A major propaganda weapon in the militant secularists assault on Americas Christian identity and on religious liberty is their re-interpretation of the concept of the separation of church and state" implicitly enshrined in the First Amendment. Our nations founders intended the distinction between religious and civil authority to allow each governing entity to fulfill its proper public role. Radical secularists reinterpret this common-sense distinction as a radical divorce between the religious and civil spheres. In their view every trace of religion must be scrubbed from American public life: no references to God should be made by government leaders; no symbols of the Christian religion should be displayed on public property. This malicious anti-God and anti-Christian animus would have struck the Founders as not only quite alien but extremely dangerous to the well-being of our nation. Here is what General George Washington wrote to the governors of the original thirteen states in a letter announcing the disbanding of the Continental Army on June 8 1783 (note that this was an official U.S. military document):
I now make it my earnest prayer that God would have you and the State over which you preside in His holy protection that he would incline the hearts of the citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to government; to entertain a brotherly affection and love for one another for their fellow citizens of the United States at large and particularly for their brethren who have served in the field; and finally that he would be most graciously pleased to dispose us all to do justice to love mercy and to demean ourselves with that charity humility and pacific temper of mind which were the characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed religion and without an humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.
And James Madison said the following in an address to the Virginia General Assembly in 1778: We have staked the whole future of American civilization not upon the power of government far from it. Weve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
The Founders Vision for America
Many of us today take it for granted that the United States is a natural product of Christian European civilization. However we shouldnt forget that at a time when most European Catholic and Protestant nations were governed by absolute or constitutional monarchies in which Church and state authority were closely linked and intertwined the concept of a secular republic built on Christian religious and moral values was quite novel. As men of the Renaissance period our nations devout Christian Founders did not eschew experimentation but their experimentation flowed from the religious and moral principles they held dear. What they gave the world was something altogether unique and unprecedenteda secular Christian republic. What they created has come to be known as the American experiment." The Christian religion and Judeo-Christian moral code formed the foundations of this experiment and have contributed enormously to its remarkable success. Without those religious and moral foundations the experiment would have failed long ago and our nation would never have achieved greatness.
The Founders vision for America was simple intuitive holistic and brilliant. Today it appears utterly sane and reasonable when contrasted with the dangerous alternative vision that radically secularist ideologues are working so hard to put into practice. The Founders believed that God created all human persons equal in dignity and endowed them with certain unalienable rights including life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They believed that the role of civil government is to protect these unalienable human rights. They believed that such government comes from God and derives its legitimate authority from the consent of the governed. They were also profoundly aware of the fact that human nature has been corrupted by original sin so they designed a three-branch system of government with checks and balances to minimize corruption and abuse of power. They believed that freedom is sacred because it is a gift from God our Creator and that the truth is what makes people free. They understood freedom as the right to act in accord with the natural moral law and to practice ones religious beliefs without government interference. They knew that religion and morality are powerful safeguards of human liberty and considered both essential to the survival and well-being of America. Most importantly the Founders agreed that without Gods guidance protection and assistance the American experiment would be a failure.
The great majority of the Founders were Protestants who hailed from eighteenth-century England where theocratic monarchs forced the state religion of Anglicanism on their subjects and outlawed the public practice of Catholicism and Protestantism. As a result of this experience the Founders decided that the United States would not have an official religion. They understood that religious freedom is a two-sided coin consisting of these basic elements one negative and the other positive: 1) freedom from religious compulsion (negative) and 2) freedom to practice ones own religion (positive). To guarantee religious freedom in the new nation our founders wisely integrated these two essential elements into the First Amendment to the Constitution: 1) they forbade Congress from passing any law that would institute an official American religion and 2) they forbade Congress from passing any law that would prohibit the free exercise of religion. Thus the First Amendment authors intended to safeguard our republic from the opposite extremes of totalitarian theocracy and religious repression.
The careful distinction between religious and civil authority in the First Amendment (commonly known today as the separation of church and state) was intended to allow each governing entity to fulfill its proper public role unimpeded by the other. The First Amendment may be considered a blueprint for the secular Christian nation that the United States was founded and intended to be.
Secularism v. Radical Secularism
What are some characteristics of a secular nation properly understood as such? First and most importantly a secular nation is a religious nation a nation under God." It recognizes that human rights and state authority both come from God and that the state is the guardian of these rights. This proper understanding of the source of human rights and the role of the state makes a secular nation a place of freedom and justice. It is a nation that values religion and morality as indispensable supports" of its political prosperity (George Washington). It is a nation where church and state coexist harmoniously each respecting the legitimate authority of the other. It is a place where each citizen is free to practice the religion of his or her choice or to not practice any religion if that is his or her choice. It is a place where the contributions of religious believers to public life are recognized welcomed and encouraged even by those who are not religious themselves. It is a nation where traditional family values are highly esteemed and diligently safeguarded by those in authority. It is a place where government leaders are public servants chosen by the people and responsible to them subject to the same laws who strive to promote the common good of all citizens. All these characteristics of a secular nation have allowed the United States of America to flourish and become the worlds greatest nation.
On the other hand a radically secularist" nation is a nightmarish place where atheism has become the official state religion" and where all genuine religions are suppressed by law. This kind of nation is a nation without God. It recognizes no authority above that of the government. It is a place where human rights are believed to come from the government and may thus be given or taken away as the state sees fit. This false subjectivist understanding of human rights and government power renders it a place of bondage and injustice. It is a nation that rejects religious faith and absolute moral standards as obstacles to its freedom and progress. It is a nation where the church is completely subordinated to the state and where public practice of religion is either severely curtailed or absolutely forbidden. It is a place where religious believers must leave their faith behind if they are to make any substantive contributions to public life. It is a nation where traditional family values are openly scorned and deliberately attacked by those in authority. It is a place where government leaders are self-appointed elitist dictators not responsible to the people and not subject to any laws who use their power to advance their own private interests. Such a godless radically secularist nation is a nation in despaira living hell. Within a relatively short time it self-destructs and usually leaves behind an infamous legacy of violence war and mass murder. Historic examples include France under the Jacobins late 1920s Mexico Nazi Germany the Soviet Union and Maoist China. Contemporary examples would include Communist China and North Korea.
Many countries of the world including the United States Canada Australia the nations of Western Europe and Communist China and North Korea are currently at various intermediate stages on the road to the radically secularist inferno. Abortion on demand is legal in all these countries; in China parents are forced by law to abort every child after their first. Euthanasia is gradually becoming acceptable and legal everywhere. More than a dozen nations on four continents have already passed laws making same-sex marriage" the legal equivalent of traditional marriage. In Western Europe radical secularism has gained significant ground. While freedom of religion still largely exists and the people still elect their government leaders hostility to religion now permeates Western European culture. A few years ago a law was passed in Ireland attempting to force priests to violate the seal of confession by reporting sins of sexual abuse heard in confession to the government; a similar attempt was made with a priest in Louisiana last year. The Catholic Church in China is officially suppressed by the government which recognizes only its own National Catholic Patriotic Association. And North Korea resembles one large prison camp ruled by a military dictatorship.
Lessons from History
As hinted above the takeover of a country by the forces of militant secularism is usually not a bolt from the blue" a sudden and swift affair imposed on unwilling and unsuspecting masses by an elite coup with whom they have nothing in common. On the contrary it is typically a gradual process occurring over several decades or generations that involves a progressive and widespread decline of religious faith among the general population eventually leaving a yawning vacuum to be filled by the pseudo-religion of radical secularism. This is exactly what took place in Orthodox Russia in the late 1800s and early 1900s: a steady loss of religious faith among the bourgeois paved the way for the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In early twentieth-century Mexico unscrupulous Catholic landlords had amassed great wealth through unjust exploitation of their tenant farmers and neglected to share their resources with the less fortunate. Plutarco Elias Calles the radically secularist dictator who took control of Mexico in the 1920s had grown up in abject poverty that left him extremely bitter and convinced that organized religion was the enemy of the Mexican people. The French Revolution offers another example of this general rule: in late eighteenth-century France corruption within the Catholic monarchy generated popular resentment which the Jacobins unhesitatingly exploited to push their fanatically secularist agenda. (Poland is a somewhat different case as it did not experience a homegrown revolution but was occupied by militantly secularist foreign invaders while its own people remained devoutly religious under Communist rule.)
Given the critical situation in which America finds itself today with the benefit of hindsight we may wonder whether the Founders made the right decision in not establishing Christianity as the official religion of the United States. It is certainly legitimate to raise this question and discuss and debate the answer as they pertain to both national religious identity and religious freedom. On one hand making Christianity the official religion of the United States would have removed any ambiguity about our identity as a Christian nation making it much more difficult for todays radical secularists to successfully mount a vicious attack on that identity. On the other hand however we need to keep in mind that even countries with official religions are not immune to the forces of militant secularism. France Mexico Russia Italy Germany Spain and Polandall either officially Catholic Orthodox or Protestant nationswere shaken by convulsive revolutions in 1789 1917 1917 1922 1933 1936 and 1939 respectively that enthroned more or less short-lived totalitarian atheistic and socialist regimes (the Jacobins the Federales Communists Fascists Nazis).
How did this happen? How did nations that had been Christian and free for centuries succumb to the tyranny of radical secularism? The answer is that for a significant period of time prior to each revolution the Christian people within those nations had been growing weak in their faith; as a result injustices had crept into society and become entrenched providing a fertile breeding ground for destructive revolutionary ideologies. When a country loses its faith it then loses its freedom as well with terrible social consequences. The rise of a godless dictator such as Hitler or Stalin is rarely an accident or anomaly but rather an ordinary consequence of a religious vacuum and its attendant social turmoil a predictable response to the need to fill that vacuum and impose order.
A lack of charity and justice properly grounded in the truth especially from those who call themselves followers of Christ lies at the root of all social problems. A serious and prolonged crisis of faith inevitably leads to crisis in society. Conversely the solution to social problems is personal conversion to Christ. This is part of the reason why Pope Benedict XVI during his papacy declared a Year of Faithto address the profound crisis of faith" afflicting the contemporary global society by summoning all Christians to an authentic and renewed conversion to the Lord the one Savior of the World." If bad Christians give religion a bad name good Christians make religion look attractive and contribute to the building up of human society. As a Muslim sultan once famously remarked to Saint Francis of Assisi If all Christians were like you I would become a Christian."
Radically secularist despots such as Lenin Calles Mussolini Hitler and Stalin who carried out their evil ideology to the letter inflicted untold human suffering and misery and are universally condemned as traitors to mankind (except by those freethinkers in their soap bubbles who think they were just doing what was right for them"). By contrast great Christian figures such as Saint Francis Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Father Benedict Groeschel Saint John Paul II Pope Benedict XVI and Pope Francis who live the Gospel authentically accomplish outstanding achievements for human society and are universally admired loved honored and respected (except by radical secularists). The latter offer marvelous examples of how to authentically live ones Christian faith in the modern world while the former serve as ominous reminders of where the radically secularist path ultimately leads.
History also assures us that the stronger the religious and moral character of a people the more likely their nation is to survive through and triumph over a radically secularist interlude. Poland is perhaps the best example of this: following fifty years of Communist rule there the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 left behind a nation still 90 percent devout Catholic.
A Dangerous Cultural Shift
Unfortunately the United States-a Christian country and the traditional leader of the free world-is now being gradually transformed into a radically secular nation partly through the increasing moral relativism and religious indifference of its own people and partly through the aggressive efforts of radically secularist activists in the fields of government and politics education and culture. President Barack Obama is the most obvious symbol of this dangerous cultural shift. Prior to becoming president and throughout his years in office President Obama has consistently exhibited contempt for the Christian faith and its adherents unlike any other president in American history. During his 2008 presidential election campaign then-Senator Barack Obama derisively referred to Middle Americans as those who cling to their guns and their Bibles." He couldnt have summed up better his contemptuous disregard for our First and Second Amendment rights.
Obama is the first president in U.S. history to invite members of the radically secularist Freedom from Religion Foundation and American Atheists to dinner at the White House. When he went to speak at Georgetown University (a Catholic institution) in 2009 he had the IHS" symbol behind the podium covered with a cloth. At Christmas of 2009 President Obama considered removing the traditional manger scenes from the White House and offered tree ornaments depicting mass murderer Mao Zedong. When he held a memorial service for the victims of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords in Arizona in January of 2011 the service was held in a basketball gym instead of in a church. His administration has effectively gutted faith from faith-based initiatives and turned a blind eye to increasing attacks on religious liberty around the world. Worst of all President Obamas healthcare reform law enacted in 2010 the Affordable Care Act authorizes the Department of Health and Human Services to force most businesses and charitable organizationsincluding nearly all religious institutionsto provide health insurance plans that cover contraception sterilization and abortion-inducing drugs even if this violates their moral consciences or religious beliefs under penalty of heavy fines. In 2012 President Obama publicly declared his support for the legal recognition of homosexual marriage" alongside traditional marriage. On at least five occasions when quoting the Declaration of Independence Obama has said that we are endowed with certain unalienable rights" deliberately omitting the phrase by our Creator." He has repeatedly failed to mention God in his official Thanksgiving messages. Once he even mocked Congress for reaffirming Americas trust in God through a Congressional resolution arguing that it was a waste of time. And he has done nothing whatsoever to defend and assist the persecuted Christians of the Middle East who are now well on the way to extinction.
President Obamas fanatical secularism is also clearly manifest in his administrations unprecedented promotion of abortion. Early in 2009 only a massive outcry from the American people prevented Congress from passing the Freedom of Choice Act (FOCA) which Obama had promised Planned Parenthood that he would sign; had this bill become law it would have demolished all state restrictions on abortion created an unlimited right to abortion" supported by government entitlement and forced all physicians to perform abortions. Although FOCA was defeated a substantial chunk of Obamas abortion agenda has found its way into ObamaCare and the unconstitutional HHS mandate both of which have yet to be completely overturned.
No president in history has ever exhibited such utter contempt for the Christian religion and its followers much less while claiming to be a Christian himself. President Obama has clearly shown himself to be a genuine radical secularistan enemy of God and religion an enemy of the American people and a traitor to our country.
