Why They Think They're Winning Part II

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

The abuse of this portion of our constitution has always facinated me. It kind of reminds me of the way some denominations are begining to interpet the word of God to say that the homosexual lifestyle is accepted by God. Now to my knowledge, and mind you I am a relative babe in terms of age and history, Congress has never, ever, made an attempt to make a law respecting an establishment of religon, nor have they ever to my knowledge attempted to make a law prohibiting the free exersise thereof. Yet we still have dozens of cases in which portions of our society claim that the constitution has been infringed apon by religion?? Those two statements are pretty simple in fact to understand if one attempts to do so without consulting the many supreme court cases on record debating it. #1. It was written in English, #2. There are no controversies over the English meaning of any of the words in that sentence, and finally, #3. If we become confused somehow, we have historical context to guide us. Let's take it a word at a time then shall we?

We'll skip over the easy stuff first. I think we can agree on what Congress is, so next lets take the phrase "shall make no". That simply means they "will not make any". Next we have the word law, I have included the wikipedia definition for your benefit as it is much more thourough than I could ever be in explaining.

Ah! Now on to the meaty stuff... First the word "respecting". In the context of this sentence it means "regarding" or "with respect to". Which essentially means "promoting" I think. Then we have "an Establishment" (See Established Church) and (State Religons). Also I would like to take the most broad definition of the word "Establish" and break it down. Now there are probably two possible ways you could look at it. #1 would be the way jefferson and the authors of our constitution meant it, and #2 the way our liberal brothers in the US choose to look at it. Only one is correct and very simply so if you examine it in the context of history and are not biased. the first is "To make a state institution of" and the second is " To cause to be recognized and accepted". I will trust that you have now read the two links I provided above and can see that there is no way any rational person could conclude that our founders meant anything remotely resembling the second definition based on again, both the history of our government and the context of the time. The last word is Religion, which I have also provided the wikipedia definition to for you benefit. In a nut shell though, an organized form or worship.

Even if you could make the leap and ignore all evidence to the contrary, you are still faced with that nasty little bit about "Congress making any law". To my knowledge congress never made a law that demanded a Christian prayer by a graduating student, or a law demanding that a nativity be placed on the steps of a city hall, or a law stating that a large cross be placed in the mojave desert to promote Christianity. Calling things like these government sponsorship of religon is like calling a Big Mac a Stick of Celery. Its really that ridiculous.

Now why do I bring this up as a part of my post? Simple, because this argument especially is at the heart of our perceived weakness as a country in the eyes of our enemies. They see it with uncolored eyes, they see the sad truth of it that so many of us don't. Put simply they can see through the agendizing and political correctness that promotes ideas like the liberal definition of a seperation of church and state. Don't get me wrong, I mean, the lawyers who came up with this argument knew it was a thin at best, false at worst argument also, but in order to promote it they had to convince people it was true. So what we have now is half our country who are ignorrant of both church history and American history who actually buy that load of dung. So why, you ask, does that make us look weak? Well, to answer that you have to look at the Islamic culture, God is the center of every family and religion is not just a thing you do on Sundays if your favorite football team isn't playing between the hours of 8:00-10:00am. I don't mean forced religon, nobody has to force these people. They have a respect and a reverence for their God that encompasses the entire family and their entire lives. So when they see us and our simpering, quibbling and infighting over such vital issue, that of reverence for God at its core, of course they percieve it as weakness.

I have not even mentioned State sponsored abortions or our debate over the very existence of God. But these too cause us to appear weak. I know some of you are saying that these things are our strengths. The fact that we have dissent, etc... and you would be correct if not for the level to which we have let these arguments rise. Having differing opinions and ideas is what makes our country great, yes! But we have forgotten who made the laws in the first place. We have forgotten by whose grace we even exist. We have "exchanged the truth of God for a lie" and now worship and serve created things rather than the Creator. Have we actually been weakened to some degree by this, I for one think so and do we appear weak to our enemies? Yes! You can bet we do.