By Bradlee Dean
WHY I SAID “NO” TO NEWSWEEK
Upon the request from Newsweek reporter Michelle Goldberg for an interview, I had one of our staff do research on Michelle’s writings. After seeing her ignorance of who we are as a people and after I saw what she was going for, I knew that this was not an interview. This was a story already written before she asked me a single question. I also knew that I was not dealing with a reporter, but rather one who was pushing her ideology. Many of her articles are spent attacking Christians for their stance against abortion (the preservation of life, read Article 5 of your Bill of Rights), homosexuality (which were “Crimes Against Nature” in all 50 states until 1961), and the fact that they preach about the true Biblical foundation of this country. I already knew where she was coming from, so what was the sense in meeting with her?
Read a portion her biography below.
…Goldberg traveled through the heartland of a country in the grips of a fevered religious radicalism: the America of our time. From the classroom to the mega-church to the federal court, she saw how the growing influence of dominionism—the doctrine that Christians have the right to rule nonbelievers—is threatening the foundations of democracy.
Maybe Michelle should learn the Pledge of Allegiance to understand that we are not a democracy, but rather a “REPUBLIC… One nation under God.” The God part is what she and others like her have a problem with. They don’t want to be ruled by anyone. Yet maybe she should take a good look at the Supreme Court building where that guy Moses and the Ten Commandments are engraved. And underneath him holding the Book of the Law it states, “JUSTICE THE GUARDIAN OF LIBERTY.” She apparently forgot to read her un-revised history books where our forefathers warned, “Those who will not be governed by God will be ruled by Tyrants” (William Penn, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson). p;nbsp;
However, people who hold Michelle’s i deals want freedom, folks, from restraint. Freedom to these is to do what you want to do rather than do what you ought to do. They want freedom from honoring the sacrifice of our veterans who have redeemed us through their blood to ratify the Constitution of these United States. Their hopes are that people accept their opinion above God’s commands.
It has been rightly stated that if you do not listen to God’s Ten Commandments, you will listen to man’s ten thousand. So they would have it…and then we wonder why America is digressing. As the Lord promised in Psalm 9:17, “The wicked shall be turned into hell, [and] all the nations that forget God.”
Maybe she should, if I am not being too religiously radical, go to Philadelphia where the Liberty bell is and read what it states. Leviticus 25:10; “And proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof.” Or might I suggest that she digs into her purse and finds “In God We Trust” printed on her money? I can go on and on, folks.
LET ME EXPLAIN…
There are those who suggest that if you are a Christian, you have no right to influence public policy or even express your views in the public arena. The “Politically Correct” movement, which favors abortion on demand, special privileges for homosexuals, and removing all references to the God of the Bible from public life, has greatly stifled any discourse that disagrees with the “correct” way of thinking. They have gained great ground and have intimidated professed Christians from influencing their communities, states, and national policies by telling them that because of their faith, they have no right to speak. Ironically, they base these opinions on documents that, in fact, say just the opposite.
THE FIRST AMENDMENT
The religion clause of the First Amendment states: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Not only is there no reference to the phrase “separation of church and state,” there is also no reference to what the Church shall not do. The Amendment refers only to restrictions on Congress. It doesn’t tell Johnny he can’t pray in school or that a nativity scene can’t be displayed in a public park; it restrains the power of the federal government from infringing on the religious freedoms of the people!
George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention and said:
If I could have entertained the slightest apprehension that the Constitution framed in the Convention, where I had the honor to preside, might possibly endanger the religious rights of any ecclesiastical society, certainly I would never have placed my signature to it.
— Reply to Virginia United Baptist Churches, May 10, 1789
James Madison, who was the chief architect of the Constitution, said: “There is not a shadow of right in the general government to intermeddle with religion” (June 12, 1788 to the Virginia Convention).
THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
yle="white-space: pre;"> This phrase does not appear in our Constitution or any of our country’s official documents. It does, however, appear in another prominent document, the Constitution of the former Soviet Union: “The church in the U.S.S.R. is separated from the state and the school from the church” (Article 52).
The phrase was also penned in a private letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, who had written to President Jefferson because they were concerned about the government getting involved in matters of religion. Jefferson wrote:
I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.
It is clear that Jefferson’s “wall of separation” referred to a one-directional wall to protect the Church from the state. He is the same one who said, “…no power over the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, or freedom of the press being delegated to the United States by the Constitution…” in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798.
THE ACTS OF THE FOUNDING FATHERS
One of the first acts of the first Congress of the United States was to establish chaplains for the U.S. House and the Senate. It was clear there was no “impregnable wall” as proclaimed by the ACLU in attempts to reverse these measures. It stands to reason that the founding fathers knew a little better what they meant when they ratified the Constitution than those in the twentieth century who seek to undo it. They did not mean for Christians to stay out of influencing public policy...if it had been so, the vast majority of our founding fathers would have had to step down from office! To remove Christians from politics is to allow only the ungodly to rule.
Please check out this short video on SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE.
