Part 5

Jim Bramlett

We would like to think of the U.S. Supreme Court as a fountainhead of truth, where wise men and women deliberate (hopefully prayerfully) and flawlessly rule on the intent of the Constitution.

If that were true, there would be an ongoing consistency in their decisions. Unfortunately, that has been far from reality.

For example, for most of our nation’s history, the Justices recognized that they were subject to a higher law found in God’s Word. The Court viewed law as President Calvin Coolidge did when he declared, "Men do not make laws, they do but discover them. Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority. They must rest upon the eternal foundations of righteousness."

Here are a few of the historic cases that reaffirmed biblical principles:

Vidal v. Girard’s Executors (1844): The Court produced a ruling which said, "Christianity is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public." The Court’s decision asked the question, "Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament?"

 

Holy Trinity v. United States (1892): The Supreme Court cited document after document from American history and concluded, "There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning; they affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation." The ruling states bluntly, "This is a Christian nation."

 

United States v. Macintosh (1931): The Supreme Court declared, "We are a Christian people...according to one another the equal right of religious freedom, and acknowledging with the reverence the duty of obedience to God."

But in early 1947, an entirely new agenda gripped the Court. In Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment erected a "wall of separation" between church and state which must be kept "high and impregnable." Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, author of the decision, stated, "We could not approve the slightest breach" of that separation. The Court cited no precedent from previous rulings. The case was an official betrayal of America’s Christian heritage.

The Everson case put forth a radically new idea: "separation between church and state" -- a removal of religious principles from government.

Our Founding Fathers placed the First Amendment in the Constitution specifically to prevent such erroneous rulings. The fact that we are a nation based on the Word of God has been restated throughout our history.

From the time of Everson until today, decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court have helped to bring about the greatest decline in American civilization. It was as if the Supreme Court had declared a bloodless revolution in America -- a revolution more subtle than yet just as destructive as the Russian revolution under Lenin. Over the next three decades, we witnessed a stream of liberal court rulings that gradually reshaped who we are as a nation.

Engel v. Vitale, Murray v. Curlett, and Abington v. Schempp (1962–1963): Within two years, three separate cases effectively removed prayer, religious instruction, and Bible reading from America’s public schools. At about the same time, students began to be taught that there is no God, no absolute truth, that the universe is a cosmic accident, and that they evolved by the chance collision of sea-slime molecules and are the same status as apes. Since then, God, the Bible and prayer have been replaced in our schools by drugs, handguns and condoms. How can anyone deny the correlation?

 

Florey v. Sioux Falls School District (1979): The Court ruled it unconstitutional for a student to ask at a school assembly, "Whose birthday is celebrated on Christmas?"

 

Grove v. Mead School District (1985): The Supreme Court refused to remove from the required curriculum of a class a book that referred to Jesus as "a poor white trash God."

Other Supreme Court rulings in the past thirty years have stated:

• It is unconstitutional for a war memorial or any public monument to be designed in the shape of a cross.

• It is unconstitutional for public schools to teach biblical doctrine or principles; however, the Bible may be used in a course on history or comparative religions.
• It is unconstitutional to post the Ten Commandments in public schools. The Supreme Court gave this reasoning: "If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey the Commandments. This...is not a permissible...objective."

Founding Father Benjamin Rush foresaw the danger of these court decisions. Two hundred years ago, he warned:

"The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating [removing] Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools."

Since 1947, our tradition of faith and our rich history of allegiance to Almighty God have been systematically stripped away, while most of the church has been slumbering. By officially declaring that America has turned its back on God, the Supreme Court and the majority of our public institutions invited evil into our midst. Thus the battle for America’s soul, which began just a few decades ago and has continued to this day, has changed our fortunes forever.

When fabric unravels it follows a pattern. First a stitch becomes loose. At that point, it is easy to repair the fabric to make it as strong as ever. But if left untended, the loose stitch affects the one next to it. Now the hole is twice as large. From there, many loose threads cause the fabric to completely unravel and fall apart.

We have seen how essential moral stitches in our national fabric have been pulled loose. We did not attend properly to those holes in our moral character. Suddenly, today it seems as if our entire society is unraveling -- from the government to the family.

We desperately need moral and spiritual leadership in this nation, from Washington, D.C to every town and village. But first it must begin in the pulpits.

In the 1830's, French diplomat Alexis de Tocqueville toured America. When his tour had been completed, he made this observation:

"I sought for the key to the greatness of America in her harbors…; in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."