Separation Of Church And State With Blood"It is with great irony when a nation, performing under the principle of separation of church and state, possesses an oath of loyalty to their country that includes the words 'Under God' and that every coin it produces contains the motto 'in God we trust.' The irony lies in witnessing that Reema, a product of our public schools' education, for all her knowledge and scholarly summations about separation of Church and State, does not know the exciting story that began with our Founding Fathers' grandparents in England at the time of Oliver Cromwell . It can be told concisely and with much effect to explain away this apparent disconnect between our so-called godless present and our Christian past, and the modernist penchant for separation of Church and State. Separating Church And State: Does It Take A Sword?Recall that Oliver Cromwell, a lowly English farmer, rose to national notoriety to train and lead a disciplined and undefeatable army against the tyrannical reign of King Charles I, resulting in both the making of England into a Christian republican Commonwealth and his ascent to the position of Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland. But "Cromwell was faced with churches, who wanted an established Church — still the old Roman model," explains R.J. Rushdoony . "The Presbyterians, who were the most powerful group, were emphatically for an established Church. That to them was salvation. The Separatists disagreed with that. But the other groups basically wanted to command the Establishment. "What Cromwell wanted was not a Church Establishment, but a Christian Establishment. "He wanted England committed to a Christian faith, not to a Church. "That's what he worked for. He had to fight the churches. It was the churches that defeated Calvinism and, most of all, the Presbyterians. It's the great blot in Presbyterian history that they were the ones who not only destroyed Calvin but brought in Charles II, a thoroughly degenerate man, "Of course, he broke his word immediately and 2,000 clergymen had to leave the Church of England, and the Presbyterians in time virtually died out in England. Leading into the English Civil War that Cromwell fought against Charles I, many Puritans in England for years had been facing conflict against Charles I's father, king James I, who considered their attempts at removing the established Anglican Church as treasonous.
"The Congregational Church of Massachusetts was the established church of Massachusetts and legally part of the Church of England. They never broke with the Church of England. They actually had Church of England men in some of the pulpits. In fact, the man at Salem whose family was deeply involved in the witchcraft trials was Church of England. "But it was only subsequently that they came to a belief that there should be a Christian Establishment rather than a Church Establishment. "However, with the Constitution it was believed that, legally and on good grounds, the states, if they chose, could establish a Church or several churches or simply say that Christianity is the established faith. But the united States could not impose it on the States and counties. "In many cases, they settled down to a county by county Establishment. Even in my lifetime, especially in the West, you could go to a county in Nebraska, Minnesota, Wisconsin – all those States – and everything would be controlled by a particular church, which was the dominant church in that area. "It could be Catholic. It could be Lutheran. It could be Presbyterian. It could be Reformed. Any number of things…They were not intolerant of each other. I know in some places, when I spoke in the early and mid ‘40s, the priests or the nuns would ask me into the parochial schools to talk about my work among the Indians. Or the Lutheran pastor would have me into the public schools. He ran it. In some instances the priests ran the public schools and the nuns taught. "Nobody saw anything wrong with that. They were not intolerant one of another. It worked out beautifully on the local level. But we shattered all of that because of
Madelyn Murray
and
her lawsuit
." The Establishment. No Avoiding It.According to the Oxford Dictionary, to establish means "to set up (an organization, system, or set of rules) on a firm or permanent basis." "Establishment is therefore the act of establishing such a system as well as the descriptive of the system once it’s in place," explains Chris Ortiz, editor of "Faith for All of Life". "That’s why the present basis of power in the United States is often referred to as 'The Establishment.' It is a fixed governing system. "The fact of the matter is that establishment is an inescapable concept, because both religion and law — the foundations of establishment — are inescapable concepts. We either have an establishment of a humanistic moral and intellectual order or we have a Biblical one. We either have an establishment of righteousness or an establishment of wickedness." America's history tells the story of a people who had learned early on from the bitter fruit of bloodshed that neither Church establishment, like the Presbyterians wanted, nor State establishment, like kings James and Charles wanted, are the answer. But Biblical establishment is the answer, meaning the establishment of righteousness and not wickedness. Separation of Church and State misses the point. "Now as Christians," said Rushdoony, "we believe that the basic starting point is the regeneration of man. Then man takes and applies that faith. For us as Christians the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. Then the basic governmental institution is the family. "This means that every father and mother will be more important in the sight of God than heads of state, because He controls children, property and the future. Then, third, you have the church as the government; fourth, the school as a government. Fifth, your job governs you and is a government. Then, sixth, society governs you with its ideas, its beliefs, its standards, and, seventh, one among many forms of government is the civil State - civil government. "Today, we are implicitly totalitarian. We speak of the state as the government. That's totalitarian. So we have to rid ourselves of such things." We begin the purging process by coming to terms with the irony of which Reema Khrais spoke about, of a nation that believes in separation of Church and State while claiming allegiance to the God of the Bible. This cannot be. This incongruity cannot be reasoned away, because the truth speaks otherwise about our historical roots. Let us then let go of the notion of separation of Church and State and pursue instead for the establishment of righteousness, beginning with sound, truthful instruction of children by their families and away from a system that ends up producing the poverty of reasoning that cannot see how our nation's roots are not secular nor were we constituted godlessly. But rather we are a people rooted in Biblical grounds and constituted in the presence of the Living God, who shed His blood so that men could be free from bondage, united in a common instruction, governed through multiple governments and established in righteousness to serve the Creator who endowed them with Life, Liberty and a desire to pursue Happiness within His just and lasting Law. Return to "Religion In Public Schools" from "Separation of Church and State With Blood" Return to "Abolish Public Schools" Home Page Return to Abolish Public School Blog
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Oliver Cromwell was staunchly orthodox in his Christian beliefs.
and believed he would keep his word to them that he would go along with their idea of an Establishment.
"With the early colonies," continues Rushdoony, "there were Separatists or Independents or people who maintained the form of Establishment but really wanted no part of it.
