THE LIE THAT IS DESTROYING AMERICA,<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
AND THE CHURCH SUPPORTS IT!
                                                                                                            General Clyde Autio (retired)
What is that lie?  It is, 'That religion and politics must be separated.' 
 
This certainly was not true in the 1760's when Jonathan Witherspoon became the president of Princeton University.  In addition to those duties he also preached twice each Sunday.   He was also an early advocate of the revolution by serving on the Committee of Correspondence, plus some one hundred other committees.  He was a signatory to the Declaration of Independence and served in Congress from 1776 to 1782.  On 17 May 1776, he concluded his now famous message, 'Dominion of Providence Over the Passions of Men' with the following prayer. 'God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.'
 
The same lie was not believed by the Reverend Jonas Clark. On the evening of 18 April 1775, while entertaining Samuel Adams and John Hancock, Mr. Clark was asked if the men of his church would fight.  He responded that he had 'trained them for this very hour; they would fight, and, if need be, die, too, under the shadow of the house of God."  The following day saw the first blood of the revolution shed and some of it came from men who were members of his parish.  "From this day," said he, when he saw their dead bodies, "will be dated the liberty of the world." 
 
The lie was not on the Reverend Peter Muhlenberg's mind on 21 January 1776 as he stood in the pulpit at his Woodstock Virginia church and preached from Chapter 3 of the book of Ecclesiastes.  He said that there was a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.  He concluded that part of Scripture with a time of war and a time of peace.  He paused to look out over his congregation of hard-working farmers, merchants and their families before concluding with a challenge: " "If you do not choose to be involved, if you do not fight to protect your liberties, there will soon be no liberties to protect!"  He then removed his clerical robes to reveal his Officer's uniform.  He led over three hundred men off to war.  Pastor Muhlenberg became Major General Muhlenberg, one of the great heroes of the Revolutionary War.  His memory has been secured in a Capitol Rotunda picture sitting on his horse next to George Washington.
 
The lie was not on the mind of Thomas Jefferson on Friday 1 January 1802 when he wrote a letter to some Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, even though a later Supreme Court would twist his words to satisfy their own ideology by denying prayer in school.  But was that interpretation true to Jefferson's intent when he wrote his letter to those Baptists?   One who considers all of Jefferson's actions relative to Christianity would doubt the judicial honesty of that court.  For example: two days later Jefferson worshiped with the largest congregation in Washington D.C., which convened in the chambers of the House of Representatives and enjoyed the music of the band Jefferson ordered to play, the President's own United States Marine Corps Band; as a member of the Washington D.C, school board, Jefferson directed that the Bible be a part of the curriculum; he showed his concern about the moral well-being of the Indians by directing Congress to provide funds so that the Moravians could take the Gospel message to them and equip them with churches; he was the first president to sign a public document with the statement, "In the year of our Lord Christ 1804."; and finally, but not exhaustively, he placed the word God in our national motto and insisted that the oath, "So help me God" be taken with the hand on the Bible. 
 
The lie was not present in Philadelphia on 28 June 1787 when Benjamin Franklin rose in the Constitutional Convention to make his speech, which stopped the embroiled group from floundering, with the following words: "…The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men.  And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?..."     Jonathan Dayton reported that his speech, more than anything else, set a different tone and from then on the convention proceeded effectively with both opening and closing prayers each day. 
 
The lie was not present in the minds of those who prepared the Constitutions of at least twelve of the thirteen colonies when they included a phrase similar to the following from the State of Massachusetts: "The Governor shall be chosen annually; and no person shall be eligible to this office, unless, at the time of his election…he shall declare himself to be of the Christian Religion."  That Constitution goes on to say; "Chapter VI, Article I [All persons elected to State office or to the legislature must] make and subscribe the following declaration, viz. "I, ______, do declare, that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth.""
 
The lie was not present on 27 March 1854 when the following excerpt from a report by Mr. Meacham of the House Judiciary Committee was read, "Had the people, during the Revolution, a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. ...  At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and its amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, but not any one sect [denomination]. ...  That was the religion of the Founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants."
The seeds for the big lie were sown in the nineteenth century.  Before the Civil War all of the chairs at Harvard were occupied by ordained ministers.  By the beginning of the twentieth century not one chair was occupied by an ordained minister. 
 
However, the harvest from the seeds of that lie had not been accomplished by 29 February1892 when the United States Supreme Court offered the following excerpt from the case of the Church of the Holy Trinity vs. United States: "Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind.  It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian."
 
So, what is the issue with the big lie?  While it has a nice congenial sound for social harmony, it is at the very foundation of the current trend to use neo-history to develop a new America, which would have no continuity with either the traditional America or the Constitutional basis for interpreting law, rights and freedoms.  The lie has opened the door for the explosion of Post-Christianity Modernism which has fathered such communist/Marxist thought as 'social justice', liberation theology, exclusive teaching of evolution in government schools, income and wealth redistribution, government funded abortions, state controlled speech, negation of the definition of marriage as being one man and one woman, loss of private property rights, and the list goes on with equally horrendous destructive actions to disassemble the pre-twenty-first century America.
 
Those who have advocated that the church remove itself from the political arena by saying that politics and religion should not be mixed have no idea about the implications of what they are truly saying and many have prayed for actions that are not possible through their separation policy.  Every political action is based upon some person or group's religious belief.  It is only the Christian religion that has accepted being forced to the side line to the detriment of the well-being of the nation, its citizens and the world. 
 
A significant step towards the downfall of the nation began when Massachusetts passed the first law for compulsory school attendance in 1852.  At that point, the efforts of such people as John Dewey became concentrated on reshaping the culture by reshaping the minds of the students to separate their thinking from that of the Christian principles of their parents.  John Dewey was quoted in a Time magazine article of 9 June 1952 with the following:  "In such a world, said Dewey, the philosopher (and, for that matter, the educator) has no alternative but to ignore the universe. Nor should he concern himself with God or the existence of absolutes. His target is man and society, where nothing is either good or bad, but only better or worse. Values are not eternal; they are perpetually born, and "philosophy cannot desire a better work than to engage in the act of midwifery that was assigned to it by Socrates 2,500 years ago.""
 
This teaching concept found its way into our progressive education system thought that God and absolutes were irrelevant.  This anti-Christian process is not just present for academics.  Recently, the educators in Burlington Township High School, New Jersey, conducted a mock emergency drill in which the hostage taking gunmen were described as "members of a right-wing fundamentalist group called 'The New Crusaders,' who don't believe in the separation of church and state."  The mock gunmen went to the school seeking justice "because the daughter of one had been expelled for praying before class."   Such a practice scenario involving any other religion would have met with violent civil disruptions, but the school officials had no concern about the covert message they were imprinting on the minds of the students about Christian fundamentalists.   Even more recently the graduating seniors from New Haven, Connecticut High School, will not see the following words on their diploma, "in the year of our Lord."  The United States Supreme Court just made a decision that a law school could deny a Christian student group recognition if they refused to permit homosexuals to have membership.  This type of anti-Christian activity is appearing more frequently and is the direct consequence of the Christian church accepting the big lie. 
 
It is not possible to construct a line between politics and religion without constructing a line between religion and the culture.  The culture is shaped by such things as: government schools – politically driven by both state and federal education edicts; government intrusion into universal health care – politically driven to include such things as abortions, rationing care and loss of freedom of choice; government takeover of private industry and assuming managerial responsibilities to include involuntary closure of dealerships; judicial decisions that negate popular votes on moral issues to include definition of marriage, abortion rights and private property rights; and extended control of financial institutions.  All of the preceding examples exist to the detriment of individual freedom and liberties because they were instituted by government edicts that were framed without the benefit of the biblical thought that was absent because of the big lie.  Sadly, as the momentum to marginalize Christianity such events will not only become more frequent but the consequences will be more onerous. 
 
The major difference between a government that is controlled by individuals with either a biblical or biblical-leaning worldview and a government without any significant biblical worldview is the difference between how the government related to the Constitution and citizens in the early nineteenth century and how it regards the Constitution and citizens in the twenty-first century.  For this we give thanks to the Church for not shaping its member's worldview for the purpose of serving God in shaping the culture.. 
 
Every significant cultural measure has shown a significant downturn as the government, both federal and state, have become more anti or non-Christian.  Some sample indicators of the changes between 1960, just prior to the Supreme Court stopping prayer in school, and 1990 are: a crime rate increase from 16.1 to 75.8 per ten thousand; the percent of children being raised on Aid to Families with Dependent Children rose from 3.5 to 12.9, nearly a four-fold increase; the teen birth rate increased from 15.3 to 42.5 per thousand teen girls; the percentage of births to unmarried women grew from 5.3 to 28.0; the teen suicide rate grew from 3.6 to 11.3 per one hundred thousand; the SAT combined scores dropped from 975 to 899, in spite of significant increases in school funding; and the percentage of single parent families grew from 9.1 to 28.6.  Every one of these indicators has an adverse affect on both the involved individual and the culture.  They all have long term affects on the ability of the culture to provide the growth necessary for the continuation of a rising standard of living and become an economic drag during financial crises that will impede any recovery.   Again, because the biblical principles of individual accountability and the true source of liberty and freedom coming from God were absent in the political processes. 
 
Today, it is not uncommon to learn that local police are restricting the freedom of assembly and speech for Christian based people and topics while permitting the same rights to non-Christian individuals and groups.  This was most recently evidenced by the police arresting three Christian street evangelists in Dearborn, Michigan – a predominantly Muslim community.  A United States District Court judge upheld the restriction.  Fortunately, the 6th United States Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision.  But, had Christians been more involved in the shaping of the culture this, and many other such, decision would never have been taken under consideration.  Federal judges are the result of a political decision made by the president and the majority in the Senate.  Even though Themis, the Goddess of Justice, is blindfolded we have come to learn that those practicing underneath that symbol are not so even handed to the exclusion of their political worldview as approved by the appointing and confirming politicians. 
 
Another indicator of the rapid decline of Christian influence in the culture is a recent Gallup poll, which  showed that fifty-three percent of Americans believed that gay and lesbian relationships are morally acceptable and only forty three percent called them morally wrong.  This is a significant change just since 2001 when only forty percent found those relationships acceptable and fifty-three percent said they were not morally acceptable.  One has to ask, where is the church in the process of trying to shape public opinion, shaping the culture and encouraging an environment that would be less hostile towards their idea of traditional marriage?  One has to expect such results if the public schools are permitted to teach the children cultural behavioral patterns that are antithetical to Christianity.  Yet, the church is not about the business of trying to insert its content and influence into the government education process.
 
A significant failing of Christian influence has been in the writing and teaching of American history.  The progressive movement took over the writing of school history books and have been able to reshape the historical facts to exclude the involvement of Christian thought in the nation's founding, the names and character of those who had significant roles in shaping the early nation, the role America played in world affairs and the content of the founding documents and writings.  Just this year a group in Texas, led by David Barton of Wallbuilders, challenged a new series of history books as being both inaccurate and lacking relevant historical content.  Their challenge was based upon well documented historical facts and survived the crucial political approval process for the new books.  This single action, not taken by the church but by the para-church, will provide all American government school students with text books that have greater accuracy and pertinent details about the founding of the nation. 
 
As Christians have allowed themselves to be forced into the closet it has been possible for the cultural shapers to give life to such lies as: America never was a Christian nation; The sixties sexual revolution set us free; Evolution should be taught exclusively as a proven scientific theory; the traditional family is no longer relevant; and that entertainment is harmless since it only reflects the culture and does not shape it.
 
If America is able to survive the current crisis and emerge with some meaningful semblance of the mid-twentieth century America, it will be by the Grace of God through His people fulfilling the responsibility He gave to Adam to tend to His creation.  That would require that the church step up to its responsibility to shape the worldview of its members so that as they then go out into all phases of the culture they will be equipped to carry forth with a message that will resonate with biblical truth.  No longer would Christians be the 'Useful Idiots' described by Stalin or the unthinking mass that was sought by Hitler to reshape Germany.  They would become cultural gate-keepers who understand that their service to their professed Lord is to glorify His name by shaping a culture that would be in harmony with the ideals supposedly proffered by a passive and non-effective church.  They would be more inclined to consider their life's work to be one of representing Christ in all that they do.  They would emulate Noah Webster, who thought it was his duty not just to author a dictionary but to use what he authored to teach the Gospel that he believed.  Christian men would consider fatherhood to be a necessity and not a casual luxury.  Pastors would view the more modern example of Dietrich Bonhoeffer as a role model in refusing to support a tyrannical political process for his own comfort but to choose to suffer with those persecuted by such a tyrancy.                
 
God is a patient and loving God who takes pleasure in welcoming back those who have failed to heed His instructions to occupy until He returns.  He repeatedly allowed a straying Israel suffer persecution so that He could welcome back a repentant nation desirous of once again serving Him.  For America the time to turn to God to heal our land by heeding His instructions is now.