The Day We Banned God from America
"Take heed unto yourselves, lest ye forget the covenant of the Lord your God...."
(Deuteronomy 4:23)
When David Barton wrote the book, America: To Pray or Not to pray, he compiled a series of charts that demonstrate the drastic downward spiral of some American institutions, after prayer and Bible reading were banned from public schools in 1963. Divorce rates went up. SAT scores plummeted. Sexually transmitted diseases spread rampantly among teens. More devastating than this, an entire generation was spiritually lost. I can recall this period quite well.
My public school education began in the small Appalachian town of Big Stone Gap, Virginia. Nestled at the base of the mountains in southwestern Virginia, it was a close-knit community of people who were stubborn in spirit and strong in personal conviction. Everybody, whether Baptist, Methodist or Pentecostal, took their faith seriously and
raised their children to respect God and country.
My family moved to Big Stone Gap when I was three years old.
My father assumed a pastorate, and I began school at age six. I remember rising early each morning, getting my little leather pack with books, and walking across the concrete bridge to school. I also recall, very clearly, seeing my first grade teacher stand in front of the class, reading a story from the Bible and offering a brief prayer to bless the day. Sometimes she asked if one of the students would like to pray. I can remember the feeling of security and safety when I heard the prayer.
Being a momma's boy, I missed home, but prayer reminded me of Dad and Mom. It comforted me.
By fifth grade, we had moved to Arlington in northern Virginia.
Not only did I experience culture shock, I also noticed something very different about fifth grade. No teacher offered to read the Bible or pray. I finally asked why and the teacher said, "We can no longer do that in a public school." I couldn't believe it! Perhaps the teachers in Big Stone Gap were doing it despite this new law. Being a kid, I hadn't watched the news or paid attention to adult conversation regarding this. In Arlington, things were different. I learned about the atheist who proudly boasted about removing prayer and Bible reading from school. Her name was Madalyn Murray O'Hair.
The O'Hair Factor
O'Hair used her son, William, to demonstrate how an atheist was disrespected by public school prayer and Bible reading. Years later, William Murray wrote this about his mother:
"I was born into a home of near constant rage and violence.
My mother never married my father or my brother's father. As a result of my mother's constant angry outbursts she could not hold down a job and she, my brother and I lived with her parents and my unmarried uncle in a small row house in Baltimore, Maryland. My grandfather had never filed an income tax return and most of what he did do during his life was illegal or ill advised. He had no savings. My grandmother read tarot cards and sent out demons by burning human hair.
My uncle kept boards of pornography in his room and my mother filled the house with statues of mating animals that she worshiped.
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My mother accepted the communist doctrine when I was about ten years old and, from that time on, there were socialist and communist study group meetings in the basement of our Baltimore home. I was taught that, because there was no God, there was no such thing as right or wrong. My mother told me it was better to be a homosexual than to be a Christian. She taught me that the most important things in life were the physical pleasures of drink, food and sex.
For many years I lived the life I was taught. I drank a quart of vodka a day and by the time I was thirty, I had been married twice. I lived only to eat, drink and have what I thought was sexual pleasure. But a time came when the women and the booze no longer gave me the happiness that my atheist mother told me they would bring. I was consuming so much alcohol that it no longer got me high. I started using marijuana and other drugs to supplement the alcohol which had betrayed me."
(Source: www.wjmurray.com 9-25-2000)
William J. Murray, who is now a Christian minister, was a young boy attending public school when his mother set out to remove prayer and Bible reading from public schools in 1959. Her lawsuit, Murray vs.
Curlett, was finally heard in court on February 27, 1963. On June 17, 1963, the Supreme Court ruled in O'Hair's favor and reverential Bible reading and prayer were expelled from America's public schools.
I wondered later, "How could one woman accomplish this?" I questioned, "Where was the outcry from Christians who believed in Bible reading and prayer? After all, Christians were the majority or were they?" Christian reaction was downright anemic. They complained and criticized the decision, but few attempted to challenge it.
Since God was expelled from public schools, thousands of court battles have occurred with the sole purpose of erasing every object, phrase, and symbol of Christianity from America. This decision has put America into a spiritual war zone, essentially separating it from its covenant protection with God. When you are in covenant with God, your enemies are His enemies. An example of God removing a hedge of protection is found in Job 1:10-12. Since 1963, the enemy of God and America has certainly attacked!
The Legacy of Breaking America's Spiritual Covenant
I believe that if they could, Washington, Adams, and most of the Founders would have kicked their way out of their tombs to object to the removal of the Bible and prayer from public schools. Washington said in his Farewell Address in 1796:
"Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail to the exclusion of religious principle."
In 1963, the Supreme Court Justices might as well have said to God, "We are rejecting the covenant our fathers had with you." In ancient Israel, when the people rejected their covenant with God, He allowed His hedge of protection to be removed, thus causing great trouble to come upon the land. This was His way of getting Israel's attention. He wanted them to see that they needed to repent and turn their hearts back to Him. Let's look at some of the things that have happened since God removed His hedge of protection from America:
Political Assaults: Five months after the Murray vs. Curlett decision, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas.
America, previously victorious in every war, was humiliated in the Vietnam War. We never won it. We merely pulled out our troops and went home. Racial tension festered. Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King was assassinated. The downward spiral continued with the oil embargo, and Richard Nixon's resignation from the presidency. Iran later took Americans hostage for 444 days. A former Israeli intelligence agent told me that Israeli officials told President Carter that they would send a special team into Iran to help release the hostages. President Carter decided to execute a secret mission to free the hostages before the ensuing presidential election. The mission failed and so did Carter in his re-election efforts. Our majestic eagle was wounded over and over again!
An Assault on Values: The removal of the Bible from schools undermined the ability to teach moral absolutes. Rejecting the Bible meant rejecting its principles. Values like honesty, perseverance, faithfulness, and kindness became subject to debate and individual circumstances. For example, if honesty depended on one's situation, the immature students were essentially taught to determine for themselves whether it's right or wrong to live by Godly standards. Talk about having the inmates run the asylum! Here's an example for a class to discuss
Clipping the Wings of the Eagle
regarding cheating in school. How do you think a group of fourth graders would respond?
Situation: Tom's parents are great. They help him with his homework. He gets an allowance for easy weekend chores. He has his own computer and Internet connection along with a telephone and killer stereo. His parents pay him $25 for every
"A" that he gets and he enjoys total privacy when he needs to study. Randy has a part time job after school to help his mom pay the high winter heating bills. He lives with his mom and four younger brothers and sisters. When he gets home after work, he makes dinner for the kids, cleans up and bathes his little brother before bed because his mom works until ten.
Exhausted and without time to study, Randy doesn't study for his test in the morning.
The moral guidelines in the Bible are summed up in the Ten Commandments: the five "dos" and the five "do nots." Reading the Bible in school planted positive values in the minds of kids. I never remember my teacher forcing me to believe the Bible, but I do remember the comfort I felt when I heard the Bible stories. Imagine if every law in America that is based on Scripture was removed! Anarchy would dominate; theft, killing, and fighting would be uncontrollable. Laws are enforced as a tool to restrain evil. Likewise, the laws of God's Word act as a restraint against sins like murder, lust, pride, and deception. Without Biblical standards, what is the basis for right and wrong? Humanists will argue that values vary, and that there are no absolutes. Even the Deists saw the Almighty in nature and revered the absolute power of the oceans and the result of gravity!
An Assault on our Identity: Teaching creationism was forbidden.
With the Bible banished, science was deemed the source of truth.
Scientific evolution was taught as the origin of our species. It is noteworthy that, before his death, Charles Darwin denied his theory of evolution. Have you ever read that fact in one of your kids' textbooks?
According to pure scientific process, a theory needs some evidence to support it. There are many missing links in the evolution theory. If kids think they are a result of a random accident of nature, or that they arose from primordial slime, is it surprising that they have no hope in a God-ordained future? People will let you down. It is not a matter of if, but a matter of when. But the God of the Bible will never let you down. His
mercies are new everyday! Teach kids this, or at least don't prohibit its discussion, and you will see new self-esteem in kids blossoming across the land.
My Grandfather, John Bava, published this poem in one of his books. It mocks the utter nonsense of evolution:
Three monkeys sat in a coconut tree, discussing things that are said to be.
Said one to the other, now listen, you two; There's a certain rumor that can't be true: That man descended from our noble race, this very idea is a big disgrace.
No monkey ever deserted his wife, starved her babies and ruined her life
And you've never known a mother monk, to leave her babies with others to bunk Or pass them on from one to another, till they scarcely know who is their mother. And another thing you will never see: a monk build a fence `round a coconut tree And let the coconuts go to waste, forbidding the other monks to taste
Why if I put a fence around a tree, starvation would force you to steal from me. Here's another thing a monk won't do: go out at night and get a stew
Or use a club, a gun or knife to take another monkey's life We're fully convinced without any fuss, man has descended, but not from us.
(Source: Scrapbook of Radiant Gems, John Bava, page 34)
Since Creationism is a Biblical teaching, it is banned in the name of separation of church and state, even though in some communities about 65% of the youth in public schools also attend church at least occasionally. By the way, separation of church and state is not now, nor has it ever been, a law. It was a concept that our Founders were mindful of because their goal was to protect the free exercise of religion not to ban religion. However, protecting the free exercise of religion is a law; it is the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution. In the name of protecting non-Christians, must we totally eradicate our Christian heritage from every public place and public school? What is wrong with this picture?
An Assault on Morality: So-called modem, enlightened educators
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appear to believe that condoms are the 21st century cure for all sexually transmitted diseases. It is outrageous to demonstrate in public school classrooms how to conquer the problem of sexually transmitted diseases by stretching condoms over cucumbers! The Bible teaches that people are slaves to sin until they are set free by faith in Christ as Savior. Then they are free to control their choices and behave correctly. In Christ, there is self-control. Abstinence is an act of self-control, but there is little teaching about abstinence. Without moral absolutes, our current system is doomed to propagate the spread of sexually transmitted diseases.
When students are taught how to sin safely by having "safe sex," then why would they abstain?
A cucumber sporting a condom never got a teenage girl pregnant, but uncontrolled lust certainly has! Our children need to learn how to live with self-control. Wise choices will stop the problem of pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. These choices may seem old fashioned, but group dating, chaperones, and fulfilling, wholesome activities will save our kids lives. Besides, since condoms fail a percentage of the time, aren't we teaching our kids how to play Russian roulette instead of saving their lives?
During an interview on TBN, evangelist Dave Roever said that the government has spent over six million dollars researching ways to stop AIDS. In conclusion, they discovered the best way was to abstain from sex before marriage and stay married to the same person. This is a six million dollar revelation that can be found in any forty-dollar Bible!
If this is the finding, then why is it wrong to teach students in public schools that they should abstain from sex before marriage? Why not just teach the Bible and save tax dollars!
An Assault on the Value of Human Life: Society has taught that any pregnancy can be terminated at any time by abortion. Without respect for life while in the womb, is it any wonder that kids kill each other? Abortion kills unborn babies and their "fetal tissue" is sold for research. This reminds me of what Hitler did to the Jews during the holocaust. Hitler's henchmen considered the Jews to be useless, and many innocent Jews were dissected and used for medical research. Some Nazi soldiers threw babies into the air and skewed them with their bayonets in front of their mothers. Thousands of Jews were used as human guinea pigs in the name of science. Does fetal tissue for medical research sound familiar? The American holocaust is not being played out behind locked doors in Nazi concentration camps. It is being hidden
behind closed doors of abortion facilities. It is being sold as a right that our Founding Fathers intended. The loss of respect for life is frightening.
If an infant can be redefined as fetal tissue then, in the future, how will senior citizens be defined? Will they be inconvenient, or too expensive, or non-productive?
Ronald Reagan said, "We cannot diminish the value of one category of human life—the unborn—without diminishing the value of all human life." At the heart of respect is basic respect for God and for all the human life that He has created. Teaching that one can redefine life by calling an unborn child a mass of cell tissue devalues all life.
Some nations use abortion for population control. In some places, euthanasia is the choice used to eliminate the weak, sick, mentally retarded, and elderly. I believe that some ungodly politicians have not already supported euthanasia simply because they would lose many of their voters! I can see the debate now: "We can save hundreds of millions of dollars under Social Security and Medicare by removing millions of non-productive people from the nation through humane termination. The money saved can be used to invest in the education of our youth." Impossible? Not to those who have no moral and spiritual convictions.
As I learn more about America's extraordinary connection to the Hebrews, it becomes clearer to me why God raised up America. It is also clear that we must uphold the spiritual covenant of our Founding Fathers. God judged Israel for breaking His covenant. Since He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, we can only expect a similar response for America's covenant breaking. God did not unleash His full judgment upon Israel until He first visited them with mercy. His mercy was an expression of His love and was intended to convict their hearts to repentance. Genesis states that, "...the cup of iniquity must become full"
before God swiftly unleashes the wrath of His mighty hand (Genesis 15:16). The Ten Commandments were not ten recommendations. If we obeyed them we would be spared from divorce, greed, murder, stealing, lying, and corruption. In the Promised Land, Ancient Israel eventually broke every commandment. Their sins moved the hand of God to unleash His wrath by preparing a plan for Israel to enter into Babylonian captivity.
American captivity is of a different nature. We are not plagued by foreign troops who force us into Siberian slavery. We experience our captivity as an internal void caused by the spiritual darkness that we
Clipping the Wings of the Eagle
have without Christ. This void results in unhappiness, depression, despair, ungratefulness, and strife. In other words, our mental prison, caused by spiritual ignorance, leads to spiritual bondage in our lives.
Christians in our nation conquered their problem of internal captivity upon their acceptance of Christ, yet they continue to struggle with sin and its effects in their lives. In addition, they are ridiculed on TV, sued for sharing the Gospel at work, and their jobs are jeopardized if they dare to read the Bible in public school cafeterias on personal time. Yet gangs roam the streets and cause people to live in fear, locked
Christians in our nation conquered their problem of internal captivity upon their acceptance of Christ, yet they continue to struggle with sin and its effects in their lives. In addition, they are ridiculed on TV, sued for sharing the Gospel at work, and their jobs are jeopardized if they dare to read the Bible in public school cafeterias on personal time. Yet gangs roam the streets and cause people to live in fear, locked