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The REAL separation of church and state – Part II

Posted by :webmaster On : February 27, 2015
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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
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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.

Gridlock – Governmental stalemate arising from a deeper cultural divide

Posted by :webmaster On : December 5, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Constitution, Government, Progressivism

Gridlock is a favorite bogeyman of journalists, columnists, and commentators in recent years, especially following national elections. They may as well save their breath and barrels of printer’s ink for the political divide has never been wider and deeper. Perennial prescriptions of non-partisanship and cooperation disappear as quickly as the morning mist following Election Day. One must ask if political polarization always results in gridlock which is shorthand for the inability of government to govern effectively. A cursory review of American history reveals many times of intense polarization, but the country and its government survived. Why was that possible then and not possible now? An examination of one of the defining moments in our nation’s history suggests an answer.

The fifty-five delegates to the Constitutional Convention had labored through the hot Philadelphia summer of 1787. Their efforts to draft a constitution for the fledgling nation were floundering and near failure amidst bitter debate and hostile feelings. On June 28th, eighty-one year old Benjamin Franklin rose to his feet and addressed General Washington who served as Convention president and the other 54 delegates. Here we recite only portions of this perhaps nation-saving speech.

Mr. President:

The small progress we have made after four or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other—our different sentiments on almost every question…is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding.

In this situation of the assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understanding?

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God Governs in the affairs of men…

We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that “except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: we shall be divided by our partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages…I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…[1]

Franklin noted on the bottom of his copy of the speech that the convention, except for three or four, thought prayers were unnecessary.[2] But he was wrong. Jonathan Drayton, delegate from New Jersey, reported the response of the convention.

The Doctor sat down; and never did I behold a countenance at once so dignified and delighted as was that of Washington at the close of the address; nor were the members of the convention generally less affected.[3]

Upon motion of James Madison, seconded by Roger Sherman of Connecticut, Franklin’s appeal for prayer was approved by the delegates who further voted that at the request of the Convention a sermon be preached on July 4th and thereafter prayers be used in the Convention every morning.[4]

On June 30, two days after his speech, Franklin would help set in motion events that would break the impasse and ultimately help shape the new nation.[5] John Drayton noted a profound change in the convention as they assembled on July 2nd. “We assembled again; and …every unfriendly feeling had been expelled, and a spirit of conciliation had been cultivated.”[6]

The entire delegation assembled at the Reformed Calvinistic Church on July 4th to hear a sermon preached by Reverend William Rogers. Rogers prayed that the delegates would be favored “…with thy inspiring presence, be their wisdom and strength; enable them to devise such measures as may prove happy instruments in healing all divisions and prove the good of the great whole…” He closed with, “May we…continue, under the influence of republican virtue, to partake of all blessings of cultivated and Christian society.”[7] God answered Rogers’ request. On September 17, 1787, the delegates approved the Constitution of the United States of America. This was not the first of many instances of God’s providence in the founding and preservation of the nation amidst polarizing events and difficulties including the greatest threat of all—the Civil War that divided the nation not only politically but also divided families and friends.

In reality, the political divide in the nation’s first 150 years was probably more dramatic then than it is today. So what makes modern political divisiveness more intractable than that of our forebears?

The fundamental divide in America goes far deeper than mere political polarization and gridlock. This divide is the result of the ascendance of a humanistic worldview that believes that “change and progress are the law of life.” To maintain progress, America must be unshackled from the past. On the other side of the divide are those who are concerned with the nature of man and values.[8] It is on this side we find the central cultural vision of the colonial Americans, the Founders, and most Americans since then.

The collective consciousness of those early Americans was essentially Christian in the way they saw the world. Man was fallen but redeemable. Their values were fixed by timeless truths found both in the natural law and the revelation to the ancient Hebrews and first century Christians. Even though Franklin and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were mired in deep philosophical disagreements regarding the details of founding a nation, the Christian worldview held by virtually all of the delegates defined their basic beliefs and informed their deliberations which made possible compromise and success in creating a document that reflected their understanding of timeless values and the nature of man.

For those who believe that change and progress are the fundamental forces for directing life, it is essential that the Founders’ central cultural vision and values be discarded. In their central cultural vision, man is not fallen. He need not look to any god or the supernatural for solutions to his problems for those solutions come only through man’s reason and scientific advancement. As man progresses, values must change to reflect the times and accommodate current attitudes and situations.

The problem with the worldview of progress and change is that it violates the essential requirements that define a viable and sustainable culture. The essence of culture is to give allegiance to a center of authority that reflects moral codes and laws whereby it enforces what it believes is right and good for society. In other words, a culture must have a unifying central vision of how things ought to work, what’s important, its moral values, and what must be included and what must be excluded from that culture.

The progressive view of culture is essentially disintegrative because it has no unifying, cohesive central vision for it, by definition, produces multiple centers of cultural vision. Progressives attempt to create coherence and cohesiveness among these multiple centers of vision by substituting falsely defined concepts such as diversity, equality, and other egalitarian ideals as the cultural center of authority. However, these concepts do not resonate with man’s innate understanding of truth and freedom and fail to answer the basic questions of life. Therefore, these humanistic concepts inevitably lead to tensions and frictions, are inherently divisive, and result in cultural disintegration.

These tensions and frictions are most evident in the modern political arena and result in gridlock. Present day political polarization has become insurmountable because the conflict flows from fundamental differences in our basic beliefs that can’t be compromised without destroying who we claim to be as individuals and as a nation. And it is in these basic differences of belief that we see the flashpoints in the culture wars which include abortion, same-sex marriage, and homosexuality.

For over 150 years America overcame its political polarization and gridlock because its citizens and leaders were guided by a single cultural vision. Now, many of the leaders in the nation’s spheres of influence adhere to and promote a humanistic view of life in which God is a myth and man is the master of his own destiny. From such beliefs come political solutions that conflict with the central cultural vision that has been held by most Americans for three hundred years (colonial Americans, Founders, and most citizens since then). And without the cohesive and coherent central cultural vision of the Founders, there is no firm foundation upon which America’s leaders can overcome political polarization and gridlock. In Franklin’s words, they have become “the builders of Babel.”

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] William J. Federer, America’s God and Country, (Coppell, Texas: FAME Publishing, Inc.1996), pp. 248-249.
[2] Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin – An American Life, (New York, Simon & Schuster), 2003), p. 452.
[3] Federer, p. 249.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Isaacson, p. 452.
[6] Federer, p. 250.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Richard M. Weaver, Visions of Order – The Cultural Crisis of Our Time, (Wilmington, Delaware: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995, 2006), pp. 4-5.

The difference a day makes – Another interpretation

Posted by :webmaster On : November 28, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Equality, Government, Homosexuality, Marriage

The voters of Oklahoma amended its state constitution in November 2004 to define marriage as being between one man and one woman. Following a suit filed in Tulsa County, U.S. District Judge Terrance Kern ruled the ban on same-sex marriage was a violation of the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and therefore unconstitutional. Because the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear the state’s appeal, gay marriage became legal in spite of the wishes of approximately 75% of Oklahoma’s electorate. [1]

Toby Jenkins, head of Oklahomans for Equality, hails the decision as a sunrise on a new day that ended “marriage discrimination” in Oklahoma. He cites four examples of such alleged discrimination: failure to process loan applications by same-sex couples, prohibition of same-sex couples from sharing an apartment in an assisted living center, prohibition from having a vehicle title issued in both names of a same-sex married couple legally married in another state, and prohibition of the right to request cremation of a deceased partner by the other partner in a same-sex relationship. [2]

However, the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear challenges to rulings allowing same-sex marriage in some states may be more of a go-slow approach than an endorsement of same-sex marriage. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ November 6th ruling favored those that define marriage as being between one man and one woman and almost guarantees the highest court will take up the issue at some point. The language within the Sixth Circuit’s ruling is significant, “…marriage has long been a social institution defined by relationships between men and women. So long defined, the tradition is measured in millennia, not centuries or decades. So widely shared, the tradition until recently had been adopted by all governments and major religions of the world.” [3]

In upholding the traditional view of marriage, the court’s verdict ended with these words. “When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers. Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.” [4]

For most people in Oklahoma and America, Mr. Jenkins’ sunrise for equality is in reality a sunset for liberty. Ultimately, same-sex marriage is not just about equality, honor, and dignity for the proponents of same-sex marriage but a means to force the majority of Americans to forfeit their religious beliefs, bow to the god of equality, and embrace the consequent moral relativism which provides no means for finding truth or judging something based on the concept of right and wrong. For those that deny this reality of the LGBT agenda, just ask the president of Gordon, a Christian college that is being threatened with loss of accreditation because of the school’s longstanding policies prohibiting gay activities among students, faculty, and staff and its public opposition to hiring protections for gays and lesbians. [5] Or ask the Lexington, Kentucky, tee-shirt maker who was found to have violated the city’s Human Rights Commission’s “fairness” ordinance and was ordered to attend “diversity training” for re-education. His crime? He refused to make tee-shirts for participants in a local gay-pride parade. [6] Or ask Jennifer Keeton, a former graduate student in counseling at Augusta State University, who was threatened with expulsion unless she changed her religious beliefs that failed “to conform to professional standards” with regard to LGBT issues. [7]

For millions of others in America who oppose the LGBT same-sex agenda because they adhere to the tenets of their Christian faith, the sun is setting on religious freedom as the nation descends into a dark night of coercion and oppression.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Writ of Certiorari, The Supreme Court of the United States, Sally Howe Smith v. Mary Bishop, et.al., August 6, 2014. http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Oklahoma-Smith-petition-8-6-14.pdf (accessed November 11, 2014).
[2] Toby Jenkins, “The difference a day makes,” Tulsa World, November 9, 2014, G-6.
[3] United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, 14-1341, Opinion, November 6, 2014. p.7. http://www.ca6.uscourts.gov/opinions.pdf/14a0275p-06.pdf (accessed November 11, 2014).
[4] Ibid., p. 42.
[5] Matt Rocheleau, “Accrediting agency to review Gordon College,” The Boston Globe, July 11, 2014. http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/07/11/agency-review-whether-gordon-college-antigay-stance-policies-violate-accrediting- standards/Cti63s3A4cEHLGMPRQ5NyJ/story.html (accessed October 8, 2014).
[6] Tony Perkins, “Intolerance fits liberals to a T (Shirt),” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 9, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/intolerance-fits-liberals-to-a-t-shirt (accessed October 13, 2014).
[7] Sarah Netter, “Georgia Grad Student Sues University Over Gay Sensitivity Training,” abcNews/US, July 27, 2010, http://abcnews.go. com/US/georgia-student-sues-university-lgbt-sensitivity-training/story?id=11261490 (accessed August 7, 2010).

“Workplace violence” comes to Canada

Posted by :webmaster On : November 21, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Government, Humanism, Islam, Worldview

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) defines workplace violence as “…violence or the threat of violence against workers. It can occur at or outside the workplace and can range from threats and verbal abuse to physical assaults and homicide, one of the leading causes of job-related deaths. However it manifests itself, workplace violence is a growing concern for employers and employees nationwide.” The OSHA website also tells us that workplace violence can strike anywhere and anyone…people in homes, pizza delivery persons, gas meter readers, psychiatric evaluators…literally anywhere work is or can be done.[1] But OSHA’s definition is so broad that it is meaningless. Almost any violence can be classified as connected to the workplace however tenuous that connection might be. Not only does OSHA mask the real reasons for much of the violence, but it magnifies the level of workplace violence by equating minor non-violent and non-criminal occurrences with violent crimes such as physical assault and murder. Effectively, a large segment of general societal violence is jury-rigged to the workplace and made the responsibility of employers. The assumptive language of OSHA’s workplace violence regulations is that all such violence is workplace related.

OSHA’s workplace violence rules were written long before November 5, 2009, when Army Major Nidal Hasan shot to death thirteen people (fourteen including the unborn child of one of the victims) and wounded thirty-two others at Fort Hood, Texas. Major Hasan committed these crimes after years of open and verbal support of Islamic jihad while serving as an Army officer. Hasan is an American-born Muslim who had exchanged emails with a leading Al-Qaeda personage in which Hasan asked if those attacking fellow soldiers were considered martyrs.[2] Hasan fired over 200 rounds in the killing spree while shouting “Allahu Akbar,” which means “Allah is the Greatest” and is the opening declaration of every Islamic prayer as prescribed by the Prophet Muhammad.

Only four days after the shootings at Fort Hood, General George Casey, Chief of Staff of the Army, appeared on several Sunday news talk shows and expressed concern regarding the speculation as to the cause or motivation behind the shootings. “We have to be careful because we can’t jump to conclusions now based on little snippets of information that have come out. As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” (emphasis added) Not only was the general more concerned with protecting diversity than exposing the truth regarding the attack, he deliberately switched the focus of what happened when he said that he did not think there was currently discrimination against the estimated 3,000 Muslims who served in the Army at that time. Implicit in the General’s unwarranted statement was that if Hasan had acted because of his religious beliefs, it would have been because of discrimination against Muslims within the Army.[3]

Forty-six people were killed or wounded just three days earlier on an Army base whose supreme commander was General Casey. The perpetrator was a Muslim who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and had a well-known history among his military peers and superiors of being in sympathy with and vocally supporting Islamic jihad. However, the general’s greatest concern was for discrimination against Muslims in the military and not the families of the dead and those wounded by Hasan. It is incredibly naïve for anyone to believe the general did know the complete story of Nidal Hasan within hours of the killings and not just little snippets of information.

So the United States government saw to it that Hasan’s crimes were labeled “workplace violence” as opposed to what it really was…an act of terror whose motivation was to advance the beliefs and purposes of a false religion. Workplace violence may describe the location, but it does not reveal the cause or motivation of the violence. Government leadership committed to the philosophy of humanism must at all costs defend its humanistic concepts of diversity and multiculturalism in which moral relativism rules and all belief systems are coexisting and equally valid. Thus, we can all rest well tonight because diversity has been defended and OSHA is churning out even more rules and regulations to combat “workplace violence” such as committed by Major Hasan.

Recently, Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, a thirty-two year old Muslim convert, shot and killed a ceremonial guard on his way to attack the Canadian House of Commons and was subsequently killed by guards. Humanism in Canada is even more advanced than in the United States, but Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper had the courage to call the assault on the House of Commons a terrorist attack. However, true to liberalism’s humanistic roots, liberal leader Justin Trudeau quickly reassured the Muslim community.

And to our friends and fellow citizens in the Muslim community, 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.[4] (emphasis added)

According to Muslim tradition, the Quran was verbally spoken to Muhammad and is the mother document upon which Islam rests. One wonders how Zehaf-Bibeau’s actions are a deviation from the Islamic faith when the words of the Quran repeatedly justify his actions. Two examples of many similar verses that justify Zehaf-Bibeau’s attack are found in the Quran.

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.[5] [Surah 4:89. Quran]

Remember thy Lord inspired the angels (with the message): “I am with you, give firmness to the believers: I will instil [sic] terror into the hearts of the unbelievers, smite ye above their necks and smite all their fingertips off them.[6] [Surah 8:12. Quran]

Are these verses, which are consistent with the actions of Zehaf-Bibeau, distorted ideological propaganda as Trudeau would have us believe? The Quran either does or does not define Islam and direct the actions of its followers? If they are reflective of the Quran’s instruction for conduct of the followers of Islam, the verses cannot be distorted ideological propaganda. If the verses are not reflective of proper conduct for the followers of Islam, how does a follower of Islam determine which verses of the Quran are to be followed and which must be considered distorted ideological propaganda?

The philosophy of humanism would have us believe that all belief systems are equally valid. If all belief systems are not equally valid, then the tenets of humanism are fundamentally flawed including humanistically defined concepts of diversity and multiculturalism which are embraced by General Casey and most of the leadership of the institutions of American life. When common sense and thousands of years of human experience expose the falsity of the humanistic worldview, its defenders use the power of office and meaningless language such as “workplace violence” and bogus definitions of diversity and multiculturalism to mask its failings.

Humanism’s diversity is a close kin of multiculturalism and focuses on the differences within society and not society as a whole. With emphasis on the differences, mass culture becomes nothing more than an escalating number of subcultures within an increasingly distressed political framework that attempts to satisfy the myriad of demands of the individual subcultures. There is a loss of unity through fragmentation and ultimately a loss of a society’s central cultural vision which leads to disintegration. Humanism’s impulse for diversity is a derivative of relativism and humanism’s perverted concept of equality.[7]

…the humanist multicultural agenda reveals that multiculturalism is not intended to supplement but rather to supplant Western culture that is so steeped in Christianity. The attack on Western civilization comes through a dismissal of American religious values as they intersected with and made possible the rise of the American political system…The essence of multiculturalism has its roots in the denial of absolutes, one of the cardinal doctrines of humanism, which translates into a moral relativism. Such a values-free approach, according to the humanists, 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.[8]

The American experience since the first Europeans set foot on its eastern shores has been centered on a Christian understanding of the world. America became the greatest nation in the world because it was founded upon principles based upon that understanding.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] OSHA Fact Sheet, U.S. Department of Labor, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, 2002.
https://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_General_Facts/factsheet-workplace-violence .pdf (accessed November 5, 2014).
[2] Billy Kenber, “Nidal Hasan sentenced to death for Fort Hood shooting rampage,” Washington Post, August 28, 2013.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/nidal-hasan-sentenced-to-death-for-fort-hood-shooting-rampage/2013/08/28/aad28de2-0ffa-11e3-bdf6-e4fc677d94a1_story.html (accessed November 5, 2014).
[3] Lindy Kyzer, “Gen. Casey on the strength of our diversity,” Army Live, U.S. Army, November 8, 2009.
http://armylive.dodlive.mil/index.php/2009/11/gen-casey-on-the-strength-of-our-diversity/ (accessed November 5, 2014).
[4] 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 November 5, 2014).
[5] The Meaning of The Illustrious Qur-an, (Dar AHYA Us-Sunnah), p.49.
[6] Ibid., p. 98.
[7] 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 398.
[8] Ibid., pp. 189-190.

America’s malaise

Posted by :webmaster On : November 14, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, Government, Humanism, Worldview

Malaise seems an inadequate word to describe what’s happening in and to America. Synonyms for “malaise” are sickness, illness, disease, disorder, anxiety, depression, and discontent. It appears all are needed to describe America’s mood and condition. One magazine cover reads, “Is the world falling apart?” [1] Syndicated columnist Pat Buchanan laments the nation’s decline in a recent column titled “Things fall apart for many public institutions.” [2] He lists numerous examples of this brokenness in recent years including the Center for Disease Control’s fumbled response in protecting Americans from an Ebola epidemic; basic security breaches in protecting the president at and away from the White House; the invasion of the southern United States by 60,000 children and young people from Central America; the Obamacare rollout debacle; the federal and state response to Hurricane Katrina in which 30,000 New Orleans residents were stranded for days; the strategic blunders by the president and civilian policy makers in handling the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; failing schools; skyrocketing national debt; deteriorating infrastructure; and political, racial, and cultural clashes. [3] And the list grows weekly.

Buchanan says that things were not always that way, and he raises the question: “What happened to us?” “Whatever happened to that can-do nation” that survived the Great Depression, armed itself and fought World War II over five years, and placed a man on the moon in ten years because we said we could do it? [4] Mr. Buchanan ends his column in dismay but offers no solutions. To Buchanan’s list we must also add the extreme societal devastation caused by the fracturing of the family structure which the late Senator Daniel Moynihan described as the he biggest change in the North Atlantic world that he observed in his forty years of government service and which happened in “an historical instant. Something that was not imaginable forty years ago had happened.” [5]

Something is profoundly wrong in America. The symptoms of the sickness are known and well-defined as shown above. The solutions put forth by politicians, bureaucrats, education professionals, scientists, sociologists and psychologists, economists and business professionals, and a host of others in the knowledge class generally treat only the symptoms with remedies that often seem to make matters worse while at the same time fail to diagnose the disease itself.

How do we determine what went wrong with America and why? To find the answer it makes sense to go back in history to a time when things were working, a time when America was unified and had confidence in the rightness of its central cultural vision? Once we find that point in time, we must ask ourselves what changed. A cursory examination of modern history in America quickly identifies that point in time as the 1960s and the emergence of the Boomer generation. What changed was a dramatic rejection by many in the Boomer generation of the values and central cultural vision of all preceding generations of Americans since their arrival as colonists in the early 1600s. A comparison of the Boomers and the Greatest Generation confirms the beginnings of America’s cultural divide.

Much has been written and said about the Greatest Generation, a term that has gained almost universal acceptance following Tom Brokaw’s book, The Greatest Generation. For it was this generation that grew up during the deprivations of the Great Depression, fought a world war, persisted in blocking Soviet threats and aggression in a prostrate post-war world, and built the world’s greatest peacetime economy. Following the Allied victory in 1945, the United States stood at the pinnacle of world power. But unlike any other time in history, that generation acted not as victors but as a good and honorable people who poured their resources and energies into helping devastated nations and their starving peoples around the world. And, they didn’t retreat in the face of new dictators and despots as they fought the hot war in Korea and the cold war in other parts of the world, primarily against the USSR and its satellites. Following World War II, they married; went to schools, colleges, and universities in record numbers; and birthed approximately eighty million children who became known as the Baby Boomers. [6]

And through all of these deprivations, challenges, and monumental efforts, “They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.” [7] But, how do these values play out in twenty-first century America? Personal responsibility has been replaced by government responsibility for our health, wealth, happiness, and well-being. Duty is out of date and doesn’t resonate with the goal of self-actualization. It’s all about me, baby! Honor is no longer based on timeless standards and awarded on merit but is now a matter of personal opinion and popularity. And as to faith, the beliefs of the naïve and ignorant masses that still believe in the Christian God are tolerated as long as they do not share their faith in public nor practice that faith if it conflicts with the dictates of the state.

The challenge to the Judeo-Christian worldview by the Boomer elite is not a new occurrence. For hundreds of years a conflict has existed within Western civilization between those that believe in a transcendent God and those that do not. But, it was in the mid-twentieth century as each sphere of influence in American society began abandoning the Judeo-Christian central cultural vision under the onslaught of the purveyors of the humanistic worldview. The abandonment of the biblical foundations upon which the nation was built became evident as the leaders of the Boomer generation took the reins of leadership in the institutions of American life and imposed their humanistic values upon the policies, practices, and standards of those institutions. What are those humanistic values and beliefs held by many Boomers in leadership? There is no God and no life after death. Nature is all there is, and man is merely the evolutionary product of nature. Man can solve his own problems through science and reason. Freedom of expression and civil liberties are paramount in all areas of life. Happiness, freedom, and progress are the goals of mankind. The focus of life is on self and self-development. Society requires extensive social programs to achieve the goals of humanism. [8] It is obvious that these humanistic values have little in common with the Greatest Generation’s values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.

Arguing from the Judeo-Christian worldview held by Americans from the Founders through the Greatest Generation, Christopher Badeaux describes the provision of order supplied by that worldview and the consequences of its abandonment in favor of the humanistic worldview.

The Lord made the Universe according to a set of hidden but largely discernable rules, and those rules produce specific, predictable outcomes once the rules and variables are known. Furthermore, all things are made ordered—oriented if you prefer—to not only the Lord, but also to decent and right outcomes…Our consciences and our natural inclinations are manifestations of this intrinsic order; disregarding them gives rise to disorder. Indeed, even doing things that are right and good can be taken to extremes that place one outside of that natural order. When we step outside of that order, as anyone who has lived with someone suffering through, say, anorexia or alcohol addiction can tell you, the disorder radiates outward in a spiderweb-crack pattern of pain. [9]

The problem with the humanistic worldview is that its prescriptions fail the test of what is required for a culture to survive. First, cultural unity and cohesiveness necessary for any society to survive can never be achieved through a dictatorial center of authority required by humanism. Second, humanism is inherently a false worldview because it steps outside the order of the universe. Therefore, it cannot answer the basic questions of life by which all people seek to understand the meaning and purpose of life.

With the ascendance of the humanistic worldview in society, the spiderweb-crack pattern of disorder and dysfunction radiates through every institution of American life. This is the reason our public institutions and the institution of family is falling apart, and polls consistently show that Americans believe that society is truly disordered and falling apart. Mr. Buchanan asked what changed America. Without doubt, what changed America was the humanistic leadership of the institutions of American life that abandoned the central cultural vision of the Founding Americans and every generation up to and including the Greatest Generation. It is only when Americans return to that central cultural vision whose foundation is Christianity that disorder will become order and America will began working again.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] “Is the World Falling Apart?” World, October 4, 2014, Cover.
[2] Patrick Buchanan, “Things fall apart for many public institutions,” Tulsa World, October 28, 2014, A-11; Pat Buchanan, “Things fall apart,”
Creators.com, October 14, 2014. http://www.creators.com/conservative/pat-buchanan/things-fall-apart.html (accessed October 29, 2014).
[3] Ibid.
[4] Ibid.
[5] William J. Bennett, The Broken Hearth, (New York: Doubleday, 2001), pp. 2, 85.
[6] 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. 9.
[7] Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation, (New York: Random House, 1998), p. xx.
[8] Corliss Lamont, The Philosophy of Humanism, Eighth Edition, (Amherst, New York: Humanist Press, 1997), pp. 13-15.
[9] Christopher Badeaux, “Faith, Fear and Cormac McCarthy,” The City, Vol. 1, Issue 3, (Winter 2008), 84-85.

The synchronization of the American church?

Posted by :webmaster On : October 24, 2014
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Category: Archives, Christianity, Equality, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government, Homosexuality

“This court has no jurisdiction over me, I am a German,” insisted Herman Goring as he stood with other Nazi war criminals in 1946 before an international military tribunal in Nuremburg, Germany. But Robert Jackson, chief counsel for the United States, responded that “…there was a ‘law above the law’ that stood in judgment of all men in all countries and societies.”[1] These contrasting views of the source of laws by which men should be judged continue to be at the heart of the cultural conflict in America—is the ultimate source of law to be God or man? Modern America and the American church face the same dilemma as faced by Germany and the German church of the 1930s.

We have previously quoted Eric Metaxas with regard to the dramatic changes in German life following the democratic election of Adolf Hitler on January 30, 1933. In less than two months the democratically elected Reichstag (parliament) succumbed to pressure from the Nazi political machine and placed the whole power of the government under Hitler’s control. Thus began a series of radical changes to conform all of German life to Nazi rule. Metaxas’ eloquent assessment of events bears repeating.

With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made “legal.” Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself…In the First months of Nazi rule, the speed and scope of what the Nazis intended and had begun executing throughout German society were staggering. Under what was called the Gleichschaltung (synchronization), the country would be thoroughly reordered along National Socialist lines. No one dreamed how quickly and dramatically things would change.[2] (emphasis added)

Herman Goring, the second most powerful man in Germany and founder of the Gestapo, called this dramatic reordering of society merely an “administrative change.”[3] “Everything must now be synchronized under the Fuhrer’s leadership and under the idea of Gleichschaltung—and the church must lead the way.”[4] The synchronization of the church began with a series of regulations and laws that effectively wed the church to the state and compromised the very biblical principles upon which their faith rested. These laws and regulations initially dealt with the “Jewish question” and included restrictions on Jews from serving in professions such as the law, medicine, teaching, literature, the arts, theater, and film. Christians of Jewish blood were also prohibited from serving in the ministry.[5]

Casting aside two millennia of Christian orthodoxy, the majority of the German churches willingly allowed themselves to be synchronized with the prevailing German political and social goals instead of the teachings of Jesus Christ. They wanted a strong state-oriented church, a “positive Christianity” that was “very aggressive in attacking those who didn’t agree with them and generally caused much confusion and division in the church.”[6] Eventually, the German church of the 1930s separated into three groups: the large apostate German Christian church, the Confessing church which initially opposed Hitler but became the silent church of appeasement, and a small but faithful remnant that became the uncompromising and suffering church. We see much the same divisions between churches in twenty-first century America, only the dividing factor is now centered on humanism which Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “the most severe enemy” that Christianity ever had.[7]

Bonhoeffer was a leader in in opposition to the Nazis and the German apostate church. Bonhoeffer preached that the purpose of the state was to make possible law and order as opposed to lawlessness and disorder, and it was the church’s role to “continually ask” whether the state’s actions could be justified as legitimate. But Bonhoeffer also recognized that the state could not only fail by in the provision of law and order but could also harm society with the imposition of “excessive law and order.”[8] Metaxas quotes Bonhoeffer’s indictment of the Nazi regime.

And if on the other hand, the state is creating an atmosphere of “excessive law and order,” it’s the job of the church to draw the state’s attention to that too. If the state is creating “excessive law and order,” then “the state develops its power to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith…of their rights.” Bonhoeffer called this a “grotesque situation.” “The church,” he said, “must reject this encroachment of the order of the state precisely because of its better knowledge of the state and of the limitations of its action. The state which endangers the Christian proclamation negates itself.”[9]

An excess of law and order makes it difficult if not impossible for the church to question the state regarding the legitimacy of its actions. By questioning the state’s excessive laws and order imposed on its citizens, the church may violate the very laws to which it objects. The inability of the church to question the state with regard to its actions is particularly relevant to the twenty-first century American church which finds itself at the same point of decision as faced by the German Church in 1933. Here we return to our initial observation that essence of the modern struggle in America is to determine whether man’s law supersedes God’s law. Put another way, is man’s law above God’s law as implied by Herman Goring and much of the humanistic leadership in American society? Two immediate examples expose the seriousness and immediacy of the challenge to the church.

Annise Parker is the left-leaning and openly gay mayor of Houston, Texas, America’s fourth largest City. In May she imposed the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance which prohibits businesses from discriminating against gay and transgender residents. The ordinance became known as the “bathroom bill” because one of the provisions allows transgender individuals to use either a male or female public restroom facility. Opposition to the ordinance began growing during the summer as pastors and various religious leaders gathered signatures for a referendum to be placed on the November ballot which would repeal the ordinance if passed. To prevent the referendum, the city attorney subsequently rejected thousands of signatures he believed did not qualify.[10]

Under the guidance of the mayor and city attorney, both still smarting from the significant efforts of the religious community to repeal the human rights ordinance, five pastors were subpoenaed and ordered to turn over to their sermons, text messages, photographs, electronic files, calendars, and emails and virtually all communication with members of their congregations on topics such as homosexuality and gender identity. The pastors face fines and possible incarceration if they fail to do so. The obvious goal of the mayor and city attorney is intimidation. However, one pastor responded, “We’re not intimidated at all. We’re not going to yield our First Amendment rights—even if it ends in fines, confinement, or both.”[11] With opposition growing to the mayor’s effort to silence the church, Houston City Attorney Feldman remained unfazed and warned the pastors that, “The fact that you happen to be a pastor and you happen to be at a church doesn’t provide you with protection.”[12] But Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott had a different interpretation for Feldman contained in an official letter to the city, “Whether you intend it to be so or not, your action is a direct assault on the religious liberty guaranteed by the First Amendment. The people of Houston and their religious leaders must be absolutely secure in the knowledge that their religious affairs are beyond the reach of the government. Nothing short of an immediate reversal by your office will provide that security.”[13] [emphasis added]

Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, is a lot smaller (about 46,000) and a long way from America’s fourth largest city. But for the liberals and other advocates of the homosexual agenda, no place is too small to be overlooked when rooting out any perceived violation of human rights. Ministers Don and Evelyn Knapp who have been marrying couples for twenty-five years at their Hitching Post Wedding Chapel recently discovered this when the city told them that they would go straight to jail if they refused to “marry” same-sex couples (180 days in jail and fines up to $1,000 per day for every day the ministers refuse to perform the ceremony). Unlike the Colorado cake baker’s business, the Knapp’s chapel is a religious corporation. But this makes little difference to the Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender mafia as they trample religious freedom guaranteed by the First Amendment under the guise of achieving their perverted definition of human rights.[14]

Albert Einstein was exiled from Germany because he was a Jew. Although he did not believe in a personal God, he was not an atheist. He described himself as somewhere between an agnostic and belief in a pantheistic god in which nature is the totality of everything and is identical with divinity. Yet, even though he was not a believer in Christianity, the suffering church had a profound impact on his life.

Being a lover of freedom, when the (Nazi) revolution came I looked to the universities to defend it…the universities took refuge in silence. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers…but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few weeks. I then addressed myself to the authors…They are, in turn, very dumb. Only the church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration for it because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced to confess that what I once despised I now praise unreservedly.[15]

As it was for the German church in 1933, it is decision time for the American church of today. We must ask ourselves: At what point do we have to become lawbreakers rather than betray our faith? The Houston pastors have given their answer.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Erwin W. Lutzer, When a Nation Forgets God, (Chicago, Illinois: Moody Publishers, 2010), pp. 60-61.
[2] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), pp. 149-150.
[3] Ibid., p. 157.
[4] Ibid., p 176.
[5] Ibid., pp. 150-151, 156-157, 160.
[6] Ibid., p. 151.
[7] Ibid., p. 85.
[8] Ibid., pp. 153-154.
[9] Ibid., p. 153.
[10] Josh Sanburn, “Houston Pastors Outraged After City Subpoenas Sermons Over Transgender Bill,” Time, October 17, 2014.
http://time.com/3514166/houston-pastors-sermons-subpoenaed/ (accessed October 21, 2014).
[11] Tony Perkins, “Houstunned: Pastors Vow to Fight Mayor’s Sermon Grab,” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 15, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/houstunned-pastors-vow-to-fight-mayors-sermon-grab (accessed October 21, 2014).
[12] Tony Perkins, “A Subpoena for Your Thoughts…”, Tony Perkins Washington Update, October 17, 2014. http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/a-subpoena-for-your-thoughts (accessed October 21, 2014).
[13] Tony Perkins, “Pulpit Friction: Texas Leaders Rally to Pastors’ Defense,” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 16, 2014. http://www.frcblog.com/2014/10/pulpit-friction-tx-leaders-rally-pastors-defense/ (accessed October 21, 2014).
[14] Tony Perkins, “Natural Marriage in Idaho: Give it Arrest,” Tony Perkins’ Washington Update, October 20, 2014.
http://www.frc.org/washingtonupdate/natural-marriage-in-idaho-give-it-arrest (accessed October 21, 2014).
[15] Lutzer, p. 89-90.

Statistics: Facts often used to replace truth.

Posted by :webmaster On : September 12, 2014
2

Category: Archives, Government, Truth

Leonard Pitts’ recent syndicated column was provocatively titled “If GOP is so right, why are red states so far behind?” Pitts raised the question because of the results of a recent study by two Princeton economists that found the economy has grown faster under Democratic presidents. From President Kennedy to and including President Obama the economy grew at 4.35 percent as compared to 2.54 percent growth under Republican presidents during the same period. He also pointed to a statistic supplied by Occupy Democrats, a left-wing advocacy group, that of the ten poorest states, nine are red states and of the poorest 100 counties, ninety seven are in red states. Based on the report’s statistical revelations, Pitts asked several questions, “If Republican fiscal policies really are the key to prosperity, if the GOP formula of low taxes and little regulation really does unleash economic growth, then why has the country fared better under Democratic presidents than Republican ones and why are red states the poorest states in the country?”[1]

To be fair, Mr. Pitts does note that the ability of presidents to influence the economy is “vastly overstated.” He even cites the Princeton researchers who stated that their study does not support the idea that Democratic policies are responsible for greater economic performance under Democratic presidents. Further, he concedes that red states and counties tend to be more rural and likely to have modest incomes while at the same time may enjoy greater spending power than wealthier states and counties. Yet, Mr. Pitts can’t resist the assumption that the fiscal economic policies of the Republicans are inferior to those of the Democrats. He states that, “…the starkness and sheer preponderance of the numbers are hard to ignore.” After comparing the true blue state of Connecticut’s first place in per capita income of $56,000 with red-state Mississippi’s last place at $32,000, Pitts says that, “At the very least, stats like these ought to call into question GOP claims of superior economic policy…”[2]

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, d**n lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain popularized this quote in America but attributed it to former British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. How does one lie with statistics? One way is to erroneously assume a correlation between two variables and simply imply that one causes the other. Although Mr. Pitts agrees that the study’s findings do not support the idea that there is a correlation between the economic policies of Democratic presidents and the above-mentioned superior economic statistics, that is, one does not cause the other, he does believe that, given the sheer magnitude of the numbers, we must assume there is some correlation between the economic policies of Republican presidents and the lesser economic growth experience thereunder.[3]

Mr. Pitts has not lied (in a manner suggested by Twain), but he has been seduced by the power of statistical “facts” and as a consequence has “…drawn a mathematically precise line from an unwarranted assumption to a foregone conclusion.”[4] To summarize, Mr. Pitts’ conclusion is that, although the statistics provide no correlation between superior economic performance and the economic policies of Democrat presidents, the statistics must almost certainly provide correlation between the Republicans’ lesser economic results and their economic policies. Therefore, Republican economic policies are linked in some unexplained manner with the poorer results and consequently must undermine Republican claims of superior economic policies. Calling the Republican claims of superior economic policies as “overblown, at best,” Mr. Pitts ends his column with a challenge. “If that’s not the case, I would appreciate it if some Republican would explain why.”

If Mr. Pitts had done his homework, he would have found the explanation given by another nationally syndicated columnist less than ten days earlier. Robert Samuelson has written about business and economic issues since 1977. He is the author of three books on the American economy, a columnist for the Washington Post, and formerly was a columnist for Newsweek magazine for twenty-five years. Like Pitts, Samuelson also wrote a column about the Princeton study which he titled “Do Dems run the economy better? Nope.”[5]

Samuelson’s interpretation of the results of the Princeton study was very different than that of Pitts. Samuelson stated that “Democrats would no doubt like to attribute the large…growth gap to macroeconomic policy choices, but the data do not support such a claim.” Samuelson called about half of the gap that favored Democrats attributable to their “good luck” with regard to outside events or trends beyond their control. Three of those events and trends that dominated (and whose timing favored Democrats) were the global oil shocks that hurt Republicans more than Democrats, productivity gains, and military buildups that boosted economic growth.[6]

To the Princeton researchers the cause of the remaining half of the gap favoring the Democrats is a mystery. But for Samuelson the reasons were obvious and contrary to what the study’s statistics seem to suggest. He explained that, “Democrats focus more on jobs; Republicans more on inflation. What resulted was a cycle in which Democratic presidents tended to preside over expansions (usually worsening inflation) and Republicans suffered recessions (usually dampening inflation).” Without thoughtful interpretation, the surface implications of the Princeton study suggest that the “…economy’s performance during a president’s tenure in office is a good test of the soundness of policies.” Samuelson disagreed and explained that there is a long lag between the adoption of policies under a current administration and their true effects over time (usually after the administration has left office). He points out that expansive policies that feed an economic boom spawn hurtful consequences (e.g., inflation and overconfidence resulting in financial crises) that must be addressed with more painful policies, usually during the next administration. However, those painful policies can (and generally do) result in long-term dividends.[7]

Samuelson’s diagnosis of America’s economic roller coaster is somewhat akin to the analogy of visits of grandchildren to permissive, over-indulgent grandparents. It’s party time for the grandkids. High sugar diets, new toys, fun and games, few rules, and a good time is had by all. However, when mom and dad pick up the kids, they have to deal with the belly aches, renew and enforce rules and restraints, and re-establish the connections between work-reward and rebellion-consequences. In other words, the kids must return to the real world under mom and dad’s rule. For close to six decades Americans have ridden the economic roller coaster, alternately driven by Democratic children and their Republican parents. Hopefully, the American electorate will eventually understand the cause of much of America’s economic ups and downs. If so, there is hope for Republican economic prescriptions.

In the information age, facts have grown exponentially. We have become a fact driven society. Richard M. Weaver wrote, “One notes that in everyday speech the word fact has taken the place of truth…And the public is being taught systematically to make this fatal confusion of factual particulars with wisdom…The acquisition of unrelated details becomes an end in itself and takes the place of the true ideal of education.”[8] The myopic acquisition of unrelated details by a society results in fragmentation through loss of wisdom. Such societies retreat from the glorious heights from which one can clearly see truth and descend into a forest of facts—minutiae that hide truth and ultimately destroy in men’s minds that even the concept of truth exists.

Larry G. Johnson

[1] Leonard Pitts, “If GOP is so right, why are red states so far behind?” Tulsa World, September 4, 2014, A-13.
[2] Ibid.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Leonard Louis Levinson, The Left Handed Dictionary, (New York: Collier Books, 1963), p. 218.
[5] Robert J. Samuelson, “Do Dems run the economy better? Nope.” The Washington Post, August 24, 2014. http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/robert-samuelson-do-democrats-run-the-economy-better-nope/2014/08/24/1e3d847c-2a0c-11e4-86ca-6f03cbd15c1a_story.html (accessed September 5, 2014).
[6] Ibid.
[7] Ibid.
[8] Richard M. Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences, (Chicago, Illinois: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. 58.

The end of sustainable government

Posted by :webmaster On : August 15, 2014
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Category: Archives, Constitution, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government

America has been a wildly successful country because of its sustainable government, and we can thank our founders for making that possible. However, the Obama presidency has done more to damage that sustainability than any administration in the nation’s history.

All governments are systems of ruling or controlling, and every system of government has a source of power. Every government’s source of power may be visualized as being at some point on a continuum of power. At one end of the continuum is anarchy at which there is no law, no order, and no systematic control and quickly slides into some form of tyranny. Tyranny resides at the other end of the continuum and imposes too much control and results in loss of freedom, oppression, and eventual slavery. Under the one system there is no law; under the other is the ruler’s law. What the Founders’ desired was a people’s law with “…enough government to maintain security, justice, and good order, but not enough government to abuse the people.”[1]

People’s law resides at the center of the continuum between anarchy and ruler’s law. How is this achieved? The Founders began their task with an understanding of the tendency of governments and cultures throughout history to swing from one extreme (tyranny) to the other (anarchy) and back. The Founders also recognized the difficulties of sustaining a government based on the people’s law because of the inherently corrupt nature of mankind.

In creating a government that was sustainable, the Founders recognized the inherent fallibility of any system of government based solely on law designed and guided by corrupt human nature that ultimately devolves into a succession of governments of tyrants or roiling mobs. To address the tendency of governments to fluctuate between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy, the Founders formed a government based on constitutionalism. A constitution designed by the people to reflect the people’s law marks the boundaries or limits of power delegated to the rulers of government. Because the Founders recognized the truth of the fallen nature of man, the American Constitution included a system of checks and balances known as the separation of powers.

By the late nineteenth century the tentacles of humanism would spread into American jurisprudence and began to undermine the biblical foundations of the law that had been laid by the Founders and threatened the restraining force of the Constitution. The new theory of law was based on relativism and introduced by Harvard Law School Dean Christopher Langdell in the 1870s. The major tenets of the progressivists’ theory of law are:

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

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.

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

Judges, through their decisions, guide the evolution of law.

To study law, get the original sources of law – the decision of judges.[2]

In his incisive indictment of progressivism in American jurisprudence, Bradley C. S. Watson states that “…such jurisprudence is destined to be destructive to any and all claims of moral truth…not only hostile to the liberal constitutionalism of the American Founders, but to any moral-political philosophy that allows for the possibility of a truth that is not time-bound.”[3]

Watson believes that there are two fundamental facts that mark the founding of America and subsequently the design of the Constitution. One was creedal and one was cultural. First, the Founders had a creedal “…understanding of natural rights, which were held not to be culturally derived or time-bound or subject to infinite incremental growth, but applicable to all men everywhere and final.” [emphasis added] In other words, there were eternal truths which transcended man and his time on this earth and were inviolable. Second, the Founders believed that American culture resulted from inherited or customary understandings that reflected the application or working out of the principles of timeless truths in daily life. The Founders’ creedal and the cultural beliefs were not in conflict but expressions of the same truth, and both rested firmly on the foundation of the Judeo-Christian faith and its eternal truths.[4] These two facts regarding the founding of America stand in stark contrast to progressivism’s faulty assumptions of the evolutionary nature of the Constitution and laws.

Because of the nature of the duties of the judiciary, Progressivists’ damage to the separation of powers under the Constitution has occurred primarily within that branch of government. But the brazen overreach of the Obama administration through disregard of Constitutional limits on executive powers may be unparalleled in American history. In addition to scorning the rebukes by the Supreme Court for his un-Constitutional executive actions, the President has violated his Constitutional duty to faithfully execute the laws by selective enforcement and/or changes to laws enacted by Congress. Additionally, the administration has regularly circumvented the powers of the legislative branch through the issuance of illegitimate executive orders to accomplish what Congress would not approve.

Such is the seriousness and extent of the abuse of power of the executive branch that on July, 16, 2014, Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley, Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, appeared before the Committee on Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives to discuss litigation for actions by the President inconsistent with his duties under the Constitution. In his prepared remarks, Turley stated:

The President’s pledge to effectively govern alone is alarming but what is most alarming is his ability to fulfill that pledge. When a president can govern alone, he can become a government unto himself, which is precisely the danger that the Framers sought to avoid in the establishment of our tripartite system of government. In perhaps the saddest reflection of our divisive times, many of our citizens and Members are now embracing the very model of a dominant executive that the Framers fought to excise from our country almost 250 years ago.[5]

Sustainable government requires adherence to Constitutional limitations of power and the recognition of and adherence to timeless fixed moral and political truths from which there can be no departure. However, because of the ascendance of the humanistic worldview, there is an assault on these principles necessary to sustain government. In American jurisprudence this assault is a result of judicial activism that changes or creates laws or goes against precedent rather than just applying or interpreting laws. The more recent assault on the Constitution by the executive branch is evident in the maneuverings of a president seemingly bent on one-man rule based on man’s law disconnected from eternal truths.

As a result of these onslaughts, the hard-won people’s law of the Founders is endangered, and the end of our once sustainable American government is at hand. It is time for the states, Congress, and the American people to reign in the judicial and executive branches of government and return to the Constitutional balanced of powers as Madison and the delegates to the Constitutional Convention intended.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] W. Cleon Skousen, The 5000 Year Leap, (www.nccs.net: National Center for Constitutional Studies, 1981), pp. 10, 19.
[2] David Barton, Original Intent, 5th Edition, (Aledo, Texas: Wallbuider Press, 2008), pp. 233-234.
[3] Bradley C. S. Watson, Living Constitution, Dying Faith, (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books, 2009), p. xvi.
[4] Ibid., pp. 23-14.
[5] Jonathan Turley, “Authorization to Initiate Action for Litigation for Actions by the President Inconsistent with His Duties under the Constitution of the United States,” Committee on Rules, U.S. House of Representatives, July 16, 2014. http://docs.house.gov/meetings/RU/RU00/20140716/102507/HMTG-113-RU00-Wstate-TurleyJ-20140716.pdf (accessed August 11, 2014).

This was done by ordinary people – Part IV

Posted by :webmaster On : June 20, 2014
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Category: America, Archives, Christianity, God's Law v. Man's Law, Government

The role government and the role of the church as it relates to government

Dietrich Bonhoeffer went to his death on a Nazi gallows in 1945 with a very definite understanding of the role of the church in society, and his death was the eventual outcome of his living that understanding. God ordained the establishment of government for the preservation of order and the establishment of laws that define that order. The church has no right to interfere with the actions of the state in purely political matters. That said, Bonhoeffer also firmly believed the church plays a vital role in helping the state be the state by continually asking if the state’s actions can be justified as a legitimate fulfillment of its role. In other words, do the actions of the state lead to law and order and not to lawlessness and disorder? Where the state fails, it is the role of the church to draw the state’s attention to its failures. Likewise, if the state creates an atmosphere of “excessive law and order,” the church must also remind the state of its proper role. Excessive law and order becomes evident when the state’s power develops “…to such an extent that it deprives Christian preaching and Christian faith…of their rights.”[1]

Bonhoeffer demonstrated his belief of limits on state authority in his arguments to the German Lutheran church (effectively the state church) against its acceptance of the Nazi Aryan paragraph in the synchronization of all German life in accordance with Nazi dictates. The Aryan paragraph served as the basis for many laws that denied Jews their rights as German citizens.

But Bonhoeffer’s arguments regarding the German government’s treatment of the Jews really framed the larger question of “what is the church?” In other words, from where does the church receive its authority? Is it an instrument of the state and therefore subject to the state or is it apart from the state? If it is apart from the state, then what does the church do when the state oversteps the boundaries of its legitimate authority?[2]

Actions of the church with regard to government

Bonhoeffer listed three actions the church should take regarding the state. The first has been described—the church must question the state with regard to its actions and whether its actions can be justified as a legitimate concern of the state. Second, the church must “…aid victims of state action in its ordering of society…even if they (the victims) do not belong to the Christian community.” Bonhoeffer did not stop there but said a third step may be necessary. The church must “…not just bandage the victims under the wheel…but a stick must be jammed into the spokes of the wheel to stop the vehicle. It is sometimes not enough to help those crushed by the evil actions of a state; at some point the church must directly take action against the state to stop it from perpetrating evil.” But Bonhoeffer’s stick in the spokes of the wheel of state is justified only if the church’s very existence is threatened by the state and the state is no longer a state as designed by God.[3]

In Part III we identified three groups of churches in Nazi Germany of the 1930s: the apostate German Christian church, the Confessing church which became the silent church of appeasement, and a faithful remnant that became the suffering church. The great majority of German churches during the Nazi era subordinated themselves to the Nazi state, did not speak out against Nazi tyranny, and did not aid the victims crushed by the wheel of state.

We also drew disturbing parallels between the German church of the 1930s and the American church of the twenty-first century. Christianity and its values are under full-scale attack in America. The church must decide what it will or will not do in response to that attack. Some will choose to do nothing and as justification point to Paul’s letter to the Romans with regard to a Christian’s conduct in relation to the state.

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed, and those who resist will incur judgment. For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. Would you have no fear of him who is in authority? Then do what is good, and you will receive his approval, for he is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain; he is the servant of God to execute his wrath on the wrongdoer. Therefore one must be subject, not only to avoid God’s wrath but also for the sake of conscience. [Romans 13:1-5. RSV]

But to do nothing is a misinterpretation of Paul’s message. Paul is not saying that we should be obedient to government regardless of what it does. It is nonsensical to claim that all rulers are legitimate authorities who must be mindlessly obeyed because of a misunderstanding of the meaning of Romans 13:1-5.

So how do we resolve the dilemma of whether we are to obey a specific ruler (government) or not? The issue revolves around whether or not a government is one that receives its authority from God. Christians must be subject to governing authorities if the authority is instituted by God, but Christians are not required to submit to those rulers whose authority is not instituted by God and therefore is illegitimate. The distinction becomes apparent from Paul’s words when he says that rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad conduct. But we know that many rulers in this world are a terror to good conduct and therefore do not fall within Paul’s description of a government that receives its authority from God.

The church and bad government

Even where there is a bad government, Christians must be subject to governing authorities to a point. Christians are required to be subject to government laws and regulations even when they disagree with them. However, when those laws and regulations require Christians to compromise or disobey biblical commands with regard to one’s personal life or the lives over which they have been given charge, the Christian must be obedient to God’s word and not government authority. Two current examples come to mind which give meaning to this distinction. The Christian owners of Hobby Lobby have refused to provide health insurance to their employees under the Affordable Care Act because of the requirement for the inclusion of abortion services. A Christian Colorado baker refused to make a cake for a homosexual couple’s wedding. Both are laws which conflict with what it means to be a Christian who is obedient to the word of God. Christians must still be subject to the governing authorities except when their obedience conflicts with the higher laws of God.

The church and illegitimate government

There is a step beyond bad government when a government’s authority becomes illegitimate because it no longer fulfills its role in providing order and has become lawless and disorderly. Therefore, Christians must be careful to distinguish between bad government and illegitimate authorities not ordained by God. We must also realize that bad governments, through a succession of actions upon which evil is piled upon evil, will at some point forfeit their legitimacy as God withdraws His authority. At that point the ignored warnings and admonishments of the church to a state rushing head-long into lawlessness and disorder must be exchanged for sticks to be thrust into the spokes of the wheel of that illegitimate government. However, Bonhoeffer cautioned that casting sticks into the spokes of the wheel of state is justified only if the church’s very existence is threatened and the state is no longer a state upon which God’s authority rests.

The very existence of the American church is being threatened by excessive laws and the heavy hand of the government as it attempts to drive Christianity from the cultural and institutional landscape of America. The church and Christians must continue to admonish the state as to its over-reach and a possible loss of legitimacy. As the American government deprives its citizenry of their rights regarding Christian preaching and Christian faith, society will continue to slide into a cultural swamp devoid of any hint of morality. There may come a point at which God will lift His authority as the government fails to fulfill its proper role. At such a time the church must be ready with sticks to thrust into the spokes of the wheel of a lawless and chaotic government.

Larry G. Johnson

Sources:

[1] Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, 2010), p. 153.
[2] Ibid., pp. 152-153.
[3] Ibid., pp. 153-154.