and that search leads many to false religions and gods. Although claiming to represent the one true God, many Protestant denominations have failed to present Him in truth and power to those searchers. This is the reason for the declining number of denominational adherents in the Western world.

What are some of those old and tired things Buchanan believes that need to be thrown out? Although Buchanan says the church hasn’t figured that out yet, it appears that some biblical truths that have directed and sustained the church for two thousand years are among the items to be tossed on the ash heap. On the issue of same-sex marriage, he states that Christian Century “…has gradually come to support a positive position, that it’s a good thing. Let’s get past this and make sure that everyone has the same opportunities to be married.”[6] [emphasis added] Apparently, the Apostle Paul’s condemnation of homosexuality in his letter to the Romans (1:18, 24-27) is one of those things to be consigned to the rummage sale. But, how does one get past a biblical commandment? For God and Paul, eternal truths are never subject to change, even in the midst of contemporary cultural imperatives that change frequently and rapidly.

Buchanan is also greatly concerned with achieving peace among the various religions and agrees with a Catholic theologian who stated that “…there will be no world peace until there is peace among religions, and that will not happen until there is dialogue between religions.”[7] [emphasis added] Apparently, Buchanan believes that dialogue will lead to common ground through discovery of beliefs shared by various religions. As commendable as world peace may be, that is not the mission of the church. Christ came into the world to bear witness to the truth. [John 18:37] Likewise, dialogue to find common ground with false religions was not part of Christ’s commission to His followers. Rather, He commanded them to “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you…” [Matthew 28:19-20a. RSV]

In his book Storm, Jim Cymbala has written an excellent diagnosis of the condition of the American church and the reasons for its decline. Cymbala states that many leaders of the church use “faith talk” or mental positivism (similar to that of Rev. Buchanan) to avoid the reality of a declining church. Many blame the decline on forces outside the church including failed political solutions and a decaying secular culture that is increasing hostile to the message of Christ and His followers.[8] Certainly these are contributing influences, but the Church has survived far worse in its two thousand-year history. Cymbala cuts to the heart of the failure of the modern church.

Yet, we simultaneously mimic the ways of the world in hopes of packaging our faith into “Christianity Lite”—a spiritual candy we can toss at nonbelievers rather than confronting the hostile reactions that can occur when we proclaim the real gospel of Jesus Christ. Pandering to the culture with prepackaged truth nuggets hasn’t made us more effective; it has made us ineffective. Many devoted Christians see the warning signs and recognize our failed attempts to turn back the tide…They are frustrated with church services that are shallow and powerless…While our culture rapidly deteriorates, they aren’t fooled by the hype in some religious quarters, nor the “Don’t worry, God is sovereign!” attitude of others who have their heads in the sand…Most of all, they know it’s impossible for any nation to change unless we Christians and our churches become the spiritual light and salt of which Jesus spoke.[9]

The church must discard its application of spiritual band-aids to a hurting and lost world and recognize the dimensions of the battle. “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.” [Ephesians 6:12. RSV]

The solutions for reversing the decline of the American church are not new and have served the church well for two thousand years. They brought spiritual renewal to America three times since the arrival of the first Americans on the eastern shore. Renewal begins with desperate, concerted prayer in which we humble ourselves, repent, and call upon God to heal our land and restore our Godly legacy. Preachers must preach the power-packed, unchanged, unadulterated Word of God centered on Jesus Christ, or as Cymbal puts it, “the real gospel of Jesus Christ.” We must seek the manifest presence of the Holy Spirit within our church services. We must die to self as we become the salt and light so needed by a lost and dying world. Lastly, we must love our brothers and sisters in Christ as well as a lost world, be they Muslim, homosexual, atheist, and every other human who in their heart of hearts is seeking to know the one true God. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” [John 3:16. RSV]

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Bill Sherman, “Christian church seeing ‘major shift’,” Tulsa World, January 24, 2015, A-9.
[2] Larry G. Johnson, “Strange Fire – The American church’s quest for cultural relevance – Part I,” culturewarrior.net, December 12, 2014. http://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/12/12/strange-fire-the-churchs-quest-for-cultural-relevance-part-i/
[3] Larry G. Johnson, “Strange Fire – The American church’s quest for cultural relevance – Part II,” culturewarrior.net, December 26, 2014. http://www.culturewarrior.net/2014/12/26/strange-fire-the-churchs-quest-for-cultural-relevance-part-ii/
[4] Sherman, A-9.
[5] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Trans. Gerald E. Bevan, (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), pp. 346-347.
[6] Sherman, A-9.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Jim Cymbala with Jennifer Schuchmann, Storm – Hearing Jesus for The Times We Live In, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2014), pp. 14-15.
[9] Ibid., p. 15

Humanism’s equality handcuffs freedom and violates the Constitution

Posted by :webmaster On : February 6, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity, Constitution, Equality, Homosexuality

Until recently most Americans had never heard of the highly respected Atlanta Fire Chief Kelvin Cochran. That changed dramatically when Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed fired Cochran because of his religious beliefs. The facts behind the firing are straightforward. Cochran self-published a book in 2013 titled Who Told You That You Were Naked? One paragraph in the book labeled homosexuality as “a perversion.” After the mayor learned of the book, he initially placed Cochran on a thirty-day suspension beginning November 24, 2014.[1] The mayor denied knowing that Cochran had written a book prior to his suspension. However, Cochran stated that he had given the mayor a copy of the book in January 2014, and that the mayor promised to read it on an upcoming trip. Cochran also said the director of Atlanta’s ethics office had given him permission to write the book and to mention in his biography that he was the city’s fire chief.[2]

Following the one-month suspension, the mayor fired Cochran just as he was preparing to return as head of the fire department. Defending his decision to fire Cochran the mayor stated, “This is not about religious freedom. This is not about free speech. Judgment is the basis of the problem.” Prior to Cochran’s firing, the mayor publicly condemned the fire chief on his official Facebook page. “I profoundly disagree with and am deeply disturbed by the sentiments expressed in the paperback regarding the LGBT community. I will not tolerate discrimination of any kind within my administration.” Georgia Equality Executive Director Jeff Graham stated that Cochran’s “anti-gay” views could result in a hostile work environment.[3]

Cochran said that the comments regarding homosexuality were contained in less than one-half page of a 160 page book he wrote for a men’s Bible study group at his Baptist church. He stated that the reference to homosexuality was made in the larger context that sexual activity was designed to be between a man and a woman in holy matrimony. Outside of that, any other sexual activity including homosexuality is sin.[4] Further, Cochran defended his beliefs and his right to express himself.

The LGBT members of our community have a right to be able to express their views and convictions about sexuality and deserve to be respected for their position without hate or discrimination. But Christians also have a right to express our belief regarding our faith and be respected for our position without hate and without discrimination. In the United States, no one should be vilified, hated or discriminated against for expressing their beliefs.[5]

In an Opinion Page piece by The New York Times, it was not a surprise to find that the newspaper supported Cochran’s firing. The Times Editorial Board stated that Cochran’s claim of religious discrimination had it backwards.

It is, as Mr. Reed said at a news conference, about ‘making sure that we have an environment in government where everyone, no matter who they love, can come to work from 8 to 5:30 and do their job and then go home without fear of being discriminated against…It should not matter that the investigation found no evidence that Mr. Cochran had mistreated gays or lesbians. His position as a high-level public servant makes his remarks especially problematic, and requires that he be held to a different standard. The First Amendment already protects religious freedom…Nobody can tell Mr. Cochran what he can or cannot believe. If he wants to work as a public official, however, he may not foist his religious views on other city employees who have the right to a boss who does not speak of them as second-class citizens.[6] [emphasis added]

It appears that the Times Editorial Board subordinates religious freedom and the practice thereof to the whims of a hypersensitive workplace environment and totally extinguishes freedom of religion and speech for high-level public servants and governmental officials.

Should the Times Editorial Board have been present with the patriots at Valley Forge on March 10, 1778, their radical egalitarian sensibilities would have experienced great shock perhaps resulting in terminal apoplexy because of a high governmental official’s supposed flagrant discrimination against one Lieutenant Enslin as a result of his attempt at homosexual actions.

Lieutt. Enslin of Colo. Malcom’s Regiment tried for attempting to commit sodomy, with John Monhort a soldier; Secondly, For Perjury in swearing to false Accounts, found guilty of the charges exhibited against him, being breaches of 5th Article 18th Section of the Articles of War and do sentence him to be dismiss’d the service with Infamy. His Excellency the Commander in Chief [George Washington] approves the sentence and with Abhorrence and Detestation of such Infamous Crimes orders Lieutt. Enslin to be drummed out of Camp tomorrow morning by all the Drummers and Fifers in the Army never to return; The Drummers and Fifers to attend on the Grand parade at Guard mounting for that Purpose.[7]

Should the Editorial Board still be in doubt as to Washington’s Christian beliefs, less than two months after Lieutenant Enslin’s disgrace Washington issued these orders to his troops at Valley Forge.

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to laud the more distinguished Character of Christian.[8]

How did America arrive at such a state of affairs that the extreme egalitarian views of humanistic governmental officials equate one’s Christian beliefs and the sharing of those beliefs with the creation of a hostile work environment? Even though the fire chief was not found guilty of mistreatment of homosexuals in or out of government, Cochran was deemed guilty because of his status as a public official who expressed religious beliefs that were contrary to the beliefs of the homosexual community. It is ludicrous for The New York Times to label Cochran’s firing as anything other than a blatant violation of Cochran’s First Amendment rights which apply to every American including public servants and officials of whatever rank or station.

Equality, rightly applied, is equality before God and the law. However, the humanist understanding of equality is synonymous with a rapacious egalitarianism that imposes regimentation and leveling. This twisted understanding of human equality places special emphasis on social, political, and economic rights and privileges and focuses on the removal of any imagined or invented inequalities among humankind. This focus results in a forced leveling of society which leads to socialism and ultimately loss of freedom.

Driving religious beliefs from the public square does not enhance but destroys religious freedom in order to attain the egalitarian ideal. Because of a growing humanistic worldview among the leadership of the institutions of American life, the nation’s central cultural vision is under assault from humanists’ surgically precise efforts to separate church and state and to sweep away all evidence of our Christian cultural heritage. Even our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of religion and speech are no longer sacrosanct from such assaults. For humanists, religious freedom means only freedom to spread the humanist orthodoxy and worship their god of equality.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “Atlanta Fire Chief fired over controversial statements,” myfoxatlanta.com, January 6, 2015. http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/story/27772986/mayor-holds-news-conference-on-fire-chiefs-future (accessed January 21, 2015).
[2] Todd Starnes, “Atlanta Fire Chief: I was fired because of my Christian faith,” Fox News, January 7, 2015.
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2015/01/07/atlanta-fire-chief-was-fired-because-my-christian-faith/ (accessed
January 21, 2015).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] The Editorial Board, “God, Gays, and the Atlanta Fire Department,” The New York Times, January 13, 2015.
[7] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc., 1996), p. 642.
[8] Ibid., pp. 642-643.

Liberal defense of Islam

Posted by :webmaster On : January 30, 2015

Category: Archives, Christianity, Humanism, Islam, Worldview

[An abbreviated version of this article[1] appeared in the Tulsa World on January 22, 2015.]

Liberals and the governments and institutions they represent are having ever increasing difficulty in convincing their constituents that the atrocities of Islamic terrorists do not represent the supposedly peace-loving Islamic religion followed by moderate Muslims. The frequency, shrillness, and fervor with which liberals defend Islam grow proportionally with each announcement of a new Muslim terrorist attack regardless of its magnitude and vicious brutality.

Howard Dean is the former head of the Democratic National Committee and one-time candidate for the Democratic nomination for president. Following the murder of two policemen and ten employees of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical magazine that routinely criticized Islam’s Muhammad as well as many other non-Muslim religious and political leaders, Mr. Dean refused to label the perpetrators as Muslim terrorists in spite of the three gunmen shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the killing spree. Allahu Akbar translates as “Allah is the Greatest” and is the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer as prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad.

I stopped calling these people Muslim terrorists. They’re about as Muslim as I am. I mean, they have no respect for anybody else’s life, that’s not what the Koran says. Europe has an enormous radical problem. I think ISIS is a cult. Not an Islamic cult. I think it’s a cult.[2]

The Paris murderers shouted the same exaltations of Allah as Army Major and fellow Muslim Nadal Hasan did when he shot and killed fourteen and wounded thirty-two at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. The American government conveniently ignored Hasan’s motives and obvious connections with Islamic jihad while euphemistically mislabeling the murders as workplace violence.

Following an attack on the Canadian Parliament by a thirty-two year old Muslim convert who shot and killed a guard during the attack, liberal leader Justin Trudeau quickly reassured his friends and fellow citizens in the Muslim community that, “…Canadians know acts such as these committed in the name of Islam are an aberration of your faith. Continued mutual cooperation and respect will help prevent the influence of distorted ideological propaganda posing as religion. We will walk forward together, not apart.[3] [emphasis added]

In response to the Paris attack political columnist Michael Gerson wrote that the murders in Paris were, “…the exploitation of religious passions for political ends…It is important to separate this violent political ideology from the faith of Islam.”[4] Although many Muslims do not agree with and reject the violence occurring in the name of Islam, the separation of Islam from the violence prescribed by the Koran is impossible. These so-called moderate Muslims are Muslim in name only and have no standing in defense of the Muslim faith. They may be Muslims by birth, conversion, products of a predominately Muslim culture, and give lip-service to the Koran, but they are not representative of Muslims faithful to the teachings of the Koran. In fact, the Koran labels them infidels for not fully embracing the teachings of Muhammad and the Koran.

They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they): but take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks. [Surah 4:89. Quran][5]

The same analogy applies to Christians. True Christians accept Christ as their Savior and follow His teachings. Those that claim to be Christian by birth, upbringing, or culture or do not follow Christ’s teachings are Christian in name only and live without the Christian creed. But unlike the followers of Islam, Christians cannot compel conversion nor punish those who do not convert.

With the explosion of Muslim-inspired violence in the West as well as in Muslim-dominated countries, liberals refuse to acknowledge the elephant in the room—the obvious truth as to the nature of Islam. That truth which is being ignored and not addressed is that violent proponents of the Islamic religion are acting in accordance with the words and directives of the Koran to spread Islam through aggressive individual, military, and political threats, intimidation, and actions in order to achieve world domination.

One wonders why the humanists and their political operatives are so adamant in the defense of Islam, a most authoritarian religion, given the fact that humanism denies the existence of a supreme being and denigrates “…traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience…”[6] Two reasons are apparent for humanists’ defense of Islam. The first is that Christianity has so dominated the history and worldview of Western civilization that Western liberals demand not only equal time for opposing views but give preference to various anti-Christian religions and none more so than Islam. The second reason for humanism’s defense of Islam is adherence to two of its core beliefs—humanistically defined multiculturalism and tolerance.

Multiculturalism is one of the cardinal doctrines of humanism and has its roots in the denial of absolutes which translates into moral relativism. According to humanist dogma, such a values-free approach makes it impossible to judge one period or era in relation to another or to say that one culture’s ethic is superior to another. The end result of this philosophy is that all belief systems are equally valid. But if all belief systems are not equally valid (as demonstrated by the followers of Islam and the Qur’an), then the tenets of humanism including its humanistically defined concepts of equality, diversity, and multiculturalism are false and unsustainable. The liberal defense of Islam occurs not because they care for and respect the tenets of Islam. Rather, to reject Islam based on its history as a scourge to mankind is to admit that their humanistic conceptions of multiculturalism and tolerance are fundamentally flawed with regard to a mankind’s understanding of his nature and transcendent values.

There is a third reason for humanists’ defense of Islam. The words of the Apostle Paul give insight into the mindset of seemingly intelligent people who are so obviously in denial of the Islamic threat to Western civilization.

And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient. [Romans 1:28. KJV] [emphasis added]

Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. [2 Timothy 3:8. KJV] [emphasis added]

They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. [Titus 1:16. KJV] [emphasis added]

In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. [2 Corinthians 4:4. KJV]

Reprobate is a very old-fashioned, King-James-style word little understood by moderns but well describes the humanist abandonment of rational thought regarding Islam. Although Christ loves the sinner, the Apostle Paul does not mince words as to the spiritual condition of a reprobate by which he means unworthy, corrupt, rejected, and condemned.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Larry G. Johnson, “Liberals won’t acknowledge nature of Islam,” Tulsa World, January 22, 2015, A-13.
[2] Daniel Greenfield, “Howard Dean: Muslim Terrorists are as Muslim as Me,” Frontpage Mag, January 7, 2015. http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/dgreenfield/howard-dean-muslim- terrorists-are-as-muslim-as-me/ (accessed January 13, 2015).
[3] Erika Tucker, “Soldier killed in what Harper calls ‘terrorist attack’ in Ottawa,” Global News, October 22, 2014. http://globalnews.ca/news/1628313/shots-fired-at-war-memorial-in-ottawa-says-witness/ (accessed January 13, 2015).
[4] Michael Gerson, “The politics of homicide in France,” Tulsa World, January 10, 2015, A-16.
[5] The Meaning of The Illustrious Qur-an, (Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah), p. 49.
[6] Paul Kurtz, Humanist Manifestos I and II, (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 1973), pp.15-16.