On May 2, the town of Danville, Illinois became what some have called a “sanctuary city for the unborn.” After Planned Parenthood staff announced plans to open an abortion clinic in the town, the city council reacted by narrowly passing an ordinance (8-7), citing a section of federal law that forbids the mailing of abortion paraphernalia.

Danville’s recent ordinance does not quite make it a “sanctuary city”—at least not in the same sense that Seattle is a “sanctuary” for illegal immigrants on the run from federal immigration officials. Danville’s ordinance is actually a reverse “sanctuary” provision that enforces federal authority in the township, in the face of state law. And herein lies the convoluted back-and-forth of legal argumentation, as both the pro-life and the pro-choice movements have exposited the law to support their side.

The pro-life ordinance makes a clear-cut appeal to the U.S. Constitution, citing Article VI which makes all federal laws the “supreme Law of the Land.” The ordinance further references a section of federal law, U.S.C. §§ 1461–62, which prohibits using the mail system to deliver abortion paraphernalia. Thus, the ordinance explains, since 1) the Danville City Council is “bound by oath to support and defend the Constitution,” 2) the Constitution makes federal law the supreme law of the land, and 3) federal law prohibits mailing abortifacients, therefore Danville is upholding the Constitution in passing this restriction.

The pro-abortion-rights side is not backing down easily, however. According to Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, Danville’s new rule violates Illinois state law. The state’s Reproductive Health Act prohibits local governments from restricting abortion rights tighter than the state law does, so he claims that Danville simply lacks the legal authority to pass such a regulation.

This article is not intended to endorse or refute either legal argument. Either way it turns out in court, the pro-life movement can still learn a valuable lesson from the Danville controversy.

Roe didn’t get rid of abortion—it made the national discussion that much more tangled.

Pro-lifers cheered as Dobbs struck down the blanket national ruling which said “the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.” Immediately, state governors and legislators went to work to pass pro-life or pro-abortion laws, depending on the state.

I’m sure some of us, cheering for Dobbs, were tempted to view ourselves as the reasonable states-rights defenders, in opposition to those big, bad authoritarian federal mandates and rulings. But being “pro-states-rights” really only truly works for the pro-life cause when the state you live in is already pro-life. In states like Illinois, being “pro-states-rights” actually seems to be more like being “pro-choice,” at least in the Danville case.

So states’ rights is not our savior, if it ever was. Don’t get me wrong—it’s a worthy principle, enshrined in our nation’s founding, and one that works well for our side in many places, especially right when the Dobbs ruling came down and various states started banning abortion right and left. But those states only did so because they were already pro-life. The cultural and political groundwork was already in place. In states where these prerequisites are not already in place, “states rights” is just a further justification to keep and expand the abortion restrictions they believe in.

Dobbs was not the end of the pro-life fight. It just moved the battle to a different battlefield, one that is currently focused more on individual skirmishes in particular states than mass movements of troops on the national stage. The dispute over Danville’s ordinance shows us much more clearly how important the local cultural battle is. Overturning U.S. Supreme Court precedent is a major step, but it was only the first step.

Influencing culture and educating the populace who will in turn vote for next year’s lawmakers is the way to ensure the breakthrough we won with Dobbs will actually bring pro-life wins to our states’ laws.

When it comes to the abortion debate, our local neighborhoods are now the new Supreme Court chamber.

Things are truly upside-down. Christians, who have been scorned forever as weak and milk-toast, are suddenly public enemy number one. And while Christianity has been the source of thousands of American charities and the inspiration for hospitals, medical care, and education worldwide, it is now labeled by the Left as hateful and bigoted. Then we see destructive anarchist groups like Antifa and BLM glorified in the Media and academia as forces for good! How could this be?

The Left has had an advantage over conservatives in shaping the public’s perception of things for many years because they have controlled the narrative. They have presented themselves as caring and compassionate, sympathetic to the poor and the disadvantaged. And, because of the Christian ideal of giving people the benefit of the doubt, we have accepted that maybe they were truly concerned for those who are less advantaged.

However, because Leftists now have so much power, they no longer feel the need to hide their true objective. They seek political dominance and the elimination of Christianity in all public forums and will do whatever is necessary to accomplish those goals. They have portrayed themselves as selfless champions of the downtrodden, and conservatives as greedy. However, we must no longer tolerate that narrative. It is a lie, and their duplicity is clear to all whose eyes are open.

Leftists have done well at creating the perception that they are not in politics for money, thus masking their greed. But make no mistake! They are as greedy as one can be. However, if you have enough power, you do not need personal wealth because you control other peoples’ money.

With the power to tax, politicians can live as if they are wealthy by legally confiscating and spending other people’s money. Creating wealth is difficult and requires certain skills and discipline. But if you are not talented in this area and are lazy and unethical, politics provides you with a vehicle to achieve your dreams without the hard work and risk that capital creation requires.

What we have seen over the last 60 years is the Left demonizing those who create wealth in order to justify confiscating it.

At the same time, the leftists, who disdain wealth creators, have convinced the public that they (the Leftists) are better and more selfless stewards of that wealth. Thus, we have people who are incapable of creating wealth, taking it from those who do and spending it according to their own desires and accruing to themselves more power in the process. It is interesting how many politicians have become multimillionaires even as they denounce those who created the wealth in the first place.

We are now governed by people who have no idea how to create or wisely manage wealth, and whose real motivation is that of controlling the rest of us. They are the embodiment of greed. They are concerned primarily for themselves and serve others only as a means of accruing power and wealth to themselves.

While one would expect that they would alienate most everyone because of their greed, they have managed to gain a substantial following among three groups who sustain them in power: those who are content to take a handout and produce nothing, those who are genuinely needy and have become dependent upon the politicians, and a third group who are equally cynical and see an opportunity to accrue some personal power and prestige by supporting the Leftists and their sordid process.

Sadly, the Media, whose primary responsibility is to hold public figures accountable, cover for their corruption. There is no way to describe it other than that of non-producers stealing and controlling what the producers have created. They are truly parasitic.

This brings us to the very important question: what does the Bible say about all this?  As “pilgrims” here are we to be compliant and silent? Compassion and generosity are certainly Christian values! But as an aside, let us put to rest the nostrum that Leftism is compassionate. It decidedly is not! After decades of the federal government spending literally trillions of dollars on numerous supposedly compassionate programs, the poor remain poor and the powerless remain powerless.

If these programs are as bad as they appear, we should turn our attention to their impact on society in general and on those who contribute. Is it moral to confiscate resources from those who create and earn it only to squander it on ineffective programs? I believe the evidence suggests that the exorbitant taxation upon the middle and upper classes in America over the last 50 years has been both immoral and counterproductive.

So, what does the Bible teach about such things? One need not be a Bible scholar to know that stealing is wrong. Therefore, without having good reason the government should not take from one citizen to give to another. Having the government’s imprimatur does not change the reality that transferring wealth from earners to non-earners without Constitutional authority is theft.  The right to personal property guaranteed in the Constitution is not simply to provide for an individual’s greed, but rather to protect his life.

Unprotected property rights place every citizen’s life at risk. If the government can take, at will, one’s wealth, it can starve that person to death. And the fact that even after trillions of dollars have been transferred, primarily from earners to non-earners, there are still many millions in poverty underscores the need to rethink our “compassionate” welfare system. As constructed, it is a colossal failure.

Foundational to the issue is the fact that government is incapable of ministering compassion. It must fall to other social institutions and organizations, such as churches, to resolve the poverty problem.

The Bible notes that “wisdom is justified of her children,” (Luke 7:35), meaning that the wisdom of an act is revealed by its consequences; and Jesus stated that “a tree is known by its fruit,” (Luke 6:44). Therefore, if a particular activity repeatedly produces bad results one can assume the act is foolish and ought to be discontinued. One’s intentions mean nothing in this.

While the Left burnishes their “compassion badges,” boasting of how much they care, virtually everything they have done for over fifty years has produced nothing but heartache, misery, poverty and increased public unrest. It cannot be ignored that as Christianity has been pushed to the fringes of society there have been tragic increases in crime, depression, suicide, divorce, sexual perversion, and confusion.

Setting aside for the moment those who cannot provide for themselves, the Bible is very clear that anyone who refuses to work should not eat. Witness the sorry tales of so many lottery winners to understand that we do not do well with unearned wealth! Therefore, government should do nothing to facilitate a comfortable life for those unwilling to work. Sources, secular and sacred, confirm that generally, those who are diligent, disciplined, and work hard do not go hungry.

Scriptures tell us that God gives rain to those who love Him and those who don’t. He is gracious! This does not mean that His provision will always be abundant. We should all be grateful to him for his care and provision for us whether it be modest or abundant. It may be that one of our biggest errors, culturally, is that we have raised a generation of Americans who believe they are owed a rich and comfortable existence even though they have done little or nothing productive. To give it to them would be immoral and destructive!

Colonial Jamestown, VA scholar, Martha McCartney, wrote in Encyclopedia Virginia, (Dec 7, 2020) that Captain John Smith, early President of the colony, would have nothing of slothfulness, declaring that

“the labours of thirtie or fortie honest and industrious men shall not be consumed to maintaine a hundred and fiftie idle loyterers.”

Whatever his motives, it is quite clear that his stubbornness preserved lives. Very few died under his leadership while a large number perished under the leadership of his successor who was not so strict. As McCartney noted,

“Regardless of whether Smith recognized this fact, he found that even small amounts of work improved both the material life and health of the colonists.”

These realities are so obvious that no politician can honestly deny them. To create a public welfare system where productivity and hard work are discouraged by the government’s confiscation of wealth from producers to distribute it to those who are unwilling to work is simply immoral and will, if not corrected, contribute to the collapse of the entire economy. It is impossible for our politicians not to understand this, therefore, we need no longer accept the notion that they are well-intentioned but misguided.

No, they are simply greedy, either for money or power, or both. They are snakes in the grass who ought to be exposed for what they are. Their programs have produced virtually nothing of value and instead an abundance of suffering.

In seeking a biblical perspective, the faithful Christian should consider two primary principles: First is his responsibility to the poor. Numerous biblical texts in both Old and New Testaments give God’s answer. On one hand, Christ Himself noted that, “the poor you have with you always.” This is merely a sad acknowledgement of reality. People are poor for a variety of reasons, many of which are intractable.

This must not be construed as cause for doing nothing. Many Christians and others have seen the impossibility of eliminating poverty as cause for discouragement and apathy.

However, Christ’s parable of the Good Samaritan teaches us that while we may not be able to do much about poverty across the globe, we can do something about people in need who cross our paths regularly. Therefore, the Christian ought to be known for wise generosity: encouraging work for those able, and compassionate giving to those who cannot provide for themselves.

Which leads to the second principle: Just as it is wrong to ignore genuine need, it is wrong to indulge the indolent. The Scriptures teach that if a man refuses to work, he should not be given food. It is for his own betterment that others refuse to support him in his slothful choices. He will gain more than a meal when he learns the value of hard work.

America is at a fork in the road. Will we return to the imperfections, yet relative goodness of a society guided by the principles and truths of Christianity and the Bible, or adopt Marxism and fall back into the despotism and misery that has otherwise characterized human history from its beginnings?

The choice seems pretty clear to me!

For the last century, the United States of America has engaged in a great secular experiment: what if we pretended that God was irrelevant? What if we pretended that we could make laws that ignored God? Could the ‘public square’ be a place of free, rational discourse—free from claims about the implications of Christian theism on public life? This pretended neutrality has served to reveal one thing: that the line between secularism and paganism is dangerously thin. I’ll revisit that point later, but let’s first take a brief diversion into the hazy world of Cannabis and Constitutionalism.

The International Church of Cannabis (yes, you read that right) is in the midst of a battle with the city of Denver, Colorado, over what the ‘church’ claims to be its First Amendment rights to religious freedom. The battle began after the ‘church’ was ordered to remove an eleven-foot, bright pink statue that it erected on their property, a street corner in a residential area.

Striking, isn’t it? A religious group dedicated to smoking weed is appealing to the U.S. Constitution on the grounds of the First Amendment, an amendment designed to protect the Christian conscience. Now, without getting into debates about originalism versus living Constitutionalism, what does this tells us about the state of our nation? More than anything else, it indicates that the Constitution is no longer fit for the American people. Or perhaps it is more appropriate to put it the other way: the American people are no longer fit for the Constitution.

The Constitution has very little to say about God—it only mentions God indirectly, noting that the document was drafted ‘in the year of our Lord, 1787.’ While some might want to read this as a latent atheism in the Founders (or at least an etiolated deism), there is another way to explain the apparent lack of God. As John Adams famously said, “the Constitution was made only for a religious and moral people, and is wholly inadequate for any other.” That is to say, the Constitution presupposes widespread belief in God and the accompanying Christian social behaviors that stabilize a society.

Nevertheless, the lack of explicitly Christian language in the Constitution has been exploited as a ‘get out of morality free’ card by progressives for the last 150 years. And that’s just how we find the International Church of Cannabis appealing to their ‘Constitutionally-protected’ religious freedoms. Because our nation—Christians included—has gone along with the belief that the Constitution, and consequently all law, can exist and preserve social order without a Christian foundation, we now find ourselves confronted with open paganism.

Why is this the case? Why does a silent secularism end up manifesting itself as open paganism? Because nature abhors a vacuum. If there is a moral vacuum, something has to fill it. Man is homo adorans, he was created to worship something, so when God is stripped of his public relevance, the public will find other things to worship, like cannabis, or himself, or whatever that thing on the courthouse in New York is.

Secularism is never truly secular. There is always a god of the system. In a liberal democracy such as our own, the god is demos, the people. Just listen to any political pundit invoking Omniscient Polls and Almighty Consensus—such things are imbued with godlike characteristics, and everyone must fall down and worship before demos.

Christians must reclaim the public square, not ceding an inch to secularism. We must not buy into the notion that laws can be value-neutral. Law, morality, and social order have no rational basis other than the Triune God of Scripture.

First, they came for the George Washington mural in a school in San Francisco—because our first president had been a slaveowner. Later they came for his name on the same school, and as of last count, the name survived.

Then, they came for the statues of the father of our country during the summer of statue-toppling.

Now, the left wants to strip his name from his eponymous university.

Commentator Nick Nolte (not the actor) notes that The Washington Post, named after you-know-who, has published the opinion of a student at George Washington University, which is in the city of you-know-who, District of Columbia.

Nolte sums up the student’s article thusly: “This university is racist, and George Washington was racist, and while I didn’t find this offensive enough to pass up attending school here, harrumph, harrumph, harrumph, half-truth, half-truth, half-truth, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous, I’m so virtuous…”

That student even wants Winston Churchill’s name removed from the library.

This is just another indication of how the left is at war with Western Civilization. If we continue down this path, there would be virtually nothing left of the great traditions of freedom and flourishing that the West has enjoyed, primarily because of our Judeo-Christian tradition.

Was George Washington a hero or a villain? Well, consider this. William Wilberforce was often called “The George Washington of Humanity.”

Alas, many don’t know who Wilberforce was. But he was a committed Christian statesman who served as a long-time Member of Parliament. With a team of colleagues and friends, he bitterly fought against slavery in the British Empire—and succeeded.

It took him more than half a century to accomplish this. And he did it in two stages. First, he fought against the slave trade itself. This stopped British ships from going to Africa, paying for slaves from Muslim slave-traders, who got them from other conquering African tribes.

Step one stopped the bleeding. Although they get virtually no credit for it, the founding fathers of America beat Britain in passing a law to stop the importation of slaves. As part of the original Constitution, they stipulated that in 20 years (1808) from the document being ratified (1788), there would be no more importation of slaves into the United States.

Step two in Wilberforce’s Christian crusade was to get all the slaves in the British Empire to be freed. He retired from Parliament in 1825, but others kept his crusade going through completion. Wilberforce received the news of the complete abolition of slavery in the British Empire on his deathbed in 1833.

Historian, retired professor, and bestselling author Dr. Paul L. Maier noted in our D. James Kennedy Ministries television special, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? that Wilberforce’s successful crusade helped ultimately lead to the end of slavery in America.

Maier says, “And then we also in our country on the basis of Christian principles, Abraham Lincoln and others, were able to do the same thing.”

William Wilberforce was one of history’s greatest heroes. And, again, this humanitarian leader was called “the George Washington of Humanity.”

What does that say about George Washington? That speaks volumes of our first president. He helped give birth to a nation that stands for freedom, under God. The Constitution he helped create had within it the seeds to one day overthrow the evil of slavery. And it happened.

At the cost of the lives of 700,000 men, but it happened.

Keep in mind a few facts about the father of our country. Washington voluntarily served his country when called on, relying on God to help him throughout.

Dr. Peter Lillback and I wrote a book many years ago about the faith of our first president, George Washington’s Sacred Fire.

 Lillback, the founding president of Providence Forum (for which I now serve as executive director), notes that Washington was a fourth-generation Virginia gentleman farmer. Slavery was built into that system. Washington inherited slaves by birth and later by marriage. When he died, Washington freed his slaves and made provision for them. He broke the cycle.

Both Washington and Wilberforce saw Jesus Christ as the ultimate hero. George Washington said in a famous letter that what America needs most is to imitate Jesus, “the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.” If we don’t, he warned, we can never hope to be a “happy nation.”

The Marxist iconoclasts of today, such as the triggered student at George Washington University, or the editors at The Washington Post, who promulgated such ideas to a wider audience, have no appreciation for the sacrificial contributions of those who went before us, that we might be free.

First, they came to remove Washington murals, then topple his statues. Now they want to rename the university named in his honor. What’s next? A call to rename the capital city?

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

By God’s grace, the American experiment has lasted for 232 years now, since the Constitution went into effect on April 30, 1789. Every political leader that is sworn in agrees to uphold the Constitution.

But now in our day of rampant political correctness, of Marxist revisionism, of “egg shell plaintiffs,” of “safe spaces,” of “hate speech” (which is often just the other guy’s opinion), even the Constitution has recently been labeled as “harmful.” It might offend someone.

Case in point. Recently, Ophelie Jacobson of Campus Reform approached students at the University of Florida to ask them what they think about the Constitution. Their responses, as seen in this video, were mostly negative.

Here were some of their comments on the U.S. Constitution:

• “Absolutely terrible. Needs to be redone immediately.”
• “I think it needs a lot more reform for the changes that happened since then.”
• “I think we just need to update it on like—more equality, equity, stuff like that.”
• It’s the product of “all old white men.”
• “It should have been made by a group of diverse people.”
• “The time period, you know, was rich, old white men; and that’s exactly what that document says and stands for and vouches for.”

No wonder so many of them were willing to sign a petition to abolish the Constitution!

Furthermore, even the keepers of the Constitution in Washington, D.C. have contributed to this negative view. On 9/24/21, The Federalist reported: “Over the summer, the National Archives issued ‘harmful content’ warnings on all its collections of online documents, including Founding-era documents like the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Declaration of Independence.”

Why would they do this? The Federalist explains that the warnings “allegedly protect against documents that ‘reflect racist, sexist, ableist, misogynistic/misogynoir, and xenophobic opinions and attitudes; be discriminatory towards or exclude diverse views on sexuality, gender, religion, and more.’”

U.S. Representative Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and U.S. Senator James Lankford (R-Oklahoma) want the National Archives to remove these “harmful negative alerts” from our founding documents.

This is getting ridiculous. If these views prevail, the Marxist attempt in America to “tear it all down” and start over might well succeed. May it never be.

The Constitution has brought unparalleled political freedom and prosperity. Marxism has brought unparalleled misery and death. People don’t clamor to get into the Marxist countries like China or Cuba or Venezuela. But they do risk their lives to get into the United States. That’s not despite the Constitution and what it represents. It’s because of it.

But many forces today, because they love power (and often the perks that come with that power) are willing to undermine the Constitution, so they may gather unto themselves more control. This does not bode well for the future of our republic.

Thomas Sowell warns, “It doesn’t matter what rights you have under the Constitution, if the government can punish you for exercising those rights. And it doesn’t matter what limits the Constitution puts on government officials’ power, if they can exceed those limits without any adverse consequences.”

This point is reminiscent of a warning from the father of our country.

As Dr. Peter Lillback and I noted in our 2006 book, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, “Washington asserted that human depravity could ultimately destroy the Constitution, even with the checks and balances it possessed. In his proposed Address to Congress in April 1789, he described how the Constitution, with all of its wisdom, could ultimately come to naught by the depravity of the people and those who govern them, since the Constitution in the hands of a corrupt people was a mere ‘wall of words’ or a ‘mound of parchment.’”  (p. 220).

One of the geniuses of the Constitution is the way its principles were built by men who acknowledged the sinful nature of man. I believe that because it was based on a correct anthropology—one that recognizes our innate selfishness—that the Constitution has been so durable.

James Madison, a key driving force behind the Constitution, learned well from his teacher, Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, the devout Presbyterian who was the president of Princeton, who taught Madison what the Bible says about man’s corrupt nature.

Madison said, “All men having power ought to be distrusted.” Therefore, the founders separated power, explicitly, so that we would have liberty rather than tyranny.

I agree with William Gladstone, the distinguished 19th century Prime Minister of England, who declared, “The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man.”

Why this constant attempt to tear down those things which are right in our world? The Constitution of the United States is one of them. We have our work cut out for us to convince many fellow Americans of that truth.

This article was originally posted at JerryNewcombe.com.

David Shestokas explains why our founding documents should pull America together, not separate us further.