“This is an important and well-documented piece of scholarship that greatly adds to our understanding of past and present church-state relations in America. Lillback’s thoughtful and painstakingly detailed historical analysis documents wherechurch-state myths and misconceptions come from and why they persist.”
BYRON JOHNSON
Professor of Sociology
Co-Director, Institute for Studies of Religion
Director, Program on Prosocial Behavior
Baylor University
“Calling Wall of Misconception just a book is like calling Niagara just a waterfall. It is a powerful piece of intellectual ammunition in America’s attempt to determine whether Judeo-Christian values are vital to her survival or whether they are obsolete relics obstructing progress toward a social utopia. The outcome could depend on how many people read this volume.”
RABBI DANIEL LAPIN
Rabbinic Scholar and Author
Founding Rabbi, Pacific Jewish Center
“Secularists today would rewrite history and cause Americans to forget our strong religious heritage. It is vitally important that our rich religious background not be forgotten. Dr. Lillback is to be commended for his effort to insure that the importance of Judeo-Christian thought in the formation of our nation is remembered. This is an important book and a must-read.”
JUDGE CHARLES W. PICKERING, SR.
Retired, US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals
“Peter Lillback has done a magnificent job of marshaling the overwhelming documentary evidence that the American nation’s civil governments rest squarely upona Biblical foundation. While one might quarrel with some of Dr. Lillback’s specific applications of that religious heritage, he leaves the open-minded reader with no doubt that the nation’s claim of ‘liberty and justice for all’ will not endure if the secularists succeed in their effort to separate God from government. With the publication of this book, Dr. Lillback has furnished plenty of ammunition to win the battle that America was — and still is — ‘one nation, under God.’”
HERBERT W. TITUS
Attorney-at-Law, William J. Olson, P.C.
Professor of Constitutional Law and former ACLU attorney
Founding Dean, College of Law and Government,
Regent University (1986-1993)
“There is mounting evidence that most of the early American republic’s key leaders were far closer to holding traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and tenets than they were to harboring any strictly secular worldviews. Peter A. Lillback explores this evidence and relates it to present-day, church-state cases and controversies. Agree or disagree with Lillback’s conclusions, Wall of Misconception makes for fascinating and informative reading. This book extends his justly influential writing on George Washington’s religious identity, and challenges materialists to come reason together with thinking, orthodox believers.”
JOHN J. DIIULIO, JR.
Founding Director, White House Office
of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania
WALL OF MISCONCEPTION
Copyright ©2012 Peter Lillback. All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-984765447
All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means – electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or any other – except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior written permissionof the author.
Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture references are from the King James version of the Bible (KJV).
Cover and Interior Design by Roark Creative: roarkcreative.com
All illustrations included are used by permission. Detailed credit list is included in the Endnotes.
For Library of Congress Control Number, please contact the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America by Hamilton Printing Company
2008—First Edition
2012—Second Edition
Providence Forum Press
The Providence Forum
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www.providenceforum.org
DEDICATION
To all the Pastors worldwide, whether enjoying freedom or
enduring persecution, who according to their consciences
seek to speak the truth in love.
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Foreword
THE ARTICLE
(originally published by The Providence Forum in the fall of 2002)
THE LETTER
(written by a pastor, questioning Christians’ concern over removing “one nation under God” from the pledge, and other God-and-country issues)
THE RESPONSE
(written by Dr. Lillback to respond to the pastor’s letter)
CHAPTER 1
GOD IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE
Public Schools and the Pledge of Allegiance
CHAPTER 2
THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE AT THE INTERSECTION OF WORLDVIEWS
CHAPTER 3
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS AND THE COURTHOUSE
Can Religious Documents Be Used in Governmental Settings for Secular Purposes?
CHAPTER 4
THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
The Relationship of Church and State in the American Context
CHAPTER 5
REQUIRED HOMAGE TO A CREED THATIS NOT ONE’S OWN
CHAPTER 6
TAX DOLLARS AND FAITH-BASED MINISTRIES
CHAPTER 7
THE INTEGRITY OF THE GOSPEL IN GOVERNMENT DRESS
CHAPTER 8
IS THE GOVERNMENT’S WORLDVIEW PERSPECTIVE UNIMPORTANT AND/OR UNNECESSARY IN THE CHRISTIAN MISSION?
CHAPTER 9
GEORGE WASHINGTON’S CONSTITUTIONAL PRECEDENTS FOR THE CENTRALITY OF THE JUDEO-CHRISTIAN VALUES IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE
CHAPTER 10
THE LOGIC OF LIBERTY
CONCLUSION
Epilogue
Endnotes
I wish to thank all who have helped make this book a reality. As always, I thank God for my family and my friends who have stood with me as we have sought to produce a study that is accessible and engaging for Americans.
First, I thank all the help I received from the many friends who enabled the first edition of this book. Second, I express my gratitude to the late Dr. Kennedy who assisted in distributing the book when it first was published. Third I wish to express my deep respect for the labors of Francis Schaeffer, since his seminal works on the Christian worldview and the role of Christianity in the public square are what first prompted me to consider these questions. I offer my gratitude to all of the professionals who have prepared this text for publication— without their diligence, artistry and wisdom The Wall of Misconception would never have seen the light of day. Lastly, I express my deep respect for the three County Commissioners of Chester County, Pennsylvania who chose to stand boldly for the continuing witness of the historic Judeo-Christian value system in public life that ultimately prompted the writing of this book.
Thank you, dear reader, for taking the time to consider these questions that will greatly impact our nation’s future and the destiny of religious liberty in America.
The issues raised by this book when it was first written in 2002 have only intensified. There is a growing concern among many Americans. Could we be losing our Constitution? These fears are fueled by Courts that seem to change the Constitution at will. And Legislators and Executives seem to bend the Constitution to achieve their political aims. Is this just a bit of political hysteria generated by the uncertain times we’ve been living through? Make no mistake about it, this is no recent concern. It was a matter that troubled the newly elected President George Washington.
In April 1789, George Washington prepared an address to Congress. It touched on a host of important matters that would impact the new Congress that was soon to meet for the first time under the newly adopted US Constitution. One of his most extraordinary insights in this lengthy document was his concern for the long term survival of the new Constitution.
To understand Washington’s concerns, we must carefully read his classic language. To help, I will outline his points and state them in simpler words. Then, I will quote his actual words. Please consider these seven points that our Founding Father made about the long term survivability of our Constitution.
1. Washington was not a prophet and could not make a final prediction about the ultimate fate of the Constitution. “I pretend to no unusual foresight into futurity, and therefore cannot undertake to decide, with certainty, what may be its ultimate fate.”
2. In our uncertain world good things have often ended up as disappointing evils and this could happen with our Constitution too. “If a promised good should terminate in an unexpected evil, it would not be a solitary example of disappointment in this mutable state of existence.”
3. If we lose our Constitution’s blessings of liberty, it would not be the first time that human foolishness has squandered the blessings of heaven. “If the blessings of Heaven showered thick around us should be spilled on the ground or converted to curses, through the fault of those for whom they were intended, it would not be the first instance of folly or perverseness in short-sighted mortals.”
4. The word of God’s revelation of the Christian religion provides an eternal example of the fact that the best human organizations can be used for evil ends. “The blessed Religion revealed in the word of God will remain an eternal and awful monument to prove that the best Institutions may be abused by human depravity; and that they may even, in some instances be made subservient to the vilest of purposes.” (Washington is here referring to the events surrounding the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.)
5. America’s future power-hungry leaders could get away with a disregard of the Constitution’s limitations and harm our unalienable rights because the voters have become lazy or selfish. “Should, hereafter, those who are entrusted with the management of this government, incited by the lust of power and prompted by the Supineness or venality of their Constituents, overleap the known barriers of this Constitution and violate the unalienable rights of humanity:”
6. No mere human document is eternal and indestructible even if it began with God’s favor and was declared to be holy. “It will only serve to show, that no compact among men (however provident in its construction and sacred in its ratification) can be pronounced everlasting and inviolable,”
7. No words on a piece of paper can withstand unbridled political ambition that remains unchecked due to an immoral electorate. “And if I may so express myself, that no Wall of words, that no mound of parchment can be so formed as to stand against the sweeping torrent of boundless ambition on the one side, aided by the sapping current of corrupted morals on the other.” (Writings of George Washington, Vol. 30, 4-1789).
Does this sound like the evening news? Was Washington prophesying the destruction of our country that we will see in our own day? Is this America’s inevitable future?
The answer depends on us. The Constitution still begins with three extraordinarily powerful and significant words: “WE THE PEOPLE.” All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.
What can you do as the ultimate check on a government that’s out of control? The first step is no longer to be “lazy.” Get involved. The second is to be what Jesus taught in “The blessed religion revealed in the word of God,” namely, to be “salt and light” (Matthew 5:13-16) right where you are.
As he left the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was asked by a woman as to the kind of government that had been created by the Constitutional Convention. He answered, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Ben Franklin insisted that WE THE PEOPLE must keep it alive. President George Washington agreed:
The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally, staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. (First Inaugural Address, April 30, 1789).
As this new edition of the Wall of Misconception is released, it is my heartfelt prayer that our generation will succeed in keeping the sacred fire of liberty aflame. We can and must labor together to fulfill America’s God-given destiny to demonstrate by our national experiment that the republican model of government is achievable and sustainable. Let us continue to manifest our Founders’ wisdom in framing a government of WE THE PEOPLE under the providence of Almighty God.
Peter A. Lillback, Ph.D.
President
The Providence Forum
June 2012
In 2002, Michael Newdow, an atheist lawyer with a daughter in a California public school, challenged the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. Newdow argued that although his daughter was not required to recite the pledge, she was injured “when compelled to watch and listen as her state-employed teacher in her state-run school led her classmates in a ritual proclaiming that there is a God and that ours is ‘one nation under God.’” A federal Ninth Circuit appellate panel agreed with Newdow, ruling that the words “under God” constituted an establishment of religion and hence, violated the First Amendment. Despite popular outrage and bipartisan criticism of the decision in Congress, a second Ninth Circuit panel reaffirmed the original ruling in early 2003, again declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional.
The American people were overwhelmingly surprised and outraged at the ruling, as well they should have been. However, the uncomfortable truth is that the Ninth Circuit’s decision declaring the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional has a certain perverse logic, given the Supreme Court’s confused church-state jurisprudence over the past half-century. The decision of the Ninth Circuit simply confirmed what conservative critics of the Supreme Court have been saying for decades, namely that so-called “strict separationist” interpretations of the First Amendment’s “Establishment Clause” based on the “wall of separation” metaphor is not merely neutral toward religion, but hostile toward religious sentiment and results in driving religion out of the public square. Despite their protestations, this is the direct result of the influence of “strict separationist” advocacy organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, and People for the American Way.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof....” For over the past half-century, a small but influential cadre of academics, activists, and activist judges has tried to insist that the First Amendment’s “no Establishment Clause” requires a “high wall of separation of church and state.” For decades these activists and jurists sought to defend this view as an accurate description of the views of the founders generally, and that it expressed the intent of the authors of the First Amendment. Their favorite citation was Thomas Jefferson’s private letter to the Danbury Baptists in which he referred to a “wall of separation” between church and state.
However, as Dr. Lillback shows, as a simple historical matter, our founders were more than willing to accommodate religious expression and symbols in the public square. Indeed, in word and deed they encouraged it. That is why Justice William Rehnquist was right to declare over two decades ago in his Dissenting Opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), that, “The ‘wall of separation between church and state’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.”
Justice Rehnquist was probably being too charitable. Not only has the “wall of separation metaphor” been useless, it is often more incoherent and pernicious than that. One here recalls the famous quip of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan remarking on the massive confusion generated by a series of Supreme Court decisions which ruled that while a state could permissibly lend school books to parochial schools without violating the Establishment Clause, it was unconstitutional to lend teaching aids and maps. That caused Senator Moynihan to ask about the constitutionality of an atlas, a book of maps.
Senator Moynihan’s caustic quip was a pithy way of saying that a consistent application of the high wall of separation principle leads to absurd results. As one informed commentator observed,
The Pledge case reveals that something has gone drastically wrong with Establishment Clause jurisprudence. If the Pledge is unconstitutional, so too are teacher-led recitations of the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln claimed “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” Teaching public school students that the Declaration of Independence is true— that our rights are, in fact, “endowed by our Creator” and that the American Revolution was just according to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”—would violate the Constitution. Even an invited performer singing “God Bless America” at a government-sponsored event, like a local county fair, would be constitutionally suspect. (“Establishing Free Exercise” by Vincent Phillip Muñoz in First Things, December 2003)
When the Declaration of Independence can in some light be thought constitutionally suspect, and would be but for public outcry at a judiciallyimposed decision, it is long past time to reexamine the basis for the precedents that lead to such absurdities.
The fundamental problem, of course, is not simply the bad history and the absurdities that would result from a consistent application of the “high wall of separation” principle. The fundamental problem, as Dr. Lillback suggests, are activist judges willing to impose their own ideological understanding of the proper relation between religion and public life.
Typically, such an understanding is based on the highly controversial opinion that religion is a purely private affair, that religiously informed argument in the public square is at best a barrier to enlightened discourse and at worst sows the seeds of intolerance and bigotry.
The consequences of this view go well beyond the impact on individuals’ and groups’ rights to freedom of expression and religion, they cut to the heart of what is required to sustain our democracy. This grand experiment is not guaranteed to last forever, and our founders understood the necessity of the electorate to be a virtuous people for freedom to be maintained, and that religion is essential to form virtue. A diminished or ghettoized civic religion will only diminish our democracy and threaten its sustainability.
Here we must be clear. If the American people, for whatever reason, through their elected representatives decide that the Ten Commandments should be removed from local court houses, that “under God” should be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance, that “In God We Trust” be removed from currency and coinage, that legislative and military chaplains should no longer be paid out of public funds, that Christmas nativity scenes should be removed from areas of public display, or that the Supreme Court should no longer open with a declaration of “God save this honorable court,” then it is perfectly in keeping with the Constitution and the democratically determined decisions of a free people to do so. While I do not think such decisions would be wise, the Constitution does not require the presence of such symbols. It does, however, permit them, and activist judges exceed their authority when they require their removal, and they deserve derision when the try to persuade us that support for such can be found in either the text of the Constitution, in the meaning or intent of the authors, the history of the American republic. And if confused Establishment Clause precedents logically lead to such absurd and pernicious results, then it is long past time to reconsider those precedents.
U.S. Senator Rick Santorum
Rick Santorum served as U.S. senator from Pennsylvania from 1995 to 2007 and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1991 to 1995. He is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., a consultant with the law firm Eckert Seamans Cherin & Mellott LLC, and a contributor to the Fox News Channel.
The following is an article I wrote,
published by The Providence Forum in the fall of 2002.
SEPTEMBER 11TH AND THE 9TH CIRCUIT COURT:
At Least For the Moment, We are still
“One Nation Under God”
When the Ninth Circuit Court declared that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional, many finally began to understand. In spite of all our national expression of dependence on God in the aftermath of September 11th, there is still a relentless movement afoot to strip our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage from our official culture. Its message is, “Sure, in the privacy of your home, say the Pledge, but don’t force your belief in God down the throats of the rest of our secular nation!”
While this decision made the headlines of our national news, a more quiet, but just as potent assault was occurring in the federal courthouse in Philadelphia. The verdict reached by a single judge, without a jury of the people, in less than 24 hours, was that the Ten Commandments that had been on the wall of Chester County’s Courthouse, had to come down. Once again, the theme was, “To have such statements in public is to violate the First Amendment by making our secular nation acknowledge God.” It was ironic indeed, that the same court opened with the declaration “God save the Court of the United States!” We must be clear. This movement will not stop if they are successful here. God in government is the enemy. Nothing less than His utter and total removal from public discourse is the goal.
“For such a time as this,” The Providence Forum has been called into being. Our existence through your support has enabled us boldly to remind our culture in Federal Courtrooms, on Courthouse steps, at Independence Hall, in academic institutions, in the presence of the President himself, that our Judeo-Christian heritage gave birth to this great nation of religious and civil Liberty.
In spite of our nation’s spiritual interest expressed recently in the memorial services on the first anniversary of the terrorist’s attacks, the day may come when we are forced to censor even the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But let us until then not fail to declare that the first teaches us of “our Creator,” of “the God of nature,” of “the supreme Judge of the world,” and the “protection of Divine Providence,” and the later was written in “the year of our LORD, 1787.” May our Lord graciously use all of our efforts to preserve and advance this legacy of liberty bequeathed to us by our Founders.
Perhaps in the wake of news stories such as ominous potential terrorist attacks, the homosexual abuse of boys by priests, the malfeasance of auditing firms in league with deceiving corporate entities, and the violent volatility of the financial markets, we may once again wish to be “one nation under God” after all!
By the way, a good reason to get registered and to vote is that our elected officials appoint our federal judges. Your vote indirectly elects judges who either believe or do not believe that we are “one nation under God.”
Dr. Peter A. Lillback
This is the letter written to me by a pastor,
who had read the preceding article, and was thereby
prompted to write the following:
Dear Dr. Lillback,
I enjoyed reading the latest issue of the Providence Forum’s newsletter. Thank you for sending it. I also appreciate – and share – your mission: “to promote Judeo-Christian worldview within our culture.” I hope that God grants you success in your endeavors.
However, I can not, for the life of me, understand why anyone would fail to see the problem with requiring public school students to recite their allegiance to “one nation under God.” Likewise, I have trouble understanding why there was an uproar over the decision to remove the Ten Commandments plaque from the Chester County Courthouse.
I see two problems with this blending of church and state:
• Those who are not Jewish or Christian should not have to pay homage to a creed that is not their own. Neither should they have to support our mission with their tax dollars.
• In order for the government to support Judeo-Christian values without trampling on the rights of non-Jews and non-Christians, those values have to be watered down to the point that they have very little to do with the gospel of Jesus Christ.
There are many avenues available to us Christians for promoting our worldview. We do not need to harness the government into doing it for us.
Please don’t take this letter as a protest. Rather, I am sincerely seeking answers from an organization that might be able to provide them.
Sincerely,
Pastoral Associate
The text that follows is largely the response I wrote to the pastor upon receiving the previous letter. However, for this book, additional material has been added. This includes a discussion of George Washington’s presidential precedents; the augmentation of the history of the creation of the First Amendment; a discussion of the logic of liberty; and the inclusion of the charts and the appendices. The text and outline of the book, however, are essentially the response to the questions and issues raised by the letter that the pastor sent to me.
It should also be noted that the Chester County Court House Ten Commandments case, that was so hurriedly decided, as mentioned in the herein reprinted article, was unanimously overturned by the Third Circuit Court on appeal. So the plaque remains in place, thanks to the courage of the Chester County Pennsylvania Commissioners, who persevered in their commitment to preserve our Judeo-Christian historical presence in the public square.
GOD IN THE
PUBLIC SQUARE:
PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND
THE PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE
“However, I cannot, for the life of me, understand
why anyone would fail to see the problem with requiring
public school students to recite their allegiance to
‘one nation under God.’”
Your comment clearly raises the question of the legitimacy of using the Pledge of Allegiance in public settings. We might ask, “Can official ‘secular’ documents make reference to God”? Ultimately, your question raises the matter of which worldview will impact our national thinking.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower – “…we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future…”
Your candid astonishment that “anyone” could miss the “problem” of requiring public school students to recite their allegiance to “one nation under God” is peculiar indeed. Long before your letter was written—about a half-century ago—Congress passed the act that incorporated the words “under God” into The Pledge. At that time President Dwight D. Eisenhower, along with the United States Congress, perceived a very different problem facing America than the one you fear. It was to find a national point of transcendence that would enable America to remain strong in the face of daunting challenges to the very fabric of American freedom.
You are undoubtedly aware of the history of the Pledge. However, many Americans do not know that the phrase “under God” was not in the original form when it was written by Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister from Boston in 1892, which was the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ discovery of America. Sixty-two years later, on Flag Day, June 14, 1954, President Eisenhower signed the legislation that added “under God” to the Pledge. Explaining his support for Congressional Act, Joint Resolution 243, he declared,
In this way we are reaffirming the transcendence of religious faith in America’s heritage and future; in this way we shall constantly strengthen those spiritual weapons which forever will be our country’s most powerful resource in peace and war.
These words are particularly significant coming from President Eisenhower. Only a decade before, he had been the military commander of the most powerful force ever assembled in history. Yet in his view, the most powerful weapons for our nation in peace or in war were not economic or military, but spiritual. In his mind, the government had nothing to fear from faith, for America’s government understood the importance of faith in the nation’s past and its need for such trust in its future.
In fact, the Pledge’s new language of “under God” had its source in Lincoln’s immortal Gettysburg Address. Lincoln believed that the healing of a nation torn asunder by civil war and grieving in the face of the unparalleled human carnage of the Gettysburg battlefield could only be found when the afflicted nation saw its proper place as being “under God.” Thus, in the Gettysburg Address, delivered on November 19, 1863, “the theologian of American anguish” encouraged his fellow citizens affirming,
It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
President Abraham Lincoln – “...this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom...”
Given this history, background, and sources, it is no wonder that school children and adult teachers used to daily say the Pledge of Allegiance. Perhaps you can remember saying it yourself.
Yet you are concerned that children might be “required” to Pledge allegiance to a flag that represents “one nation under God.” Clearly, we must be concerned about protecting the religious liberty of our students, but is it possible that this liberty of conscience exists precisely because historically we have claimed to be a “nation under God”?
What has transpired in the half century between President Eisenhower’s enacting the words “under God” into the Pledge and into law in 1954 and the opposing view of the U. S. Ninth Circuit Court’s 2002 ruling that holds that the use of the Pledge is unconstitutional? To answer this, we must come to grips with the massive shift of worldviews and cultural values that has occurred in the past half century.
An incredible sea change has in fact occurred in public opinion, worldview, and governmental policy in these last decades. Actually, to better understand this, a good place to start is by considering your own words as a pastor expressing his concerns about what he sees as God’s role in the public square.
Initially, notice the assumption that is made by your statement “requiring to recite their allegiance.” The fact is that no one in America is “required” to say the Pledge! Free speech is our First Amendment constitutional heritage. The very way you have couched the matter masks what is really transpiring in the Court’s decision. Today, we are encouraged and permitted to recite our allegiance to the flag by using the words “one nation under God.” Should we choose to do so, we are doing it in a lawful way. Should we choose not to say it, we are doing so in a constitutional way. Where is the reality of “required” action in this discussion? It is in the Ninth Circuit Court’s move to strike the 1954 Congressional Act, Joint Resolution 243 as unconstitutional!
While the Supreme Court’s decision not to review this decision leaves the Pledge in force in all areas except the Ninth Circuit, if that ruling were ultimately to become the opinion of the Supreme Court, we would be “required” to forego saying the Pledge ever again in a public setting. What then becomes of our free speech? What then becomes of religious liberty for those who can in good conscience say the Pledge in its legal form? They will no longer be encouraged and permitted to do so. They will be required not to recite their allegiance.
Isn’t it interesting that you have unconsciously misstated the entire matter? By allowing our rhetoric to be controlled by inaccurate terminology, we are not only going to lose our historic freedom to say or not to say the Pledge, but we will have unconsciously abandoned a freedom for a court mandated lawful behavior. Sadly, we will never even know what hit us. This process of the erosion of our liberties was well understood by the great architect of our Constitution, James Madison, when he said,
Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations. James Madison, Virginia Convention, June 6, 1788.1
Christian cultural analyst, the late Francis Schaeffer, agreed with Madison’s insight. Schaeffer argued that our culture’s movements away from Christianity’s values are the consequence of a conscious shift in how people interpret their world. In A Christian Manifesto, he wrote:
The basic problem of the Christians in this country... in regard to society and in regard to government, is that they have seen things in bits and pieces instead of totals. They have very gradually become disturbed over permissiveness, pornography, the public schools, the breakdown of the family, and finally abortion. But they have not seen this as a totality – each thing being a part, a symptom, of a much larger problem. They have failed to see that all of this has come about due to a shift in worldview–that is, through a fundamental change in the overall way people think and view the world and life as a whole. This shift has been away from a worldview that was at least vaguely Christian in people’s memory toward something completely different...2
Worldviews clearly matter. So, how should we define Worldview? Actually, as you likely know, the term “Worldview” comes to us from the German equivalent, Weltanschauung. In 1933, in a lecture called “The Question of a Weltanschauung,” the world famous atheist, psychologist, and philosopher Sigmund Freud defined a worldview as “an intellectual construction, which solves all the problems of our existence uniformly on the basis of one overriding hypothesis.” The point is that if we are to address the ultimate questions of life, we are inevitably led to a concern to construct a Worldview.
We all have wondered about our lives with the powerful words of who, what, why....? These questions are found everywhere—in the curiosity of children, the contemplations of philosophers, and in our deepest inner-life. The inner struggles that are evoked by these questions, we either seek to resolve or we strive to ignore or suppress. Dr. Armand Nicholi, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explained it this way:
All of us, whether we realize it or not, have a worldview; we have a philosophy of life—our attempt to make sense out of our existence. It contains our answers to the fundamental questions concerning the meaning of our lives, questions that we struggle with at some level all of our lives, and that we often think about only when we wake up at three o’clock in the morning. The rest of the time when we are alone we have the radio or the television on— anything to avoid being alone with ourselves. Blaise Pascal maintained the sole reason for our unhappiness is that we are unable to sit alone in our room. He claimed we do not like to confront the reality of our lives; the human condition is so basically unhappy that we do everything to keep distracted from thinking about it.”3
Every worldview consciously or unconsciously seeks to answer the ultimate questions about our lives. Who am I? Why am I here? Do I have a soul? Is man free? What is wrong with the world? Is there a God? Has he spoken? Is there a true religion? Is there life after death? And there are many more of these worldview questions. Our worldview is our explanation of these great questions.
But the radical issue of our hypotheses of life or worldview that answers these ultimate questions of human existence is simply this: Our lives are the experiment that tests our hypothesis! What if the experiment fails and we discover that our hypothesis was false? Then what? Our life is over. Determining one’s answers to the ultimate questions implicit in worldview consideration has ultimate consequences.
Throughout history, Christianity has given answers to these questions. These answers explain the impact the Judeo-Christian heritage has had on human cultures. Consider a few examples of social change provided by Christianity.
In the Roman Empire in the early years of the Christian Era:
Many permanent legal reforms were set in motion by Emperors Constantine (280-337) and Justinian (483-565) that can be laid to the influence of Christianity. Licentious and cruel sports were checked; new legislation was ordered to protect the slave, the prisoner, the mutilated man, and the outcast woman. Children were granted important legal rights. Women were raised from a status of degradation to that of legal protection. Hospitals and orphanages were created to take care of foundlings. Personal feuds and private wars were put under restraint. Branding of slaves was halted.4
In the Medieval Era the value of human life became normative as the Christian world-view sought to create order in the collapse of the Roman Empire:
Before the explosive and penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of abortion, infanticide, abandonment and exposure were a normal part of everyday life in Europe. Afterward, they were regarded as the grotesque perversions that they actually are. That remarkable new pro-life consensus was detonated by a cultural reformation of cosmic proportions. It was catalyzed by civil decrees, ecclesiastical canons, and merciful activity.5
This is also seen in the era of the founding of America. America’s Western civilization was an outgrowth of the Reformation era, and the Protestant ideal of biblical wisdom seen in its teaching of “Sola Scriptura” helped to create our institutions of government:
Over a ten-year period, political science professors at the university of Houston analyzed over 15,000 writings and speeches by the Founding Fathers to determine the primary source of ideas behind the Constitution. The three most quoted sources were the French philosopher Charles Montesquieu, English jurist William Blackstone, and English philosopher John Locke. But the Bible was quoted more than any of these four times more than Montesquieu, six times more often than Locke, and twelve times more than Blackstone. Ninety-four percent of the Founding Fathers’ quotes were quoted, either directly or indirectly, from the Bible.6
It is therefore of immense importance to men to have fixed ideas about God, their soul, and their duties toward their Creator and their fellows, for doubt about these first principles would leave all their actions to chance and condemn them, more or less, to anarchy and impotence.7
President Theodore Roosevelt – “...the next half-century will determine if we will advance the cause of Christian civilization or revert to the horrors of brutal paganism...”
American author and lecturer Gary DeMar has written: “.... It’s the power of regeneration, not revolution, that brings about change to individuals who then reform families, churches, businesses, and every other feature of God’s kingdom.”8 (From: War of the Worldviews)
But there has been a major shift away from Christianity in the prevailing worldviews of the mid-twentieth century that continues to directly impact us today: In 1909, in regard to a “Christian Civilization,” President Theodore Roosevelt said: