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VERSUS A GODLESS GOVERNMENT BY BRANNON HOWSE Americans need to stand up for and reaffirm the faith of our fathers. Today, a civil war rages in Congress, in the courts, and in our schools. Why do I believe that this battle for religious freedom will so greatly affect the future of this nation? Because as a nation we can only embrace and govern on the basis of one of two worldviews. We as a people will either embrace the Christian worldview or the secular humanist worldview. There is no middle ground. This is not a new battle. In fact, it has been on-going since the Garden of Eden. This conflict of the ages has always been between what is right and what is wrong, what is just and what is unjust, what is good and what is evil, what makes men free and what makes them slaves. The Christian worldview was the basis and foundation on which the founding fathers built the United States of America. Lenin, however, used the secular humanist worldview to base his ideology. Fyodor Dostoyevsky in his book, Crime and Punishment, wrote, "If God is dead, then everything is permitted." If there is no God, then humanism, which is based on the belief that man is god, is the moral standard. In other words, man can decide for himself what is right and what is wrong through a relativistic, humanistic worldview. If, however, there is a Creator, as America's founding fathers believed and wrote in the Declaration of Independence, then man is not god and is subject to set standards as prescribed by the Creator. Man is also obligated not only to live, but to govern in a manner consistent with God's laws and standards. The standards prescribed by the Creator are spelled out in the most important book of our western culture, the Holy Bible. Those who believe in God the Creator and His moral standards of right and wrong, i.e. the Ten commandments, are embracing the Christian worldview either knowingly or unknowingly. Those of us who believe in God and seek to follow and live out the Judeo-Christian faith realize that we are not the minority that the media and cultural elite would have us to believe. Gallop surveys over the past two decades reveal that fully 85 percent of Americans consider themselves to be following the Christian faith. On an average Sunday in America, 106 million Americans attend church. Americans need not apologize to the cultural elite for their religious convictions, no matter how strong. Indeed, it was a group of gun-toting, church-going Christians who gave us the greatest nation on the face of the earth. If you doubt me when I say that this nation was founded on the Christian worldview by people who considered themselves to be following the "Christian faith," then you do not know the facts. Dr. D. James Kennedy in his book, Character and Destiny, provides interesting data about the people who founded our nation:
In 1892, the Supreme Court ruled in the case, Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States, that:
In 1774, while serving in the Virginia Assembly, Thomas Jefferson personally introduced a resolution calling for a day of fasting and prayer. Later, while serving as the Governor of Virginia (1779-1781), Jefferson decreed a day of: "Public and solemn thanksgiving and prayer to the Almighty God."3 Engraved on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington D.C. are these famous words by Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence and our third President:
I could fill hundreds of pages with quotes from our founding fathers proving that they both publicly and privately believed in and possessed the Christian worldview. Many of our founding fathers were convinced that as long as we as a nation held onto and protected our Christian heritage, we would flourish. Likewise, they also believed that if we denied and rejected our Christian heritage, it would be the death of this nation they so loved. George Washington wrote "We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained." He also wrote "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." Benjamin Franklin wrote: "Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world." On June 20, 1785, James Madison wrote, "Religion [is] the basis and foundation of Government." Several years later, on March 4, 1809, President James Madison said in his Inaugural address, "We have all been encouraged to feel in the guardianship and guidance of that Almighty Being, whose power regulates the destiny of nations." It is overwhelmingly clear from these few examples that our founding fathers knew just how important it was to the preservation of our nation that our Christian heritage and foundations not be eroded. Even though our founders knew how important our Christian heritage was - and with a 99.8 percent Christian majority - still a state religion was not mandated. Our founders wanted freedom of religion, not freedom from religion, as the liberals claim. The founders did not want our nation to deny its heritage, but they wanted everyone to be free to practice and express their religious convictions and beliefs. The "wall of separation" between church and state is a myth. In recent years, this myth has gone from protecting us from a state-mandated religion to denying people their constitutional right to practice their religion publicly. The ultimate result of the myth of separation has been the creating of a state-mandated religion, best known as humanism. In two different cases, the United States Supreme court has written in footnotes to decisions handed down that humanism has a religious tone. Today, this religion is not excluded but promoted aggressively in our nation's government schools at your expense. My friend and mentor, Dr. D. James Kennedy, put it best when he said,
Despite what the liberal American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) says, the religious foundation of our nation gave more liberty to everyone, not less as they would have us believe. Our founding fathers did so for good reason. They knew the lessons of history, as Dr. D. James Kennedy writes:
We have compromised our foundational beliefs as a nation and a people, creating a society on the verge of moral collapse - one where crime is rampant in our streets, babies are legally murdered in their mothers' wombs, and divorce is as common and easy as ordering a pizza. Part of our Christian heritage has always been personal responsibility and morality. With these two characteristics missing, America has become a welfare program out of control. Unwed mothers are financially rewarded for having more and more children out of wedlock. Couples who get married and have children are assessed a heavy tax for simply choosing to do the respectable and responsible thing. Untold numbers of welfare and entitlement recipients are having their immoral and irresponsible lifestyles funded by a government that has chosen not to hold individuals to a high standard of personal responsibility and decency. Psychologists and other misguided "professionals" only worsen the problem by "discovering" a new disorder or disability for every negative human failing. Sure, there are those who have problems and disabilities, but such real problems end up being ignored or not taken seriously by the general public because of the over-use of psycho-babble terms and victimization grouping and labeling. This nation is being destroyed from the inside. How much longer can our nation continue down this road before we realize that the damage we are doing is increasingly irreversible? America needs to recommit itself to the heritage that made it great - a heritage that was clearly based on a Christian worldview, a strong faith in God, and in His moral principles and standards of hard work, personal responsibility, right and wrong, good and evil, just and unjust. Certainly we need to have compassion, but today's welfare programs are based not on compassion but on socialism. At times there are those who need a little help to get back on their feet, but as one talk show host has said, "The safety net has turned into a hammock." There is a clear difference between compassion and encouraging and rewarding irresponsibility, immorality and laziness. The same individuals who scream that you and I are not compassionate enough are the same group of liberals who have been behind cases where compassion, understanding, and the protection of Constitutional rights have been extremely absent. The rights of many Americans - which are so basic that the framers of the Constitution called them self-evident - have been denied. Yet, if you and I are in favor of welfare reform, we are accused of depriving certain individuals of their so-called "rights" even though these "rights" are not granted nor protected by the Constitution. As Dr. D. James Kennedy has written, today's young people "have been taught that their heritage of freedom gives them plenty of 'rights' but very few responsibilities." Liberals who steal our Constitutional rights are hailed by the liberal press as being advocates for equality. Yet, when a conservative tries to defend the Constitution and limit special privileges and treatment for a few, which is often times not in the best interest of the majority, we are called mean-spirited hate-mongers. In some cases, states and/or the federal government has aggressively attached and harassed conservative groups or individuals with audits, law suits, and threats. Often such harassment is leveled at those who have - with great strength and courage - dared to stand up and defend the Christian worldview on which this nation was built. Why should America be forced to become a secular nation when the majority of Americans are not secular in their religious beliefs? In addition, there is nothing beneficial about being a secular nation. In fact, history proves that it is detrimental to the future of a nation to reject certain principals and standards just because they can be traced back to a religious foundation. Time magazine published a cover story on December 9, 1991, titled, "One Nation, Under God," in which they asked the question: "Has the separation of church and state gone too far?" The writer for Time obviously felt it had when he wrote:
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