How a slogan can change the world
Now we understand who sold us big, secular government, and why they did it. But how did they pull it off? Through what slight-of-hand did the Establishment Clause – “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” – become transformed into a total ban on religious expression in the public square? It’s a fascinating bit of linguistic legerdemain.
First, to better convey the technique, let’s recall the Stephen Stills mega-hit song,“Love the One You’re With” Remember that one?
A whole chorus of soulful singers, against a lively, up-tempo disco accompaniment, urged millions of lonesome souls, “If you can’t be with the one you love, honey, love the one you’re with. Love the one you’re with. Love the one you’re with.”
How many adulterous affairs and spontaneous teen “hook-ups” resulted from this devious message encouraging sexual anarchy, no one will ever know. But notice how the seduction worked:
The way the first phrase (“If you can’t be with the one you love”) is mirrored in the second phrase (“love the one you’re with”) by using the same words, the whole equation sounds almost logical in a hypnotic sort of way – which is to say, if you don’t think about it. After all, love is good, right? So if you can’t love one person, then love someone else!
“One” in the first phrase refers to your sweetheart, but in the second phrase the same word, “one,” means someone else. “Love” in the first phrase implies commitment and fidelity – key elements of real love. The same word, “love,” in the second phrase, implies an impulsive, self-indulgent, and very likely immoral and unfaithful act, and a betrayal of what love is all about.
This is verbal seduction.
Now look at the First Amendment:
“Congress …” – we know what that is.
“… shall make no law …” Well now, I’ll bet you thought you knew what that means. You thought it meant Congress shall make no law. But what you didn’t know was that in 1940, in the Supreme Court case of Cantwell v. Connecticut, the justices decided – citing a mysterious legal principle called “incorporation” – that the First Amendment applied not just to Congress, but to state governments too. So now the federal government could force the states to follow its dictates in regards to prohibiting the “establishment” or prohibiting the “free exercise” of religion. This is obviously something the original 13 states would have rejected outright, given that half of them had state “establishments” of religion.
“…respecting an establishment of religion …” For 150 years an “establishment of religion” in the context of the First Amendment meant that a national church, a particular denomination, wouldn’t be supported and imposed on the states by the federal government. But with the decline of Christianity in the U.S. and, indeed, increasing hostility toward it, the meaning of “establishment of religion” has been radically changed – just like the words in the Stephen Stills song. Today, “establishment of religion” means the mere public mention of God, Christ, the Bible, the Ten Commandments, prayer and so on. The “God Bless America” banner erected on a California public school to honor those killed in the 9-11 terror attacks was attacked by the ACLU as an unconstitutional establishment of religion.
But to make this seduction even more powerful, the First Amendment religion clauses have been morphed into the phrase, “a wall of separation between Church and State” – eight words taken out of context from an incidental letter of courtesy Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802.
You rarely hear the actual wording of the First Amendment anymore. But “separation of church and state” is one of those phrases that roll off the tongues of judges and journalists so easily and so often, most of us assume it’s in the Constitution.
In fact, one of the justices on the New York Supreme Court, back in a 1958 First Amendment case called Baer v. Kolmorgen, made this very point when he commented: “Much has been written in recent years concerning Thomas Jefferson’s reference in 1802 to ‘a wall of separation between church and State.’ … Jefferson’s figure of speech has received so much attention that one would almost think at times that it is to be found somewhere in our Constitution.”
But there’s a method to this constant repetition, as marketers well know: Say it enough times, and people come to believe it.
The celebrated 18th century American philosopher William James put it more pungently: “There is nothing so absurd but if you repeat it often enough people will believe it.”
Indeed, there are very few phrases more familiar to Americans than “the separation of church and state.” Marketers pay millions to brand their product or make their political candidate a household name. But just as with commercial or political marketing, widespread familiarity with a slogan doesn’t necessarily mean the message is true.
If Jefferson’s “wall of separation” has come to mean that any reference to God must be eliminated from government, schools and anything the government funds, then what did the phrase originally mean, as Jefferson used it?
Ironically, Jefferson intended for his letter to the Danbury Baptists to reassure them that the new federal government would not endanger the free expression of their religion. This is widely known. But what is not well known is that Jefferson did not actually coin the phrase “separation of church and state.”
Rather, he borrowed the metaphor from the sermon, “The Garden and the Wilderness,” which was very familiar to Baptists of the time. As Jim Henderson, senior counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice explains it:
- That sermon, rendered by Roger Williams (the founder of the Rhode Island Plantation colony) and a Baptist, depicted the church as a garden, the world as a wilderness, and the wall as a device of the Creator’s invention that protected the garden from being overrun by the wilderness. Williams explained that, from time to time, for the purpose of disciplining sin in the church, “it hath pleased” the Almighty to break down the wall.
Thomas Jefferson, ever the politician, knew when he communicated with the Baptists that “The Garden and The Wilderness” was well known and widely read nearly two generations later. He appealed to them in the terms of their own great man’s idiom.
There you have it. The “wall of separation” was meant to protect “the garden” of the church from being overrun by “the wilderness” of government. No wonder Chief Justice Rehnquist has said, “The metaphor of a ‘wall of separation’ is bad history and worse law. It has made a positive chaos out of court rulings. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”
One other deceptive marketing device we should note is the aforementioned slogan that “the Constitution is a living document.” The opposite of a “living document” is a “dead document,” and who wants that? “Living” and “breathing” are positive-sounding attributes. But, if you told your spouse that your marriage contract is a “living” document and therefore you should be able to have intimate relationships with other “partners,” would your spouse approve?
After all, “if you can’t be with the one you love,” why not “love the one you’re with”?
Why not? Because it’s a lie. The “living” quality of any contract, including the Constitution, is its integrity – its unchanging nature. What kills a contract is when one or the other party attempts to change, twist or re-interpret it. So in reality, the secularist’s “living” Constitution is dead, while the document, interpreted according to its original intent, is full of life and wisdom.
A quiet American revolution
Common sense provides ample proof to a rational person that the First Amendment’s religion clauses couldn’t possibly mean what the ACLU and many of today’s judges say they mean, since there is simply no evidence of it in history. Think about it: It’s the first and most important right enshrined in the Bill of Rights, and yet there are no examples of this modern, radical, anti-Christian interpretation being applied during our nation’s first 150 years?
OK, we understand the problem. Now the question is, what do we do about it?
In America, unlike virtually all other countries, the power really does reside in the people. We have the legal means of making this the most enlightened nation in history, administered by a limited, constitutional government. After all, it’s regular people like you and me that elect the president, who in turn nominates judges for the Supreme Court and other federal courts. It’s we who elect the senators who confirm the president’s judicial nominees.
Moreover, we elect the congressmen who actually have the constitutional power to control the federal judiciary! As Texas congressman and Constitution champion Ron Paul has explained: “… Congress [can] exercise its existing constitutional power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts. Congress could statutorily remove whole issues like gay marriage from the federal judiciary, striking a blow against judicial tyranny and restoring some degree of states’ rights. We seem to have forgotten that the Supreme Court is supreme only over lower federal courts; it is not supreme over the other branches of government.”
Constitutional amendments – like the Federal Marriage Amendment or the Human Life Amendment – can and would trump any errant Supreme Court decisions by becoming part of the Constitution. Supreme Court justices can also be impeached, just like presidents.
And did you know presidents aren’t compelled to obey unlawful Supreme Court decisions? Some presidents, including Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln, have actually defied Supreme Court orders.
But, many would warn, a president defying the Supreme Court would lead to a “constitutional crisis.” Great, that’s probably just what America needs – a crisis that can be resolved only by reference back to the nation’s founding principles as established in the Constitution. What’s wrong with a president or Congress who has the courage to stand up to a runaway judiciary and say, “No, we’re not abiding by your unconstitutional ruling. What are you going to do about it?”
Whatever we attempt to do to rectify this terrible wrong, it has to start with brutal honesty – an unflinching realization of what we have allowed to transpire in our nation. Only by facing hard truths can we ever make any real progress.
So let me ask the question: In allowing the First Amendment to be changed from its original meaning to what it has become – namely, the prohibition of any acknowledgement of God or His laws of life inside the schools where most American children spend their youth – do you realize what we’re doing?
Similarly, in making any reference to God or biblical principles off-limits for those we’ve entrusted with running this nation’s government and charting its future course, do you realize what we’re doing?
We’re deluding ourselves into believing there is some neutral ground between good and evil, and that this is where the government is supposed to be. But such a “neutral ground,” if such can even be said to exist, is in itself evil. In fact, it’s only people who don’t truly believe in God that can even believe it’s possible to be neutral.
When we realize that the Creator has stationed us on this earth in a battleground between a good kingdom and an evil one, and that our real choice in life is between obedience to Divine law or disobedience, between honesty and dishonesty, nobility and shallowness, selflessness and selfishness, courage and cowardice, we see there is no neutral ground.
Thus, if government is not populated by godly, principled people, we are doomed to live as glorified serfs. Why? Because true religion and its fruits – love of truth and one another – constitute a powerful force working against the natural tendency of power to corrupt. To put it another way, without having a real relationship with the Living God, men automatically become their own miserable “gods.” That pathetic, false god in turn owes his allegiance to dark forces he doesn’t recognize or comprehend – and if he’s in a position of power, he is compelled to become a demagogue or a tyrant.
What we’re witnessing before our very eyes, in our own lifetime, is the official, ever-so-gradual “squeezing out” of everything that’s really precious to America.
It’s as though we’re throwing away something so precious that it goes almost beyond the ability of words to convey it. We’re taking the finest life has to offer, like the most precious memories of our children, of their birth, of their accomplishments; we’re taking the sacrifices of our soldiers, of our patriots, our nation’s martyrs – and we’re spitting on them.
Think of the Puritans who braved the two-month sea voyage to an unknown land, only to lose one-half of their number during the first, brutal winter. And the loyal patriot soldiers with Gen. George Washington at Valley Forge, shivering and miserable in the snow, many without shoes. Think of the death and suffering of the millions of young American boys lost and wounded in war during the last two centuries, as well as the tremendous sacrifices of their families.
Now think of the sustaining role God, faith, prayer and the Holy Bible had in the lives of all of these people.
If we really have been convinced that our Constitution – conceived, written, believed in, fought for and died for overwhelmingly by Christians and God-fearing people – requires that the Christian faith be taken out of government, then there’s really no hope for us as a nation.
But I don’t think we’ve all bought the Big Lie.
Yes, we have a lot of judges who offer pious lip-service to the Constitution, while really believing this 200-plus-year-old document drafted by a bunch of flawed slaveholders in a different era with different problems is in dire need of major updating by bright, gifted jurists such as themselves.
But then, there are those like Judge Roy Moore. Standing on the courthouse steps as his beloved Ten Commandments monument was being dragged away, he commented: “It is a sad day in our country when the moral foundation of our laws and the acknowledgment of God has to be hidden from public view to appease a federal judge.”
Focus on the Family’s James Dobson summed it all up. Decrying the judicial banishment of the Ten Commandments as part of a movement to remove every trace of “faith or reverence for God from the public square,” he warned, “We’re at a pivotal point in the history of this country.”
“Be a participant,” Dobson added. “Don’t sit on the sidelines while our basic freedoms are lost.”
- Buying the Big Lie of Church-State Separation by WND
- ‘The Myth of Separation of Church and State‘ by Tim Greenwood
