Tag Archives: The First Amendment

Bill Lockwood: America a Christian Nation 4 (1)

Posted on by Leave a comment

by Bill Lockwood

When our Founding Fathers referred to this nation, as “Christian Nation,” as did John Jay, one of authors of Federalist Papers, they did not intend that this be understood in the sense that an official church had been established, or that a “Theocracy” was in place, but rather that the principles upon which our republic rests were Christian in origin. Benjamin Morris, a second-generation American, in surveying the mass of material on this topic, summarized:

“Christianity is the principle and all-pervading element, the deepest and most solid foundation, of all our civil institutions. It is the religion of the people—the national religion; but we have neither an established church nor an established religion.”

Some of founders even referred to America as a “Christian Republic.” That generation demonstrated this by the fact that they Morris adorned public buildings with biblical symbols such as Moses crossing Red Sea; or Moses holding tablets of stone carved on the building of the Supreme Court; or the even state papers of the Continental Congress that are filled with Christianity.

One of the formative laws of the United States is the Declaration of Independence, which reads more like a theological statement to the secularists of today. Our republic posited that rights come from God and that the single role of government is to protect what God gave us, inclusive of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The Republic itself is an outgrowth of Christian principles.

Roger Sherman, from Connecticut, one of the most influential of the founders, having signed not only the Declaration of Independence, but the Articles of Confederation as well as the
Constitution. He wrote to Samuel Baldwin in 1790 that “his faith in the new republic was largely because he felt it was founded on Christianity as he understood it.”

Joseph Story, a jurist who served on the Supreme Court during the founding era and wrote the first lengthy Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, commented as follows:

Probably at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal sentiment was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.

The Supreme Court in numerous cases has referred to this as “A Christian Nation.” Most notable is the 1892 case entitled The Church of the Holy Trinity v. The United States. Here the Court packed its decision with a litany of precedents from American history to establish “this is a religious people, … this is a Christian Nation.”

Now it is Different

When speaking of the Bible, one denominational church manual reads, “Now it is different.” Sadly, so it is in the teaching of the founding of America, the Constitution itself, and American civics in general.

Modern Americans have become so ill-educated and misinformed on the subject at hand that even universities and professorships, endowed with tax dollars, argue vehemently against America being conceived as a “Christian nation.” They trumpet loudly that this is a “secular state” and has been from the beginning.

In 2009, for example, the church of Christ where I preach hosted a “Christianity and the Constitution” public seminar, featuring various speakers, establishing that America was designed as a “Christian nation.” Objections by letters to the editor appeared in the local paper, The Times Record News of Wichita Falls. One woman wrote:

…the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and the Constitution were clearly written as secular documents, with not a single mention of Jesus or the word Christian … [I]t is a fact that the major players in the production of the federal documents were steeped in the Enlightenment: deists, humanists, Masons, and skeptics … [emp. added]

She went on to say that we had “presented discredited information” and “tortured” history to establish the claim that America was a Christian nation.

In answer to that letter, I included the following:

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (cited in the US Supreme Court case [of 1892, mentioned above] said that “Christianity is and always has been a part of the common law.” … The Supreme Court of 1844 (Vidal) said, “It is unnecessary for us, … to consider the establishment of a school for college for the propagation of Judaism or Deism or any other form of infidelity. Such a case is not to be presumed to exist in a Christian country.”

It was also noted in response that Noah Webster, who helped ratify our Constitution, wrote that the source of our republican principles “is the Bible, particularly the New Testament or Christian religion.”

Concluding, I added that regarding to “deists” by whom our nation was supposedly founded, that at the time of the Constitutional Convention deists were not even allowed to hold public office! An actual listing of the religious preferences of the delegates to the Constitutional convention of 1787 shows that 55 declared themselves Christians while only 3 called themselves deists. That is about 5%.

Nathan Jun of MSU

After the above exchange in the paper, Dr. Nathan Jun of Midwestern State University came in to help out the secular cause. He wrote:

In response to Bill Lockwood’s April 21 letter: The First Amendment of the Constitution states that ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion …’ Both conventional approaches to interpreting the ‘establishment clause’ – the first as well as the more conservative accommodationist approach—strictly preclude any implicit or explicit religious preferences on the part of the Constitution or Congress.

The United States of America is most certainly not a ‘Christian’ nation, and this is a basic and uncontroversial principle of constitutional law. Whether or not a preponderance of the founders of this country were Christians, moreover, is wholly irrelevant. The government they founded is and has been secular in principle, if not always in spirit. The antiquated, anti-Semitic Supreme Court decision that Mr. Lockwood cited (instead of, say, the Constitution) says nothing about the fundamental character of our system of government. It does, however, say an awful lot about Mr. Lockwood and, perhaps, about his particular brand of Christianity—at least to this non-Christian.

The errors in Dr. Jun’s statement are so numerous that it is only possible to note the highlights, which I did in a following letter to the editor.

Dr. Jun: sir, your philosophy is woefully misinformed. The 1st Amendment, according to James Madison, merely forbids the federal government from establishing a ‘national church.’ No one then, nor do I, wish to have an official state church. However, that is far different from speaking of our Christian nation in the sense of recognizing Christian principles being imbedded within its framework and forming the underpinning of our society. As Patrick Henry put it, this nation ‘was founded upon the gospel of Jesus Christ.’ Joseph Story, appointed by Madison to the Supreme Court, said, ‘we do not attribute this prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity … an attempt to level all religions and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference would have created universal disapprobation …’

I suppose that these men are too antiquated to know what they are talking about land need modernists from Universities to straighten them out. Not a Christian nation? ‘Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty as well as the privilege … of our Christian nation to select Christians as their rulers’ (John Jay, 1st chief justice of the Supreme Court).

Next, I only mentioned that the Founders were Christians in answer to another letter which opined that this country was founded by a bunch of deists and secular humanists—not as proof of a Christian nation. You missed that point as well.

Third, to cavalierly dismiss as ‘anti-Semitic’ the 1892 Supreme Court decision which identified us as a Christian nation bespeaks of dep-seated prejudice by Dr. Jun and a fundamental lack of understanding about the roots of America. It is extremely sad that our tax dollars support this type of radical expression.

In truth, the fact that this was established as a Christian nation infuriates the secularists in our country. Perhaps they ought to be thankful that the only “accommodation” that America made was to the irreligious, allowing them to live freely in a Christian nation without forcing them to support a state-sponsored church.

I am certain that if these professors, of which Dr. Nathan Jun is only one, who personally publishes an “Abolish the Police” signature on his Facebook page, were to live in a Muslim country, they might have a different perspective.

After the above public exchange, I contacted Dr. Jun by email in an effort to engage in a public discussion on Christianity in general. But his contempt for Christianity apparently knows no bounds as he tartly replied, “do not ever contact me again.”

So much for a free society where ideas can be exchanged openly in gentlemanly fashion.

Bill Lockwood: “Bring on the Lions!” — Homosexual Agenda Seeks to Destroy Christianity 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

by Bill Lockwood

Several years ago a relative of mine was in a major northeastern city for a short visit and it so happened that a “Gay Pride” parade was occurring. Shocking as it seems, some of the marchers were carrying signs that read: “Bring on the Lions!” That, of course, referred to the extermination of Christians after the order of the ancient bloody Roman Empire and presented a completely different picture of the Homosexual Goal for America than the MSM would like for you to see.

The entire political & cultural battle today may be boiled down to a War on God by the political left, which is being driven by the Homosexual Agenda. Nothing can be clearer than this. Even Islam joins with homosexuals—for now–in this same goal of eradication of Christianity. Read the text of the Democratic Party’s so-called Equality Act (H.R. 5) and be in the dark no more. It completely eradicates The Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), originally passed in 1993, let alone respect the First Amendment which promised that the federal government is FORBIDDEN to touch religious speech and freedom.

“The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (42 U.S.C. 2000bb et. seq.) shall not provide a claim concerning, or a defense to a claim under, a covered title, or provide a basis for challenging the application of enforcement of a covered title.”

The RFRA began as a reaction following a 1990 Supreme Court decision (Employment Division v. Smith) which concerned Christians that religious liberty might be threatened. This resulted in a huge national movement of Christians to protect their God-given rights.

How does this link to the Homosexual Agenda? GrasstopsUSA re-published a portion of homosexual activist Michael Swift’s Manifesto from 1987. For a real stomach-turner, read the entire text on Fordham University’s website entitled, “Michael Swift, ‘Gay Revolutionary,’” reprinted from the Congressional Record itself.

We shall sodomize your sons, emblems of your feeble masculinity … Your sons shall become our minions and do our bidding … All laws banning homosexual activity will be revoked. Instead, legislation shall be passed which engenders love between men… There will be no compromises … All churches who condemn us will be closed … All males who insist on remaining stupidly heterosexual will be tried in homosexual courts of justice … Tremble, hetero swine, when we appear before you without our masks.

As Grassroots correctly stated, “Disguised as a measure to extend civil rights protections” to homosexuals and “transgendered individuals,” H.R. 5 actually “forces every man, women and child in the United States to not simply accept anti-biblical behaviors but to actively affirm them under penalty of law.”

Brad Polumbo

Brad Polumbo, a homosexual Opinion Writer for USA Today and who wishes to “outlaw” “conversion therapy”, while claiming to be “libertarian,” headlines the following, “Gay Conservative: Equality Act would crush religious freedom. Trump is right to oppose it.”

Polumbo calls the “Equality Act,” “the landmark LGBT rights bill.” “From my vantage point as a gay conservative, I can see that the Equality Act goes too far for any level-headed gay rights advocate to support, and its blatant disregard for the basic right to religious freedom is appalling.”

The bill purports to protect LGBT Americans like me by prohibiting discrimination ‘based on sex, sexual orientation and gender identity in areas including public accommodations and facilities, education, federal funding, employment, housing, credit and the jury system.’ On the surface, this sounds unobjectionable—after all, no one deserves to face discrimination. Yet the bill defined ‘public accommodations’ so loosely and called for regulations so sweeping that it would crush religious freedom and radically reshape American society.

Polumbo warns that “The Equality Act could potentially see houses of worship deemed ‘public accommodations’ and subjected to anti-discrimination law. It would also declare any hospital or establishment providing medical services a ‘public accommodation,’ which would include religious organization and hospitals.”

Steve Warren

Homosexual activist Steven Warren issued in 1987 a “Warning to homophobes.” In it he stated that homosexuality will be spoken of in your churches and synagogues as an “honorable estate” and “you can either let us marry people of the same sex, or better yet abolish marriage altogether.”

Throwing down the gauntlet to Christianity, he warned, “You will be expected to offer ceremonies that bless our sexual arrangements” and you will “instruct your people in homosexual as well as heterosexual behavior, and you will go out of your way to make certain that homosexual youths are allowed to date, attend religious functions together, openly display affection, and enjoy each others’ sexuality without embarrassment or guilt.”

If the older people object “you will deal with them sternly, making certain they renounce their ugly and ignorant homophobia or suffer public humiliation.” “Finally, we will in all likelihood, want to expunge a number of passages from your Scriptures and rewrite others …”

The final warning: “If all these things do not come to pass quickly, we will subject Orthodox Jews and Christians to the most sustained hatred and vilification in recent memory.”

Bring on the Lions.

Bill Lockwood: Freedom v. Force 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

by Bill Lockwood

Freedom irritates the left. Not their own freedom—but yours. Democrats live with a hatred; a despising of the very principle of liberty. This is the essential difference between the left and the right—not merely how spend money and upon what—but whether or not to curtail your freedom.

Consider free speech. The free and open exchange of ideas has been the hallmark of American society for over two centuries. The First Amendment has served as a prohibition against the Federal Government from managing any kind of speech. Alarmingly, however, more than one-half of Americans today favor a “re-writing” of the First Amendment whereby “hate speech” would be illegal. The survey was taken by the nonpartisan Campaign for Free Speech (CFS).

As everyone knows, the determination of what constitutes “hate speech” is the crux. Who will determine what type of speech is hateful enough to be illegal? (see First Liberty Institute article, 11-15-19).

College campuses lead the nation in showing contempt for free speech. Most college students, according to surveys, want restrictions on what they call “offensive” speech. Marxist professors have instilled a pure hatred for free speech in the student bodies. Witness the hostile reception conservative speakers have had at various Universities around the country.

Even the liberal American Bar Association (ABA) documents in a recent article the silencing of various speakers at college campuses. The authors, Stephen J. Wermiel & Josh Blackman, try to explain that it comes from “both sides”, left and right, but conclude that the “incidents” of disruption to speakers on the liberal side are “less common.” Indeed! And it is more than a stretch to say that “hecklers” wearing “Make America Great Again” hats equate with the violence of shutting down speakers and forcing college campuses to withdraw conservative invitations to speak. Silencing by force is the leftist method.

Force has been used so much by the left that some Republican-led state legislatures have felt the need to impose policies on their state university campuses to allow free speech.

Under the rubric of “hate speech” the big tech giants Facebook and YouTube have already shut down Alex Jones’ voice on InfoWars.  Some Christian voices, like Julio Severo, are put in “Facebook jail” for posting Bible verses such as about homosexuality. Google suppressed Prager University and Twitter temporarily banned Candace Owens. So prevalent has this forcible silencing of speech been on the left that Bill Maher was compelled to ask, “If you’re a liberal, you’re supposed to be for free speech. That’s free speech for the speech that you hate.”

Consider Climate Change. The Paris Climate Accord from which Trump withdrew in 2017 is all about force. Those who preach the Green Gospel of saving the planet cannot garner enough support for their message by normal debate and means of persuasion. Therefore, these globalists wish to sign American taxpayers on to a globalist “Carbon Pricing Panel” whereby the dictators of the United Nations will force reparations from the United States to pay for our environmental sins. These payments will be distributed to Third World and developing nations.

All of us have pulpits. Some of us preach the gospel of Christ and by reasons addressed to the mind ask worshippers to contribute in collection trays. Leftists and socialists of the Democrat Party cannot garner enough support for their doomsday message that the Sky is Falling, consequently they must save us all—by forcing us to pay contributions to their collection baskets. They cannot rely on freedom or the free-flow of ideas, so proponents of the Green Gospel use force.

Fred Singer, prominent scientist at the Heartland summit, a University of Virginia environmental science Professor Emeritus, and founder of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change, observed, “This is about money and power. Science plays a small role, and mostly it’s being misused….It’s a matter of really trying to control things.”

Consider attacks on private property. So essential is this to freedom that John Adams commented that this was the single foundation stone undergirding all human freedom and liberty. “Property must be secured or liberty cannot exist.”

The left knows this as well. The all-out attack on private property by the program Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH), fostered by the United Nations’ Sustainable Development program and flourishing under HUD funding, has become common-place in American cities.

Big government planners do not like that you have the “freedom of association.” Liberty to live where you like and with those whom you are most comfortable is anathema. We must pare down your liberty branches! Cities are bribed with the endless access to federal money to “re-distribute” the racial mixes of their populations. Cities such as Baltimore, MD are placing minority families in white suburbia. No freedom here.

Liberal bastion Minneapolis, Minnesota became the first city to end single-family zoning. The Mayor of the city called such housing a mark of racism and “self-segregation” that must be halted at once. The white population is in his cross-hairs. Other cities are beginning to follow suit. 1

There are also a large number of organizations, such as Center for Study of Social Policy, Program for Environmental and Regional Equity (PERE); Center for American Progress (CAP); W. Kellogg Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation, and others, that are in the business of bribing cities with large amounts of George Soros money to forcibly re-zone various neighborhoods or re-draw school boundaries to dismantle schools that have “too large a white or Asian population.” 2

Another group, PolicyLink, a radical activist group, pushes policies such as “parks equity” which states that lack of access to city parks are partly responsible for “racial performance gaps” in school and on the job. The manifesto therefore is for middle-class tax-payers, once again by force, to begin funding more parks in slum areas of the country.

The common denominator in all of this is lack of freedom. Force replaces it. This is the tool of the left.

The Wild Wild West of News 0 (0)

Posted on by Leave a comment

The Wild Wild West of News –“Remember, Obama has actually bragged about lying to the American people…”

by Bill Lockwood

True to his Marxist roots President Obama, in the waning days of his tenure in office, decries what he calls the “wild wild west” of news while suggesting that some agency should have a “curating function” to filter what is “approved” for public consumption. Speaking at a Pittsburgh conference last week, comrade Obama even proposed that “we are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to.” REBUILD? “We”—collectively?

A “curator” calls for someone or agency who is “in charge.” Sometimes it is used for “a guardian” to oversee a minor. This is exactly how Obama sees Americans. The free-flow of information is harmful to minors who need be spoon-fed government-approved information.

Continued the lying dictator-in-chief: “There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world.” Remember, Obama has actually bragged about lying to the American people —“If you like your doctor, etc.”

Another government bureaucracy added “to sort” through internet, television, radio, and printed material to apply basic “truthiness” tests. This does not simply sound like the Hitler’s and Stalin’s of the world, it is precisely what their programs of totalitarianism enacted.

As unbelievably astounding as Obama’s proposal is, he continued unfazed: “The way I would like to see us operate is, yes, significant debate and contentious debate, but where we are operating on the same basic platform, same basic rules, on how do we determine what’s true and what’s not. Everything on the internet looks like it might be true. And so in this political season, we’ve seen — you just say stuff. And so everything suddenly becomes contested. That I do not think is good for democracy, and it’s certainly not good for science, for progress, for government, for fixing systems.”

A government-sponsored media-organ would not be “censorship” Obama schmoozed. “But it’s creating places where people can say ‘this is reliable’ and I’m still able to argue safely about facts and what we should do about it.” Only within certain parameters will “vigorous debate” be allowed.

Thomas Jefferson

Respect for the law of the land as well as basic components of liberty is something completely alien to Barack Obama as well as Hillary Clinton. There is an amendment of the Constitution that expressly, in so many words, declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”

The core concept of the Bill of Rights is that people enjoy liberties because they are bestowed upon us by God Himself and that the government created for Americans is forbidden by the people to even touch the hem of the garment of these liberties.

As Thomas Jefferson observed, the fact that several liberties were enumerated in the First Amendment means that “whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others” and that “The liberty of speaking and writing … guards our other liberties.”

This election is about liberty. Will we enjoy what remains of that which God has given us in America? Much of it has already been eroded by the government. Or, will we succumb to the comrades of the Democratic Party who would love nothing more than to control you from cradle to grave?

Freedom-loving Americans resent the notion which lies behind all of these Big Brother proposals. It is the assumption that we need government to decide for us what political and religious information we will consume and what we will not. No thanks, Barack, we would rather live in the wild-wild-west of conflicting information and sort it out ourselves than be locked into government-sponsored “safe zones” being fed crumbs that fall from the rich man’s table.

Back to Homepage