The False Separation of Church and State
The
current debate over the so-called "separation
of church and state" has caused much controversy
in America in recent years. It is an argument framed
by the world's political system, erroneously reinforced
by the worldly religious philosophers, and, of course,
undergirded by the invisible spirits of Satan.
It is designed to do one thing: ghettoize Christians,
keeping them away from the real issues of discipling
the nations. The Church can let the world system control
mankind without a fight only if it wants to betray
its Leader and condemn to earthly slavery those He
died to free.
There are two basic religious systems in this world
which have led nations astray. One system holds that
man's destiny will come out of social restructuring
(Humanism, Marxism, etc.). The other holds that, because
God is a spirit or a form of higher consciousness,
He is unconcerned with matter or earthly political
issues.
It is this second false religious concept that has most
severely deceived many God-loving Christians. This
false view alleges that God is unconcerned with the
real world issues of economics and politics. This is
actually an Eastern mystical concept, not a Christian
idea at all. Unfortunately, over the last 150 years,
this Eastern mystical heresy has entered much of evangelical
thought. When the Church falls into false doctrine
that pulls it away from the real world, nations go
into imprisonment.
Many Christians seem to think God only wants souls;
that He has little use for the bodies in which those
souls live. The Deceiver has persuaded the Church to
buy into the old religious heresy of "dualism"
- a gnostic heresy dismissed by the early Church fathers
during the fourth and fifth centuries.
Gnostic dualism teaches that the world and all matter
is useless, if not evil and/or illusory."God wants
spirits," it says, not bodies and the work earthly
bodies can do to bring God's kingdom to the earth.
Politics is seen as "worldly" to a Christian
since it deals with earthly affairs. The only work
of value for the Christian dualist is preparing people's
spirits for heaven. Because of this heresy, Christians
have been tricked away from their duty to God to rule
over the earth. If matter were evil or useless, Jesus
never would have incarnated Himself in a human body.
He would have saved man in the form of a spirit.
Religion Is Not Just a Personal Issue
This false Eastern philosophy of dualism underpins the
erroneous concept of the separation of "church
and state" because it gives force to the argument
that religion is a personal spiritual issue which must
be separated from the real world affairs of government.
If you think as a Christian dualist, you really don't
care how righteous men's social orders become. The
dualist is afraid that the evil world of politics will
corrupt the religious purity of our spirit.
For him, keeping the Church away from the affairs of
state is an obvious religious duty rather than a net
of deception, woven to ensnare Christ's nations. The
dualist is unable to relate to why Christ wants to
assume political power on earth.
Let's examine some of the effects of the Church's dualism
in today's political thought.
"The United States Constitution guarantees the
separation of church and state. Everybody knows that,"
says the Deceiver. "The wise founding fathers
wanted to make sure that they had created a free society
where no one's religious convictions would be pushed
off on anyone else. In order to do this, the Constitution
was written to provide freedom for all religions to
operate privately, and guarantees that no religion
is allowed to influence or control the political world
or the civil government." So argues our "reasonable"
foe.
Those who have imprisoned the nations tell us that religion
must be kept out of public debates, since religion
belongs only in the Church, where its freedom is properly
guaranteed. This dualistic doctrine of "separation
of church and state" is written also into the
Soviet Union's constitution, Mexico's, and most thoroughly
secularized nations.
The more the nations listen to this creed of keeping
religion out of the nation's schools and politics,
the more society falls apart, the more anarchy reigns,
the more murders and rapes and suicides take place.
Do you think the phrase "the separation of church
and state" is found in the United States Constitution?
If you answered "yes," you are 100 percent
wrong! The Constitution never uses the phrase, "separation
of church and state." The Constitution's first
amendment simply says that Congress shall make no law
establishing a national religion and neither shall
it prohibit religion.
You couldn't have found "separation of church and
state" in any state constitution back in 1789
either. All the states were openly Christian (except
for Rhode Island), and most of them had state-financed
churches.
It was Thomas Jefferson who used this phrase in a letter
written to a group of Baptist pastors in Danbury, Connecticut
in 1802. The purpose of the letter was to assure those
Baptist pastors that Jefferson's somewhat unorthodox
view of Christianity would not be pressed on the Church
in the United States during his presidency.
President Jefferson assured them that there is a wall
of separation that supposedly protects the Church from
any undue meddling by the state. The irony is that
the phrase never implied that the state needed to be
protected from the Church: Jefferson was guaranteeing
the Church the benefit of the Wall.
The contemporary anti-Christian religious establishment
has turned the issue completely on its head by redefining
the phrase. This trick is called "historical revisionism."
Historical revisionism twists history and interprets
it for one's own purposes.
Our Founding Fathers
Consider the quotes on the bottom of this page by our
fathers, who wrote, influenced, and/or lived by the
wisdom of the Constitution and ruled our nation. Our
founders knew better than to pay attention to the dualist's
lies about politics and its relationship to religion.
The founders of this nation were wise enough to establish
neither a state church nor make the state non-religious
in its value base. Even the Supreme Court's historical
findings support this view.
The Supreme Court ruled in 1799 that "by our form
of government, the Christian religion is the established
religion." In 1892, the United States Supreme
Court in the case The Church Of The Holy Trinity vs.
United States, examined hundreds of state constitutions,
court cases, and other historical documents and reached
the following conclusion:
"There is a universal language pervading them all,
having one meaning: they affirm and reaffirm that this
is a religious nation. These are not individual sayings,
declarations of private individuals: they are organic
utterances: they speak the language of the entire people
... These and many other matters which might be noticed,
add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass
of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation
(Supreme Court Case: v. The Holy Trinity, Cited: Feb
29, l892).
The Baptists to whom Jefferson was writing feared state
established churches, and feared political pressures
that come with state established churches. They resented
having to pay taxes to support rival churches. Their
fear was rival churches, not rival religions. They
were not living in a Muslim society. They were living
in Christian America. Jefferson promised the church
that the wall would shelter them from any growing incursions
from the state.
However, the wall today does not fulfill Jefferson's
design for it. For example, local cities tax church
property to support the public school system. Since
the public school system established our nation's values,
it has become the state church, maintained with taxpayers'
money and defended by the American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU).
For over 100 years secular humanists have sold Christians
on the lie that the state is to be protected from Christianity.
Now that the state is huge, now that it takes four
to five times God's tithe of ten percent, it has flexed
its muscles and begun to wage public war on the Church.
Rewriting History and Redefining Words
The world system has spent billions of our tax dollars
through public education to convince us of its view
of reality, even rewriting history and redefining words.
It spends billions more reinforcing these views through
books, movies, magazines, and TV shows. It has dedicated
itself to capturing the media, while Christians were
content to live in cultural shadows.
If you have a child in public school, ask to see his
American history book. See how it deals with the religious
history of Christianity in America. Look very hard.
You will find almost nothing, and yet there is absolutely
no doubt that Christianity has been the single most
dominant cultural force in this nation's history until
the early 1900s.
Major religious movements that affected secular history
are never even mentioned! The nations are kept in prison
through the false words and false history which is
their daily diet(Isaiah 5:13). For example, the great
revival of 1835-45 did more to spur the Civil War on
behalf of justice for the blacks than any other social
force. The abolitionists came directly out of this
revival in the Northeastern states. It was Christians
who pressed the issue of slavery to the wall and who
broke with other Christians who refused to reject slavery.
No self-respecting American historian can deny with
intellectual integrity the impact of the revival on
the Civil War. But search in vain for its analysis
in public school books.
We are told that "to speak of religion in a public
text book would be a violation of separation of church
and state." Will the Pilgrims next disappear from
our history books? Will the Deceiver's duped minions,
the ACLU, have the United States' founding fathers
as closet homosexuals who, in fact, hated the Bible
and left Europe to escape religion in any form?
Over the last 100 years, the Church has "cut a
deal" with Western society which was never set
to paper or ever openly discussed. In fact it was not
understood then, nor is it clearly understood today.
The deal was this: Christians would stay out of the
political world of governing and setting laws for society,
and in return the state would permit the Church to
evangelize freely about the future condition of men's
souls.
Much of the Church increasingly backed out of political
involvements because it felt guilty for a job very
poorly done. Until the time of the Reformation in the
1500s, the Church had been integrally involved in the
running of society and was guilty both of frequent
corruption and tyranny. The Church's role in the political
realm was out of balance and it had degenerated into
carnal and wicked power plays. Even the unbelievers
were disgusted. Instead of producing kingdom citizens
who would bring God's honor and balance to the world's
institutional order, it had produced many church leaders
who wanted the Church to wield the sword and control
all thought.
Martin Luther's ideas became more widely understood
and the Church gradually withdrew from the political
realm. It became carnal for Christians to be involved
in the political process. "Politics is a dirty
business," became the affirmation of the Church.
We are told to stick to the business of saving souls.
The worldly politicians and the devil loved that "deal."
It left them a clear field from which to take God's
earth unopposed by God's first line of defense, the
Church.
Gradually, dualist thinking became the unwritten rule
of Western culture: the unbelievers run the world,
and the Christians order the private consciences and
afterlife of their followers.
But Jesus never retreated from real life, and He challenges
us not to. You cannot "Go into all the world"
in order to bring it under Christ's obedience if you
are lost in your narrow concern with your own soul.
Never Again
We must adopt the rallying cry of the Jews: "Never
again!" For the Jews, that cry means that they
will never again permit a slaughter such as happened
in Nazi Germany. "Never again" carries with
it the affirmation that life cannot and will not be
taken without a fight. We too, must affirm that we
can no longer stay off the battlefield for God's earth
and his nations. Never again will we play religious
pattycake outside the political arena while the unbelievers
take care of the important job of running God's earth.
Never again will we allow the nations of the earth
to go down into the depths of human degradation and
slaughter without a battle to the end.
The hypocrisy of the world system is maddening. They
not only condemn conservative Christians to the private
ghettos between their ears, they are also incredibly
two-faced. Humanistic politicians do not think it is
wrong when left-wing pastors march in support of various
anti-American causes. That is considered"Christian
duty." But let more evangelical elements of the
Church speak, and those same liberal forces cry bloody
murder.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson can run for President and not
a word is spoken about its propriety, but when Jerry
Falwell or Pat Robertson hazards an opinion on anything
that the liberals do not like, you would think they
had desecrated the flag! Whatever our problems, we
have every bit as much right in the political arena
as the Berrigan brothers, Bishop Tutu, or Jesse Jackson.
In redefining the "separation of church and state,"
liberals have temporarily gained some ground, but in
the long run they have only created a much more militant
kind of conservative Christian activist.
Welcome to "the Deal." It's such a deal -
the world system gets the mine and the church gets
the shaft! The "wall of separation" is designed
to disembowel the church by cutting off its ability
to shape or challenge the money, legal and power structures
that run things.
The Lie: Christian Activism Will Destroy Peace and Enshrine
Bigotry
In an increasingly godless society, tolerance becomes
the supreme virtue and defined religious conviction
becomes the supreme sin. The criminal becomes anyone
whose standards are tied to God's standards. The "good
citizen" becomes anyone who accepts the morality
of the lowest common denominator. Excellence dies under
the world system's all-tolerating hand.
Our opponents claim that active Christianity in the
public sector will lead to enormous social upheaval
and unrest. It wasn't the Church that started World
Wars I and II, the Korean and Vietnam wars. It was
the "enlightened" non-religious nations.
Attacks on the Church's responsibility for civil death
and the disruption of society tend to be incredibly
one-sided and unbalanced.
The non-religious have caused multiplied millions more
deaths and destruction than did misguided Christians
- even during the Inquisition! The Church's dirty laundry
is hardly worth an historical footnote in contrast
to the more than 150 million plus deaths that the "reasonable
and non-religious society" has brought upon us
all in the 20th century. The Christians have killed
their thousands, but it takes a secular humanist to
kill millions.
But the world system guardians protest: they say "religion
in politics will divide the country and lead to disruption
of the democratic process." Do they have in mind
divisions in society like the ones have already given
us - divisions such as labor and management, war and
peace, blacks and whites, the old and the young, males
and females, and a dozen other hard-core disruptions
brought upon the world by those who reject Christianity
altogether? Humanists lie about history so much it
defies the imagination. Humanistic"concern"
for "religion disrupting the culture" is
about as wicked as its own unspeakable record of human
suffering.
Secular humanism wants raw power, and Christians pose
a threat to its ugly intentions. Secular humanism dehumanizes
people into objects, whether as the victims of abortion,
pornographic exploitation, or starvation of those who
are "enemies of the non-religious state"
(such as in Russia, Southeast Asia, and Ethiopia).
What humanism hates most about the Church waking up
is that it will unmask their anti-human exploitation
and take their foot off people's throats.
I've been behind the Iron Curtain and seen firsthand
what a totally non-religious society looks like in
its quest for the separation of church and state. One
single world describes the sad eyes of its citizens
and their colorless clothes and buildings. That world
is DESPAIR. And now American humanists want to bring
the "blessings" of a totally secular society
to America.
Whether the sales pitch for secularism comes from the
decadent West, with its sweet insistence that the individual
is the center of the universe and that all problems
will be solved with more money and time spent on self-actualizing
and navel-gazing, or from the Soviets with their "kill
the individualist so that all individuals can be truly
free," the logic of humanism is fatally flawed.
The liberators offer a third choice: the kingdom of
God.
Christianity is humanism's great enemy, and the fact
that humanists can recognize this reality is the only
evidence I have that they can think at all! In their
insane desire to separate the spiritual from the real
world, they would condemn us all to a society of amoral
barbarism. Their "wall of separation" between
church and state is, in reality, not a wall but a coffin.
But the liberators are going to dismantle this wall.
Our love for people compels us to do so.
Copyright 1987, Dennis T. Peacocke. Reprinted by permission
from Winning The Battle For The Minds Of Men. For ordering
information please write: ALIVE & FREE, 131 Stony
Circle, Suite 750, Santa Rosa, CA 95401.
R e l a t e d Q u o t e s:
George Washington: "It is impossible to rightly
govern the world without God and the Bible."
John Adams: "Our constitution was made only for
a moral and religious people ... so great is my veneration
of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to
read, the more confident will be my hope that they
will prove useful citizens in their country and respectful
members of society."
Thomas Jefferson: "The Bible is the cornerstone
of liberty ... students' perusal of the sacred volume
will make us better citizens, better fathers, and better
husbands."
Andrew Jackson: "That Book (the Bible) is the rock
on which our Republic rests."
Benjamin Franklin: "A nation of well-informed men
who have been taught to know the price of the rights
which God has given them cannot be enslaved."
William Penn: "If we will not be governed by God,
then we will be ruled by tyrants."
Ulysses S. Grant: "Hold fast to the Bible as the
sheet anchor of your liberties; write its precepts
in your hearts and practice them in your lives. To
the influence of this Book we are indebted for all
the progress made in true civilization and to this
we must look as our guide in the future. 'Righteousness
exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.'"

|