Article the third… Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech.. Christian Betrayal By The Rt. Rev. Larry W. Johnson, Archbishop, Anglican Church of Virginia, Virginia Communion, International Provinces of the Anglican Church International Communion. Such is the audacity of man that he would counterfeit God and be so bold as to challenge His work. (7) We who are alive today must do whatever it takes to see that our children have the opportunity to live in a country that embraces individual freedom, propagates wholesome living, ensures free enterprise, fosters high moral and Spiritual standards, does not hinder freedom of worship, espouses law and order, protects life, liberty and the “pursuit of happiness” that only a Judeo-Christian Nation can secure and where government, as Lincoln proclaimed, is “…of the people, by the people, for the people, (and) shall not perish from the earth (6).” IT IS TIME FOR AN AMENDMENT TO THE CONSTITUTION THAT AFFIRMS THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN FOUNDATION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Proposing this is not without precedent. A successful society, one that endures, must have common laws, a common language, and common moral values accompanied by common hopes and aspirations. The unfolding disaster in our time is that the actions of our secularist government are leading to the doorstep of outlawing the practice of Christian worship. In our schools, our children cannot pray, read or even carry their Bibles. Military Christian chaplains cannot pray in the Name of Jesus, and military hospital administrators have removed the crosses from chapels by order of the U.S. Congress. Though Congress opens each session with a “prayer,” it is far from the Christian prayer of the kind that would have been recognizable by the late Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall who served the Senate during World War II. It seems any deity may be mentioned but Jesus Christ. Constantly challenged now, and often forbidden, are Christian prayer and singing of hymns in public meetings, display of Christmas scenes and symbols in public and even private areas, and crosses in graveyards. One church I know of in Atlanta cannot ring its bells which have rung for decades, and a monastery in Virginia had to silence it bells which for a century had called the brothers from the fields for the daily offices. God help us! God save the United States. Why do Christians feel their faith is under attack? Because it is. Christianity is the only religion that, despite the fact that our Nation was founded by Christians, has to fight to express itself. The United States has succeeded longer than any other democratic “experiment” because of the tenets of Christian faith. And yet, those very tenets have been challenged at every turn. Politicians and judges side with special interest groups (not just minorities, but often small minorities) which are constantly at work to gag Christians. Our chief law enforcement officer threatens to jail those who dare preach from the pulpit the Gospel of Jesus Christ where it does not meet with certain “politically correct” ideas, while ignoring other religions who openly espouse the killing of Christians and Jews? In our desire to follow Christ, Christians have fallen into the trap of being “tolerant,” something that secularists, atheists, Muslims and others apparently do not have to be. Our namby-pamby government “leaders” woefully uneducated in the history of this great nation, urge us to abide by the teaching of turning the other cheek. And to our detriment and to the spiraling downfall of this nation, we have sat back with a pleasant smile upon our face, considering ourselves to be “persecuted with Christ” and have done nothing. We have allowed evil to permeate the halls of government, enact laws which relegate Judeo-Christian values to the sidelines and smother our practice of our religion while at the same time stifling our very fundamental expression of free speech while allowing the most outrageous speech of those who would smite us. Christians have taken for granted that by simply upholding and adhering to the Constitution, our leaders would protect us. By sitting back and waiting for this to happen – now for more than 50 years – we find that our leaders do not consider Christianity worthy of being protected. Only now are the majority of us realizing we have been betrayed by unpatriotic representatives sympathetic to every religion but that which founded this nation. It is evident that schools and colleges are not doing the job of teaching Americanism. Many educators criticize our economic system as abusive, not fair to the poor and the list goes on. Some politicians speak of capitalism as evil and charge those of us who support our system as “terrorists.” i.e. Tea party participants. In our schools and colleges, the focus is upon the Problems of Democracy with some courses having this very title (POD). I have never encountered one entitled the Virtues of Democracy. What’s more, I have never encountered a course on the American Revolution entitled the Glorious Revolution, the term used by many of our founders. More instructional time is devoted to destroying our system than teaching the virtues of the most moral, freeing and economically successful form of government in the history of the world. Similar things seem to be occurring in many seminaries. Some student assignments are to “pick to pieces” the denomination's beliefs rather than how to spread the Gospel of the Holy Bible (1). Now we find the deplorable state of once noble denominations because of these “scholarly pursuits.” The orthodoxy of God's Word is replaced by man's ideas and worldly morals. Perhaps no one has said it better than Patrick Henry, and Anglican churchman and the Trumpet of the American Revolution: “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” The cornerstone of American freedom which began with the Judeo-Christian Faith must be renewed since it is upon Christian principles that this Nation was born. Today’s Christian in the United States lives a life that would be appalling to our Founders. The dream they fought for; that which they thought worthy of giving up their lives and fortunes and reputations for, is gone. Not just slipping away, but gone. How did this happen? Who is the culprit? We have only to look in the mirror. We have allowed what at first were tiny steps down a crumbing path and now with a “tut-tut” we shake our heads and turn away from what have become giant leaps to the bottom, content to pray in our churches, hoping God will come and fix things for us.In our slovenliness, we have lost something unique in the history of civilization. We are God’s hands and feet here on earth. The success of our forefathers in founding this nation was their willingness to sacrifice, for God honors that. It is time to educate ourselves, our congregations and all who will listen on the greatness our nation was and can be again. It is time to turn from the mistaken idea that standing back and accepting the attacks is a winning strategy. It is time to take a good look at other countries where Christians have been beaten into submission and see how close to that the United States has come. Are Christians to be included in the Constitutional “freedom of religion” or not? Christian principles which have sustained the American experiment for over four hundred years are now endangered. The torch has been all but extinguished. It’s time now to pick up the torch and ignite the flame! Our American Republic cannot survive without Christianity as the foundation. My concerns are about saving our culture, economic system, children, families, religious freedom, and Nation. To save the United States we must seek to encourage the American people not to surrender to the evil one. There is work to be accomplished in every city, state and town. At the top of the list of objectives is a Constitutional Amendment which assures that we may practice our faith, teach, not just our children, but all who have fallen by the wayside the Judeo-Christian morals and principles which have until now preserved the American Dream: The dream that draws people from all over the world; the dream for which our founders martyred themselves. The dream our fathers and their fathers intended and believed would live on and on and on. I have heard our political leaders suggest that United States judicial system should use international law to guide our country’s legal system. One Senator suggested that Scottish law might have a place in our judicial contemplations. Appallingly the Archbishop of Canterbury purposed that Sharia (2) law be introduced into the English Parliamentary System and there are those in this country who believe it should be applied to Muslims living here. The Judeo-Christian idea of government is to love one another and the protection of the weak; obedience to the Ten Commandments; and the practice of the Golden Rule and the proposition that our leaders are ordained by God to govern. Much of what our laws should be based upon and what we should be teaching our youth is in the Holy Bible (1). The Bible supports a Republican (4) form of government and not what some modern American politicians are conjuring up. “Let the religious element in man's nature be neglected, let him be influenced by not higher motives than low self-interest, and subjected to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority and he becomes the creature of selfish passion and blind fanaticism.” Daniel Webster (3). The former Ambassador to the UN from Lebanon, Charles Malik said, “The good (in the United States) would never have come into being without the blessing and power of Jesus Christ.” 3 These are true words spoken by an observer of the American miracle. While many of our politicians think that it is their ingenuity, suave personalities and the many hours they spend before the cameras that produce American success, it is the recognition by our forefathers that it was Jesus Christ's love of His people and shedding of His Blood that brought Salvation to the United States and made it successful. It continues to be the faith and prayers of the people that enable the United States to succeed in spite of the turning away of its leaders. David Kyvig's book reveals that in 1894 that Christians proposed a constitutional amendment which stated, “Almighty God [is] the Author of National Existence and the source of all power and authority in Civil Government, Jesus Christ [is] the Ruler of Nations, and the Bible [is] the formation of law and the supreme rule for the conduct of nations.” 4 We know that it failed to be approved. (5 ) As they saw the secularization of the government and society, we see it now unfolding as a disaster before our eyes. Unknown to most Americans is that there were nine other proposals put forth between 1894 and 1910 to have Congress alter the Constitution's Preamble to express trust in or acknowledge the “Authority of a Christian God.” (4) In the Supreme Court case of Holy Trinity v. The United States wording appears that the United States is a Christian Nation but legalists say this is not “dictum” and sets no precedent for subsequence rulings. Perhaps the jurists of the Supreme Court writing this opinion assumed this based on our history, founding and the obvious. It is sad that now we are led by a President and majority of congress who not only believe but state the reverse of this. Last year while visiting one of our parishes and staying at the motel in a State Park in Kentucky, the chief park ranger informed me that I could neither pray with the campers, nor bless the animals or give thanks for the foliage. “No prayers,” he said, “…separation of State and Church you know.” Tragically praying the Name of God, the Creator of Nature, is banned in that park. When invited to open a session of Congress, the Congressional Chaplain advised me not to use the Name of Jesus. I disobeyed. I later was invited to open a Senate session and disobeyed again. I was ask to deliver the baccalaureate address to graduating seniors at my son’s high school and was instructed not to utter the name of Jesus; I disobeyed. Small rebellions are good, but have not will not stop the tide flooding through the gates thrown open by our overtly anti-Christ government. Christians are not and have never been disrespectful of other religions. As a teacher in a public school in the sixties, I gave the opportunity for students of the various denominations represented in the class to offer the morning devotion. Any student could leave the room if he wished, but none did. The byproduct of this was that they learned about the faith of each other. Now, in a few places students may pray if they initiate it, but in other places, they are not allowed. Sometimes athletes are “carrying the ball” and resisting pressure, praying before and even after games. The pressure is mounting to seal their lips too. What about free speech as written in Article 2 of the Constitution? Misguided laws and rules that ban God are the result of Satan’s work. The result of this sin is that it is succeeding in shaping our country into something that was not intended. What does the future hold for the United States? If nothing is done, Christianity will be so weakened that the adversaries of the United States need not bring war to conquer us; we will have fulfilled the prophesy of Nita Khrushchev who stated on August 24, 1963 “We will bury you {from within}.” As the Muslims know and practice, those who would destroy us only have to be patient and “the object of their desires will drop into their lap as an apple from a fruit tree.” We must accept the challenge as Christian citizens to pick up the torch and insure that our Constitution is amended to establish with clarity the “Authority of God” in our Nation. This will be difficult in view of the state of our country and the erroneous rulings by misguided judges and unconstitutional laws propagated by our politicians. However, we can turn this around with hard work and of course with God’s help. We must unite in prayer and action to accomplish this. Why? Because our children and their children’s children need us to assure that they will live in an American Republic founded upon Biblical ethics. The world looks to the United States as a beacon of hope and as an example of freedom. Most of the world’s oppressed do not desire our treasurer but rather democracy and freedom. Our republican form of government, our form of Constitutional law, and individual freedoms are the world’s great Hope. End (1) Definition: Holy Bible- The collection of sacred writing of the Christian religion; a collection of sacred writing of the Jewish religion comprising the Old Testament only. Random House Dictionary, New York. (2) Definition: Shariah, deriving from the Koran, from the Sunna, and from human opinions and traditions. Random House Dictionary, New York. (3) Kyvig, David, Explicit and Authentic Acts: Amending the U.S. Constitution, 1776-1995, Lawrence, Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 1996. (4) Walton, Rus, One Nation Under God, Third Century Publishers, Washington, D.C., 1975. (5) The U.S. Constitution and Fascinating Facts About It, Seventh Edition, Oak Hill Publishing Company, Naperville, IL, 2007. (6) Lincoln, Abraham, Gettysburg Address November 19, 1863, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. (7) Pliny the Elder, The Natural History. Email address for the Rt. Rev. Larry W. Johnson: larrywjohnson@embarqmail.com Web Site: www .theanglicanchurch.net |