How Change Occurred in Our Education/Governmental System pt. 2

Con’t -How Change Occurred in Our Education/Governmental System Through the Years pt. 2
by John Rosenstern

WALL OF SEPARATION

The Danbury Baptist Association wrote to President Thomas Jefferson in 1801, and in the president’s reply, he coined the phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” in assuring the Baptists that government would not interfere with their religious freedoms recently guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. The phrase, “a wall of separation between church and state,” cannot be found in the Constitution or any other founding documents. Justice Black made a decision that was based on a quote from the response letter Jefferson wrote back to Danbury Baptist Association. What the First Amendment says is: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers knew the intension of the First Amendment was simply to prevent the establishment of a single denomination. The letter sent to Jefferson by Danbury expressed their concern that the guarantee of the “free exercise of religion” appeared in the First Amendment. To them, this suggested that the right to religious freedom was a government-granted right rather than a God-granted right. Their concern, as should be ours, was that someday the government might try to regulate religious expression. A court declared in 1799: “By our form of government, the Christian religion is the stablished religion; and all its sects and denominations of Christians are placed on the same and equal footing.” The misapplication and distortion by Justice Black of Jefferson’s response phrase “a wall of separation between church and state” gave license to all in government to use the new philosophy of the court to abolish Christianity from the public sector.

The eight words within Jefferson’s letter to Danbury have become a mantra often repeated enough for the masses to believe it as though this is what the founders desired. The unconstitutional phrase was used successfully in the case of Engel v. Vitale—the case that struck down school prayer. The court also redefined the word church in their ruling. Up until 1962, the word church, as used in the phrase “separation of church and state,” was defined to mean a federally established denomination. From 1962, the word church would now mean “a religious activity in public.” Prayer was considered an activity in public and, therefore, deemed unconstitutional based on the new meaning. The meaning of the First Amendment was altered by the courts.

Within a year after prayer was successfully removed from schools by the court, two more cases also eliminated Bible reading, Bible classes, and instruction. This was a great departure from our founders. NOW WHAT? Christian education was replaced with humanism and psychology. Have the changes in our schools helped our society? Is moral evolution working to improve humanity, or has it been our demise in America? We will continue our discussion on education next month. Satan knows that if he can get the minds of our youth while they are impressionable, he can then plant seeds of doubt and foster rebellion against Christianity. The Bible teaches us in Proverbs 22:6: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”