MIXING CHURCH AND STATE
Most every believer is aware that our state (and nation) is in a moral free-fall. It is very frustrating to see our society being pillaged and feel helpless to do anything about it.
For over a century now, The Christian Civic League of Maine has been engaged in the battle to preserve traditional family values and have come to understand that it is not a question of winning or losing but rather one of faithfulness.
I believe it is nothing less than sinful for a Christian who lives in America to be ill-informed on the great issues of our day and uninvolved in finding solutions for the moral challenges we face. Christians, therefore, must accept the blame for allowing our nation to drift so far off the course charted by our founding fathers.
Mark Twain, an allegedly notorious skeptic, understood the importance of the Church in his day. In the September 2, 1904, edition of Collier’s, Twain wrote:
"It will be conceded… that a Christian’s first duty is to God. It then follows, as a matter of course, that it is his duty to carry his Christian code of morals to the polls and vote them. Whenever he shall do that, he will not find himself voting for an unclean man, a dishonest man… If Christians should vote their duty to God at the polls, they would carry every election, and do it with ease… Their prodigious power would be quickly realized and recognized, and afterward there would be no unclean candidates upon any ticket, and graft would cease… If the Christians of America could be persuaded to vote God and a clean ticket, it would bring about a moral revolution that would be incalculably beneficent. It would save the country…"
Of course churches must not act in a partisan way, but they should equip and send people who represent the interests of the Kingdom of God into the political process at all levels. If Mark Twain is correct, this could result in the salvation of our nation itself. Churches, especially, ought to be involved because they bring a heavenly perspective to the earthly realm.
Our society is in trouble morally and spiritually and this is not the time to retreat. Rather, Christians must stand up, speak up and refuse to give up. You cannot dispel darkness with more darkness and you cannot correct error with silence.
We are so fortunate that General George Washington and his brave men who were battling blizzard-like conditions, ill-clad and ill-equipped while literally starving to death, did not finally resign themselves to failure and give up! The General didn’t bail out on the troops and send them all home. Instead, the troops looked to their brave leader who remained in the trenches with them and watched him pray for divine guidance and deliverance. Those who survived that fierce winter at Valley Forge followed him back into the battle that spring where they witnessed God’s great faithfulness. They discovered that with God, “ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE.” They discovered what we can easily forget…that God always honors those who honor Him. And they discovered you never lose until you quit.
The Scriptures are filled with accounts of God intervening on behalf of His people wherever He found yielded servants who were willing to engage the enemy.
When the Jewish people were targeted for extinction as a result of Haman’s final solution - suggestion to King Xerxes in Esther 3:8-10, Queen Esther was willing to get involved with politics at the suggestion of her uncle Mordeci. She heard his penetrating words: “if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place but your father’s family will perish. And who knows but that you have come into a royal position for such a time as this” [Esther 4:16].
Edmond Burke is credited with the famous quote, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men do nothing.”
The great attorney turned evangelist, Charles Finney, who was converted to Christianity, wrote:
“The church must take right ground in regards to politics…The time has come for Christians to vote for honest men, and take consistent ground in politics or the Lord will curse them…God cannot sustain His free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take right ground. Politics are a part of religion in such a country as this, and Christians must do their duty to their country as a part of their duty to God…God will bless or curse this nation according to the course Christians take in politics.”
Finney believed, as I do, and as the Christian Civic League does, that Christians have an absolute mandate to take their Christianity into the marketplace of ideas and be salt and light. [Matt. 5: 14-16]
For the past four decades the American people have been inundated with the myth that our Constitution forbids the mixing of religion and politics.
So now, several generations of Americans have grown up believing the Constitution demands the separation of church and state. We have even heard of attorneys referring to the “fact” that the First Amendment to the Constitution includes the phrase: “separation of church and state.” IT DOES NOT ! ! ! It is a big lie perpetuated and fostered by the courts. Unfortunately, it is embraced by the American public to our shame and disgrace, and that lie has led us to the edge of the abyss.
When the Supreme Court Justices ruled that the constitution erected a “wall of separation” between church and state, they perpetrated the lie. The framers of our constitution never erected such a wall. In fact, they saw the necessity for a union to exist between the church and state, without which there could be no morality.
John Adams wrote:
“Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
David Barton, in his book, The Myth of Separation, thoroughly exposes the myth of the “wall of separation of church and state” logic. The First amendment does say this:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceable to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
You probably know the Principle of Propaganda:” Any lie, no matter how absurd, if repeated enough, becomes believable.”
Today “separation of church and state” is believed to be a direct quote from the first Amendment. You probably know the truth about this, but just in case here is the basis of the myth:
The origin of the phrase is a rather obscure phrase from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson on January 1, 1802, in response to a letter from the Danbury Baptist Association, Danbury, Connecticut. In their letter to Jefferson, they expressed their concern for a rumor being circulated that a particular denomination was about to be recognized as a national denomination. Jefferson calmed their fears by writing:
“I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, thus building a wall of separation between Church and state.”
Jefferson was writing a personal letter to a group of concerned Baptists, assuring them that America was not about to have a “Church of the United States,” patterned after the “Church of England.”
Tragically, those whose purpose has been to protect our children from the God they deny exists, have resorted to extracting nine words from a private correspondence to validate their views, which is foreign to the Constitution’s original intent. Those remarks were written by a man who was in France, serving as the U.S. Minister to France, throughout the time of the Constitutional convention in 1787 and the drafting of the Bill of Rights in 1789.
They had to bypass all of the participants in the Constitutional Convention, and every member of Congress who authored the first Amendment, to find someone who had written a letter from which they could extract favorable language to make their case. And the words they chose were taken out of context. This lie is a moral outrage to our nation, and the resulting moral morass, apart from God’s intervention, is irreversible.
PEOPLE OF FAITH MUST REMEMBER: You never lose until you quit. THIS IS THE TIME…”TO STAND UP, SPEAK UP, AND REFUSE TO GIVE UP.”
The good news is that there are many indications that God is intervening. There are hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of Christians in America who have not retreated and who have refused to kneel at the altar of the god of this culture.
We can see this principle illustrated in the Old Testament story of Nehemiah. In the fourth chapter of that book, the Scripture says, “So we rebuilt the wall ‘till all of it reached half of its height, for the people worked with all their heart” [Nehemiah 4:6]. Then it goes on to say, ”So we continued the work with half the men holding spears, from the first light of dawn ‘til the stars came out” [Nehemiah 4:21].
THAT’S THE KIND OF DEDICATION WE MUST HAVE IF WE ARE GOING TO SEE OUR STATE AND COUNTRY RESTORED TO BE THE GREAT NATION SHE WAS DESIGNED TO BE BY OUR GRACIOUS GOD. We must be willing to work, and we must be ready to engage the enemy, not with swords and spears, but rather with truth and ideas that are based on the Word of God.
WE MUST STAND UP, SPEAK UP AND REFUSE TO GIVE UP!
So many Christians today don’t know what to do or where to begin.
THERE IS ONE VERY IMPORTANT THING EVERYONE HERE IN MAINE CAN DO….they can become a member of the Christian Civic League and make it strong. The League is one very influential voice in this state that speaks for thousands of believers in Maine. The annual membership is very nominal, $10 per individual or $30 per family. Churches and organizations can join for only $50. The League stays on top of the activities in Maine and informs Christian throughout the state so they can take action when needed. The fall of each year is also the time to renew memberships that already exist.
Many Churches in Maine include the Christian Civic League of Maine in their missions giving with a regular monthly gift. Individuals can do the same. This regular support is what it takes to keep the League strong and growing in its influence to protect the family from being destroyed by the enemies of the faith. The League also needs prayer and has a Prayer Partnership Network that is open to prayer warriors to join. Anyone can sign up by contacting the League. Michael Heath and the small League staff stay on top of issues in our state and nation and exercise the League’s influence to address the issues of concern.
I have membership and church support applications available for anyone who is interested.
