Parents will be held responsible by God for their children’s education, says the Bible. This was a view shared by the majority of America’s founders. But today there is a great defiance against this on the part of many in our educational establishment. Many leaders in the educational system seem to think they know better than the parents as to what should and should not be taught.

FoxNews.com reports (3/4/23): “A Colorado elementary school’s private emails show secret plans to defy parents’ wishes on transitioning their child’s gender.”

Recently, a Fairfax (Virginia) County parent, Neeley McCallister noted:

“As parents, it is our primary duty to protect our children and preserve their innocence…Unfortunately, there is a toxic movement infiltrating our schools that is more interested in pushing a political agenda rather than teaching…our children the subjects we were taught in school: math, reading, science, history.”

McCallister made these remarks during hearings to promote a bill in the new U.S. House of Representatives, under the leadership of Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA). The new bill seeks to assert parental rights when it comes to what is taught in the schools.

This is right and good. Centuries ago America made great strides in becoming a “city on a hill” in part because of the great education so many citizens received. Initially it was based on the Bible and resulted in astounding levels of literacy.

As James Madison, a key architect of the U.S. Constitution, observed,

“A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

The first Congress under the U.S. Constitution that gave us the First Amendment also passed a law that ensured that each state to be added to the new nation should be committed to education. If the American experiment were to work, it could only do so if the people could read and write for themselves. So on August 4, 1789, Congress passed the Northwest Ordinance. This important document said in Article III:

“Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”

This was in a day when “Religion” meant Christianity of one stripe or another.

Even Thomas Jefferson, who departed from Christian orthodoxy later in life, allowed the Bible and Isaac Watts’ hymnals to be used to teach reading at two schools for which he served as president of the board of trustees. Isaac Watts was a great writer of classic Christian songs, including “Joy to the World,” “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” and “Jesus Shall Reign.”

However, in the last few decades, there has arisen an anti-God tenor in the schools. Last week, Foxnews.com reported on a story out of the Phoenix area, where a school board rejected hiring teachers from a Christian college because these teachers were deemed “not safe”: “An Arizona school board member wearing cat ears during a meeting said she would oppose having a contract with a Christian university over the religious and Biblical beliefs they espouse.”

Another board member concurred with her, as he decried the university for “teaching with a Biblical lens.” The board agreed with the anti-Christian ban.

The school board says in effect, “Teachers needed. Biblical Christians need not apply.” This sort of discrimination is clearly unconstitutional. But is it what parents want?

We all have a lens, a worldview. It was a Biblical worldview, a “Biblical lens,” that made us the most free and prosperous nation. But if the Left had their way, only those with godless values should be teaching our children—with little or no significant input from the parents.

Americanwirenews.com noted a similar example of anti-Christian bias at work in the schools. A public school teacher in Washington state said we need to keep the schoolchildren safe from their “Christo-fascist parents.”

Some parents teach their children to follow the Bible—the way Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan learned their values. “Horrors,” say many in the education establishment today, trying to separate parents from their children’s education.

Thankfully, the new Congress is fighting back, as noted. Former Speaker of the U.S. House Newt Gingrich writes,

“Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republicans have given the American people an opportunity to dramatically strengthen the role of parents in the education of their children.”

The preamble to The Parents Bill of Rights Act declares:

“Parents have a God-given right to make decisions for their children. Unfortunately, many school districts have been ignoring the wishes of parents while special interest groups try to criminalize free speech.”

The preamble adds,

“This list of rights will make clear to parents what their rights are and clear to schools what their duties to parents are.”

Perhaps U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik (R-NY) says it all:

“Parents are the primary stakeholders in their child’s education, and they have a right to know what is going on inside their child’s classroom.”

Hear, hear.

When Vice President Kamala Harris gave a speech on the 50^th anniversary of “Roe v. Wade” about a week ago, she infamously left out the Creator—when talking about our rights. One wag told me, “Hey, at least Kamala didn’t say, we ‘are created by … you know, the thing,’” as did her boss on the campaign trail.

She also left out the “right to life.” But does this oversight matter? I addressed her “right to life” omission in a previous piece, but what about leaving out the Creator? Who cares?

We all should. The essence of America is self-rule under God. Leave out either part, and we end up with tyranny. Without God as the secure source of our rights, from whence come those rights?

Thomas Jefferson said, and you can see this quote in the Jefferson Memorial: “And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?”

Why does God matter? The late Clay Christensen was a Harvard Business professor who hosted a 90-second video segment that brilliantly shows why He matters.

Christensen says that ultimately we must choose between internal versus external restraint. In explaining to a visiting student from China how religion benefits American society by bolstering morality, Christensen makes the point that we can’t hire enough police to make people good. But democracy has greatly benefited through the internal restraints that religion provides.

William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, would concur. He once noted, “If we will not be governed by God, we must be governed by tyrants.”

Within a few years of America’s revolt against British rule, the French had their revolution. Some like to compare the American with the French Revolution. They were totally different because of the God factor. The American Revolution was pro-God. The French Revolution was anti-God. That is the difference in a nutshell.

For the documentaries in my Foundation of American Liberty series for Providence Forum, I had the privilege to interview Dennis Prager, the founder of PragerU. At one point in the interview, he contrasted these two turbulent events.

He told me, “The American Revolution and French Revolution is the battle in the United States.  Which revolution will prevail? … They loathe the idea of God in the French Revolution; the secular republic was the ideal. In America, they believed in secular government, but in a God-based society, because rights come from God in America. And you can only have liberty if you have God.”

Prager pointed out that this was not a “faith statement” so much as a “logical” one: “People will either feel accountable for their behavior to God or the state. Those are your two choices. It is an absurdity to believe they’ll be good if they’re accountable only to themselves. If you’re only accountable to yourself, you will always justify what you do.”

And so he concludes, “God is the ultimate issue.”

Take the issue of the value of human life. When you remove God from the equation, life becomes cheap. Because we’re made in the image of God, human life has value.

Human beings are different than the animals, says the Bible. Recently I read portions of a great book, The Death of Humanity: And The Case For Life” by history professor Dr. Richard Weikart, who wrote the classic book, From Darwin to Hitler.

Dr. Weikart writes, “Western society is in deep trouble today. Once we identify some segments of humanity as ‘life unworthy of life’ or ‘sub-human,’ to use phrases commonly used before and during the Nazi period, we have jettisoned any basis for valuing humans as humans. We have effectively undermined all human rights, because now we can decide which humans have rights and which do not.”

In contrast, the founders of America said in the Declaration of Independence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are the right to life.” The first right they listed is the right to life.

In the Declaration, the signers mention God four times, including their appeal “to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of our Intentions,” referring to Jesus, whom God, the Bible says, has appointed to judge us all one day.

But if there’s no Creator, as some politicians seem to think, why should there be any human right? As retired Congressman Ron Paul once noted, “There is only one kind of freedom and that’s individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Is the Biden administration governing in a way that takes into consideration the will of the American people? Based on his plummeting poll numbers and crude anti-Biden chants filling sports stadiums, the answer would seem to be no.

The recent defeat of the left at the polls in Virginia and elsewhere was a reminder of the pushback of “we the people.”

Some leftist pundits said Terry McAuliffe lost his Virginia gubernatorial campaign in 2021 because he didn’t campaign to the left enough. Others remarked it was the alleged “white supremacist” factor that gave conservatives the victory. Of course, they say this while ignoring the victory of the lieutenant governor-elect in Virginia, Winsome Sears. She is the first black person to win that position in that state.

[That] election was a reminder of the genius of the founding fathers to build into the system the opportunity for “we the people” to correct earlier political mistakes.

Conservative columnist Star Parker made a comment about this principle once in a television  interview with D. James Kennedy Ministries. She noted,

“What I’ve learned about this whole political arena is that the words of President Garfield are really true.  If you have recklessness and corruption in government, it’s because you tolerate it. Because of the beauty of the founding, they give us elections every two years, every four years, and every six years. So, in two years, we get to [elect Congress members] again; every four years, we get the president again; and every six years we get to determine who’s going to be our senate representation.”

Parker made this remark right after Biden’s victory about a year ago. She added,

“So, I’m just staying encouraged, because this moment in our history is only this moment in our history. History is long, and history is after us, but it’s also before us….We are now being tested…and it’s uncomfortable to have to get up and actually engage. But we’re called to do that. And we have that chance every two years, every four years, and every six years.”

Our political developments are a reminder of the American experiment created by the settlers and then the founders of America.

What is America in a nutshell? It is an experiment in self-government under God.

Some people want to remove the self-government part—but then they ultimately crown the government God. That scenario violates both parts of the phrase: self-government under God.

Others want to remove the God-part of the phrase. But when we have government without God, even self-government (without God), it all tends to break down because of the inherent sinfulness of humanity. John Adams famously said,

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

America’s founders designed things in such a way that we would be a self-governing people. The more people govern themselves the less outward government they need. The less they govern themselves, the more outward government is needed.

Knowing that we are all accountable before God, our founders understood the need for keeping one’s passions in check. As Thomas Jefferson noted,

“Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever.”

Self-government under God leads to greater freedom. The converse is true—bigger government under man (not God) constricts our freedom.

Why has America been so blessed—despite all our flaws—lo, these many centuries? I believe that the  first steps to self-government under God in America go back to the positive influence of the Pilgrims. 400 years ago this autumn, the Pilgrims who settled Plymouth held their first Thanksgiving celebration.

Our recent Providence Forum documentary, THE PILGRIMS, makes the simple point that the Pilgrims just wanted to worship God according to their conscience. In pursuing this religious freedom in the New World, they helped cast a long and positive shadow on what would become the future nation.

As the hymn, “America the Beautiful,” points out, “O beautiful for pilgrim feet / Whose stern impassioned stress, / A thoroughfare for freedom beat / Across the wilderness!”

Ronald Reagan once observed,

“Here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights. We the people declared that government is created by the people for their own convenience. Government has no power except those voluntarily granted to it by we the people.”

The founding fathers took and extended the Pilgrims’ concept of liberty under God. Our 40^th president added, “Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rulers for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.” And for that, all Americans should be full of thanksgiving.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

Written by Kelle Berry

Recently, an activist group known as the Secular Democrats of America (SDA) sent a document to the president and the administration with a directive “to take back the mantle of religious freedom and pluralism.”

On the surface, the title—Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House—makes the SDA’s mission sound appealing. The document calls to:

“…Oppose discrimination against atheists, agnostics, humanists, seekers, religious and nonreligious persons and to champion the value of freedom of thought and conscience…”

This even makes it sound harmonious with First Liberty’s own mission of protecting religious freedom for all Americans. After all, the First Amendment grants everyone the right to freely exercise their religious beliefs, convictions and to act according to their conscience without government censorship, threat, or coercion.

However, scratching beneath the surface, one sees that the SDA’s demands are much more dangerous. Inside the document, one finds a detailed “blueprint” redefining religious freedom in a way that would be unrecognizable to America’s Founders.

Building a Higher Wall of Separation?

Invoking America’s third president, the SDA implores a return to a “Jeffersonian approach to governance.” In other words, the SDA is petitioning to fortify a higher “wall of separation” between church and state.

Many high school civics students are undoubtedly familiar with those words from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists. But what may not be known is that Jefferson wrote them to reassure the church that the First Amendment ensured the government would not interfere in their religious activities. At no time did Jefferson believe that religion and government could not mix.

Indeed, one need look no further than Jefferson’s attendance at church services held inside the U.S. Capitol itself as evidence of his approval of strong church-state relations.

Jefferson and a vast majority of our nation’s Founders understood that faith is not only permissible in the public square, but also beneficial. Houses of worship and religious organizations all faiths care for the sick, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless. And the benefits don’t stop with charity. A recent study reports that religion contributes $1.2 trillion to the U.S. economy.

In stark contrast to the Founders’ constitutional intent, the SDA commands employees “to separate their personal religious beliefs from their work.” Sadly, some government officials have completely bought into this unconstitutional view.

First Liberty continues to protect Coach Joe Kennedy’s right as a high school football coach to pray alone after games. If the SDA gets its way, Coach Kennedy and millions of other Americans who are government employees will suffer irreparable harm to their First Amendment rights—putting them in the untenable position of choosing between their faith and their job.

Government employees are not the only ones who will suffer under the SDA’s aggressive plan.

Private religious organizations who have historically been able to work with the government are also threatened. In the case of Fulton v. City of Pennsylvania, currently pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, Catholic adoption agencies that have, for decades, worked with the government to provide loving homes for adoptive children have been told to sacrifice their religious identity in order to continue their work.

Unsurprisingly, the SDA opposes the right of the adoption agencies: “[n]o institution, religious or secular, is entitled to access taxpayer funding.” If the SDA gets its way, it won’t just be orphans in need of loving homes who suffer. Millions of Americans who benefit from the benevolent partnership between church and state will also suffer.

Legislation Already Under Way

It’s tempting to quickly dismiss the SDA’s demands. However, people of faith must realize that some in positions of power who sympathize with the SDA’s message are already acting to implement its agenda.

For example, look at the effort on Capitol Hill to pass the so-called Equality Act, which if signed into law, would effectively overturn the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) which, as its name suggests, was intended to restore religious freedom.

The Equality Act may sound appealing in name, but the only equality it seeks to achieve is to eradicate any religious beliefs that do not conform to the government’s preferred orthodoxy. It’s a law that would squash dissent and differing viewpoints from the public sphere. The sad irony is that the Equality Act is actually antithetical to the SDA’s stated principles and its championing of pluralism.

At a time when the SDA and many other activist groups are pushing to recreate the U.S. Constitution, First Liberty remains vigilant and undeterred in our mission to protect and defend religious freedom consistent with the vision of America’s Founders. And regardless of who resides in the White House or controls the U.S. Congress, we will continue being the best hope for victory for Americans of all faiths.

This article was originally published at FirstLiberty.org.

Written by Dr. Everett Piper

The stories have become so commonplace that they’ve almost lost their shock value.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio singles out churches and synagogues, threatening to seize their property and shut them down “permanently” if they dare defy his orders.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, (working through her city’s director of public health), declares a Romanian church a “public nuisance.” “We will shut you down, we will cite you, and if we need to, we will arrest you, and we will take you to jail,” she tells this small group of former Soviet bloc Christians who refuse to bow to her power.

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas issues a stay-at-home “order” that includes a “request” that all churches which choose to exercise their First Amendment rights must provide a “record of attendees” to the city and to the state.

Andy Beshear, Kentucky’s governor, warns that any state residents attending any church services will be “forced” to self-quarantine for 14 days.

Vanita, Oklahoma, Mayor Chuck Hoskin issues a municipal order saying that anyone engaging in any church activity inside or outside, will be subject to a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.

Police in Lakewood, New Jersey, arrest 15 congregants of a local synagogue for attending an Orthodox Jewish funeral.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy responds by saying that any knowledge of the religious freedom guaranteed to these Jews by the Bill of Rights is “above his pay grade.”

Mayor after mayor and governor after governor across America have declared churches to be “non-essential” and ordered them closed under penalty of law. And yet, those who’ve haranged us for decades about the “separation of church and state” now sit in sleepy silence.

Why?

George Santayana once said, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” With this as context, perhaps a bit of a history lesson is in order.

In 1791, James Madison wrote the First Amendment:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Madison, thus, argued that it is an “essential” right of every church and not that of a “king.”

Madison’s premise was very easy to understand. No government official should ever presume to define the matters of the church. No politician or unelected bureaucrat ever has the power to “establish”, dictate, contradict or contravene religious belief or practice. This is not the government’s business. It is the church’s and the church’s alone. It is not the prerogative of our Congress or the courts to tell the church what to do or not to do.

Eleven years later, Thomas Jefferson found it necessary to reassure a small group of nervous Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut, that they did not have to fear any government intrusion into the affairs of their denomination’s polity or practice.

“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that … [the] 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 from Jefferson’s assurance of non-intrusion that we get our present language of separation of church and state.

Read in context, the words of Jefferson and Madison are crystal clear. In America, unlike any other nation, the church is protected from the government. There is a “wall” that provides that protection, and it serves as a fortress, not a prison. It is built to guard the church, not to confine it. This wall is no more intended to restrain religion than the walls around your personal home are intended to restrain you. As a house has a door whereby you come and go, likewise, our Constitution has a door whereby the church is always free to enter society as it chooses, but also to lock that door and keep the government out when it sees fit.

The key here is that the church holds the key, not your power-hungry governor, or your strutting little local mayor. The door is locked from the inside, not the outside. The wall is built for your benefit, not theirs.

John F. Kennedy once said that “in times of turbulence … it is more true than ever that knowledge is power.”

The COVID-19 turbulence has exposed the radical ignorance of the left. They know nothing of our history and care little for your freedom.

Remember this in November.

You have knowledge. You have power. You hold the key. It’s time to use it.

Dr. Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).

This article was originally published at The Washington Times.

The Chicago Board of Education voted 5-2 on Wednesday, February 26, 2020, to stop celebrating Columbus Day and replace it with “Indigenous Peoples Day.” This latest example of political correctness comes on the heels of calls for paintings in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) that contain images of white people to be removed. CPS has the largest collection of early 20^th century murals in the U.S. Most of them were commissioned by the Work Projects Administration as part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal.

CPS has created a new educational steering committee to evaluate all future artwork displayed in the schools saying they will, “evaluate concerns raised about specific works of art to ensure equity and cultural responsiveness.”

A district statement read, “The district recognizes that some works of art in schools do not reflect the district’s values of diversity and inclusion.” This statement is ironic considering most of the paintings that are being suggested for removal feature Native Americans pictured peacefully with early white missionaries and settlers. Apparently, “diversity and inclusion,” means excluding white people.

Sarah Dennis, a social justice advocate, says her children were taken on a field trip to Bateman Elementary where they saw a mural that contained white women wearing head-coverings (a religious symbol that was common in early American history). Head-coverings are still worn today by Illinois citizens in the Amish and Mennonite communities. Her response is, ““We went out into the hallway and stared at it. I asked them, ‘What do you see? What kind of message does it send to the children who attend here, about who is important?’”

Other commentators called the art, “racist, dated and offensive.” This kind of disregard for religious practice and historical accuracy is reflective of the new postmodern deconstructionist mindset that seeks to tear down existing social structures and replace them with new politically correct ones.

Ironically, the Italian-American community that hosts more than 500,000 citizens in Chicago alone, released a statement against the removal of Christopher Columbus as a historical figure in the schools:

For Italian Americans, who endured horrific discrimination and continue to be the subject of stereotypical degradation in popular culture, Christopher Columbus is a symbol for the resilience of a people that have helped shape the cultural landscape of this great nation.

Is CPS seeking to represent all cultures equally and fairly or do they seek to give preference to some people groups while excluding others? This is the inequality that often happens when multiculturalism gets hijacked by special interest groups who seek to promote their own agendas.

Some paintings have already been removed. Last year at Percy Julian Middle School in Oak Park, students from the Social Justice Club successfully pressured administrators to remove Ethel Spears’s 1937 mural Child and Sports – Winter because the painting included only white children.

This follows the example of other schools around the nation that have removed any paintings of America’s founders (e.g., George Washington, Thomas Jefferson or Patrick Henry) because they owned slaves.

Teaching history demands telling the truth about the mistakes that have happened in American History. We don’t want to lie to our children, telling them that America’s past was perfect. That can be done, however, without removing any reference to the positive impact made by European settlers. They were not all slave-owners, oppressors and racists. And even those who were often contributed in ways that have helped all future generations of Americans including historically oppressed groups.

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, though written by flawed humans, have helped all Americans. Oppressive regimes like Communist regimes scrub history to advance an ideology. As Americans we should seek to tell the whole story: the good, the bad and the ugly. We can’t do that if ideology leads to censorship.

THIS SATURDAY! IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

In his recent Christianity Today (CT) blog post, New Testament scholar Scot McKnight defends recently retired CT president Mark Galli’s hubristic diktat about the necessity—in Galli’s view—of Trump’s removal from office:

Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Senate or by popular vote next election—that is a matter of prudential judgment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments.

Trump’s removal from office would inarguably result in the election of a man or woman who endorses, among other things, human slaughter, the intentional creation of motherless and fatherless children for homosexuals, the chemical sterilization of gender-dysphoric minors, the sexual integration of private spaces, a diminution of religious liberty, and mandatory transpeak (i.e., the mis-sexing of cross-sex impersonators)—facts that cannot be ignored in this discussion.

In his blog post, McKnight tries unsuccessfully to recast Galli’s argument via the creation of a colossal strawman painted with an equally colossal brush. He argues that both support for and opposition to Galli’s argument—which in McKnight’s view was solely a moral judgment wholly devoid of political dimensions—reveals a philosophical commitment to “statism”:

At no time in my life have I seen the church more engaged in politics and more absorbed by a political story. … [M]ake no mistake, the American story is increasingly statism. … [S]tatism entails an inherent belief, either explicit or implicit, in the state. It is a belief that solutions to our biggest problems are found in the state and the Christian’s responsibility from the Left or the Right is to get involved and acquire political power. Statism as I am using it here is the idol of making a human the world’s true ruler. Statism exalts humans and human plans and voting. Statism centers its faith in the future on who rules in D.C. Statism makes government a god. … Those who think the CT editorial meant support for the other party are statists. Those who think it meant support for their party are statists. Neither was the case. It was a moral judgment.

McKnight’s strawman is constructed out of a dollop of redefinition, a smidge of ambiguity, and a dearth of nuance. Take special note of McKnight’s critical admission: “Statism as I am using it here” (emphasis added).

The church has always been deeply involved in political issues that are at their core, biblical. That’s why the church was involved in the abolitionist movement and the Civil Rights Movement, both of which created hostility and division within the country.

Statism is typically defined as “centralized government administration and control of social and economic affairs.” As such, deep concern by conservative Christians about the expansion of government, its encroachment into spheres of life where it doesn’t belong, and its promotion of evil as good is not tantamount to “statism.” In fact, such concerns and efforts to participate in the project of self-government to remedy these offenses against truth and liberty are the antithesis of “statism.” The desire to reduce the size and scope of government, to protect human life, and to strengthen support for the First Amendment so as to allow individuals, families, and churches to flourish cannot rationally be conceived of as “statism.”

While the belief that Galli’s editorial “meant support for the other party” may have been wrong, such a belief is not proof of statism. Moreover, while Trump’s removal from office may or may not signify support for the other party, it certainly means the other party will have even more opportunity to harm individuals, the family, and the church.

McKnight implies that Christians believe solutions to all our biggest problems are found in the state, whereas many Christians have more reasonable beliefs. They believe that elected leaders can pass policies and laws, make judicial appointments, and issue executive orders that embody and reflect either good or evil, truth or falsehood, wisdom or foolishness, and that either contribute to or undermine human flourishing.

They value religious liberty and speech rights. They seek justice for humans in the womb. And they are deeply thankful for the blessing of self-government that the oppressed from all around the world come to America to enjoy. And yes, they feel passionate about these issues, which, while political, are first and foremost, biblical, which makes their moral judgments sound.

But apparently McKnight sees the passionate desire of Christians to elect leaders who will protect humans in the womb, women in the locker room, and religious liberty as an idolatrous quest for power and proof of statist drives. Did he feel that way about William Wilberforce’s tireless efforts to end the slave trade in England or Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s divisive efforts to end the egregious violations of the civil rights of African Americans?

Paul teaches that “there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.” So, who is the authority God has instituted here in America? We, the people, are. Christians who feel passionately about the importance of exercising the blessing of self-government through voting and who believe a flawed man who has implemented policy decisions wiser than the ones his opponents would implement are not making an idol of him or exalting human plans. They are properly exercising their authority instituted by God.

Mcknight also believes that “progressive” Christian Randall Balmer was right when he asserted that

Christianity operates best from the margins of power, not in its center. Too many today think the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House.

I’m not sure who Balmer and McKnight hang out with because no Christian I know believes that “the solutions to our problems are anchored to the one leading the White House”—at least not all the solutions to all our problems.

Many Christians believe, however, that some of the solutions to some of our problems can be remedied by elected government leaders, including, of course, the president. Do Balmer and McKnight believe no solution to any problem can be found in the decisions of our president?

While many Christians supported candidates other than Trump during the primary, when the General Election arrived, the choices were between two morally flawed candidates—one of whom offered some glimmer of hope for decisions that would contribute to human flourishing. That candidate—Donald Trump—has made judicial appointments, issued executive orders, and implemented policy decisions that have surprised many conservatives—decisions for which they are thankful.

Appreciation for these good decisions no more constitutes “wholesale evangelical support” for Trump than presumably CT’s support for the work of Karl Barth constitutes wholesale support for this deeply sinful man.

In a 2017 article about Thomas Jefferson’s affair with his slave and theologian Karl Barth’s decades long affair with his assistant, whom he brought to live in his home despite the pain it caused his wife, Mark Galli wrote,

In light of these profound contradictions, what are we to do with the messages of each of these men? Does their behavior tarnish their ideas? … I don’t think so. … Like many, I’ve long hoped to find a heroic human figure whom I can admire unflinchingly. But time and again, I’ve had to discover there is no such person. Well, except the one known as the True Man, who dialectically enough has been known to use ignoble things to shine forth his glory.

Are Donald Trump’s achievements commensurate with those of Thomas Jefferson or Karl Barth? No, but that’s irrelevant to the arguments of Galli, and presumably Dalrymple and McKnight. Their arguments concern whether it is moral for Christians to vote for a morally flawed candidate with better policies than his opponent, and whether admiration for the good policies he has effected constitutes idolatry.

Balmer wants Christians to be marginalized except when he doesn’t. Balmer waxes enthusiastic about times when Christians “set the social and political agenda” for the country:

For years, I have argued in books, articles, op-eds and even a couple of documentaries that evangelicalism, in contrast to the Religious Right, has a long and distinguished history. Evangelicals set the social and political agenda for much of the 19th century. They advocated for the poor and the rights of workers to organize. They supported prison reform and public education. They enlisted in peace crusades and supported women’s equality, including voting rights.

Apparently, Balmer wants Christians on the margins of power only when he disagrees with their social and political agenda.

Still reeling from the 2016 election, Randall Balmer confesses,

I should be over it by now, but I confess that the number 81 continues to haunt me. Following the shock of Election Day 2016, the further news that 81% of white evangelicals supported Donald Trump was devastating to me personally. These were the same people who had been telling us for the past four decades that they were devoted to “family values,” but then they pivoted and, without hint of irony or apology, cast their votes for a twice-divorced, self-confessed sexual predator. … I was, well, devastated.

Here’s what Dr. King, a profligate philanderer—whom CT, with no hint of irony or apology, celebrates—said about Christians and political power:

I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between … the sacred and the secular.

…

There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. …  Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.” But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.

It’s a good thing the early Christians Dr. King described didn’t allow the “reputation” of the church to determine their actions.

McKnight, perhaps accurately, prophesies what Christianity “Tomorrow” will look like:

Evangelicalism … is shifting. … Christianity will be a justice-oriented evangelicalism.

Unlike many evangelicals, McKnight finds such a shift to be a good thing, citing favorably new CT president Timothy Dalrymple’s vision for both CT and evangelicalism:

Out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship or intellectual elitism, this is why we feel compelled to say that the alliance of American evangelicalism with this presidency has wrought enormous damage to Christian witness. It has alienated many of our children and grandchildren. It has harmed African American, Hispanic American, and Asian American brothers and sisters. And it has undercut the efforts of countless missionaries who labor in the far fields of the Lord. While the Trump administration may be well regarded in some countries, in many more the perception of wholesale evangelical support for the administration has made toxic the reputation of the Bride of Christ.

…

[Trump] is a symptom of a sickness that began before him, which is the hyper-politicization of the American church. This is a danger for all of us, wherever we fall on the political spectrum. Jesus said we should give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s. With profound love and respect, we ask our brothers and sisters in Christ to consider whether they have given to Caesar what belongs only to God: their unconditional loyalty.

Some thoughts on Dalrymple’s thoughts:

• It’s out of love for Jesus and his church, not for political partisanship, that many Christians feel compelled to support President Trump. It’s out of their deep desire to protect those who are knitted together in their mothers’ wombs that many in the 81% that give Randall Balmer the heebie-jeebies feel compelled to support this presidency. It is out of love for God who created man male and female that Christians support Trump. Are those idolatrous statist desires?

• Has Trump’s presidency harmed African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian American brothers and sisters? How so? What’s Dalrymple’s evidence?

• For McKnight to cite Dalrymple’s concern for the “reputation of the Bride of Christ” is ironic because McKnight doesn’t view marriage —the earthly picture of Christ, the Bridegroom, and his church, the Bride of Christ—as an essential Christian creed:

The issue is that essentials of the faith and theological robustness speak to the Christian creeds and not to anything about marriage.  

In contrast, Professor Anthony Esolen, writing in Touchstone Magazine, says this about marriage:

The marriage of man and woman is an image of Christ’s union with his bride the Church (Eph.5:32, Rev. 21:20), and that is meant as no mere poetry. The madness of our time would reduce the Bible’s most exalted revelation of the nature of the divine image in man and of the union of God with man to a figure of speech.

Of course, it’s possible to believe the historical understanding of marriage is non-essential and still be concerned about the reputation of the bride of Christ in the world, but Dalrymple’s assertion and McKnight’s admiration for it raises the question, does the world hate evangelicals more for their support—often grudging—of President Trump or for their support for marriage as intrinsically and unalterably the union of one man—the earthly representation of Christ—and one woman—the earthly representation of the church? (If marriage is the picture of Christ and the church, what does same-sex “marriage” mean other than that there is no distinction in nature or function between Christ and the church? And how would that implicit claim be non-essential?)

• Since the alienation of children and grandchildren is offered as justification for abandonment of Trump in favor of morally flawed candidates who endorse evil policies, what do McKnight, Dalrymple, and Galli make of Jesus’ words from Matthew 10:

Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. … Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. ³⁶ And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household.

Now that’s some serious familial alienation Jesus has promised us.

Will McKnight, Dalrymple, and CT reject the non-essential understanding of marriage if it makes “toxic” the reputation of evangelicals in the world? Will they reject the non-essential biblically based understanding of marriage if it alienates many of our children and grandchildren?

• Voting for Trump does not demonstrate idolatrous worship of (or “unconditional loyalty” to) him anymore than voting for any of the candidates who heartily endorse human slaughter and soul-destroying sexual immorality would demonstrate “unconditional loyalty” to them.

How would the world respond if evangelicals supported someone as morally degenerate as Pete Buttigieg, whose degeneracy—one could argue—far surpasses Trump’s? The world would rejoice. By currying favor with the world, the church’s “reputation” would shine because the church would now be in the world and of the world. But that shine would not be from the true light of the True Man.

Listen to this article read by Laurie:

https://staging.illinoisfamily.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Are-Politically-Engaged-Conservative-Christians-Idolaters.mp3

IFI is hosting our annual Worldview Conference on March 7th at the Village Church of Barrington. This year’s conference is titled “Thinking Biblically About Our Corrosive Culture” and features Dr. Michael Brown and Dr. Rob Gagnon. For more information, please click HERE for a flyer or click the button below to register for the conference.

The New York Times has embarked on an effort to rewrite the history of the United States as a nation built upon slavery.  Calling it the “1619 Project,” the opening article is a whopping 7,600-word effort to look at 18th Century history through a liberal 21^stcentury lens.  Joshua Lawson has written an excellent rebuttal to this effort in The Federalist.  Because much of the NYT’s ideology is already being inserted into the narrative of schools and universities, I wanted to pass along some portions of this important article for your consideration.

No, America Wasn’t Built On Slavery, But Faith That All Men Are Created Equal

The year 1619 was chosen for the Times’ “re-founding” to mark when the first slaves arrived in the English settlement of Jamestown.

Slavery was a heart-wrenching, obstacle during America’s birth, but by no objective analysis was it the central factor of the founding as the 1619 Project claims.

Slavery was and is an abomination. It is an evil part of America’s past—as well as that of nearly every nation on earth. The fact that slavery has a universal heritage does not absolve American slave owners, but it does provide a necessary historical context.

During the 17th century, slavery was, sadly, an accepted part of life throughout the world. By A.D. 1619, slavery had existed for more than 5000 years, dating back at least to Mesopotamia.

Written by Nikole Hannah-Jones, the 7,600-word flagship essay of the 1619 Project asserts that “our democracy’s founding ideals were false when they were written.”   Hannah-Jones claims, “white men who drafted those words did not believe them to be true for the hundreds of thousands of black people in their midst.” She provides no evidence or examples for this sweeping assertion.

Jefferson’s original final draft of the Declaration explicitly referred to black slaves not as property but as men.  Letters written to John Jay show Alexander Hamilton hoping the Revolutionary War could lead to the emancipation of blacks and appraising them equal to whites in their abilities. Additional examples are plentiful.

The Founders were painfully aware of the cognitive dissonance of forming a nation under the proclamation that all were created equal while maintaining slavery. They also had to face the political reality that the 13 colonies could not be united in a new nation if they immediately abolished slavery.

With no other way to obtain the necessary support for unity and ratification, the Founders spitefully tolerated slavery’s existence, while also placing it on a path to extinction. Once the nation secured independence, American statesman of the Founding Era slashed away at slavery as quickly as prudence and political reality would allow.

The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 prohibited slavery in the territory that would become the states of Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin. In 1794, Congress barred American ships from engaging in the slave trade. Additional legislation in 1780 banned Americans from employment or investment in the international slave trade. Finally, the U.S. Congress officially banned the importation of slaves beginning on January 1, 1808, the earliest date allowed under the deal made to ratify the Constitution.

Far from the bastion of racism, hate and pro-slavery sentiment that the 1619 Project portrays, much of the United States was ahead of the world in ending the horror of slavery.  Shortly after the signing of the Declaration, northern states took the lead. By 1804, New York, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Vermont, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania had passed laws that immediately or gradually abolished slavery.

If the American Founding was grounded in slavery, and the Founders didn’t believe a word of the opening of the Declaration, how does one account for these actions?

According to Hannah-Jones, one of the “primary reasons” Americans declared independence was to preserve slavery, fearful of the “growing calls” to abolish the slave trade in London. However, a closer look shows the abolitionist movement didn’t have a truly organized presence in England until 1783 when the first petition was filed by Quakers. It wasn’t until 1787 that the influential Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was founded.

The 1619 Project is politically driven 2020 posturing dressed in the veneer of a historical “exposé.” By warping history, it hopes that dopamine hits of anger and injustice will prevent readers from engaging in objective analysis. Just in time to paint America as racist for the upcoming presidential election.

Leftists are banking that the outrage caused by the 1619 Project will provide them the political capital required to move to the next stage: a full reconfiguration of America into their image.

America does not need further tribal rhetoric tearing up what little societal cohesion remains. The nation certainly doesn’t benefit from Times writers conducting a growing chorus of anger and grievance.

This article was originally published by AFA of Indiana.

Written by Paul G. Kengor

One of the major U.S. Supreme Court decisions we’ll soon hear about is the Bladensburg cross case. This is the case in which secularists are demanding the removal of a large cross that memorializes veterans in the town of Bladensburg, Maryland because the cross resides on public property.

It’s crucial to realize that the cross wasn’t erected yesterday. The “Peace Cross” was constructed in 1925 in honor of 49 fallen veterans of World War I. It was designed by the Gold Star mothers and erected by the local post of the American Legion.

The case is known as The American Legion v. The American Humanist Association. The “humanists” argue that the memorial is unconstitutional because it’s fashioned in the shape of a cross on government property, and thus stands in violation of “separation of church and state”—a phrase, of course, not found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. That language was expressed by Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists, and has been badly abused and misinterpreted ever since.

The fact that the cross is a cross is what makes it unacceptable. (Replace it with a statue of Barney the purple dinosaur and the humanists would withdraw their objections.) Secularists appeal to the First Amendment of the Constitution, which says, in part, that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” Obviously, allowing the old cross to continue to stand would not create a congressional “establishment of religion.” Anyone who thinks allowing this cross to remain means that the feds are conspiring to implement a national theocracy needs to have his head examined. As they invoke that select handful of words from the First Amendment, the secularists misleadingly do what they always do, namely—avoid the remainder of what the First Amendment says about freedom of religion: the government “shall not prohibit the free exercise thereof.” The American Legion and Gold Star mothers of Bladensburg exercised their freedom of religion in 1925 to honor their fallen brothers and sons. They naturally commemorated them with the cross that represents their faith.

The secularists, however, refuse to view it that way. And that’s quite unfortunate. They would never view themselves and their actions as hostile, but, in reality, that’s what they are. This is hostility toward religion. They likewise would never view themselves and their actions as intolerant, but, in reality, that’s likewise what they are. This is yet another remarkable example of their intolerance. How can people who preach diversity be so blatantly intolerant of the beliefs of others?

For a sense of the lack of respect, consider one of the worst affronts in the case:

A federal appeals court in October 2017 had ruled the cross unconstitutional, asserting that it “excessively entangles” the government with religion. That verdict was rendered in a 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit in Richmond, Virginia, which argued that the Peace Cross “aggrandizes the Latin cross” and thereby constitutes a U.S. government endorsement of Christianity. So said a 33-page opinion written by Judge Stephanie Thacker and joined by Judge James A. Wynn Jr.

Thacker’s overall opinion demonstrated a troubling lack of historical-theological awareness. Worst of all was the insensitivity displayed during oral arguments. Thacker, an Obama appointee approved by the U.S. Senate in 2012 by a vote of 91-3, offered a truly novel solution. During oral arguments, Thacker asked the attorney defending the memorial: “What about … my suggestion of chopping the arms off?”

Yes, the judge offered a compromise: slice off the horizontal arms. You heard that right: slice off the arms from the cross of Christ.

Can you imagine? Can you picture it? Grab a photo of the memorial and do your own airbrush. How does it look?

For the record, the Peace Cross, mercifully, does not have a corpus. Thus, the demolition crew wouldn’t be sawing off the arms of Jesus. Nonetheless, imagine the precedent proposed. Presumably, using the Thacker Solution, similar large memorial crosses on government property could all be targeted for arm-removal.

In fact, that prompts this thought: in the interest of fairness and equality, why stop with crosses? Shouldn’t we thus also target the horizontal parts of the Star of David—another religious symbol—if we find them as similarly large memorials on government property? Should they be hunted down? Should they be permitted to remain only if we sawed off the horizontal parts? Of course, the star would no longer be a star, but apparently dismembering it would be a triumph in this greater good of not “entangling” government with religion.

Do we go down this road?

I pose a serious question to Judge Thacker and the secularists: Do you not see how your objections to the cross of Christ might be offensive? In the name of not offending, you’re offending. In the name of inclusion, you’re excluding. In the name of tolerance, you’re engaging in intolerance.

It isn’t like this cross was planted yesterday or is being scheduled for construction in 2020. It has been there for nearly a hundred years. It’s as much historical as spiritual. Can’t you leave it alone at least for that reason? This isn’t a bronzed statue of a Confederate general who whipped slaves on a plantation. This is a testimony to the faith of the men who died for their country in World War I—for peace. Do you not see the aggression in your actions? Why go on the offensive with bulldozers? Leave it alone.

If this was a giant Star of David on public land, I’d be the first to stand with a group of rabbis demanding that secularists back off and respect a century-old memorial. I will fight for the rights of every Christian and Jew and cross and Star of David. The same isn’t true for secular liberals. They pick and choose. They’re the first to harass, fine, sue, shut down, and toss in jail the Christian baker, florist, or marriage clerk. I will defend the liberty of a Muslim baker in Dearborn as well as a Christian baker in Colorado. I will defend the right of an Orthodox Jewish caterer to decline a wedding on the Sabbath just as I’ll defend the right of a Christian florist in Washington state to decline a same-sex wedding ceremony that violates the teachings of her faith and her freedom of conscience.

Far too many secular liberals, however, will not. To this day, Jack Phillips, the Christian baker in Colorado, is hounded with new legal challenges. Militant secularists will not back off from badgering him.

And yet, a colleague of mine who’s an attorney on religious-liberty cases tells me he’s unaware of a single case in which a same-sex couple has sued a Muslim baker for declining a same-sex wedding ceremony. Progressives will not pursue Muslims, even as Muslim bakers likewise openly refuse homosexual couples. They leave them alone. It’s a double standard they impose against Christians.

If they insist there’s no double standard, then let’s see it. Prove otherwise by having the decency to leave the Bladensburg memorial cross alone.

A version of this article first appeared at The American Spectator.

Could a contrast between the American Revolution and the French Revolution be relevant to today’s conflicts? I think so. The attempt to demote historic icons, like George Washington, is a case in point.

George Washington grew up as a gentleman farmer in Virginia and was a fourth generation slave-owner. But by the end of his life, he had decided slavery was immoral and so at his death, he freed his slaves and made provision for them.

But in our day—where the alleged “right to not be offended” often seems to trump the constitutional right to free speech—some are calling for images of George Washington to be torn down, like statues of Confederates.

The dailywire.com (5/2/19) reports on how “George Washington High School” in Northern California is contemplating tearing down two 1930’s panels featuring George Washington because the pair of murals allegedly “traumatizes students and community members.”

This is in San Francisco, so the outcome seems likely.

How long will our historical iconoclasm last? The cultural Marxists are working overtime to cut Americans off from our history.

I believe that despite his flaws, including being a slave-owner, there are many heroic aspects of our first president. Dr. Peter Lillback and I wrote, George Washington’s Sacred Fire, which puts all this in context. Recently we discussed Washington and slavery.

Our founders fought the American Revolution, led by Washington, so that we could enjoy our God-given rights. Though slow in coming, recognition of those God-given rights eventually gave the slaves their freedom. What is happening in the culture wars today is a revival of the French Revolution, which waged war against God.

France in 1789 fought against injustice, even in the church; but their godless “cure” ended up being worse than the disease. The French Revolution was anti-God and pro-tyranny—leading to death in the streets. The American Revolution was pro-God and pro-freedom.

America’s founders mentioned God four times in the Declaration of Independence. They identified King George III’s tyranny as illegitimate—because he was violating our God-given rights. The founders, with a firm reliance on the Lord, laid down “their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor” in support for their declaration as a new nation.

When George Washington first read the Declaration to his troops, one of his first acts was to hire Christian chaplains—systematically, throughout the army. He felt that if we were to win this war, it would only be with God’s help.

And he and the other colonists felt that God did help. To paraphrase Washington in his First Inaugural Address, no people should be more grateful to the Lord than we Americans because God aided us at every step to become an independent nation.

Consider a few further contrasts between the American Revolution and the French Revolution.

Our framers signed the Constitution in “the year of our Lord” 1787. The French Revolutionaries got rid of the Christian calendar; and so they declared 1791 as Year 1 of their new non-Christian calendar.

The French Revolutionaries desecrated Notre Dame Cathedral, disallowing Christian worship there and placed a half-naked woman on the altar, calling her “Reason,” whom they worshiped.

In contrast, our founders hired Christian chaplains for the military and also for the U.S. House and U.S. Senate. Since there weren’t enough church buildings in Washington, D. C., they held Christian worship services in the U.S. Capitol building. Presidents Jefferson and Madison attended those services.

The French Revolution eventually consumed its own. Since then, France has had 17 different governments, while the U.S. still lives under one—the U.S. Constitution.

I predict that today’s social justice warriors, who are consuming our past heroes, will one day be consumed themselves by future revolutionaries. Future generations could look back at us and say things like: “You had 4D sonograms documenting the humanity of the unborn and yet you allowed millions of abortions on demand?” or “Science has documented genuine differences between men and women, yet you allowed boys who claimed to be girls to compete and dominate in sports, winning valuable scholarships?”

Every generation has its flaws and blind spots. Our generation has yet to recognize its own.

Slavery was evil. Thank God for those strong Christians who defeated it. Thank God for William Wilberforce’s Christian anti-slavery crusade, which took him about five decades to complete. That crusade inspired abolition here in America. Interestingly, in his day, Wilberforce was sometimes called “the George Washington of Humanity.” Both men worked hard to liberate others.

Slavery has plagued humanity from the beginning of time and can even be found in some places today, places where the gospel of Christ has no sway.

Too bad the children of the French Revolution are rising up today to cut us off from our past heroes. There is a reason Washington continues to be a hero to millions. Enough with the historical revisionism.

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com.

U.S. Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Ny), the darling of the new socialist Democrats in this country, recently referred to the three branches of government. She said, they are the White House, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives. John Roberts, call your office.

Ocasio-Cortez is not alone in a great misunderstanding of our history. Many Americans have an abysmal knowledge of our history and some of the basics of American civics.

The results of a recently-released survey (2/15/19) are not encouraging. The Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation reports that, “in the highest-performing state, only 53 percent of the people were able to earn a passing grade for U.S. history. People in every other state failed; in the lowest-performing state, only 27 percent were able to pass.” [Emphasis theirs.]

The states that did the best were Vermont, Wyoming, and South Dakota. The states that did the worst were Louisiana, Kentucky, and Arkansas. When I first read that, I thought, “Then, what are those Vermonters doing, voting for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders again and again?” As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Some examples of the common ignorance of Americans uncovered by the survey:

• 57% did not know that Woodrow Wilson was the Commander in Chief during World War I.

• 85% could not identify the correct year the U.S. Constitution was written (1787).

• 75% could not identify how many amendments have been added to the document (27).

• 25% did not know that freedom of speech was guaranteed under the First Amendment.

The Foundation concluded: “[A] waning knowledge of American history may be one of the greatest educational challenges facing the U.S.”

This survey is consistent with other findings through the years. We have dumbed down our schools.

Our loss of the knowledge of basic history and civics is a tragedy. We suffer from what I call, American Amnesia. I even wrote a whole book about it. God is the source of our freedom, but we forget this to our peril. As John F. Kennedy put it, “[T]he rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.”

I once interviewed the late Mel and Norma Gabler of Longview, Texas, who reviewed textbooks, from a Christian and conservative perspective. They told me of a textbook which dedicated seven pages to Marilyn Monroe, but only a paragraph to George Washington—and in that paragraph it mentioned that he had false teeth.

Our young people today know more about the trivia of today’s celebrities than they do the men and women who sacrificed everything to bequeath our freedoms to us.

Karl Marx once said, “Take away a people’s roots, and they can easily be moved.” Dr. Peter Lillback, with whom I had the privilege to write a book on the faith of George Washington, said in his book on church/state relations, Wall of Misconception, “One of our great national dangers is ignorance of America’s profound legacy of freedom. I firmly believe that ignorance is a threat to freedom.”

Lillback compiled the following quotes on the link between education and freedom:

• Thomas Jefferson said, “A nation has never been ignorant and free; that has never been and will never be.”

• James Madison observed, “The diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty….It is universally admitted that a well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.”

• Samuel Adams pointed out the importance “of inculcating in the minds of the youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country.” God and charity first, said the Lightning Rod of the American Revolution, country second.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, says the Bible, which was in the first 200 years of America the chief textbook in one way or another. That includes the small but powerful New England Primer, which trained whole generations in Christian theology (in the Calvinist tradition), while teaching them even the basics of reading and writing.

Even their ABC’s were based on Biblical truths. Says the New England Primer: “A, In Adam’s Fall, We Sinned All. B, Thy Life to Mend, the Bible Tend. C, Christ Crucif’ed, For Sinners Died,” and so on.

Back then, with a Bible-based education, literacy was so high that John Adams said that to find an illiterate man in New England was as rare as a comet. It is too bad that as a society we continue to forget God, and we continue to reap the consequences, including the loss of our history and heritage of liberty.

Why does this matter? George Orwell, a former British Marxist, told us why in his classic novel, 1984: “Who controls the past, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

This article was originally published at JerryNewcombe.com

An Illinois lawmaker’s bill to publicly display the motto “In God We Trust” in public schools is the latest challenge to the secularism that is the status quo in many public schools across the country.  Though displaying the motto would not be mandatory, State Representative Darren Bailey (R-Xenia) says his legislation (HB 341) would encourage a return to Christian principles: “As a God-fearing Christian, I believe that the lack of such is the problem in our country today.”

This bill has three co-sponsors in the Illinois House thus far: State Representatives Andrew Chesney (R-Freeport), Chris Miller (R-Robinson) and Brad Halbrook (R-Shelbyville).

Illinois is the latest state with legislation that would permit the posting of “In God We Trust” in public schools.  Lawmakers in Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Tennessee have recently voted to require or allow the motto to be posted in public schools.  Sheriff’s deputies in Jefferson County, Illinois, have joined the movement by voluntarily placing “In God We Trust” decals on their squad cars.  Similar bills have already been introduced this year in Alaska, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York and South Carolina.

Atheists like Hemant Mehta of friendlyatheist.pathos.com are outraged by attempts to refer to a Higher Power:

“We certainly don’t need religion to teach common decency and morality when it’s the Christians currently running the government who provide us with a steady stream of corrupt acts and cruel policies.”

Evidently not a very “friendly atheist.”  Critics also say the motto can be alienating to students who are not religious, and allege that it is a violation of the separation of church and state.

But that cornerstone of American secularism – the vaunted “separation of church and state” – never appears in the United States Constitution, but rather first appears in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association dated January 1, 1802.  Jefferson’s chief concern appears to be avoiding the establishment of any denomination as the “state church.”

Garrett Epps, writing in The Atlantic, and arguing against public expressions of faith, claims that the concept of the “separation of church and state” originated not with Jefferson, but with the American theologian Roger Williams, founder of the first Baptist congregation in the British New World.  According to Epps, Williams coined the phrase in 1644 to “signify the protection that the church needed in order to prevent misuse and corruption by political leaders.”

Epps is seemingly unaware that he has undermined his own argument.  The “separation of church and state” is meant to protect the churches from government intrusion – not the populace from exposure to religious teachings.

Those who oppose the influence of Christianity in society are fond of (mis)quoting Thomas Jefferson, one of several deists among the Founding Fathers.  But deism is not atheism, and while Jefferson did not believe in supernatural revelation, he affirmed his belief in one God as well as in divine providence, the divine moral law, and in personal judgment including rewards and punishments after death.

The opponents of Christianity would also do well to study the life of George Washington, the first president of the United States.  George Washington was a devoted Anglican his entire life.  As General of the Army of the Potomac, Washington openly endorsed religious practice – this, mind you, while as a public servant.  He encouraged his soldiers to attend to their religious duties, including “to implore the blessing of Heaven” upon the nascent American Army.  Washington’s archived papers contain hundreds of biblical quotations, figures of speech, idioms, proverbs, and allusions related to his Christian faith.

George Washington presided over the Constitutional Convention of 1787 during the time when the writing of two key founding documents in American history were written: The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  The Constitution explicates how the new United States was intended to function.  The Declaration of Independence lays out the rationale for the new nation, and in so doing mentions God four times and states that our rights come from our Creator.

It seems inconceivable that important aspects of American history are deliberately withheld from public school students – especially when the vast majority hold to a belief in God and subscribe to Christian beliefs.  A Pew Research Center survey found that “an overwhelming majority of the youngest adults continue to believe in God or a higher power: Eight-in-ten of those ages 18 to 29 say they believe in at least some kind of spiritual force.”

It is the height of duplicity to deny the posting of what was unanimously declared by the 84^th Congress to be the official national motto of the United States, and which appears on the currency in the purses and wallets of students.  The “In God We Trust” movement is a welcome reaffirmation of the Divine guidance upon which our great country was built.

Take ACTION: Click HERE to send a message to your state representative to ask him/her to support and co-sponsor HB 341.  Simply acknowledging God does nothing to establish a church or a religion, but subtly points to the fact that we are dependent daily on God’s goodness, mercy and grace.

Christian Life in Exile
On February 22^nd, IFI is hosting a special forum with Dr. Erwin Lutzer as he teaches from his latest book, “The Church in Babylon,” answering the question, “How do we live faithfully in a culture that perceives our light as darkness?” This event is free and open to the public, and will be held at Jubilee Church in Medinah, Illinois.

Click HERE for more info…

America’s founders believed in God and His word, and predicated our founding documents on those immutable, biblical principles.

Though Leftists love to spout revisionist nonsense about many of the Founders being deists or worse, those accusations don’t hold water when faced with the weight of those early patriots’ own words and actions.

Thomas Jefferson, often upheld as vying for the least religious spot amongst the Founders, wrote:

I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.¹

And Jefferson’s worship habits speak even louder:

Many people are surprised to learn that the United States Capitol regularly served as a church building; a practice that began even before Congress officially moved into the building and lasted until well after the Civil War.

On December 4, 1800, Congress approved the use of the Capitol building as a church building.

The approval of the Capitol for church was given by both the House and the Senate, with House approval being given by the Speaker of the House, Theodore Sedgwick, and Senate approval being given by the President of the Senate, Thomas Jefferson. Interestingly, Jefferson’s approval came while he was still officially the Vice- President but after he had just been elected President.

Jefferson attended church at the Capitol while he was Vice President and also throughout his presidency. The first Capitol church service that Jefferson attended as President was a service preached by Jefferson’s friend, the Rev. John Leland, on January 3, 1802.

Significantly, Jefferson attended that Capitol church service just two days after he penned his famous letter containing the “wall of separation between church and state” metaphor.

Now, just over two centuries later, many Americans maintain a post-Christian worldview. As written at IMB.org:

In a Christian culture, the majority of people have been shaped by Christianity, and it shows in how they live their lives. Post-Christianity, just as it sounds, is a culture that was once shaped by the Christian faith and worldview, but has since moved away from the primacy of such a worldview.

In a post-Christian society the Biblical story that once shaped culture is no longer the narrative that gives meaning to life.

The Barna Group conducted studies beginning in late 2016 and ending in mid-2017 concerning young people and their faith worldview; the findings are especially troubling.

The study sampling and definition:

Two nationally representative studies of teens were conducted. The first was conducted using an online consumer panel November 4–16, 2016, and included 1,490 U.S. teenagers 13 to 18 years old. The second was conducted July 7–18, 2017, and also used an online consumer panel, which included 507 U.S. teenagers 13 to 18 years old. The data from both surveys were minimally weighted to known U.S. Census data in order to be representative of ethnicity, gender, age and region.

One nationally representative study of 1,517 U.S. adults ages 19 and older was conducted using an online panel November 4–16, 2016. The data were minimally weighted to known U.S. Census data in order to be representative of ethnicity, gender, age and region.

GEN Z were born 1999 to 2015. (Only teens 13 to 18 are included in this study.)
MILLENNIALS were born 1984 to 1998.
GEN X were born 1965 to 1983.
BOOMERS were born 1946 to 1964.
ELDERS were born before 1946.
NO FAITH identify as agnostic, atheist or “none of the above.”

Some of the findings?

Gen Z is the first purely Post-Christian generation — the percentage of Gen-Z identifying as atheist is DOUBLE the U.S. adult population.

The article presenting the findings (with a related book available for purchase), “Atheism Doubles Among Generation Z,” notes:

For Gen Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).

The decline in a Christian-based worldview is illustrated in the graphic posted to the right.

Appallingly, over one third of Gen Z don’t believe it’s possible to know if there really is a God.

What happened to the country whose motto is “In God we trust”?

Noah Webster, the “Father of American Scholarship and Education,” wrote:

The religion which has introduced civil liberty is the religion of Christ and His apostles… This is genuine Christianity and to this we owe our free constitutions of government.²

The Christian religion… is the basis, or rather the source, of all genuine freedom in government… I am persuaded that no civil government of a republican form can exist and be durable in which the principles of Christianity have not a controlling influence.³

And, George Washington, the Father of Our Nation wrote:

While we are zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of Christian.⁴

Yet in the span of just over 200 years, the youth of America knows next to nothing about God and the Bible. Church attendance, at least in mainline Protestant and Catholic churches, is declining precipitously.

What is the answer? Is it too late?

The Apostle Peter admonished us:

But in your hearts revere Christ as Lord. Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. (1 Peter 3:15)

“Always be prepared to give an answer” — the underlying precept of apologetics, the defense of the faith.

And a vital part of Apologetics is knowing your worldview.

Gen Z may be overwhelmingly lost and devoid of hope, but we believers have the answer that restores hope. We must be ready to give that answer to a generation that sorely needs hope.

With that dire need in mind, Illinois Family Institute presents the Fourth Annual IFI Worldview Conference Featuring John Stonestreet.

10 AM – 3:30 PM 

Medinah Baptist Church (map)
900 Foster Avenue, Medinah, IL 60157

$20 per person/$50 per family 

Just who is John and why is he a tremendous resource for such an event?

As President of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, John’s passion is to illuminate a biblical worldview for today’s culture. He’s a speaker, writer, cultural commentator, and collaborator of worldview initiatives.

John directs conferences and curriculum projects, speaks to groups nationally and internationally, consults on worldview education for schools and churches, and appears frequently on web and radio broadcasts.

John is the co-host with Eric Metaxas of Breakpoint Radio, the Christian worldview radio program founded by the late Chuck Colson.

Don’t miss this tremendous opportunity to “study to shew thyself approved…”!

The Founders invested their hope and their faith into this burgeoning Republic, infusing our Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution with biblical precepts and a Judeo-Christian worldview.

Now is the time to recapture the explicit understanding of that worldview, and to share that hope and understanding with a lost and hopeless generation.

_____________________

¹ – Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIV, p. 385, to Charles Thomson on January 9, 1816.
² – Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie and Peck, 1832), p. 300, ¶ 578.
³ – K. Alan Snyder, Defining Noah Webster: Mind and Morals in the Early Republic (New York: University Press of America, 1990), p. 253, to James Madison on October 16, 1829.
⁴ – George Washington, The Writings of Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XI, pp. 342-343, General Orders of May 2, 1778.

In early January, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) overturned a longstanding policy that forbade churches from getting federal disaster relief money.

The rule change by the Trump Administration affected any houses of worship that were damaged on or after August 23, just before Hurricane Harvey devastated large areas of Texas and especially the Houston area.   It was a welcome relief also to congregations in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina in the path of Hurricane Irma, and to church communities in Puerto Rico that endured Hurricane Maria.

What might seem to be a neutral stance – that all damaged buildings in a disaster area could apply for aid financed by U.S. taxpayers – was denounced by atheist groups as a violation of the “separation of church and state” doctrine that has governed church-government relations since a series of Supreme Court rulings in the 1940s.

Beginning with Justice Hugo Black’s misapplication in Everson v. Board of Education (1947) of a reference in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury, Connecticut Baptists promising a “wall of separation” between church and state, the court effectively abandoned neutrality for hostility.

Federal officials’ initial singling out of religious institutions for denial of disaster aid is just one of many consequences from that serious misreading of President Jefferson’s letter — and of the First Amendment.  As historian David Barton notes, liberals now use the First Amendment as a sword to attack religious freedom, while conservatives use it as a shield.

Wrong-headed rulings have fundamentally transformed many constitutional protections into their opposite, but nowhere has more damage been done than to the First Amendment, the first part of which reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

America’s Founders, and particularly Mr. Jefferson and James Madison, who championed religious liberty, would be appalled at how those very words have been twisted to advance discrimination against religious speech and practice.

But perhaps a turnaround is on the horizon.

The Trump Administration’s appointment of judges who respect the Constitution is one good sign. Another is the recent move by FEMA to undo bureaucratic discrimination.  Still another is a pending Supreme Court case.  On December 5, the justices heard arguments in what could produce the most important First Amendment ruling in decades.

A Christian baker in Colorado who had declined to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding invoked First Amendment protection from having to use his artistic ability to express something against his values.  The case is Masterpiece Cake Shop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Similar cases have arisen across the nation involving bakers, wedding planners, photographers and florists, all of whom say they have no problem with serving homosexual clients but draw the line at helping to facilitate weddings.  They say it is about the event, not the clients, a crucial distinction that the Court just might find persuasive.

Although all of these involve religious liberty, they could gain more support from liberals if they are based on freedom of expression.  After all, these are the same folks who think nude dancing is covered, so why not expressive cake baking?

In many arenas, the courts have invented new “rights” not envisioned by the Founders or ignored specific constitutional guarantees.  Without the Founders’ Biblically-based understanding of humans as flawed but redeemable, it’s easy to arrive at rulings, policies and laws that sound good on paper but are calamitous in the real world, producing a less responsible populace.

“If men will not be governed by the Ten Commandments,” G.K. Chesterton observed, “they shall be governed by the ten thousand commandments.”  The less that people embrace personal responsibility, the more we need bureaucrats, police, prosecutors and prisons.

Thanks to the genius of the Framers, there is a way back.  The Constitution itself is the most articulate voice in any legal matter. Since people are policy, the short answer to how we can restore America’s constitutional freedoms and ordered liberty is to elect and appoint leaders and judges who respect the original text and defeat those who do not.

Another remedy would be to impeach lawless judges, something clearly authorized by the Constitution, but almost never exercised. Maybe we need the president to declare some of these judges a disaster.

This article originally posted on Townhall.com.

Written by Kate Hardiman

For 11 years, Professor Duke Pesta gave quizzes to his students at the beginning of the school year to test their knowledge on basic facts about American history and Western culture.

The most surprising result from his 11-year experiment? Students’ overwhelming belief that slavery began in the United States and was almost exclusively an American phenomenon, he said.

“Most of my students could not tell me anything meaningful about slavery outside of America,” Pesta told The College Fix. “They are convinced that slavery was an American problem that more or less ended with the Civil War, and they are very fuzzy about the history of slavery prior to the Colonial era. Their entire education about slavery was confined to America.”

Pesta, currently an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, has taught the gamut of Western literature—from the Classics to the modern—at seven different universities, ranging from large research institutions to small liberal arts colleges to branch campuses. He said he has given the quizzes to students at Purdue University, University of Tennessee Martin, Ursinus College, Oklahoma State University, and University of Wisconsin Oshkosh.

The origin of these quizzes, which Pesta calls “cultural literacy markers,” was his increasing discomfort with gaps in his students’ foundational knowledge.

“They came to college without the basic rudiments of American history or Western culture and their reading level was pretty low,” Pesta told The Fix.

Before even distributing the syllabus for his courses, Pesta administered his short quizzes with basic questions about American history, economics and Western culture. For instance, the questions asked students to circle which of three historical figures was a president of the United States, or to name three slave-holding countries over the last 2,000 years, or define “capitalism” and “socialism” in one sentence each.

Often, more students connected Thomas Jefferson to slavery than could identify him as president, according to Pesta. On one quiz, 29 out of 32 students responding knew that Jefferson owned slaves, but only three out of the 32 correctly identified him as president. Interestingly, more students— six of 32—actually believed Ben Franklin had been president.

Pesta said he believes these students were given an overwhelmingly negative view of American history in high school, perpetuated by scholars such as Howard Zinn in “A People’s History of the United States,” a frequently assigned textbook.

What’s more, he began to observe a shift in his students’ quiz responses in the early 2000s. Before that time, Pesta described his students as “often historically ignorant, but not politicized.” Since the early 2000s, Pesta has found that “many students come to college preprogrammed in certain ways.”

“They cannot tell you many historical facts or relate anything meaningful about historical biographies, but they are, however, stridently vocal about the corrupt nature of the Republic, about the wickedness of the founding fathers, and about the evils of free markets,” Pesta said. “Most alarmingly, they know nothing about the fraught history of Marxist ideology and communist governments over the last century, but often reductively define socialism as ‘fairness.’”

Pesta also noted that, early on, his students’ “blissful ignorance was accompanied by a basic humility about what they did not know.” But over time he said he increasingly saw “a sense of moral superiority in not knowing anything about our ‘racist and sexist’ history and our ‘biased’ institutions.”

“As we now see on campus,” Pesta said, “social justice warriors are arguing that even reading the great books of Western culture is at best a micro-aggression, and at worst an insidious form of cultural imperialism and indoctrination.”

Pesta, an outspoken critic of Common Core, said he believes that these attitudes will become more pronounced moving forward, due to Common Core architect David Coleman’s rewrite of Advanced Placement American and European history standards.

Pesta argues that Coleman, now president of the College Board, “has further politicized the teaching of history, reducing the story of Western culture to little more than a litany of crimes, exploitations, and genocides, while simultaneously whitewashing the history of ideologies like socialism and communism.”

Despite no longer giving the quizzes, Pesta told The Fix that he continues “to seek effective ways to teach students the literature of Western culture, which it is not only alien and complex, but often condemned by students before it is truly encountered.”

“We must absolutely teach those areas where Western culture has fallen short, but always with the recognition that such criticism is possible because of the freedoms and advantages offered by Western culture,” he said.

This article was originally posted at TheCollegeFix.com