Should Churches stay out of Politics?

          Tony Passaro
Bel Air Tea Party  Patriots
Alliance of American Patriots
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    apassaro@crosslink.net
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Should our Churches stay out of the political process?

There is a relationship between the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT and the Christian Churches.  The movements are essentially the same both holding the same goals and objectives.

Abraham Lincoln opened his famous Gettysburg Address with the following words:

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. "
Lincoln went on to conclude:
"It is for us the living … to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced ... that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
Why would someone begin a talk about whether our churches should stay out of the political process by quoting the Gettysburg Address? Because in his address, Lincoln identified four fundamental principles as the essence of America. These were that America was:

1. "conceived in Liberty";
2. "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal";
3. a "nation under God""; and
4. a "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

Lincoln states that the Civil War was about whether these principles could endure.

Sadly, our country is again involved in a civil war about these same principles; a war again testing whether "that nation … so conceived and so dedicated can long endure". But this time, the battle is not on a battlefield with guns and swords but is raging our courts, the halls of Congress, in the Executive branch, in our state capitals, in our churches, schools and universities and in our homes and streets. We are fighting an enemy that rejects:

o "the proposition that all men are created equal"
o the concept "that all men … are endowed with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"
o the idea that ours is a "government of the people, by the people, for the people"
o the inviolability of our Constitution and laws, viewing them as "living, evolving" and subject to distortion in meaning to achieve their political ends
o and, most importantly, they not only reject the concept of America being a "nation under God", they reject the idea that religion and morality have any role in public discourse and affairs!
o
In short, they reject the foundational pillars upon which our Republic rests.
Our Republic is anchored on the concept of God given "unalienable Rights" that are self-evident truths. It was on the basis of these Rights that our founders claimed the right to Independence from England. Having gained our freedom, WE THE PEOPLE then agreed to the Constitution, which represents our voluntarily relinquishing limited rights to the federal government "in order to form a more perfect Union". But in doing so, we did not alter the fact that ours was a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". WE THE PEOPLE not only retained control and ownership of the federal government and the Republic, we retained control of all rights not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution. This was made explicit in the 9th and 10th Amendments. But what is unique about our Republic is that our founders entrusted WE THE PEOPLE with the responsibility for the preservation of our Republic. We are the stewards of our Republic's patrimony.
Designing our Republic was no easy task. In an address to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin noted:
"We have gone back to ancient history for models of government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances."
Why? What was so different about "our circumstances"? The difference was that ours was a Christian nation; a nation founded on the premise of equality and God given inalienable rights. As Christians, our founders believed that redeemed men are virtuous and self-controlled. They were therefore capable of more liberty, requiring less external governance. They were capable of being responsible stewards, wisely choosing their leaders and holding them to their oaths of office; thereby ensuring the continuance of the Republic. As James Madison said:
"We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
Donald S Lutz, a professor at the University of Houston, wrote an excellent book called "The Origins of American Constitutionalism" in which, discussing the reasoning behind the American Constitution, he observes:

"[T]he most fundamental assumption is that the American people are a virtuous people…Without the belief in a virtuous people, the federal republic would not have been tried."

John Quincy Adams may have summarized our founding best when he said:

"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."

The object of the enemy in our new civil war, to use President Obama's words, is "fundamentally transforming the United States of America." While the enemy refuses to reveal the full extent of transformation they have in mind, we do know that it at least involves (and this is just a partial list) the following:
" Abrogation of the Constitution by either ignoring it and/or modifying it through convoluted judicial interpretations and international treaties;
" Unlimited powers for the federal government;
" Political redistribution of the wealth of America;
" Control over all education in America;
" Control over large segments of our economy;
" Control over our healthcare;
" Replacement of economic energy with "green" energy;
" Use of tax laws to undermine private charities;
" Use of "hate crimes" to limit speech;
" Maximization of unionized labor;
" Protection of a mother's "right" to murder her baby;
" Expansion/protection of "rights" of minorities over those of the majority; and
" Dissolution of the "indissoluble bond" that our Constitution created between "the principles of civil government" and "the principles of Christianity".

In the case of this last "transformation", the enemy has quietly been at work for years. Their first success occurred in 1947 when they introduced the novel claim that the Constitution created a "wall of separation between the church and the state". Their objective was to transform our Republic from one that protected freedom of religion into one that protected WE THE PEOPLE from religion. And by "religion" their focus was Christianity.

Using this convoluted construction of the 1st Amendment, which was augmented in the '60s with unconstitutional tax laws threatening churches that refused to remain silent, the enemy has been incredibly successful in silencing America's Christian churches as:
" prayer, the Bible and Christian displays were hounded out of schools and the public square;
" divorce was made no-fault;
" pornography, immoral sexual activities and murder in the name of choice were made rights; and
" our morals and culture fell into the sewer.
" We permitted the murder of innocents.

Why did the enemy make it such a priority to silence the Christian church in America, to dissolve the bond between our government and the principles of Christianity? The answer is that they:
" They realized, as stated by progressive Woodrow Wilson, that:
"America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of the Holy Scriptures."
" They agreed with George Washington when he said:
"True religion affords to government its surest support."
" They agreed with Benjamin Franklin that:
"Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters."

" And they understood what James Madison meant when he said:
"We have staked the whole of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

In short, the enemy understood they could never achieve a radical transformation of America as long as America was firmly seated on the foundational pillar of Christian virtue; that the key to undoing the American Republic was to weaken our "capacity…to govern ourselves". And to do this, they had to neutralize the guardian of Christian virtue in America; the Christian church. They had to undermine our ability "sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God." They had to transform WE THE PEOPLE into poor stewards of our Republic.

So they cleverly and ironically distorted the 1st Amendment, which was designed to protect the free exercise of religion, and turned it into the weapon they used to silence the church; to exclude religion from public discourse. And by allowing this to happen, by standing silent, WE THE PEOPLE are reaping the bitter harvest of their success. As expressed in Proverbs 29:2: "When the righteous thrive, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan." My fellow Tea Party Patriots, we are groaning!

I want to digress for a moment to make a few tangential points.

1. Until the election of Barrack Obama, our enemy moved by stealth; well under the radar screen of most Americans. In fact, one could argue that there are some striking similarities between our enemy and the Islamic radicals who attacked us on 9/11. Both: seek to destroy our current system of government and:
o are anti-Christian;
o use stealth to conceal their intentions;
o were at war with us long before we realized it; and
o hid amongst us, using political correctness to make it difficult for us to identify them and label them for what they are.

2. The enemy's success to date was due in large part to the fact that WE THE PEOPLE have to a certain extent abandoned our traditional Christian values and adopted (as the great Christian theologian Francis Shaffer observed) "two impoverished values: personal peace and affluence".

We've traded a concern for posterity for a desire for prosperity. And in doing so, we've failed to execute our role as stewards of the Republic. We became complacent and gave in to politically correct values that distain absolutes, resulting in our largely ignoring, or at least tolerating, the significant gains our passionate enemy was making. I recently read about a German aristocrat who, in response to the question "how many German people were true Nazi?" said: "Very few people were true Nazis, but many enjoyed the return of German pride, and many more were too busy to care. I was one of those who just thought the Nazis were a bunch of fools. So, the majority just sat back and let it all happen.

Then, before we knew it, they owned us, and we had lost control, and the end of the world had come. My family lost everything." By putting personal peace and affluence ahead of all other values, by remaining silent, people make themselves irrelevant. As Plato observed almost 2500 years ago: "The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men."

3. The Christian church is not the only institution that the enemy has successfully attacked during the last 100 or so years.

o Its greatest success has been the transformation of the public education system and our colleges and universities into secular, progressive institutions. Absolutes have been eliminated and the overall quality of education significantly degraded. True history is no longer taught and Western Civilization is dishonored, to the extent it is taught at all. This is a huge victory for the enemy. As George Orwell said in his famous novel "1984": "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." At most educational institutions today, the enemy controls all knowledge about the past, present and future.

o As painfully demonstrated in the last election, the enemy has been extremely successful in controlling the mainstream media, thereby gaining even greater power over the present.

o The enemy has also been remarkably successful in unionizing government workers, isolating them from the rest of the population by making them competitors for the wealth created by the private sector as opposed to "public servants".

o Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and welfare have succeeded in undermining traditional American work-ethics, charitable and family values, making many citizens dependent on the government.

o The enemy has made significant inroads it taking over our free markets. The state already controls half our health care spending and auto companies and financial institutions have been taken over or are greatly controlled by the state.

All of these areas need to be reversed if we wish to restore our Republic to its original foundations.

4. The good news is that the enemy has overreached; it has become emboldened by its overwhelming victory in 2008 and "come out of the closet". It has, to a certain extent, turned off its "cloaking device". And most Americans are horrified by what they see. As one young woman shakily told Senator Arlen Specter at a town hall meeting last year: "You have awakened a sleeping giant." PRAISE THE LORD!

5. The Tea Party movement is a response to this awakening. We are involved because personal peace and affluence is not our core value; we passionately want to live up to our responsibilities as stewards of the Republic. The mission of the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT is to organize, educate and inform our fellow citizens for the purpose of restoring our Republic to its constitutional foundations. To achieve these goals, all the areas where the enemy has gained ground must be restored.

6. Seeking to restore the Christian church in America to it traditional role is not a religious act by the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT. It is a patriotic act. It is a reasonable act by responsible stewards.

So, what are we to do? As King David asked in Psalm 11:3: "When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?"

The founder assumed their posterity would be like they were; virtuous Christians. They assumed that as Christians with a stewardship duty, they would make it a priority to ensure that politics followed a course that would be in the direction that glorified God. And they assumed that the American Christian church, which French historian Alexis de Tocqueville would later refer to as America's "first institution", would continue to play the pervasive role in our society that it did at the time the Republic was formed; the role of custodian of virtue in our citizens and society. That the church would continue to educate their congregants not only about their responsibilities to God and the church, but also on what the scriptures say about government, social and political issues and each Christian's responsibility to their country. Christians are citizens of two kingdoms. "Why, then", asked colonial Pastor Jonathan Mayhew in 1765, "should not those parts of Scripture which relate to civil government be examined and explained from the desk, as well as others?" As explained by Charles Finney:

"...God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take a right ground. Politics are a part of religion in a country such as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God. God will bless or curse this country in accordance to the course Christians take in politics"

As Christians, we believe that God is the source of all our blessings. Our greatest blessing is life, without which nothing else would matter. Our second greatest blessing is the knowledge of Christ, our Lord and Savior. Our third greatest blessing is being citizens of the United States of America, the circumstance that has enabled each of us to obtain all of our worldly blessings. God calls us to be good stewards of all that He has given us and the church regularly preaches about how we should be good stewards of our wealth. But where the church often fails in its teaching is on how we should be good stewards of the source of our wealth; this free land over which we constitutionally are the stewards. Should the church teach on this subject even though it will involve politics? Absolutely! Scripture demands it.

We, the stewards of our Republic, will be held accountable by God for our stewardship, just as we will be held accountable for the stewardship of our wealth, our environment, etc. The American Christian church has no excuse for ignoring this essential area in our Christian education. And we lay

Christians must reverse what the enemy has done to the church in America. We must do everything in our power to re-involve the American churches in educating of our citizens about what the scriptures say about governmental, political and social issues as well as the Christian's responsibility as a citizen. We need to get the churches re-engaged in public discourse. As Francis Schaeffer wrote in his classic book, "And How Should We Then Live?" :

"If we as Christians do not speak out as authoritarian governments grow from within or come from outside, eventually we or our children will be the enemy of society and the state. No truly authoritarian government can tolerate those who have a real absolute by which to judge its arbitrary absolutes and who speak out and act upon that absolute. … To make no decision in regard to the growth of authoritarian government is already a decision in support of it. "

As critical part of the enemy's assault on the American Christian church has been legal intimidation. For this, they primarily use two deceptively named organizations: The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), an organization founded in 1920 by an avowed communist; and a sister organization named Americans for the Separation of Church and State (ASCS), not coincidentally founded in 1947, the same year the ACLU managed to introduce the concept of a wall of separation between church and state.

Every election, the ASCS sends letters to thousands of churches across America threatening their tax status if they engage in "political speech", in an overt attempt to intimidate them into silence.

In 1994, Christians started to fight back with the formation of the Alliance Defense Fund, an organization dedicated to training Christian lawyers to defend 1st Amendment freedom of religion rights and morals of churches, schools, municipalities, states and individuals at no cost. A number of other fine organizations have since been formed to perform this function including the James Madison Center for Free Speech and the Liberty Legal Defense Foundation, to name but a few. These Christian legal defenders have been blessed with an excellent success rate and remove the excuse of legal or tax restraints from churches that choose to remain silent.

So what should we, the members of the members of the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT do? We suggest the following:

1. We need to vigorously, on our knees, pray for the restoration of the Christian church in America to the role as custodian of our nation's and our people's virtue.
2. WE need to sign the Manhattan Declarationhttp://www.manhattandeclaration.org/ (Get all your friends to do so as well.)
3. We need to approach our pastors and church leaders and ask them how we can assist in establishing a Citizenship Ministry in our church; a ministry with the goal of helping the church and its members to better understand and perform our stewardship duties to our Republic by educating church members in areas such as:
" the Christian's civic duties (including voting and the criteria to use in selecting leaders - Exodus 18);
" the Christian world view and its implication on a Christian's understanding and response to cultural, social, political, economic, scientific, historic, etc. issues and events;
" the historic role of Christianity in the world's and in America's history; and
" God's principles applied to current issues (abortion, marriage, hate crimes, evolution, etc).
4. If the pastor and/or church leadership is not receptive to this kind of teaching in your church, we need to prayerfully consider leaving the church and finding a new church which is open to establishing a Citizenship Ministry.
5. We need to encourage all other Christians in our sphere of influence to follow the above steps.

We are looking for TEA PARTY MOVEMENT members who are passionate about restoring the Christian church in America as custodian of virtue and who want to implement this change in their church. I propose we establish a Citizenship Church Outreach Council composed of these passionate people where we develop strategies for approaching the individual pastors and church leaders and share resources (books, papers, sermons, DVDs, etc.) and experience to help members be more effective in their efforts with their churches. This committee meet would as often as it makes sense. Our hope is that we will also be able to access external resources available from other groups that have similar goals to this Citizenship Church Outreach Council. Working with Julie Turner to make this initiative more widely known among the members of the TEA PARTY MOVEMENT as well as to establish a mechanism for interested members to sign-up. In the meantime, if you wish to contact an organizer with questions or to sign-up, he can be reached at jebauman@wt.net or 936-27.... If the Lord blesses this effort, it will have remarkable success.

I am passing out two hand-outs. One is a list I prepared of topics which churches should feel free to address. How many of these are covered by the teaching in your church? The second is a document prepared by the James Madison Center for Free Speech and the Alliance Defense Fund entitled "2004 Guidelines for Political Activities by Churches and Pastors" which I lam sharing to provide you with an idea on how far churches and pastors can go to participate in the election process.

In preparation of this presentation, a little research was done on 2008 Christian voting statistics. According to Pew Research, 181 million (or 78%) of the people eligible to vote in 2008 classified themselves as Christian.

In the actual election, 81% (or 98 million) of the 121 million people that voted, described themselves as Christian.

This means that approximately 83 million self-described Christians did not vote!

Eighty-three million stewards of our Republic failed in their stewardship!

Obama beat McCain by 7.7 million votes.

What a difference a virtuous people would have made!