Blogging with Bryan C. Hanks

I was out of the office when this piece ran in the paper and somehow, it didn’t make it online … so here it is: the transcript of Dan E. Perry’s post-Christmas column that ran in our editorial section of TFP on Dec. 26. This is the piece Mrs. Pearl Schecter was referring to in her guest column that appeared in Wednesday’s Free Press.

Church and state

Modern secularists misinterpret history in taking notion of separation to extremes in America

One of the most eye-opening statements ever uttered by Jesus was, “Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21). In that statement Christ recognized the distinction between political and spiritual responsibilities. He was letting it be known that Caesar shall be given taxes and all rightful political obedience. At the same time, God should be given worship, obedience, service, and the dedication of one’s whole life. Our allegiance to government should be separate from our allegiance to God.

Background to the controversy

It was the quest for political and religious freedom that drove the first European settlers to the new land called America. Here they found the opportunity to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. When the First Amendment to our Constitution was written, it established this right to every American citizen. It reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Our Founders were well aware of the problems created by the Mother Country with the establishment of the Church of England as the official religion of the British Empire. We wanted to guard against the establishment of a particular religion in America. At the same time we wanted to guarantee that every citizen in this young land was given the freedom to practice whatever religion preference he desired. The fact that we were overwhelmingly a Christian nation from our very founding did not preclude us from recognizing other beliefs.

Were our founders Christian?

Most far left liberals surmise that we were a secular nation and not Christian at our conception, but they have not looked at the historical facts and what the records show. By way of example, in his sermon entitled, “Dawn’s Early Light,” James Kennedy tells of his appearing many years ago on the Merv Griffin television show. He said he followed just after Sam Donaldson who had moved over on the couch and Kennedy then sat next to Merv. He said they were talking about the matter of religious liberty and the Christian foundation of America. Sam kept “jabbing me in the back with his two cents worth.” Finally, he said, “Well, maybe there were a few Christians around when the Constitution was passed, but one thing is for certain, they gave us a secular government.”

“A few Christians around?” Kennedy had done his research and determined that of the 55 men who met in Philadelphia in the Constitutional Convention to write our Constitution, 50 were avowed biblical followers of Jesus, and possibly 52. We don’t know too much about the other three. Furthermore, the constituency of this country in 1776 reveals that, “At the time, ninety-eight percent of Americans were Protestant Christians; 1.8 percent were Catholic Christians; 0.2 percent, or two-tenths of one percent were Jewish. Therefore 99.8 percent of the people in America in 1776 claimed to be Christians. TV’s Sam Donald-son was making only a wild, uneducated guess — and he was way off the mark!

A secular government?

Sam Donaldson was absolutely out of bounds when he claimed, “… but one thing is for certain, they gave us a secular government.” Totally unfounded! He was just guessing again, and another wild guess at that. I’ve already given much of the background of the Founding Fathers and their intentions in establishing our Constitution and form of government. But let’s look again at the facts. The first thing George Washington did as our nation’s first President was to take his oath of office unto God, and he did so with his hand on the Bible. The record shows that after taking the oath, he bent over and kissed the page of the Bible. Hardly the kind of conduct for any self-respecting secularist. In fact, secularists observing the occasion would be appalled and horror stricken. Was this a secular nation? Not hardly! The next thing Washington did was to lead the entire Senate and House of Representatives to an Episcopal Church for a two hour worship service. Yes, it was a two hour service of worship and praise and thanksgiving in recognition and honor of the God of Providence who formed our nation. Why, that’s enough to give the ACLU collective apoplexy!

What is a secularist?

According to Webster’s Dictionary, a secularist is “one who rejects every form of religious faith and worship and undertakes to live accordingly; also, one who believes that education and other civil matters should be without the religious element.” Though the secularists in America today are doing their very best to rid this country of every vestige of Christianity and religion, there is no doubt that that is not the way it was in the beginning. I understand that at the very time the first Congress was passing the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights, that same Congress passed one of what was called the “four most important documents in American history:” The Northwest Ordinance. James Kennedy said he heard the infamous atheist, Madolyn Murray O’Hair, say on television several years before she died that, “We don’t want religion in schools; people ought to get their religion in churches.” The Congress that gave us the First Amendment said in the Northwest Ordinance, which was describing the situation that was to take place in the Northwest Territories: “Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind shall forever be encouraged. They went on to say it was “schools and the means of education” that was to be encouraged by religion, morality, and knowledge.”

But look what we’ve done!

But we have taken religion out of school by removing the Bible and prayers. We have taken morality out of our schools by removing the Ten Commandments, and now we have gotten rid of knowledge as well. It is common knowledge that after the 1962 decision to remove prayer from the schools, SAT scores went precipitously downward for eighteen straight years. A number of years ago I had heard what Kennedy confirmed, that sixty-five percent of all crimes committed in America are committed by school-age young people; He says what we all know: “As a general rule, those sixty-five percent haven’t been taught morality in the homes nor in the schools; they have no concept of right and wrong. Good or bad. They are doing things today that we find absolutely incredible.” Why? Because, as Kennedy says, we have lost sight of the light that the Founding Fathers tried to shine in that “dawn’s early light” upon the future of this country. We have taken the train off the tracks that were laid down so carefully by our Founders, and we have tried to reject religion and replace it with secularism. In looking back to 1776, the Foundation of this country never heard or thought of anything such as a secular nation. Shortly after our founding we were appalled at what was happening in France. They were making attempts to throw off religion completely, and it ended in disaster. Soon it led to a river of blood and then the tyranny of Napoleon.

Dan Perry is an attorney and lifelong resident of Kinston. This column is excerpted from “God’s Amazing Love Letter … and its impact on America,” Perry’s fifth book.