Church and State

QUESTION: How does combining church and state affect religious liberty?

ANSWER:

By religious liberty, we mean the ability to choose any religious persuasion you desire and to have free expression of your beliefs. The mandatory following of a national church dogma or observance would not be considered as religious liberty. If a church and state are combined in an organizational fashion, history shows that religious liberty is always suppressed.

In addition, a totalitarian state based upon humanistic anti-Theistic beliefs such as Communist Russia, even though they do not have a state church (God-related religion) in the normal sense, they also suppress religious freedom as well as political, social, and civil freedoms. Basically, atheistic humanism was their state religion. Belief in it was mandatory to avoid severe consequences. Consequently, they had, in effect, a denominational or organizational state religion.

Today, in America, the politically correct pursuit of expunging all Christian Theistic religious expressions, writings and symbols from the public square in the name of separation of church and state is removing the very things that gave us our religious liberty and other freedoms and replacing them with an opposite doctrinal religion of atheistic humanism as our state or national religion.

In June 1961 in a case called Torcaso v. Watkins, the U.S. Supreme Court stated, "Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others." The Supreme Court declared Secular Humanism to be a religion. The American Humanist Association certifies counselors who enjoy the same legal status as ordained ministers. Since the Supreme Court has said that Secular Humanism is a religion, why is it allowed to be taught in our public schools and be supported by our tax dollars? The removal of public expressions of faith is, in effect, establishing the religion of humanism over Christianity. This is exactly what our founding fathers tried to stop from happening with the first amendment.

Secular Humanist leaders also admitted that "Secular Humanism" is a religion before they realized the consequences of that admission and implemented "damage control." The following is a quote from Lloyd Morain, former editor of "The Humanist" which is the quasi-official journal of the American Humanist Association.

"Humanism does not include the idea of a God and as such is considered a philosophy rather than a religion. In a way, it is an alternative to all religions. However, whether one looks to humanism as a religion or a philosophy to live by or as a way of life is, we believe, largely a matter of personal temperament and preference. Those caught up by its religious aspects know that it provides a vibrant, satisfying faith. Those who think of it as a philosophy find it both reasonable and adequate."

Free expressions of faith are being replaced with mandatory, government enforced censorship of expression since expressions of faith would be inconsistent with the new state humanist religion. Consequently, a new state religion is being enforced, under the guise of ensuring that traditional Christian Theistic doctrinal religion in the public square is extinguished.

Alternatively, history shows that only under a government with Christian Theism as their doctrinal, national religion is there religious freedom. Where the gospel of Jesus Christ has gone and taken root, political, social, and civil freedom has usually followed.

Billy Graham once declared, "We have confused liberty with license-and we are paying an awful price. We are a society poised on the brink of destruction." Author Charles Hummel stated, "that real liberty can only be conceived in terms of purpose for which we were made." That is why the humanist and the evolutionist cannot really define liberty; instead they always end up with license because they have no purpose.

The dictionary defines license as "excess," and the thesaurus provides these substitutes for license: "immoderation," "abandon," "lack of control," and "lawlessness." License ultimately takes us back to anarchy. Anarchy leads to total government control. Total government control eliminates religious liberty and basically all freedoms.