Separating Church and State

Deborah Venable

03/26/08

 

By the simplest of definitions, the government of the United States of America can accurately be called a theocracy in its foundations, but that word sparks fear in the hearts of many freedom-loving Americans.  The big difference in most theocracies and the American government founded on a belief in God-given rights is the word, church.  There is no single church that defines our freedom.  Our troubles come from people who must have their beliefs spelled out in a specific religious (or non-religious) charter of some sort.  The re-unification of America will only be possible if we stop trying to separate God from State and we stop trying to integrate Church and State.

 

I believe in God.  I believe that God has blessed America many times over, and I also believe that man – not God – has damned America. 

 

With the wide publication of Jeremiah Wright’s sermons of hate filled, anti-American rhetoric, we are forced to think about the implications of theocratic rule as a real possibility if this pastor’s protégé should be elected President of the United States.  Personally, I think the real concern in that event has nothing to do with God and more to do with the church of liberalism that Obama belongs to.  Yes, I said church.  For liberalism has a very specific charter, and included in that charter is the absolute necessity of eliminating Christian decency in order for social liberalism to flourish.

 

Reverend Wright’s church (Obama’s church) has been infiltrated by the tenets of liberalism.  Instead of leading the congregation to a celebration of salvation through Jesus Christ, Reverend Wright foists hate and misery upon all those who follow his teachings.  Race is the only thing that matters to these people – they don’t want equality of the races – the only thing that will make them happy is black superiority.  They won’t allow any of us to “look beyond color of skin to content of character.” 

 

I’m quite sure there are many other churches, some under the guise of Christianity, that also teach divisiveness - (I’ve sat in the pews of a few of them) – but there are many more others that do not.  It is to those we should flock, if we feel the need to congregate in a church, for they do no harm. 

 

Recently, I heard a statistic that people are attending church services in ever decreasing numbers.  I hope there are two reasons for this.  I hope that many of these people are finding their way closer to God by refusing to be shepherded by such hateful preaching as those aforementioned churches provide.  I hope it is not simply because so many have turned their backs to God.

 

Church should not be big business, as too often we see that it is.  Church should not be an opportunity for preachers to rant and rave about their political beliefs – whatever those may be.  We should not go to church to learn politics.  Nothing turns me off faster than listening to a preacher spew fire and brimstone from a pulpit in a church – much less hate speech, racial slurs, (and political ravings against a country that ferociously defends his right to do so), followed immediately by the “passing of the plate” to support further rantings.  Maybe it’s just me, but I think that the house of God should be a place of serene introspection and a gentle reminder that life’s joys far outweigh the negatives.

 

To say that in government there is no place for theocracy is like saying that in life there is no place for morality.  There can be no government of a free people that is not based on morality, and all moral dealings are a result of human’s acceptance of laws inspired by Divine guidance.  Our Founders made it abundantly clear that America was founded on laws inspired by such Divine guidance.  I am sick of modern educators and politicians that insist on arguing that point.  I am equally sick of churches that insist on melding politics into their worship services.  That is where the separation is needed.

 

A little over four years ago a politician delivered a speech on the floor of the United States Senate.  The mainstream media gave it minimal play at the time as I recall, but it should go down in history as a defining moment of telling it like it is in today’s America.  Here is the kicker – the politician delivering the speech was a Democrat.  His name – Zell Miller, D - Georgia.  The speech was called “A Deficit Of Decency” and any speech that any one of our current front-runners for president has ever given would pale in comparison, for it contained all the elements of the aforementioned Divine guidance – and it certainly did no harm!

 

Here is the text of that speech found at this site.

 

A Deficit Of Decency In America

Senator Zell Miller

February 12, 2004

“The Old Testament prophet Amos was a sheep herder who lived back in the Judean hills, away from the larger cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem. Compared to the intellectual urbanites like Isaiah and Jeremiah, he was just an unsophisticated country hick.

“But Amos had a unique grasp of political and social issues and his poetic literary skill was among the best of all the prophets. That familiar quote of Martin Luther King, Jr. about ‘Justice will rush down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream’ are Amos’s words.

“Amos was the first to propose the concept of a universal God and not just some tribal deity. He also wrote that God demanded moral purity, not rituals and sacrifices. This blunt speaking moral conscience of his time warns in Chapter 8, verse 11 of The Book of Amos, as if he were speaking to us today:

That ‘the days will come, sayeth the Lord God, that I will send a famine in the land. Not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the word of the Lord.
‘And they shall wander from sea to sea, and from the north even to the east. They shall run to and fro to seek the word of the Lord, and shall not find it.’

‘A famine in the land’. Has anyone more accurately described the situation we face in America today? ‘A famine of hearing the words of the Lord.’

“But some will say, Amos was just an Old Testament prophet – a minor one at that – who lived 700 years before Christ. That is true, so how about one of the most influential historians of modern times?

“Arnold Toynbee who wrote the acclaimed 12 volume A Study of History, once declared, ‘Of the 22 civilizations that have appeared in history, 19 of them collapsed when they reached the moral state America is in today.’

“Toynbee died in 1975, before seeing the worst that was yet to come. Yes, Arnold Toynbee saw the famine. The ‘famine of hearing the words of the Lord.’ Whether it is removing a display of the Ten Commandments from a Courthouse or the Nativity Scene from a city square. Whether it is eliminating prayer in schools or eliminating ‘under God’ in the Pledge of Allegiance. Whether it is making a mockery of the sacred institution of marriage between a man and woman or, yes, telecasting around the world made-in-the-USA filth masquerading as entertainment.

“The Culture of Far Left America was displayed in a startling way during the Super Bowl’s now infamous half-time show. A show brought to us courtesy of Value-Les Moonves and the pagan temple of Viacom-Babylon.

“I asked the question yesterday, how many of you have ever run over a skunk with your car? I have many times and I can tell you, the stink stays around for a long time. You can take the car through a car wash and it’s still there. So the scent of this event will long linger in the nostrils of America.

“I’m not talking just about an exposed mammary gland with a pull-tab attached to it. Really no one should have been too surprised at that. Wouldn’t one expect a bumping, humping, trashy routine entitled ‘I’m going to get you naked’ to end that way.

“Does any responsible adult ever listen to the words of this rap-crap? I’d quote you some of it, but the Sergeant of Arms would throw me out of here, as well he should. And then there was that prancing, dancing, strutting, rutting guy evidently suffering from jock itch because he kept yelling and grabbing his crotch. But then, maybe there’s a crotch grabbing culture I’ve unaware of.

“But as bad as all this was, the thing that yanked my chain the hardest was seeing that ignoramus with his pointed head stuck up through a hole he had cut in the flag of the United States of America, screaming about having ‘a bottle of scotch and watching lots of crotch.’ Think about that.

“This is the same flag that we pledge allegiance to. This is the flag that is draped over coffins of dead young uniformed warriors killed while protecting Kid Crock’s bony butt. He should be tarred and feathered, and ridden out of this country on a rail. Talk about a good reality show, there’s one for you.

“The desire and will of this Congress to meaningfully do anything about any of these so-called social issues is non existent and embarrassingly disgraceful. The American people are waiting and growing impatient with us. They want something done.

“I am pleased to be a co-sponsor of S.J. Res. 26 along with Senator Allard and others, proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to marriage. And S.1558, the Liberties Restoration Act, which declares religious liberty rights in several ways, including the Pledge of Allegiance and the display of the Ten Commandments. And today I join Senator Shelby and others with the Constitution Restoration Act of 2004 that limits the jurisdiction of federal courts in certain ways.

“In doing so, I stand shoulder to shoulder not only with my Senate co-sponsors and Chief Justice Roy Moore of Alabama but, more importantly, with our Founding Fathers in the conception of religious liberty and the terribly wrong direction our modern judiciary has taken us in.

"Everyone today seems to think that the U.S. Constitution expressly provides for separation of church and state. Ask any ten people if that’s not so. And I’ll bet you most of them will say ‘Well, sure.’ And some will point out, ‘it’s in the First Amendment.’

“Wrong! Read it! It says, ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.’ Where is the word ‘separate’? Where are the words ‘church’ or ‘state.’

“They are not there. Never have been. Never intended to be. Read the Congressional Records during that four-month period in 1789 when the amendment was being framed in Congress. Clearly their intent was to prohibit a single denomination in exclusion of all others, whether it was Anglican or Catholic or some other.

“I highly recommend a great book entitled Original Intent by David Barton. It really gets into how the actual members of Congress, who drafted the First Amendment, expected basic Biblical principles and values to be present throughout public life and society, not separate from it.

“It was Alexander Hamilton who pointed out that ‘judges should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty.’ Bound down! That is exactly what is needed to be done. There was not a single precedent cited when school prayer was struck down in 1962.

“These judges who legislate instead of adjudicate, do it without being responsible to one single solitary voter for their actions. Among the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a brilliant young physician from Pennsylvania named Benjamin Rush.

“When Rush was elected to that First Continental Congress, his close friend Benjamin Franklin told him ‘We need you. . . we have a great task before us, assigned to us by Providence.’ Today, 228 years later there is still a great task before us assigned to us by Providence. Our Founding Fathers did not shirk their duty and we can do no less.

“By the way, Benjamin Rush was once asked a question that has long interested this Senator from Georgia in particular. Dr. Rush was asked, are you a democrat or an aristocrat? And the good doctor answered, ‘I am neither’. ‘I am a Christocrat. I believe He, alone, who created and redeemed man is qualified to govern him.’ That reply of Benjamin Rush is just as true today in the year of our Lord 2004 as it was in the year of our Lord 1776.

“So, if I am asked why – with all the pressing problems this nation faces today – why am I pushing these social issues and taking the Senate’s valuable time? I will answer: Because, it is of the highest importance. Yes, there’s a deficit to be concerned about in this country, a deficit of decency.

“So, as the sand empties through my hourglass at warp speed – and with my time running out in this Senate and on this earth, I feel compelled to speak out. For I truly believe that at times like this, silence is not golden. It is yellow.”

 

Zell Miller left the Senate shortly thereafter choosing not to seek reelection.

 

It seems every day the deficit of which he spoke is growing larger.  Politicians regularly seek out media microphones to try and explain away their personal immorality, and every time we accept their explanations the separation of God and state increases, just as that deficit grows larger.  We do not need government to supply us with all the things that liberalism promises.  Instead, we need government to model an acceptance of moral rule and Divine guidance.  I defy anyone to show me the harm in that. 

 

 

Home    Rant Page    Comments