I have watched with interest the occupy movement over the past
few months. Cities have tolerated these individuals as they protested
the wealth of banks and the 1% to the detriment of the 99%. I’ve also
watched the deterioration of the morality of our society and the
denigration of organized religion.
Two articles recently caught my attention. The first, an article by
Bill Murchison entitled “The Atheists and the Savior” posted in
Townhall.com.
http://townhall.com/columnists/billmurchison/2011/12/20/the_atheists_and_the_savior.
In it Murchison writes about the death of Christopher Hitchens, the
world famous British atheist, in December of last year. Hitchens died
of oesophageal cancer.
According to Murchison, Hitchens was against all religions, or at
least said he was. The title of a best-selling book he published several
years ago was,
God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.
Everything. Well, that’s a little stiff, perhaps. One problem,
according to Murchison, with such a stance was its dogmatism. If you
think, say, that Christians are dogmatic — inflexible in views that are
open to question or, anyway, examination — what about dogmatic atheists?
It is fair, Murchison continues, to suggest that Christianity has maybe actually facilitated the atheist movement.
Murchison:
How? you say. By downplaying, I would say, its own truth claims
while up-playing its social conscience and good works. This leaves the
impression on minds inside and outside the church that faith in Christ,
while possibly a good idea, is just a good, modern-style choice — take
it or leave it. The drama of the faith thereby loses its drama, its pull
and its intensity. Is it just a choice? OK. Which is where the atheist
fraternity rushes in, expostulating about the stupid things Christians
have done — e.g., kill and persecute each other — and saying, what
person of sensitivity could believe in such stuff? Q.E.D., end of debate
— assuming there ever was one.
The over-arching, all-consuming factuality of the faith is the
point Christians tend to leave alone, out of fear they might hurt the
feelings of non-believers or out of — I hate to say this — their own
waning conviction that it’s really, deep-down true, hence inescapable.
I think Murchison is onto something here. We Christians in the
United States have tolerated the nonsense of not being allowed to put up
Christmas nativity scenes in public squares for fear of offending
atheists and other religions.
This past Christmas season, a town in Texas pushed back against a
Wisconsin based group which threatened action against the town’s
nativity scene. Several thousand Christians turned out in support of
keeping the display on public property. Don’t mess with Texas.
The second article that caught my attention was one by Chuck Norris entitled “The Feds’ war on religion”.
http://townhall.com/columnists/chucknorris/2011/12/20/feds_war_on_religion_part_1_of_2/page/full/.
According to Norris:
It’s one thing to watch “merry Christmas” be omitted from signs
in your favorite department store but quite another to see Bibles
withheld from wounded warriors at Walter Reed National Military Medical
Center. It’s true! On Dec. 2, the Family Research Council reported that
it had discovered a memo released in September at the esteemed military
hospital, in which Navy officials announced that “no religious items
(including Bibles, reading material, and/or artifacts) are allowed to be
given away or used during a visit.”
Norris is not a theologian…rather an iconic figure whose public
persona is one of a macho man. However, his instincts are in the right
place, in my opinion. Highly respectful of the military, Norris wonders
in his article about the future of our military under the present
commander in chief. Excerpts below:
But imagine if the FRC had not found this memo. Imagine how many
others like it aren’t found and are circulated around the federal
government.
If you think this is an isolated incident, consider the following
dozen-plus examples reported in the past six months alone by the FRC
and Rep. Forbes’ office and a few of my own I found, which document how
religious freedom and Christian liberty in particular have been limited,
quarantined, omitted or outright obliterated.
–The Air Force Academy apologized for merely announcing Operation
Christmas Child –a Christian-based charity and relief program designed
to send holiday gifts to impoverished children around the world.
–Yet the Air Force is building an $80,000 Stonehenge-like worship
site for “earth-based” religions, including “pagans, Wiccans, druids,
witches and followers of Native American faiths.”
–The Marine Corps considered tearing down a Camp Pendleton cross meant to honor fallen heroes.
–Air Force officials stripped religious curriculum from a 20-year-old course on “just war theory.”
–The Department of Veterans Affairs censored references to God and Jesus during prayers at Houston National Cemetery.
–The Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate passed the $662 billion
National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which included a repeal of
Article 125 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which states: “Any
person subject to this chapter who engages in unnatural carnal
copulation with another person of the same or opposite sex or with an
animal is guilty of sodomy.”
–The Department of Health and Human Services unveiled new health
care rules that ignore basic conscience protections for medical workers
with faith-based objections to abortion and contraception.
–Officials at HHS denied funding for the U.S. Conference of
Catholic Bishops’ successful program for sex trafficking victims because
of the church’s teaching on human life.
–Administration officials refused to intervene in the closing of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
–President Barack Obama has lobbied for the passage of the
Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would trample on the faith of
employers in hiring, firing and promotion decisions.
–The Pentagon released new regulations that force chaplains to perform same-sex “weddings” despite their religious objections.
–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton demonized other countries’ religious beliefs as an obstacle to radical homosexual rights.
–Just this past week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation
sent a letter to officials at Travis Air Force Base, demanding the
removal or transfer of a Nativity scene and a menorah that are part of a
larger holiday display on the base.
What is going on in the U.S. military? Why is it so difficult for
the feds to understand the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,
which says they “shall make no law respecting an establishment of
religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”?
And how many of these restrictions of our religious liberties are
direct results of President Obama’s being in office? And if these
occurred in just the past six months, imagine what would happen in
another four years if Obama were to be re-elected. Our service members,
as well as our devoted military Christian chaplains, deserve better.
Gone are the days when the commander in chief rallied the troops
and nation with a religious presidential call as Ronald Reagan and
Franklin D. Roosevelt did. FDR declared in his Christmas address to the
nation Dec. 24, 1944 (the first Christmas after D-Day): “Here, at home,
we will celebrate this Christmas Day in our traditional American way
because of its deep spiritual meaning to us; because the teachings of
Christ are fundamental in our lives; and because we want our youngest
generation to grow up knowing the significance of this tradition and the
story of the coming of the immortal Prince of Peace and Good Will. … We
pray that with victory will come a new day of peace on earth, in which
all the nations of the earth will join together for all time. That is
the spirit of Christmas, the holy day. May that spirit live and grow
throughout the world in all the years to come.”
The United States was founded on Judeo-Christian values. Just a
cursory study of the writings of our founding fathers makes that very
clear. Are we turning into a nation whose government wants to
obliterate all things religious?
Speaking of the Constitution’s structural division of powers, members
of the U.S. House of Representatives have been told they can’t send
constituents Christmas greetings and have it paid for with tax dollars
according to the Congressional Franking Commission – which reviews all
congressional mail to determine if it can be paid with tax dollars –
and was told that Christmas greetings can’t be sent in official mail.
According to the commission, cards can’t say: “Merry Christmas or
Happy New Year” and be paid for by U.S. tax dollars, but they can say
“Have a happy new year,” referring to the time of year, but not the
holiday. A manual explaining what the Franking Commission is, is available
at
http://cha.house.gov/sites/republicans.cha.house.gov/files/documents/franking_docs/franking_manual.pdf.
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is also on to
something when he suggests that Congress should review the existence of
appeals courts and activist judges which continue to take this country
down the road to pure secularism. The Constitution of the United States
in the limited space it gives to the judicial branch specifically
states in Article Three, Section One that “the judicial power of the
United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior
courts that Congress from time to time shall establish.”
http://www.usconstitution.net/const.html.
It was never the intention of the founding fathers that the three
branches of government be co-equal. Checks and balances, yes, but the
legislative branch was to have dominant say. What has happened over our
history is that the judicial branch has assumed power it simply did not
have in its founding. Judicial review of laws passed by the legislative
branch came later in
Marbury vs. Madison.
Over the past twenty years, no court in the land has made more
anti-American and anti-Christian rulings than the Ninth US Circuit Court
of Appeals. Located in California, the heart of the most liberal part
of the country, the land of nuts, fruits and flakes, the 9th Circuit
certainly holds true to its surroundings. According to Gingrich, “The
courts have become grotesquely dictatorial and far too powerful.” I
agree.
I guess I am tired of all three branches of our federal government,
to a greater or lesser degree, establishing the religion of secularism. I
have read the First Amendment, am familiar with many of the
nutsy-cuckoo decisions of the 9th Circuit (such as declaring the words
“under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional), and am
well-acquainted with the original intent of the founding fathers not to
establish a state religion for the U.S…but, come on people, we are
losing our common sense, and many of our elected officials are first on
the list of theophobes.
