The Wall of Separation

The rancorous presidential election of 1800 brought religion to the forefront of public debate and had lasting repercussions for the relationship between church and state.

Thomas Jefferson was inaugurated the third president of the United States on March 4, 1801, following one of the most bitterly contested presidential elections in American history. He had faced the unpopular incumbent, Federalist John Adams of Massachusetts—his confrere in the independence struggle and longtime rival. The electorate was deeply divided along regional, partisan, and ideological lines. Acrimonious campaign rhetoric punctuated the polarized political landscape.

In few, if any, presidential contests has religion played a more divisive and decisive role than in the election of 1800. Jefferson's religion, or alleged lack thereof, emerged as a critical issue in the campaign. His Federalist opponents vilified him as a Jacobin and atheist. (Both charges stemmed from his notorious sympathy for the French Revolution, which in the 1790s had turned bloody and, some said, anti-Christian.) In the days before the election, the Gazette of the United States, a leading Federalist newspaper, posed the "grand question" of whether Americans should vote for "GOD—AND A RELIGIOUS PRESIDENT [John Adams]; or impiously declare for JEFFERSON—AND NO GOD!!!"

Jefferson's Federalist foes did not invent the stinging accusation that he was an infidel. Years before, his ardent advocacy for disestablishment in Virginia had led many pious Americans to conclude that Jefferson was, if not an enemy of religion, at least indifferent towards organized religion's vital role in civic life. The publication of his Notes on the State of Virginia in the mid-1780s exacerbated these fears. He wrote, "It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." This passage came back to haunt him in the 1800 campaign. Detractors said this proved he was an infidel or, worse, an atheist.

Jefferson described himself as "a real Christian," although he was certainly aware that his beliefs were unconventional. "I am of a sect by myself," he said. He believed that human reason was the arbiter of religious truth and rejected key tenets of orthodox Christianity, including the Bible's divine origins, the deity of Christ, original sin, and the miraculous accounts in Scripture.

Despite his deviations from orthodoxy, he rejected suggestions that his views were of "that anti-Christian system imputed to me by those who know nothing of my opinions." His religion was very different, Jefferson conceded, from the leading churchmen of his day who called him an "infidel and themselves Christians and preachers of the gospel." He believed that Jesus Christ's moral teachings, stripped of the fiction and artifice carefully crafted by those calling themselves Christians, were "the most perfect and sublime that has ever been taught by man."

An infidel in office?

Jefferson's faith provided an early test of religion's place in national politics. His heterodox beliefs raised doubts about his fitness for high office. In 1798, Timothy Dwight, a Congregationalist minister and the president of Yale College, warned that the election of Jeffersonian Republicans might usher in a Jacobin regime in which "we may see the Bible cast into a bonfire, the vessels of the sacramental supper borne by an ass in public procession, and our children … chanting mockeries against God … [to] the ruin of their religion, and the loss of their souls."

In an influential pamphlet published in 1800, William Linn, a Dutch Reformed clergyman, warned that a vote for Jefferson "must be construed into no less than rebellion against God." He added ominously that the promotion of an infidel to high office would encourage public immorality and lead to the "destruction of all social order and happiness."

Presbyterian minister John Mitchell Mason similarly declaimed that it would be "a crime never to be forgiven" for the American people to confer the office of chief magistrate "upon an open enemy to their religion, their Redeemer, and their hope, [and it] would be mischief to themselves and sin against God." Jefferson's "favorite wish," Mitchell charged, is "to see a government administered without any religious principle among either rulers or ruled." He repudiated the notion gaining currency among Jeffersonians that "Religion has nothing to do with politics."

Jeffersonian partisans denied that their candidate was an atheist and advanced a separationist policy that would eventually exert much influence on American politics. "Religion and government are equally necessary," said Tunis Wortman, "but their interests should be kept separate and distinct. No legitimate connection can ever subsist between them. Upon no plan, no system, can they become united, without endangering the purity and usefulness of both—the church will corrupt the state, and the state pollute the church."

Republicans extolled Jefferson as a leader of uncommon liberality and tolerance—an enlightened man who zealously defended constitutional government, civil and religious liberty, and the separation between religion and politics. "[M]y information is that he is a sincere professor of Christianity—though not a noisy one," Wortman wrote.

The campaign rhetoric was so vitriolic that when news of Jefferson's election swept across the country, housewives in Federalist New England were seen burying their family Bibles in their gardens or hiding them in wells because they expected the Scriptures to be confiscated and burned by the new administration.

Anybody but a Presbyterian!

Although Jefferson's beliefs drew the most attention, John Adams was not immune from political smears on account of religion. When President Adams recommended a national "day of solemn humiliation, fasting, and prayer" in March 1799, political adversaries depicted him as a tool of establishmentarians intent on legally uniting a specific church with the new federal government. This allegation alarmed religious dissenters, such as the Baptists, who feared persecution by a state church.

"A general suspicion prevailed," Adams recounted a decade later, "that the Presbyterian Church [which was presumed to be behind the national day of prayer] was ambitious and aimed at an establishment as a national church." Although disclaiming any involvement in such a scheme, Adams ruefully reported that he "was represented as a Presbyterian and at the head of this political and ecclesiastical project. The secret whisper ran through all the sects, 'Let us have Jefferson, Madison, Burr, anybody, whether they be philosophers, Deists, or even atheists, rather than a Presbyterian President.'" Adams thought the controversy, which drove dissenters into Jefferson's camp, cost him the election.

Both men were deeply wounded by the vicious attacks on their characters and the ruinous campaign tactics. An anguished Jefferson compared his persecution at the hands of critics—especially among the New England clergy—with the crucified Christ: "from the clergy I expect no mercy. They crucified their Saviour, who preached that their kingdom was not of this world; and all who practice on that precept must expect the extreme of their wrath. The laws of the present day withhold their hands from blood; but lies and slander still remain to them."

The bitterness lingered long after both men had left public office. In their declining years, they resumed a correspondence, slowly repairing their ruptured friendship.

Church and state

Jefferson enjoyed one pocket of support in staunchly Federalist New England: the Baptists. In October 1801, the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut, wrote to congratulate the recently inaugurated president. The Danbury Baptists were a beleaguered religious minority in a state where Congregationalism was the established church. They celebrated Jefferson's advocacy for religious liberty and chastised those who criticized him "because he will not, dares not assume the prerogative of Jehovah and make Laws to govern the Kingdom of Christ." They expressed a heartfelt desire "that the sentiments of our beloved President, which have had such genial Effect already, like the radiant beams of the Sun, will shine & prevail through all these States and all the world till Hierarchy and tyranny be destroyed from the Earth."

On New Year's Day, 1802, President Jefferson penned a reply. The carefully crafted letter reassured the Baptists of his commitment to their rights of conscience and struck back at the Congregationalist-Federalist establishment in New England for shamelessly vilifying him in the recent campaign. The First Amendment, he wrote, denied Congress the authority to establish a religion or prohibit its free exercise, "thus building a wall of separation between Church & State."

Jefferson's wall, according to conventional wisdom, represents a universal principle on the constitutional relationship between religion and the state. To the contrary, this wall had less to do with the separation between religion and all civil government than with the separation between national and state governments on matters pertaining to religion. The "wall of separation" was a metaphoric construction of the First Amendment, which Jefferson time and again said imposed its restrictions on the national government only (see, for example, Jefferson's 1798 draft of the Kentucky Resolutions).

How did this wall, limited in its jurisdictional application, come to exert such enormous influence on American law and politics? Jefferson's metaphor might have slipped into obscurity had it not been "rediscovered" by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1947. Asked to interpret the First Amendment's prohibition on laws "respecting an establishment of religion," the justices declared: "In the words of Jefferson," the First Amendment "erect[ed] 'a wall of separation between church and State' … [that] must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

This landmark ruling laid the foundations for a long line of legal decisions restricting religion's place in public life. The "wall" metaphor, in particular, provided the rationale for censoring religious expression in schools, stripping public spaces of religious symbols, and denying public benefits to faith communities.

The bitterness of the election of 1800 has long faded from public memory. The partisanship and rancorous rhetoric that characterized the contest, however, have become familiar features of the political culture. An enduring legacy of the campaign is the perennial debate regarding the constitutional place of religion in civic life. Religion, argues one side, is an indispensable support for political prosperity, providing a vital moral compass in a regime of self-government. The other side, echoing Jeffersonian partisans, asserts that social cohesion and democratic values are threatened whenever bricks are removed from the wall of separation between religion and politics.

This debate is as old as the Republic and as current as the morning newspaper. And what say you Gentle Reader?

Being Played?

Bailouts are going to reckless Wall Street bankers, to homeowners over their heads and now maybe even to Americans hooked on credit cards. Where's the reward in doing the right thing?


If you feel like you're being played, you're not alone.

The financial crisis has deepened many people's suspicions that doing the right thing hasn't paid off. Instead, they feel it's made them chumps.

You see it in the "Where's my @#$%ing bailout?" T-shirts, the despair about plummeting retirement accounts and the hostile comments that greet every news story about mortgage restructuring or credit card forgiveness.

One reader put it this way:

"Doesn't keeping your promises mean anything? Most if not all of the people who snagged these (mortgages) were well aware of the risk and the responsibility. It kills me that I'm playing by the rules and bailing out those who were greedy, stupid or both."

Even when they're not directing their anger at anyone in particular, many of my readers feel like they've been led down the garden path.

"I am 62 years old and HAD been planning to retire in 5 years," one wrote. "Although I have lived frugally my entire life and put away 15% of my income every year in a retirement account, my balanced portfolio lost 60% of its value in the last two months."

What he wanted to know: Would he be a bigger fool for pulling his money out of the market now or staying in and possibly suffering more lumps?

If you have similar questions -- if you suspect you're being a chump for making your mortgage payments, paying your credit card bills and continuing to invest in your 401(k) -- read on. You're certainly not alone as you watch others exploit loopholes, mistakes and well-intentioned remedies.

Bailed out but still ruined
The question of why some homeowners are getting bailouts has really been answered by the financial turmoil of the past few months. A huge spike in foreclosures, magnified by derivatives cooked up by Wall Street firms, nearly brought down the global economy. As it stands, we're still likely to suffer one heck of a hangover in the form of a serious recession.

The foreclosure mess is far from over. Many of the riskiest loans -- the ones where homeowners weren't even paying all the interest that was accumulating on their loans each month, let alone touching the principals -- are just now resetting.

What does a VP do?

Let Freedom ring

"What experience and history teach is this -- that people and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles."



Gentle Readers,

It is what we do- speak up-speak out -take a stand!

"History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. History is who we are and why we are the way we are."

Imagine that we can travel back to the beginning of our country. What would we see, or think, would you take a stand or take a seat? Most would take a seat! But I think better of you Gentle Reader! I believe that you would have stood up for your country (even in it's infancy) You would have poured the tea in Bostons Harbor (the reason I drink coffee to this day)! Take a walk with me as we look back one more time, or perhaps the first time, for some of you.


It’s 1775. The year 1787, with its novel constitution and separation of church and state is a long 12 years away. At the moment, you and your friends are just a bunch of outlaws.

You’ve heard the debates in Parliament over taxation and representation; you’ve seen British troops enforce royal supremacy at the point of a bayonet. Your king, George III, and Parliament have issued a declaration asserting their sovereignty in "all cases whatsoever" in the colonies. You are, at least in New England, a people under siege with British troops quartered in Boston. You’ve dumped tea into Boston’s harbor in a fit of rage and had your port closed.

Who will you turn to now for direction? There are no presidents or vice-presidents, no supreme court justices or public defenders to call on. There are a handful of young, radical lawyers, like the Adams cousins, John and Samuel, but they’re largely concentrated in cities, while you and most of your friends live in the country. In many colonies, including Massachusetts, there are not even elected governors or councilors—they have all been appointed by the British crown and are answerable to it.

Where you turn is where you have habitually turned for over a century: to the prophets of your society, your ministers.

The American Revolutionary era is known as the "Golden Age of Oratory." What school child has not heard or read Patrick Henry’s immortal words, "Give me liberty or give me death"? Who has not seen reenactments or heard summaries of Ben Franklin’s heroic appearance before a hostile British Parliament?

Yet often lost in this celebration of patriotic oratory is the key role preaching played in the Revolutionary movement.

A few broad statistics can help us appreciate more fully the unique power the sermon wielded in Revolutionary America.

Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately 8 million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!

The pulpits were Congregational and Baptist in New England; Presbyterian, Lutheran, and German Reformed in Pennsylvania and New Jersey; and Anglican and Methodist in the South. But no matter the denomination, colonial congregations heard sermons more than any other form of oratory. The colonial sermon was prophet, newspaper, video, Internet, community college, and social therapist all wrapped in one. Such was the range of its influence on all aspects of life that even contemporary television and personal computers pale in comparison.

Eighteenth-century America was a deeply religious culture that lived self-consciously "under the cope of heaven." In Sunday worship, and weekday (or "occasional") sermons, ministers drew the populace into a rhetorical world that was more compelling and immediate than the physical settlements surrounding them. Sermons taught not only the way to personal salvation in Christ but also the way to temporal and national prosperity for God’s chosen people.

Events were perceived not from the mundane, human vantage point but from God’s. The vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist, to whom things were not as they might appear at ground level: all events, no matter how mundane or seemingly random, were parts of a larger pattern of meaning, part of God’s providential design. The outlines of this pattern were contained in Scripture and interpreted by discerning pastors. Colonial congregations saw themselves as the "New Israel," endowed with a sacred mission that destined them as lead actors in the last triumphant chapter in redemption history.

Thus colonial audiences learned to perceive themselves not as a ragtag settlement of religious exiles and eccentrics but as God’s special people, planted in the American wilderness to bring light to the Old World left behind. Europeans might ignore or revile them as "fanatics," but through the sermon, they knew better. Better to absorb the barbs of English ridicule than to forget their glorious commission.

For over a century, colonial congregations had turned to England for protection and culture. Despite religious differences separating many colonists from the Church of England, they shared a common identity as Englishmen, an identity that stood firm against all foes. But almost overnight, these loyalties were challenged by a series of British imperial laws. Beginning with the Stamp Act of 1765 and running through the "Boston Massacre" of 1770, the Tea Act of 1773, and finally, martial law in Massachusetts, patriotic Americans perceived a British plot to deprive them of their fundamental English rights and their God-ordained liberties.

In the twentieth-century, taxation and representation are political and constitutional issues, having nothing to do with religion. But to eighteenth-century ears, attuned to lifetimes of preaching, the issues were inevitably religious as well, so colonists naturally turned to their ministers to learn God’s will about these troubling matters.

Tyranny Is "Idolatry"

When understood in its own times, the American Revolution was first and foremost a religious event. This is especially true in New England, where the first blood was shed.

By 1775 the ranks of Harvard- and Yale-educated clergymen swelled to over 600 ministers, distributed throughout every town and village in New England. Clergymen surveyed the events swirling around them; by 1775 liberals and evangelicals, Congregationalists and Presbyterians, men and women—all saw in British actions grounds for armed resistance.

In fact, not only was it right for colonists to resist British "tyranny," it would actually be sinful not to pick up guns.

How did they come to this conclusion? They fastened on two arguments.

First, they focused on Parliament’s 1766 Declaratory Act, which stated that Parliament had sovereignty over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever." For clergymen this phrase took on the air of blasphemy. These were fighting words not only because they violated principles of representative government but even more because they violated the logic of sola Scriptura ("Scripture alone") and God’s exclusive claim to sovereignty "in all cases whatsoever."

From the first colonial settlements, Americans—especially New England Americans—were accustomed to constraining all power and granting absolute authority to no mere human being.

For Reformed colonists, these ideas were tied up with their historic, covenant theology. At stake was the preservation of their identity as a covenant people. Not only did Parliament’s claims represent tyranny, they also represented idolatry. For colonists to honor those claims would be tantamount to forsaking God and abdicating their national covenant pledge to "have no other gods" before them.

In a classic sermon on the subject of resistance entitled A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission, Boston’s Jonathan Mayhew, a liberal (he favored Unitarianism), took as his text Romans 13:1–6, in which Paul enjoins Christians to "be subject unto the higher powers." The day he picked for this sermon was portentous—it came on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, when Anglican ministers routinely abhorred the Puritan revolution, and Puritans routinely kept silent. Mayhew would not keep silent.

For centuries, rulers had used this text to discourage resistance and riot. But circumstances had changed, and in the chilling climate of impending Anglo-American conflict, Mayhew asked if there were any limits to this law. He concluded that the law is binding only insofar as government honors its "moral and religious" obligations. When government fails to honor that obligation, or contract, then the duty of submission is likewise nullified. Submission, in other words, is not unlimited.

Rulers, he said, "have no authority from God to do mischief.… It is blasphemy to call tyrants and oppressors God’s ministers." Far from being sinful, resistance to corrupt ministers and tyrannical rulers is a divine imperative. The greater sin lies in passively sacrificing the covenant for tyranny, that is, in failing to resist.

Who determines whether government is "moral and religious"? In the Revolutionary era, the answer was simple: the individual. There were no established institutions that would support violent revolution. Ultimate justification resided in the will of a people acting self-consciously as united individuals joined in a common cause. Where a government was found to be deficient in moral and spiritual terms, the individual conscience was freed to resist.

America: A New Heaven

Clergy in the Revolutionary era reminded people not only what they were fighting against, namely tyranny and idolatry, but also what they were fighting for: a new heaven and a new earth.

Many early American settlers arrived believing they were part of the New Israel, that they would be instruments for Christ’s triumphant return to earth. Interpretations varied on whether the last days would be marked by progressive revelations and triumphs (the "postmillennial" view), or whether they would be marked by sudden judgments and calamities (the "premillennial" view), or some combination thereof. But all agreed the present was portentous, and American colonists were going to play a direct role in the great things looming.

Wars, first with France and later with England, accelerated these millennial speculations. In fighting against England and George III, people felt they were at once fighting against the Antichrist in a climactic battle between good and evil, tyranny and freedom.

Freedom and liberty (like individual) were both political and religious terms. They helped not only preserve fundamental human rights but also sustain loyalty to Christ and to sola Scriptura. So closely intertwined were the political and religious connotations, it was virtually impossible for colonists to separate them.

In his 1776 sermon on The Church’s Flight into the Wilderness, Samuel Sherwood examined the prophecies in the Book of Revelation and concluded that American Christians were the "church in the wilderness," nurtured in a faraway hiding place and raised to battle and defeat Antichrist. He argued that the powers of Antichrist were "not confined to the boundaries of the Roman empire, nor strictly to the territory of the pope’s usurped authority." Rather, they extended to all enemies of Christ’s church and people. He concluded that England’s monarchy "appears to have many of the features and much of the temper and character of the image of the beast."

In only slightly more secular terms, the greatest pamphlet of the Revolutionary era invoked this millennial imagery. Thomas Paine’s Common Sense was the runaway bestseller of the American Revolution. In time Paine would be unveiled as a wild-eyed deist, and worse, an atheist. But you couldn’t guess that from Common Sense. It read like a sermon. Paine knew his audience well, and he knew what biblical allusions would bring them to arms.

His sermonic pamphlet begins by berating George III as the "royal brute" of England, noting that monarchy, like aristocracy, had its origins among ruffians who enforced their "superiority" at the point of a sword. Then they masked this brute coercion with the trappings of refined culture and regal bearing. Nevertheless, "How impious is the title of sacred majesty applied to a worm, who in the midst of his splendor is crumbling into dust!" He then identifies the monarchy with tyranny, and tyranny with idolatry and blasphemy. Paine traces in elaborate detail Israel’s "national delusion" in requesting a king as did other nations, and God’s subsequent displeasure at a "form of government which so impiously invades the prerogative of heaven."

From scriptural precedent, Paine, the revivalist of revolt, concludes, "These portions of Scripture are direct and positive. They admit of no equivocal construction. That the Almighty hath here entered his protest against monarchical government is true, or the Scripture is false."

Paine then went on to echo ministerial visions of a new millennial age. With unmitigated confidence, Paine reiterated John Winthrop’s 17th-century Puritan vision of America as a "city upon a hill." But unlike Winthrop, Paine’s millennial city was modeled on republican principles (rather than hierarchical) and religious toleration (rather than state-enforced conformity). With words certain to thrill, he likened the colonists to a young tree on which small characters were carved, characters of liberty and freedom. In time this tree would grow huge, and with it, the characters boldly would proclaim the birth of a new adventure in freedom that would be seen throughout the world.

Many colonists were fearful that, if they failed, their leaders would be hung as traitors and the people enslaved in tyranny. But Paine exulted, "We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of a new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom.… How trifling, how ridiculous do the little paltry cavillings of a few weak or interested men appear when weighed against the business of a world."

With rhetoric like this, Paine fused the liberal Mayhew’s defense of resistance with an evangelical-like appeal to passion. It is not surprising that liberals and evangelicals united in "the business of a world."

Voice of Hope and Courage

No minister studied the rapidly unfolding events against scriptural teachings more closely than did Concord’s 32-year-old minister, William Emerson (grandfather of Ralph Waldo Emerson). For a long time, his world had been dominated by local concerns and salvation preaching. But all of this changed in March and April 1775, when all the members of his congregation were propelled into what he termed "the greatest events taking place in the present age."

By March, Emerson and other Concord patriots knew that British spies had infiltrated their town and informed General Thomas Gage of a hidden armory and munitions supplies stocked by the local "Sons of Liberty" (a secret society of radicals). Many believed Gage was planning a preemptive strike on these supplies, and they feared for their lives. At a muster of the Concord militia on March 13, Emerson preached a sermon on 2 Chronicles 13:12: "And behold, God himself is with us for our captain.… O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers, for ye shall not prosper" (KJV).

Never would he deliver a more momentous sermon. He had it within his means to promote or discourage an almost certainly violent call to arms. What was he to say? What was God’s will for his American people?

With obvious agitation, Emerson began his sermon with the somber note that recent intelligence warned of "an approaching storm of war and bloodshed." Many in attendance would soon be called upon for "real service." Were they ready? Real readiness, Emerson explained, depended not only on martial skill and weaponry but also on moral and spiritual resolve. To be successful, soldiers must believe in what they were fighting for, and they must trust in God’s power to uphold them. Otherwise they would scatter in fear before the superior British redcoats.

What were the men of Concord fighting for? In strident political terms that coupled the roles of prophet and statesman, Emerson argued for colonial resistance. For standing by their liberties and trusting only in God, the American people were "cruelly charged with rebellion and sedition." That charge, Emerson cried, was a lie put forward by plotters against American liberty. With all of the integrity of his sacred office behind him, Emerson took his stand before the Concord militia:

"For my own part, the more I reflect upon the movements of the British nation … the more satisfied I am that our military preparation here for our own defense is … justified in the eyes of the impartial world. Nay, for should we neglect to defend ourselves by military preparation, we never could answer it to God and to our own consciences of the rising [generations]."

The road ahead would be difficult, Emerson cautioned, but the outcome was one preordained from the beginning of time. Accordingly, the soldiers could go forth to war assured that "the Lord will cover your head in the day of battle and carry you on from victory to victory." In the end, he concluded, the whole world would know "that there is a God" in America.

On April 19, the mounting apprehensions became fact as 800 British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to destroy the patriot munitions. At Lexington, Gage’s troops were met by a small "army of observation," who were fired upon and sustained 17 casualties. From there the British troops marched to Concord. Before their arrival, the alarm had been sounded by patriot silversmith Paul Revere, and militiamen rushed to the common. William Emerson arrived first, and he was soon joined by "minutemen" from nearby towns. Again a shot was fired—the famed "shot heard ’round the world"—and in the ensuing exchange, three Americans and twelve British soldiers were killed or wounded. America’s colonial war for independence had begun.

Words like Emerson’s continued to sound for the next eight years, goading, consoling, and impelling colonists forward in the cause of independence. The pulpit served as the single most powerful voice to inspire the colonists.

For most American ministers and many in their congregations, the religious dimension of the war was precisely the point of revolution. Revolution and a new republican government would enable Americans to continue to realize their destiny as a "redeemer nation." If time would prove that self-defined mission tragically arrogant, it was not apparent to the participants themselves. With backs against the wall, and precious little to take confidence in, words like those of Mayhew’s, Emerson’s, and Paine’s were their only hope.

I'm a preacher first, last and always, called by God to stand up and tell you truths that some have never heard, truths that some have rejected, truths that can and will change lives. All the while I am a 'Prisoner for the Lord' Not in Jail but trapped by circumstances not of our own choosing but of God's. While Marti is still bed fast and I will not leave her side- but if she gets better- look out!!! WORDS

Love,

Denis

Tolerance? and Religion

The faith that gave birth to tolerance is no longer tolerated!

How did America go from Pilgrims seeking freedom to express their Judeo-Christian beliefs to today’s discrimination against those very beliefs in the name of tolerance? “Back Fired” chronicles the history of this disturbing development now rampant in our country.

Do these headlines sound familiar?

Ten Commandments taken down
“Under God” removed from the Pledge
Prayer prohibited
Nativity Scenes banned
Salvation Army defunded
Boy Scouts sued
Christmas Carols stopped
Bible called ‘hate speech,’

Discover how tolerance evolved


From Pilgrims to Puritans
From Protestants to Catholics
From Liberal Christians to Jews
From Monotheists to Polytheists
From All Religions to Atheists
To only Politically Correct

“From its beginning, the new continent seemed destined to be the home of religious tolerance. Those who claimed the right of individual choice for themselves finally had to grant it to others.” – Calvin Coolidge, May 3, 1925

“The frustrating thing is that those who are attacking religion claim they are doing it in the name of tolerance. Question: Isn’t the real truth that they are intolerant of religion?” - Ronald Reagan, August 23, 1984

FAITH UNDER FIRE

FAITH UNDER FIRE
Gov't to pastor: Renounce faith!
Now banned from expressing moral opposition to homosexuality

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Posted: June 09, 2008
10:00 pm Eastern

© 2008 WorldNetDaily

The Canadian government has ordered a Christian pastor to renounce his faith and never again express moral opposition to homosexuality, according to a new report.

In a decision handed down just days ago in the penalty phase of the quasi-judicial proceedings run by the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal, evangelical pastor Stephen Boisson was banned from expressing his biblical perspective of homosexuality and ordered to pay $5,000 for "damages for pain and suffering" as well as apologize to the activist who complained of being hurt.

According to a report from Pete Vere at the Catholic Exchange, the penalty could foreshadow the possible fate of Father Alphonse de Valk, who also has cited the biblical perspective on homosexuality in the nation's debate over same-sex "marriage" and now faces HRC charges.

Boisson had written a letter to the editor of his local Red Deer newspaper in 2002 denouncing the advance of homosexual activism as "wicked" and stating: "Children as young as five and six years of age are being subjected to psychologically and physiologically damaging pro-homosexual literature and guidance in the public school system; all under the fraudulent guise of equal rights."

The activist, local teacher Darren Lund, filed a complaint and the guilty verdict from Lori G. Andreachuk, a lawyer, was handed down some weeks ago. The latest decision involved the penalty phase of the trial.

"While agreeing that Boisson's letter was not a criminal act, the government tribunal nevertheless ordered the Christian pastor to [stop expressing his opinion]," Vere reported.

Andreachuk noted that Lund, who brought the complaint, wasn't, in fact, injured.

"In this case there is no specific individual who can be compensated as there is no direct victim who has come forward…," she wrote.

However, that did not stop her from order the payment anyway.

And as for the future, she wrote:

"Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc. shall cease publishing in newspapers, by e-mail, on the radio, in public speeches, or on the Internet, in future, disparaging remarks about gays and homosexuals. Further, they shall not and are prohibited from making disparaging remarks in the future about … Lund or … Lund's witnesses relating to their involvement in this complaint. Further, all disparaging remarks versus homosexuals are directed to be removed from current Web sites and publications of Mr. Boissoin and The Concerned Christian Coalition Inc," the lawyer opined.

Andreachuk also ordered Boissoin to apologize for the original letter in the Red Deer Advocate and told the two "offenders" to pay $5,000.

The apology letter, Vere said, "threatens civil liberties in Canada, according to Ezra Levant, an author and lawyer who himself was targeted by an HRC attack."

"[The] government now believes that if it can't convince a Christian pastor that he's wrong, it will just order him to condemn himself?" Levant wrote on his blog. "Other than tribunals in Stalin's Soviet Union and Mao's China, where is this Orwellian 'order' considered to be justice?"

"This is like a Third World jail-house confession – where accused criminals are forced to sign false statements of guilt," Levant wrote. "We don’t even 'order' murderers to apologize to their victims' families. Because we know that a forced apology is meaningless. But not if your point is to degrade Christian pastors."

"In essence, the Alberta Human Rights Tribunal is ordering to the minister to renounce his Christian faith, since his opposition to homosexuality is based upon the Judeo-Christian Bible," Vere wrote.

WND reported recently about de Valk, the target of a Human Rights Commission case over his biblical references regarding homosexuality.

"Father [de Valk] defended the [Catholic] Church's teaching on marriage during Canada's same-sex 'marriage' debate, quoting extensively from the Bible, the Catechism of the Catholic Church, and Pope John Paul II's encyclicals. Each of these documents contains official Catholic teaching. And like millions of other people throughout the world and the ages – many of whom are non-Catholics and non-Christians — Father believes that marriage is an exclusive union between a man and a woman," Vere wrote.

Vere raised the question that Canada now considers morality a "hate crime."

"If one, because of one's sincerely held moral beliefs, whether it be Jew, Muslim, Christian, Catholic, opposes the idea of same-sex marriage in Canada, is that considered 'hate'?" he asked.

Vere wrote that the response he got from Mark van Dusen, a spokesman for the federal human rights prosecution office, shocked him.

The government agent confirmed the agency investigates complaints but doesn't set public policy or moral standards. He said the agency job is to look at the circumstances and decide whether to advance it or dismiss it.

What is shocking about that, Vere wrote, is the admission that unjustified complaints can be dismissed, yet the case against de Valk has continued now for more than six months.

Albert Einstein