hi all. recently i got into a pretty heavy conversation over the role of religion in american culture…especially politics. now let me mention a few things right up front. let me start by explaining what i mean by religion. to me religion is a man made system that defines god, man, and explains how man can be rightly related to god. this changes from religion to religion. this is not mans role as far as i can tell. god has defined himself in scripture. he has also defined man. he dictates what is needed to be rightly related to him. what he offers is a personal relationship with him through jesus. when we recognize we need him, turn to him seeking forgiveness and relinquish control of our life to him he begins to transform us into the men and women he wants us to be. religion cannot do this. as such i do not have a high regard for religion. in many ways religion has done more harm than good to the cause of christ.
that being said, if i look at religion another way, as a way of communicating spiritual truth, i think it can play an important role in our culture. if you read history, you’ll find our founding fathers did too. they saw a democratic republic as an ineffective form of government unless the citizens were virtuous. the key to virtue from their perspective was religion. and not just any religion, they were christians. when they spoke of religion, this is what they meant, this is what they knew and practiced. for instance in the declaration of independence, when they said we are endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights. who did they see as that creator??? allah? some hindu god? zeus? they understood the system of governance they had created depended on people being of good moral character, and religion was the key to maintain that character.
now, let me mention one more thought before i get to my main objective. do you know why the constitution was written? the individual colonies had banded together to declare independence from what they saw as an oppressive rule by great britain. they had come to america from europe to be free, especially to be free in the area of religion. read things like the mayflower compact and you can clearly see they felt called of god to come to america and found a country for his glory, where they could worship freely. this was not available in europe where state run churches dominated. having won their independence, the colonists realized their need for a centralized government. but the thought of a federal government was fearful. they understood a federal power could over run the individual states and their rights. so, in establishing the federal government, they carefully listed its powers. where it had jurisdiction, and where it did not. what was the very first right they established???
congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. now, i am not a lawyer. but i also am not an illiterate. i can read and i can understand both the english language and the culture of that day. lets start with the first word…congress. as the constitutional convention met and hammered out the make-up of the federal government, they came up with 3 co-equal branches. the executive branch (president, vice-pres, cabinet), the legislative branch (congress made up of the house of representatives and senate), and judicial branch (supreme court, lower federal court system). when they wrote congress, they meant the legislative branch of the federal government. they did not want the federal gov’t interfering in the area of religion by establishing a federal religion or prohibiting the free exercise of religion. it was not there domain. boy have things changed. today congress can mean a teacher or school, a city council, a municipal authority of some sort. none of these are the congress, non of them are even close. but it is this amendment that we refer to every time. no nativity scenes, no crosses, no prayers, no intelligent design, etc. separation of church and state don’t you know. somewhere along the way we got on that slippery slope, and apparently it was slipperier than we could have ever imagined. we can find the constitutionally protected right to kill unborn children, to produce pornography, to create a welfare state, and at the very same time deny prayer, nativity scenes, christmas carols, the christmas story for that matter, crosses, intelligent design, etc.
as i said i am not a lawyer, but i do have a brain. i can read our history. i can read our founders. if this is what they meant in the first amendment, why did schools practice prayer up till the last 50 years? why do they pray at the beginning of a congressional session? why do they have chaplains? why do they have the 10 commandments in the supreme court? why do they pray in the supreme court? why do we swear on a bible? why do we have so many religious mottos? why do we have so many religious inscriptions? why does god decorate our currency and significant buildings? why? i mean, i assume our founders knew what they meant when they wrote the constitution? and then they were the ones who implemented it, i assume they knew what they were doing. so why has all this stuff come up in recent history?
i don’t want to get into all the details, but in simple terms in the late 1800’s we started looking at law and the constitution differently. we began to apply the theory of evolution to the law. it was something that was alive and evolving. immediately we were transformed from a constitutional republic where the rule of law was an absolute, that grew out of an understanding of and respect for gods moral absolutes to simple humanism. once god was removed, the state operates in the place of god, doing what is in its best interest as it sees it. so today it is unconstitutional to pray in a school assembly…b/c that is how we now interpret the constitution. and i haven’t even asked exactly what religion is being established by a moment of prayer or even a moment of silence…and i won’t even get into that for lack of time. today , a school or municipality is equal to the congress. go figure…i sure hope they don’t go out and declare war or or raise the federal income tax or something. and isn’t it funny how the prohibit the free exercise part is completely ignored. i guess you lose your civil rights if you become a teacher. yet the very same constitution says, you have a constitutionally protected right to murder your unborn child. please look up the constitution for yourself and try to figure where and how they came up with that. again, its not there, but it has been interpreted in.
i could go on, i’ll spare you. jesus has called us to be salt and light. we live in a hostile world. christianity is offensive by nature…it says man is a sinner and needs a savior…and that savior is jesus…only jesus. no man seeks after god, but god seeks after us and does so mainly through the church he has raised up to make disciples of all nations. i started this blog mentioning an extended conversation where a person who claims to be a christian said she was not in favor of christianity having any place within the state. specifically, the turlock city council should not pray because it would be offensive to non christians. this prayer would negate the message of christ’s love. she said she would never pray before non christians, she was not an “in your face christian”, and she preferred to share her views…whatever that means.
here is how i see it. constitutionally the founders set up a system of gov’t where they fully expected religion to have an active role. but that role would be determined within individual municipalities and states. without the virtue/moral and ethical absolutes taught by the church, they did not see a democratic republic being effective. spiritually, christ and the apostles were about as “in your face” as it got. they were salt, they were light, they turned the world upside down. they did not practice the religion of political correctness, they did not shy away from persecution or opposition.
i asked this individual why america was so blessed. does god like americans more than others? if so he has a lot of explaining to do. no, i think america has been blessed by and large b/c we were founded on judeo christian ethics…by and large we did things right, according to scriptural principles. and as that was true, we became the most prosperous, powerful, influential country on the planet. we are in decline. the decline runs parallel with our slide down the slippery slope of explaining god right out of his place in our culture. we as christians can either go along for the ride(can anyone see jesus doing that??? wasn’t he the one who says over and over in the sermon on the mount mt.5-7…you have heard that it was said, ie. the politically correct version of the day, but i say unto you, ie. this is the truth straight up) or we can exercise our rights as christians living in america and push back. i am not calling for a moral majority political agenda. but i do see the need for the church doing exactly what jesus and his followers did. they engaged their culture with truth and called men to belief. they were revolutionary, they were counter cultural. how do you see it??? love to hear from you. blessings. vince
