Remember Where You Came From⤒🔗

A few short years after Bavinck and Kuyper prophesied the religious struggle that would characterize the twentieth centu­ry, a most remarkable set of lectures was delivered. They are remarkable not because of their content, but because of who deliv­ered them. David Josiah Brewer set out to prove that the United States was, even in 1905, a Christian nation'. Why is that so remarkable? Perhaps it wasn't—then. But imagine the same case being made today by an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court!

Brewer treats his subject as if preparing a brief. He dispassionately surveys the simple and unavoidable facts and comes to a sim­ple and unavoidable conclusion. Consider:

America's actual history began, "In the Name of God, Amen." These were the first words of the Mayflower Compact, which went on to speak of the voyage to plant the "first" colony as having been undertaken "for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith."

Throughout the founding period there was no doubt that it was a Christian land that was being established. The Constitution of Maryland required that officeholders pro­vide "a declaration of belief in the Christian religion," and until 1851 defined freedom of religion this way: "(I)t is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him." Therefore, it went on, "all persons professing the Christian religion, are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty." It fur­ther allowed that "the Legislature may, in their discretion, lay a general and equal tax, for the support of the Christian religion."

The Constitution of Vermont was even more specific: "(N)or can any man who professes the Protestant religion, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right, as a citizen." Presumably, such protection did not apply to atheists. In promoting the free exercise of religious worship according to conscience, this Constitution recognized limits: "(E)very sect or denomination of people ought to observe the Sabbath, or the Lord's Day, and keep up, and support, some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the will of GOD." The Ten Commandments, effective­ly banished from the Public Square today, were not only honored in the Public Square at our founding, but the commandment regarded by many today as the most "con­troversial," the Fourth, was actually written into various state constitutions, its obser­vance regarded as belonging to the very foundation of proper social order.

The Constitution of New Hampshire (1784), after guaranteeing the unalienable right to worship God according to con­science, goes on to say: "As morality and piety, rightly grounded on evangelical prin­ciples, will give the best and greatest securi­ty to government, and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to due sub­jection; and as the knowledge of these, is most likely to be propagated through socie­ty by the institution of the public worship of the DEITY, and of public instruction in morality and religion; therefore the people of this state have a right to impower, and do hereby fully impower, the legislature to authorize from time to time, the several towns, parishes, bodies-corporate, or reli­gious societies within this state, to make adequate provision at their own expense, for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion and morality." The Massachusetts Constitution (until 1863) had nearly identical provisions. It was thought a thing perfectly proper ­indeed, necessary - to use the power of the state to propagate religion, and not just any religion, but the Protestant religion.

The Connecticut Constitution (until 1818) saw the interests of the state as being bound up in the interests of the Church: "(T)he free fruition of such liberties and privileges as humanity, civility and Christianity call for, as is due every man in his place and portion...hath ever been, and will be the tranquillity and stability of Churches and Commonwealth; and the denial thereof, the disturbances, if not the ruin of both." The North Carolina Constitution (until 1876) held "That no person who shall deny the being of God, or of the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments...shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department of this State." And the oath of office used in Delaware (until 1792) read, in part: "I...do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration."

It can hardly be imagined that the modern mantra which chants "First Amendment" does so correctly. That our Founding Fathers wanted no national denomination, that we can accept. That the Fathers who represented the States cited above would have understood the First Amendment as prohibiting States from establishing reli­gions—well, history and fact stand against such a revisionist view.

But Brewer goes beyond citing colonial charters and constitutions and other founda­tional documents. He describes widespread cultural phenomena which made it evident that Christianity was the religion of the land. How surprising, in view of modern school and college systems, to learn that Brewer could write in 1905 that "Up to a recent date the rule was that the presidents and an exceedingly large majority of the faculty of all these institutions [of higher learning] be ministers. It was a national sur­prise when first a layman was elected a col­lege president."

As Bavinck foresaw, the twentieth century has witnessed that gigantic conflict of worldviews. Alas, we have lost. Expressions of Christian faith and sense, when at odds with prevailing humanist sen­timent, are already socially unacceptable. It is only a matter of time before the public expression of Christian faith will be illegal. Just this month, a coalition of humanistic religious leaders, including many professed "Christians," urged the Southern Baptists to abandon their plan to come to Chicago to evangelize. Such actions, they claimed, are the breeding grounds of "hate crimes." Evangelism leads to hate crimes! Certainly such actions (it will be said) must be made illegal!

Rousas Ha'naviy (The Prophet)←⤒🔗

In 1965, R.J. Rushdoony saw as inevitable what many then thought was unthinkable: homosexuals would emerge as the great object of liberal solicitude and the new stan­dard for measuring "tolerance." Rushdoony saw this for what it was: part of a major religious shift in the West, away from Biblical Christianity and toward anti-Christianity. "If there is no God and no divinely ordained law, then not only does perversion have equal rights with morality, but actually truer rights, because Christian morality is seen as an imposition on and a dehumanization of man, whereas perversion is an act of liberty and autonomy..."

From prophecy, to fulfillment, 34 years: In 1999, 1500 Lesbians gathered in Washington, DC, to coordinate their agenda to advance degeneracy as our society's sal­vation. To do this, they said, they must be allied with all "rights" causes in the con­sciousness of American people. According to one news report, a speaker said that the activists had to "work to connect the dots of the 'isms' that oppress us...and build the America that we desire." What they mean is that they don't want to have their "cause" viewed as separable from any other "jus­tice" issue. One Lesbian explained the agenda: "Progressivism seeks a world with universal social, racial, and economic jus­tice; we seek the right to be fed and shel­tered, to love and be loved, and to live with­out fear... We recognize the centrality of economic inequity, class, and gender in all forms of oppression." Marx refuses to stay dead. And America is poised to bid him enter. They've lost the voice which can say "No." With most Christian offspring in gov­ernment schools, they won't soon recover it.

Lesbian Congressman Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the keynote speaker, asked, "How do we go about creating the world in which we want to live?" (Of course, in their view, God has not done that.) She answered, "...Do things publicly, first in small num­bers, then in greater numbers, until that is just the way it is." The only distinction homosexuals have as a group is perversion. Get ready to see lots of it.

Today it must be said that the laws in our nation — indeed, in Western civilization — do favor, and will increasingly favor and reward those who practice and/or advocate homosexuality and other loathsome behav­iors. What too many remain blithely unaware of is that the same laws which favor revolting behavior must disfavor righteous behavior. As homosexuals emerge from the closet Christians will be stuffed in.

This is why laws exist, always and in every case: to serve an order. Think about it: the reason that even the Levitical laws are changed (St. Paul argues in Hebrews) is because there has been a change in order. "For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law" (Heb 7:12). Laws are made to serve an order. If the order is changed, the laws must also change.

The tricky thing about our American cir­cumstance is this: the order has been changed while Christians have been asleep at the wheel—or busy contemplating their navels, or arguing over such "earthshaking" issues as common grace.

There has already been an inversion of assigned values in the Public Square. A society's order, you see, is always revealed by what is permitted in its Public Square, and the respective valuations there assigned to various beliefs and practices. Laws are then drafted and enforced to preserve and advance this Public Square order. The laws of our nation, then, will follow — they must follow — the new order.

Ranked Out/Out Ranked←⤒🔗

When we think "law and order," we ordi­narily take order to mean a state of peace and serenity. That is the second sense of the word. What we ought to have in mind is its first meaning: social position; rank in the community. That's where the critical rela­tionship between law and order is discov­ered. For law is always in order to an order, and the order is brought about through its advocates being rewarded and its opponents being punished. That's what laws facilitate: the promotion of behaviors approved by the order and the frustration of behaviors which are not.

Law is never neutral. It necessarily pro­ceeds from a particular worldview and seeks the establishment of an order in har­mony with that view. Worldviews proceed from religious presuppositions. Law, then, must be seen as a tool by which a societal order is generated and/or established. In all societies, the righteous are the justified ones, those in accord with the prevailing religious sentiment and expectations. These favored ones are rewarded by law. Conversely, the wicked, those regarded as a threat to the order, are punished.

We are now poised to welcome anti-Christianity as the official religion of the American Public Square, with laws estab­lishing anti-Christianity not far behind. Remarkably, a Trojan Horse is no longer necessary: we open the gates for those who have told us that they are going to eradicate us. "Come right in," we say.

The Old Squeeze Play←⤒🔗

"This town isn't big enough for the both of us," is not only a good line for a western movie, it's an accurate axiom describing the religion of the Public Square. Two hostile religions cannot receive equal treatment. At most, one will be accommodated in terms defined by the other. Today, anti-Christianity has won the battle for presence in the Public Square.

And — not to depress, but to inform you — it isn't likely to get better any time soon. The three major means by which anti-Christianity came to its current position continue to hold sway over the minds of most professing Christians in the USA. 1) Compromising (and compromised) church­es are supported by ignorant Christians, 2) modern anti-Christian media is the unchal­lenged source of news for most Christians, and 3) government schools continue to be the de facto choice of American Christian parents for indoctrinating their offspring. (Focus on the Family, arguably the most influential evangelical organization in America, in the August, 1999, issue of their magazine, encourages its millions of readers to "rebuild hope for public schools," when they should be screaming, "Fire! Get out!")

The naiveté of modern Christians concern­ing the religious character of the so-called "Culture War" is astonishing. The institu­tions of a society are born to and raised by the shared religion of that society. At one time our institutions were explicitly and implicitly Christian. This manifest truth has been altogether lost on our generation, thanks to the above-named conduits of anti-Christianity (churches, media, schools). We have been raised to believe that culture is religiously neutral rather than religiously determined. While we were having revival meetings, our national religion has changed.

During this twentieth century we have seen the success of the slow, deliberate and systematic effort to eradicate every vestige of the evidence of our explicit Christian ori­gins from our national consciousness. The long effort is finally, for the time being, tri­umphant. The revisionists have won out in the pulpits, the media and the schools of our land. You'd simply never know that we were ever a self-conscious Christian nation for our first two centuries. A big eraser has been at work.

But it has not left a blank slate. The Public Square has not become neutral; its been turned over to the advocates of another religion, viz., anti-Christianity. The ACLU recently won another case requiring the removal of a religious symbol. This one concerned the ichthus on the seal of little Republic, Missouri.

Last year the ACLU won another lawsuit against another Missouri municipality. The City of Florissant, MO, was forbidden by a US District Court from displaying a nativity scene at Christmas-time in front of the Florrisant Civic Center.

Irrationale←⤒🔗

In explaining the rationale for their aggres­sion in seeking to remove religious symbols from government properties, ACLU spokesman Deborah Jacobs said, "It is important to remember that religious dis­plays on public property send a message that anyone who is not a member of the reli­gion being celebrated by the government is a second-class citizen." Well, of course, this is quite right and as it should be. That is clearly the understanding of our Founders when they made explicit mention of our preference for Protestant Christianity. Others could be received, but all were expected to abide by Christian law.

My, how things have changed. Miss Jacobs went on to explain, "People who put nativity scenes on their front lawns, pro­claim that theirs is a Christian home. People who put menorahs in their windows pro­claim that theirs is a Jewish home. Neither of these messages is one that any city gov­ernment should send."

Well, what message should they send? What's this I hear? President Clinton offi­cially declaring the month of June, 1999 and forevermore, to be Gay and Lesbian Pride Month? Hmmm. And what's this I see? Secretary of State Madeline Albright swearing in a militant homosexual to be Ambassador to a 98% Roman Catholic country (how very diplomatic!). And who is that holding the Bible during the ceremony? Why, none other than James Hormel's sodomite partner. (Would that it had opened to Leviticus 20:13.) And what's this I see in San Francisco? Is that Mayor Willie Brown, Jr., raising the rainbow flag, symbolizing gay pride, at City Hall? Yes, it is. Now, does all this send a message that those who do not support gay "rights" are "second-class citizens"? It sure does. And we sure are. Because a new religion is being served in the Public Square.

As we were saying, laws exist to serve an order. Laws are never "neutral." They will always and in every case favor an order. Those who promote the chosen order will be advanced, those who oppose it demoted. The chosen order determines the laws and the laws determine who goes into and who comes out of the proverbial _closet. The order a people chooses is religiously deter­mined.. People will seek that order which they believe reflects the will of their deity. This is how it works: God–Order–Laws.

The laws and order of the God of the Bible — which have more or less governed the West for 2,000 years — are in the process of being thoroughly banished from our Public Square. God's laws and God's order will be replaced, not by religiously neutral, nice and friendly secular laws, but by a vicious breed of anti-Christian laws. This anti-Christianity has gained and will contin­ue to gain power by pretending to be a sim­ple and sincere plea for tolerance. But this tolerance is a crowbar, a device employed to gain entry and position until the door can be busted open and knocked down. Most remain oblivious to the naked implication of the fact that Christians, as such, today constitute the only people group in the United States and Canada against whom hate speech is considered acceptable; indeed, such hate speech is often regarded as the fulfillment of a civic duty.

Compare the last time you heard a report of a "dangerous, extremist Christian hate group" and the last time, if ever, you heard of a dangerous, extremist homosexual hate group (like the one, e.g., that firebombed Rev. Chuck McIlhenney's home, while he and his family were asleep inside). When a homosexual was murdered in Wyoming earlier this year the press made it the cause of a decade. When a little boy was raped and murdered by two homosexuals in Arkansas last month, the media becomes strangely silent!

The current hue clamoring for homosexual rights is hardly ever recognized (by Western Christians) for what it is: a cry for the destruction of Biblical Christianity.

But long before it became a demand for homosexual rights, G. Groen van Prinsterer recognized the sinister character of the egal­itarian worldview, which he called The Revolution, a nod to its most consistent incarnation, the French Revolution of 1789. Dr. D. Martin Lloyd-Jones said, "Groen van Prinsterer saw the dangerous character of the French Revolution and all it had intro­duced...(H)e was very much a voice crying in the wilderness." The barren tract has spread considerably since then and the voic­es opposing it have indeed been few. But van Prinsterer's words have lost not a whit of their relevance. Let's review some of his insights.

Groen, in 1847, saw the essential issue as the exaltation of Reason above Revelation. This, of course, is exactly correct, as we see in Genesis 3 and everywhere else sin has gained an upper hand. Satan brought our first parents under his dominion by success­fully tempting them to interpret their cir­cumstances apart from God's pre-defining Word. It was man's task to accept God's order and live in terms of His definitions. Satan offered him "something better." "Determine for yourself what is good and what is evil. If we have to live with these two categories, you might as well fill each with content determined by yourself. If you let God do that for you, your value will be proportionately diminished. You can only be free when you throw off His yoke, use your own head, make your own definitions, and thus create your own order. As long as you live in His order you are no better than a slave. Come on out here where the air is free! Be as God yourself!"

And although they had all they needed ­including an unambiguous warning that the day they ate thereof, they'd die — they exalt­ed their reasoning above God's revelation: Eve considered the "neutral facts," viz., "the fruit was good for food and pleasing to the eye and desirable for gaining wisdom." Never mind that it was food that killed, beauty that blinded, and wisdom that was folly.

Groen taught that wherever human Reason is exalted above God's Revelation, the latter "must shortly be reduced to a compilation of legends and fables." Everything will be explained by "natural" causes. In the end, any remaining Deity will become "a mere abstraction, a hypothesis, a hypothetical god." Of course, a god who is nothing more than a convenient limiting concept cannot function as a basis for morality. Therefore as faith in Christian doctrine declines, Christian morality will disappear. Why should it stay? Morality is only an opinion. As Raynal, a celebrated philosopher, said, "Properly speaking, there is but one duty, which is to make oneself happy." Thus, Groen showed, on the principles of unbe­lief, "there is no basis for [moral] obligation beyond enlightened self-interest." And where God has been removed as the source of the moral code, law comes to be regarded as mere convention — i.e., law is not from the one true God and therefore cannot be transcendent, invariant and universally applicable. Thus, man is called upon to live in harmony, not with God and His order and Law, but only with his own [fallen] nature. Quoting Lamennais, Groen notes, "(M)en's inclinations are made the sole measure of his duties."

Inclines←⤒🔗

Homosexuals, therefore, need cite no other justification for their actions than their inclination. This state of affairs has come about through egalitarianism saturating Western thought. And, you may rest assured, it will not stop at homosexuality. As night follows day, pedophiles and zoophiliacs will also seek, and be granted, legitimacy in the new order. For, "step by step, men are dragged to the abyss...Many, however, shrink from being consistent at any price, preferring to quit halfway down the slope." Nevertheless, once man is grant­ed the right and authority to determine for himself what is good and what is evil, and once it is granted that the only referent for that determination is inclination, well, once that "principle is granted, every step in its further development has the virtue of rela­tive truth. Thus, what many will shun, oth­ers will carry forward as a compelling con­sequence. Where most will shuffle along reluctantly, others will drive ahead. The ones who are utterly convinced, supported as they are by relative truth [by relative truth, van Prinsterer means: they are making valid applications of their erroneous, but granted, starting point; in other words, they are making a true use of falsehood], will falter at nothing. Here lies the secret of error's triumph."

Remember that Bavinck, in 1901, foresaw that "radicals and socialists are to be the leaders in the twentieth century. They have agreed tb hold a total and final clearing out of whatever of the old Christian world-view consciously or unconsciously still remains in our laws and morals, in our education and civilization...All conservatism stands weak over against radicalism, with which it agrees in principle." And Robert Lewis Dabney, the greatest prophet among the Southern theologians, hit a bull's-eye in the 1890's, observing that "American conser­vatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward toward perdition." Dabney saw that the advocates of women's "rights" would triumph "because the premises from which they argue their revolution have been irrevocably admitted by the bulk of the people." Thus van Prinsterer and Bavinck and Dabney alike knew that false premises, once adopt­ed, would lead inevitably to certain conclu­sions whether or not some advocates' of the premises liked those applications. For, says Dabney, "the Creator has made man, in spite of himself, a logical animal; and con­sequences will work themselves out, whether he designs it or not, to those results which the premises dictate... What was the resisted novelty of yesterday is to-day one of the accepted principles of conservatism [cf. the Republican Party and the "right" to abortion, and now see its tent widening to encompass homosexuals as a supporting contingent]; it is now conservative only in affecting to resist the next innovation, which tomorrow will be forced upon its timidity and will be succeeded by some third revolution, to be denounced and then adopted in its turn."

Keep Your Eyes Open←⤒🔗

Keep an eye on how the "debate" concern­ing homosexual rights is being conducted in the Public Square. God's express will, His Word, has already been precluded from the arena. The only thing permitted is human opinion, thus thrusting the debate onto the very foundation which led, inexorably, to the practice which is supposedly being chal­lenged! Therefore, the terms of all permit­ted public debate insure the victory of the advocates of perversion.

We began this century as a Christian nation. As we approach the end of the cen­tury we are witnessing a cleaning out of what's left of Christianity: expressions of the Christian religion are being stuffed into the closets once reserved for perverts. For in an anti-Christian culture, we are the new perverts. One hundred years. What a differ­ence a century makes!

Christians must realize that what we are witnessing is a war of worldviews, not of particulars. The only weapons that can pre­vail, therefore, are those cited by St. Paul in Ephesians 6: Word and Spirit. The Word of God must be our starting point in public debate or we must lose. Groen knew this. That is why he said, "Over against all the wisdom of men and in awareness of my own frailty, I have for a slogan [this word] as the earnest of victory: It is written! — a foundation that will stand against any artillery, a root that will hold against every whirlwind of philosophic unbelief."

Let's use that Word — and live it as God enables — for the next one hundred years. And let's watch carefully what He does. We may have offered the future to the anti-Christians. But God has not co-signed our surrender. In His charter for us He has said: No weapon formed against His people can prosper. And that's the truth. Amen.

FOOTNOTE 3: The United States: A Christian Nation, has been reprinted and is available from American Vision, 1-800-628-9460.