scriptural examples of political involvement
I have heard many wonderful Christian people say that we, as Christians, have no business getting involved in America's political scene. Politics is dirty business, they say. Separation of church and state prohibits Christians from influencing public policy, they say. Jesus wasn't a politician, they say, and we should be just like Jesus. The Bible doesn't tell us to get involved in politics, they say. All of this is wrong, of course. I'll show you why.
First and formost, "separation of church and state" is a secular progressive myth. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution does say that Congress can't establish a national church (such as National Lutheran, or National Methodist, etc.). The Constitution also says that the federal government can't regulate or restrict the expression of our religious beliefs. It says nothing about a separation of church and state. That myth is the result of secular progressives taking control of the federal judiciary and unconstitutionally changing the very foundation of the republic. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/ is the link to the Library of Congress online exhibition entitled "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" which will show you that what I say is true.
Not only does the Constitution not prohibit political involvement by Christians, but the Bible doesn't, either. The Bible is filled with stories of how good and faithful men and women served God in the world of politics and government. Read the story of Joseph, told in the Book of Genesis (especially chapter 41). Joseph's willingness to surrender to God's will in the king's palace in a pagan nation led directly to the salvation of thousands of people.
Read the stories of the Old Testament judges (Book of Judges). Read about Othniel (3:7-11), Ehud (3:12-30), and Deborah (4 and 5). King David was a faithful (though imperfect) follower of God. King Solomon, i nitially, followed God, and he was blessed by God. Read 2 Kings 22, and the story of how Hilkiah, the high priest, found the long-neglected and forgotten Book of Law. He gave the Book of Law to Shaphan, the secretary, who read it to King Josiah. The king ("He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.") had this reaction:
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king's attendant: "Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us."
God wants faithful Christians influencing public policy, politics and government. God wants us to affect the world around us. God wants us to make a difference. That's why we're here!
www.shalomjerusalem.com/prophecy/prophecy1.htm links to an excellent article from 2003 that illustrates just what I'm talking about.
First and formost, "separation of church and state" is a secular progressive myth. The Constitution doesn't say that. The Constitution does say that Congress can't establish a national church (such as National Lutheran, or National Methodist, etc.). The Constitution also says that the federal government can't regulate or restrict the expression of our religious beliefs. It says nothing about a separation of church and state. That myth is the result of secular progressives taking control of the federal judiciary and unconstitutionally changing the very foundation of the republic. http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/ is the link to the Library of Congress online exhibition entitled "Religion and the Founding of the American Republic" which will show you that what I say is true.
Not only does the Constitution not prohibit political involvement by Christians, but the Bible doesn't, either. The Bible is filled with stories of how good and faithful men and women served God in the world of politics and government. Read the story of Joseph, told in the Book of Genesis (especially chapter 41). Joseph's willingness to surrender to God's will in the king's palace in a pagan nation led directly to the salvation of thousands of people.
Read the stories of the Old Testament judges (Book of Judges). Read about Othniel (3:7-11), Ehud (3:12-30), and Deborah (4 and 5). King David was a faithful (though imperfect) follower of God. King Solomon, i nitially, followed God, and he was blessed by God. Read 2 Kings 22, and the story of how Hilkiah, the high priest, found the long-neglected and forgotten Book of Law. He gave the Book of Law to Shaphan, the secretary, who read it to King Josiah. The king ("He did what was right in the eyes of the LORD and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.") had this reaction:
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law, he tore his robes. He gave these orders to Hilkiah the priest, Ahikam son of Shaphan, Acbor son of Micaiah, Shaphan the secretary and Asaiah the king's attendant: "Go and inquire of the LORD for me and for the people and for all Judah about what is written in this book that has been found. Great is the LORD's anger that burns against us because our fathers have not obeyed the words of this book; they have not acted in accordance with all that is written there concerning us."
God wants faithful Christians influencing public policy, politics and government. God wants us to affect the world around us. God wants us to make a difference. That's why we're here!
www.shalomjerusalem.com/prophecy/prophecy1.htm links to an excellent article from 2003 that illustrates just what I'm talking about.
posted by hondo at 11:50 PM
5 Comments:
Americans of every party and religious persuasion have reason to be concerned about the direction our nation is heading. For the last quarter century, a group of influential religious conservatives have slowly worked their way into the power elite in our country. It is neither their religious beliefs nor their conservatism that should concern us, though, for there are many people who share similar religious beliefs and conservative principles yet who are still committed to living in a democracy.
However the particular people to which I am referring have no such commitment but are rather intent upon turning the United States into a theocracy. In the run-up to the 1980 Presidential election many of these people joined forces to bring about the election of Ronald Reagan. At that time their existence, at least on the surface came to the awareness of the American electorate. Many citizens were concerned, not about religious people being in politics, for that has been the case in American political life since the colonial period, but instead about the content of the political rhetoric that insisted that America be brought to live and govern itself under the principles of biblical law. The immediate sense of alarm faded, however, when the takeover of the government by theocratic proponents never occurred under the successive administrations of Reagan and Bush, who without the theocratic support would have wound up as trivia questions instead of our nation’s presidents, even as the faces of such figures as Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and James Dobson became familiar to most Americans. The theocrats on the right were never able to fully advance their agenda inasmuch as they were blocked by a Democratic majority in the Congress as well as by traditional Republicans, the so-called fiscal conservatives who were committed to democracy, as opposed to the social conservatives who had begun to colonize the GOP.
All of that began to change with mid-term election in 1994 when Newt Gingrich led the Republicans to power in the Congress. Many of these newly elected representatives were social conservatives intent on completely reshaping the government according to the agenda of the theocrats who had helped them to power. This same electoral trend has occurred in every national election since that time, culminating in the re-election of President Bush and an increase in presence of social conservatives in both houses of Congress in 2004. And now the socal conservatives are off the leash, no longer capable of being reined in my the moderates who long held sway. These newer members of the GOP, many of whom were Southern democrats just a few years ago who could trace their roots in that party back to the civil War, have now taken to calling their more moderate party-members like Rudolph Giuliani and Arnold Schwarzenegger, RINO’s, that is “Republicans in name only,” for they consider themselves the “true: conservatives, like the Byzantine Greeks who had never set foot in Italy but who considered themselves the “true” Romans.
But don’t take my word for this, because I am a liberal who can’t be trusted, right? Well how about Republican Congressman Christopher Shays of Connecticut who recently had this to say in the New York Times about the direction of his own party: "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy." Or is Shays too much of a moderate for you? Do you need the word of a religious person, say a man of the cloth, to persuade you of the seriousness of the situation? How about the op-ed from the Rev. John Danforth, an Episcopal priest, former US senator from Missouri and President Bush’s most recent UN ambassador:
During the 18 years I served in the Senate, Republicans often disagreed with each other. But there was much that held us together. We believed in limited government, in keeping light the burden of taxation and regulation. We encouraged the private sector, so that a free economy might thrive. We believed that judges should interpret the law, not legislate. We were internationalists who supported an engaged foreign policy, a strong national defense and free trade. These were principles shared by virtually all Republicans.
But in recent times, we Republicans have allowed this shared agenda to become secondary to the agenda of Christian conservatives. As a senator, I worried every day about the size of the federal deficit. I did not spend a single minute worrying about the effect of gays on the institution of marriage. Today it seems to be the other way around.
Now that the Republican party is having trouble controlling the theocrats, shouldn’t this be a warning to the rest of America that something is going very wrong and that citizens should be on their guard?
Most of America has never even heard of the founders of the movement known variously as Christian Reconstructionism, dominion theology or theonomy (God’s law), but they are well known on the far right The late Rousas John Rushdoony is the godfather of the movement. His three- volume Institutes of Biblical Law is the standard work of the movement in which he outlines what a modern society based on the law of the Bible would look like. Basically, it would be an orderly society because everyone who disagreed with what was going on would be executed as either idolaters or a deviants, including fellow Christians. Rushdoony founded the Chalcedon Institute to promote his views, which have been widely disseminated throughout the Radical Right.
Other groups, such as the Alliance Defense Fund, the Coalition on Revival and the Council for National Policy have very close ties to the Reconstructionists. The ADF, which was founded by evangelicals such as the late Bill Bright of Campus Crusade and D. James Kennedy of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, as well as the late Larry Burkett of Crown Financial Concepts which is the fundamentalist’s version of the ACLU, brings the Reconstructionists to teach law students in their summer Blackstone Fellowship program, including such figures as George Grant, who advocates the execution of homosexuals in his book Legislating Immorality, and Gary DeMar who would also execute adulterers, women who seek abortions, and the doctors that perform them. The Coalition on Revival, which openly advocates the closing of public schools and abolishing the IRS, has detailed position paper on its web site outlining what and why they believe that the Bible should be the basis of all law and government. Readers should pay special attention to those papers as they outline in chilling detail what these people would do to America. Rushdoony, Gary DeMar and Rushdoony’s son-in-law Gary North, who advocates stoning homosexuals because the materials are so ready at hand, all were both original signers of the COR’s manifesto in 1986 as well as founding members of its steering committee, as were other such evangelical luminaries as J.I. Packer, Left Behind author Tim LaHaye, and Edith Schaefer, the wife of the late right-wing guru Francis Schaefer. Undoubtedly the most secretive of the theocratic organizations is the Council for National Policy. This organization, founded in 1981, brings together the heads of the biggest right-wing organizations for thrice annual meetings which are held in secret and open only to members. Over the years a number of researchers have been able to identify a number of these influential leaders. Rushdoony was a member for many years, as well as was one his disciples, Howard Phillips, the 1996 Presidential candidate of the Constitution Party who Focus on the Family’s James Dobson admitted voting for at a meeting of the CNP in 1998. In addition to the already mentioned “stoner” Gary North, other members have included Dobson, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, Eagle Forum’s Phyllis Schlafly and Lt Col. Oliver North, as well as Peb Jackson of the evangelical organization Young Life. According to a report by the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State which has condensed recent news coverage of the group, there was a meeting of the group just prior to the Republican National Convention in August 2004 which was both appropriate and convenient, given that these people now control the Republican Party and they were all going to be there anyway.
Mainstream Americans ought to be asking what is going on with all of this. Why are these people and their ministries intent on destroying democracy? Why are they trying to make the Bible the handbook of American government and law? If these evangelical leaders do not espouse these positions, then why do they not publicly repudiate and distance themselves from such activities? What are they doing funding people who want to stone our citizens for “sex crimes”? Why are they paying to train aspiring lawyers using known theocrats who think that democracy is evil? And why do they, the followers of the one who said “Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your father who is in heaven,” are they meeting secretly to plot control of the Republican party and by extension the rest of our national life? What is it that they have to hide? We had better start asking these questions before it is too late and we are all stoned to death.
Yo Hondo,
When you say the separation of church and state is a myth by secular progressives, do you mean secular progressives like Thomas Jefferson? You know, that guy who coined the phrase separation of church and state? Man, that guy was really way off the intention of our founding fathers...
Anonymous, you should check out two links in order to improve your education on this subject.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=16
is a link to the actual texts of the letter from the Danbury Baptists to Jefferson, and the letter of reply from Jefferson.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=9
is a link to an essay examining what Jefferson meant by his use of the phrase "separation of church and state." This essay provides historical, verifiable documentation that the modern liberal interpretation of that phrase is inaccurate. What say you?
To public theologian-- If what you say is true about Christian "fascists" controlling the GOP, then why do we not live under a theocracy today? The GOP controlled both houses of Congress from 1995-to 2006, and we've had an openly Christian President since 2001. What happened to this evil takeover? Answer--America's Christian conservatives have no desire to establish a theocracy. We just don't want the secular left to destroy the foundation of America, as built by our Founding Fathers. We don't want America to circle the same drain that Europe has.
Second, you mentioned Christopher Shays and John Danforth. Quite honestly, I don't give two hoots what those two liberal gentlemen think about the direction of the GOP. Danforth is an Episcopalian priest, which makes him the modern day equivilent of an elder in the ancient church of Ephesus.
What say me? I say that, you as yourself have provided the proof that Thomas Jefferson coined the phrase "separation of chuch and state" that it therefore cannot be a myth.
Post a Comment
<< Home