Americas Christian Heritage Session III Where We Got Off Track

Before We Dig In Please introduce yourselves to your table. Share one thing that has struck you so far in our time together. Share any hopes that you have for our last 2 weeks that remain in this study.

The Golden Triangle of Freedom (Liberty) Requires Requires Faith / Religion (of some sort) Virtue (Morality) Requires

“Unrestrained Freedom Undermines Freedom” The Paradox of Freedom “Unrestrained Freedom Undermines Freedom”

The First Amendment

The Establishment Clause “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion…” Buddhist Anglican Roman Catholic Muslim Methodist Lutheran

The Free Exercise Clause

The Free Exercise Clause “Congress… shall make no law prohibiting the free exercise of religion” Translation The Federal Government is supposed to protect religious expression

Everson vs Board of Education (1947) “The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable… We could not approve the slightest breach.”

Engel vs Vitale (1962) “Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.” Church ‘establishment’ would now mean any religious activity instead of a religious ‘institution’

Noteworthy The philosophy of a small dissent group would now become the standard by which the rest of the country must conduct its public affairs

Abington vs Schempp (1963) “If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be harmful to the child…”

Stone vs Graham (1980) “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey the Commandments… This is not a permissible state objective.”

Roe vs Wade (1973) 60,069,971

60,069,941 / 325,700,000 18.5%

The Impact of these Decisions Feel vs Measure Discuss at Your Tables If we were to evaluate the impact that would result from the removal of the Bible and religious instruction from our schools and public square, what measurable changes would you expect to see?

Incarceration Violent Crime

(George Washington, April 30, 1789) God’s Blessing? “The propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which heaven itself has ordained.” (George Washington, April 30, 1789)

“… it is the duty of nations to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the holy scriptures and proven by all history that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord. And, insomuch as we know that, by His divine law, nations like individuals are subjected to punishments and chastisement in this world, may we not justly fear that the awful calamity of civil war, which now desolates the land may be a punishment inflicted upon us for our presumptuous sins to the needful end of our national reformation as a whole people?

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious Hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own.

Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self- sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins and to pray for clemency and forgiveness…. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the nation will be heard on high and answered with blessings no less than the pardon of our national sins and the restoration of our now divided and suffering country to its former happy condition of unity and peace.” (March 30, 1863 : Proclaiming a National Day of Fasting and Prayer)

See You Next Week

Accountability? “As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.” (George Mason)