"Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God – what is good and acceptable and perfect." Romans 12:2.
"You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free." John 8:32.
PROLOGUE
The purpose of this essay is to show that inaccurate, even bogus, Christianity is destroying our country, and doing great damage to the Christian Church.
The establishment's long-term goal is to bring about what is known as the "New World Order," which will be an end to national sovereignty and an end to whatever individual liberty we have left. The people we know as the establishment are working towards a centralized world government which will, of course, supersede the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. The only real dispute is, will the United Nations be turned into a world government, or will world government originate in Washington, D.C.? Either way, individual liberty will no longer exist, especially regarding land ownership and the right to self-defense, which I regard as the two most important of God-given rights.
I believe that President George W. Bush is in favor of this New World Order. He may seem to be lukewarm on the United Nations, but his actions prove him to be a centralist. The overseas imperialism, the piecemeal transfer of political power from states to the federal government, and within the federal government to the Executive branch, and within the Executive branch to the White House itself, the gravitation of wealth from ordinary people to establishment interests, the weakening of our national borders by agreements along the lines of the North American Union and so-called "free" (actually highly regulated and taxed) trade agreements, and any number of other examples show that the Bush administration is actively working toward the centralization of political power.
It was mainly the evangelical/fundamentalist (religious right) Christian vote that put George W. Bush in office in both 2000 and 2004, and it was the religious right leadership that stumped for him on the campaign trail and is still doing it.
How did this happen? Actually, the ruination of this country has been going on for many decades as I have shown in my last two blog essays (1).
In this essay, though, I want to demonstrate that the last seven years or so have ushered in what might well be the end of our country. The lapdog mainstream news media simply will not cover what I believe should be major news items and in order to find these out one needs to be on the Internet. At the end of this essay I will list a few sources of news that are from a variety of viewpoints, predominately libertarian but also from other dissident sources.
My theory as to why the country has taken such a nosedive into the big-government, intrusive nanny-state, authoritarian camp is the failure of people to think independently for themselves and their propensity to obey leaders. One, maybe the main, reason for this is poor education. Last year I said I would dig deeper into (I believe I used the word "flog") the "education" system. I won't do that right now and must apologize, but doing so would take the essay off on a major tangent.
Fundamentalist Christians obey, or at least greatly respect, their pastors. I guess they believe these pastors, at least the well-known ones, have a special hotline to God. These pastors came to believe that a George W. Bush presidency would turn the country away from paganism and back to God. The rest is history.
I read a few books on the fundamentalists, their belief structure, and their politics, to compare and contrast them with my own. My conclusion was that, while I agree with their religion and morality for the most part, as far as their political positions go they really should review what Jesus taught and also what St. Paul taught as exemplified by the scriptures quoted above.
I cannot comment on their knowledge of church history, as my own knowledge is extremely scant. I do know, however, that in the very beginning the church had little organization and what little it had was bottom-up rather than top-down. It is incumbent upon individual Christians to read scripture and apply their ability to reason. I also know that in the beginning Christians were pacifistic and gave the government a wide berth. They paid taxes to keep the bureaucrats out of their hair and otherwise dissociated themselves from government.
I have always said the only real authority is that of God. Who do these human beings think they are if they presume to have "authority" over other human beings? And, why in the world is anybody obeying them?
Is it because they know more? I have come to believe that there is authority and there is authority. Some people are truly experts in their field. Bach was an authority on music composition. Einstein was an authority on physics. Dr. James Dobson, while I disagree with him on some particulars, is an authority on child rearing. Were I the parent, or even the sitter, of a small child, it is his work I would consult for pointers, since I know nothing about the subject. Dr. Murray Rothbard was a, if not the, foremost authority on the libertarian philosophy, especially economic theory, and while I understand my own libertarian philosophy pretty well, whenever I am thinking through some ideas, my Rothbard collection is never far away. We are not always on the same page, but Dr. Rothbard has helped me question authority more than anyone else.
That brings me to the other kind of authority. This is the self-proclaimed special privilege of telling others what to do. I seriously question it.
Actually, no!! I do not question it! For I believe it does not even exist to question!
Now, I must admit and even point out that Romans 13 does seem to tell us to submit blindly to the civil authorities as they are appointed by God. However, there are some of things to remember. One is that when Jesus walked the earth (and when the apostle Paul was living) the church authorities and the civil authorities were apparently not strictly separated. Jesus himself was "arrested" or kidnapped by the temple authorities and bound over to be crucified. And we need to remember that there is the real authority of knowledge and the phony authority of the person who tells others what to do. What is really being described in Romans 13? I believe that more study is needed on this.
This leads to a very important part of the topic. Exactly what is the separation of church and state? And is this separation something that the country's Founders wanted to assure? A resounding "YES!"
Founder Thomas Jefferson said:
"Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." (emphasis mine.) (Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1802.)
(2).
Founder James Madison also had some words to say about this:
"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819.)
"Strongly guarded as the separation between religion & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820.)
"Every new and successful example, therefore a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822.)
· "I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, spring, 1832).
· "To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina. I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811.) (3)
I think that is enough said about the separation of church and state, as it seems to be a settled issue.
God gave each of us a perfectly good mind and a free will. Each is responsible to take the initiative to accept Christ. How, then, can we be counseled to blindly obey other fallible human beings?
For decades now, fundamentalists have bemoaned the government, but only because they believe the wrong people are in political and bureaucratic positions. Government itself would be wonderful, they believe, if they get their own people in. My question is, why is the big government of liberalism considered "socialism" or even "communism," while big government by Christians would be "freedom"? Both are socialistic, the difference only being in the kind of regulation.
The kind of socialistic regulation the fundamentalists advocate was outlined pretty well by Tim La Haye in 1982 (4). This was written at about the same time Jerry Falwell took to the airwaves. It exemplifies exactly what is going on to hoodwink religious people into believing that the separation of church and state is not mandated by the Constitution, and into actively working towards the destruction of this country (even as they believe they are saving it) and in the process doing great harm to the church by alienating the best and brightest.
Right now, the country's leaders, both the fundamentalist church leaders and the ones in high government office are taking the sacred and turning it into the profane. Jay Bakker, son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, expressed it very well a few months ago on Larry King Live. He said that the "ice cream" of the Christian faith is being mixed with the "dung" of government. This is certainly going to ruin your ice cream.
So, let the study begin. We shall see if I was able to show that this is what is happening. I think I can, but not without the help of several authors.
(1) Please see The Three Worst American Enemies of Freedom and The Roots of Neoconservatism on this blog.
(2) Other relevant quotes may be found at http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qjeffson.htm
(3) Still other relevant quotes may be found at http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qmadison.htm
(4) La Haye, Tim, The Battle for the Family, Fleming H. Revell Co., Old Tappan (NJ), 1982.
PROLOGUE
The purpose of this essay is to show that inaccurate, even bogus, Christianity is destroying our country, and doing great damage to the Christian Church.
The establishment's long-term goal is to bring about what is known as the "New World Order," which will be an end to national sovereignty and an end to whatever individual liberty we have left. The people we know as the establishment are working towards a centralized world government which will, of course, supersede the Constitution as the supreme law of the land. The only real dispute is, will the United Nations be turned into a world government, or will world government originate in Washington, D.C.? Either way, individual liberty will no longer exist, especially regarding land ownership and the right to self-defense, which I regard as the two most important of God-given rights.
I believe that President George W. Bush is in favor of this New World Order. He may seem to be lukewarm on the United Nations, but his actions prove him to be a centralist. The overseas imperialism, the piecemeal transfer of political power from states to the federal government, and within the federal government to the Executive branch, and within the Executive branch to the White House itself, the gravitation of wealth from ordinary people to establishment interests, the weakening of our national borders by agreements along the lines of the North American Union and so-called "free" (actually highly regulated and taxed) trade agreements, and any number of other examples show that the Bush administration is actively working toward the centralization of political power.
It was mainly the evangelical/fundamentalist (religious right) Christian vote that put George W. Bush in office in both 2000 and 2004, and it was the religious right leadership that stumped for him on the campaign trail and is still doing it.
How did this happen? Actually, the ruination of this country has been going on for many decades as I have shown in my last two blog essays (1).
In this essay, though, I want to demonstrate that the last seven years or so have ushered in what might well be the end of our country. The lapdog mainstream news media simply will not cover what I believe should be major news items and in order to find these out one needs to be on the Internet. At the end of this essay I will list a few sources of news that are from a variety of viewpoints, predominately libertarian but also from other dissident sources.
My theory as to why the country has taken such a nosedive into the big-government, intrusive nanny-state, authoritarian camp is the failure of people to think independently for themselves and their propensity to obey leaders. One, maybe the main, reason for this is poor education. Last year I said I would dig deeper into (I believe I used the word "flog") the "education" system. I won't do that right now and must apologize, but doing so would take the essay off on a major tangent.
Fundamentalist Christians obey, or at least greatly respect, their pastors. I guess they believe these pastors, at least the well-known ones, have a special hotline to God. These pastors came to believe that a George W. Bush presidency would turn the country away from paganism and back to God. The rest is history.
I read a few books on the fundamentalists, their belief structure, and their politics, to compare and contrast them with my own. My conclusion was that, while I agree with their religion and morality for the most part, as far as their political positions go they really should review what Jesus taught and also what St. Paul taught as exemplified by the scriptures quoted above.
I cannot comment on their knowledge of church history, as my own knowledge is extremely scant. I do know, however, that in the very beginning the church had little organization and what little it had was bottom-up rather than top-down. It is incumbent upon individual Christians to read scripture and apply their ability to reason. I also know that in the beginning Christians were pacifistic and gave the government a wide berth. They paid taxes to keep the bureaucrats out of their hair and otherwise dissociated themselves from government.
I have always said the only real authority is that of God. Who do these human beings think they are if they presume to have "authority" over other human beings? And, why in the world is anybody obeying them?
Is it because they know more? I have come to believe that there is authority and there is authority. Some people are truly experts in their field. Bach was an authority on music composition. Einstein was an authority on physics. Dr. James Dobson, while I disagree with him on some particulars, is an authority on child rearing. Were I the parent, or even the sitter, of a small child, it is his work I would consult for pointers, since I know nothing about the subject. Dr. Murray Rothbard was a, if not the, foremost authority on the libertarian philosophy, especially economic theory, and while I understand my own libertarian philosophy pretty well, whenever I am thinking through some ideas, my Rothbard collection is never far away. We are not always on the same page, but Dr. Rothbard has helped me question authority more than anyone else.
That brings me to the other kind of authority. This is the self-proclaimed special privilege of telling others what to do. I seriously question it.
Actually, no!! I do not question it! For I believe it does not even exist to question!
Now, I must admit and even point out that Romans 13 does seem to tell us to submit blindly to the civil authorities as they are appointed by God. However, there are some of things to remember. One is that when Jesus walked the earth (and when the apostle Paul was living) the church authorities and the civil authorities were apparently not strictly separated. Jesus himself was "arrested" or kidnapped by the temple authorities and bound over to be crucified. And we need to remember that there is the real authority of knowledge and the phony authority of the person who tells others what to do. What is really being described in Romans 13? I believe that more study is needed on this.
This leads to a very important part of the topic. Exactly what is the separation of church and state? And is this separation something that the country's Founders wanted to assure? A resounding "YES!"
Founder Thomas Jefferson said:
"Believing that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their Legislature should 'make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,' thus building a wall of separation between Church and State." (emphasis mine.) (Letter to the Danbury Baptists, 1802.)
(2).
Founder James Madison also had some words to say about this:
"The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819.)
"Strongly guarded as the separation between religion & Gov't in the Constitution of the United States the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Detached Memoranda, circa 1820.)
"Every new and successful example, therefore a perfect separation between the ecclesiastical and civil matters, is of importance; and I have no doubt that every new example will succeed, as every past one has done, in showing that religion and Government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822.)
· "I must admit moreover that it may not be easy, in every possible case, to trace the line of separation between the rights of religion and the civil authority with such distinctness as to avoid collisions and doubts on unessential points. The tendency to a usurpation on one side or the other or to a corrupting coalition or alliance between them will be best guarded against by entire abstinence of the government from interference in any way whatever, beyond the necessity of preserving public order and protecting each sect against trespasses on its legal rights by others." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Rev. Jasper Adams, spring, 1832).
· "To the Baptist Churches on Neal's Greek on Black Creek, North Carolina. I have received, fellow-citizens, your address, approving my objection to the Bill containing a grant of public land to the Baptist Church at Salem Meeting House, Mississippi Territory. Having always regarded the practical distinction between Religion and Civil Government as essential to the purity of both, and as guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I could not have otherwise discharged my duty on the occasion which presented itself." (Emphasis the Web page's.) (Letter to Baptist Churches in North Carolina, June 3, 1811.) (3)
I think that is enough said about the separation of church and state, as it seems to be a settled issue.
God gave each of us a perfectly good mind and a free will. Each is responsible to take the initiative to accept Christ. How, then, can we be counseled to blindly obey other fallible human beings?
For decades now, fundamentalists have bemoaned the government, but only because they believe the wrong people are in political and bureaucratic positions. Government itself would be wonderful, they believe, if they get their own people in. My question is, why is the big government of liberalism considered "socialism" or even "communism," while big government by Christians would be "freedom"? Both are socialistic, the difference only being in the kind of regulation.
The kind of socialistic regulation the fundamentalists advocate was outlined pretty well by Tim La Haye in 1982 (4). This was written at about the same time Jerry Falwell took to the airwaves. It exemplifies exactly what is going on to hoodwink religious people into believing that the separation of church and state is not mandated by the Constitution, and into actively working towards the destruction of this country (even as they believe they are saving it) and in the process doing great harm to the church by alienating the best and brightest.
Right now, the country's leaders, both the fundamentalist church leaders and the ones in high government office are taking the sacred and turning it into the profane. Jay Bakker, son of Jim Bakker and Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, expressed it very well a few months ago on Larry King Live. He said that the "ice cream" of the Christian faith is being mixed with the "dung" of government. This is certainly going to ruin your ice cream.
So, let the study begin. We shall see if I was able to show that this is what is happening. I think I can, but not without the help of several authors.
(1) Please see The Three Worst American Enemies of Freedom and The Roots of Neoconservatism on this blog.
(2) Other relevant quotes may be found at http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qjeffson.htm
(3) Still other relevant quotes may be found at http://members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/qmadison.htm
(4) La Haye, Tim, The Battle for the Family, Fleming H. Revell Co., Old Tappan (NJ), 1982.
1 comment:
Hi Alice:
I too wonder about how easily the Christian right is duped by their big government allies. Thank you for pointing out their attempt to serve two masters.
The issue that really amazes me is the "Gay marriage" proposals. The religious right is adamant that allowing such "legal" marriages would undermine all of Christianity, and indeed, the whole of western civilization.
From my perspective, however, once marriage left the purview of the church to become a state regulated "business" for which you needed a "license" with attendent legal privileges, religion had already lost. They had sold out to the State placing their faith in it, not in Christ. Now, as the state turns its back on them, they bemoan the fall the US Empire. They should review the City of God. Our Kingdom is not in this World, and placing faith in Government is simply another way of serving Mammon, not God.
We should do better.
Best wishes, Fritz Ward
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