The RRRev-er-end (Limbaugh’s voice) Barry Lynn is a product of theological liberalism. Their beliefs are essentially that “Christianity is Myth” and that “Myth can be useful.”
Therefore, they talk with straight face about resurrection, prayer, faith, atonement, forgiveness, miracle, and all along they have been “beside themselves” speaking in our language but with their own meanings.
Many, who are not busy pastoring standard churches, will openly tell you that they believe all to be myth, but put them in a church where the next offering is important, and they suddenly go covert operative on you....wolf in sheep’s clothing.
No reflective Christian can ignore that prayer is speech and that all current religious issues confronting the legal realm are in truth free speech and free exercise issues and not establishment issues.
Therefore, Lynn lacks the “reflective Christian” piece. I daresay he is also devoid of the “Christian” piece.
Much agree. thanks.
Wonderfully said, dear brother in Christ!
As for the "establishment" issue: That word had a particular meaning to the Founding Fathers that the modern mind has evidently forgotten. To the Framers of the Constitution, the word "establishment" regarded the historical fact that, in the Old World, an "established" church was one in which church was indistinguishable from the order of secular government. Or to put it another way, a single privileged church was the only church acceptable to the political authority. And penalties — quite often severe — applied to those citizens of its polity who were not members of the government-approved church.
This goes back to ancient times, e.g., as in both Greece and Rome, where the state religion was deemed mandatory for all citizens, as a matter of state law. Dissenters to that established religion were deemed criminals, subject to capital penalties.
Then there is the famous modern example of Great Britain, which to this day has an established church: the Anglican rite. (Although no Muslims there have been civilly punished as dissenters yet, as far as I know. Or on any other basis that I can detect for that matter.) Not to mention Germany, which to this day taxes citizens in support of state-favored churches (mainly Lutheran, I suppose).
What the Establishment Clause does NOT do, however, is to erect a "wall of separation between Church [i.e., religion per se] and State." The Framers encouraged religious belief and moral life grounded in religious values and experience. If this statement is not true, then the Declaration of Independence makes no sense at all.
Good grief, Thomas Jefferson himself, when he became the third President of the United States, established regular, formal religious services in the Capitol on each Sabbath morning, with different pastors from different denominations (all Prottie at the time, I assume) to officiate at Sunday service in the halls of Congress itself. And then he had the temerity to spread this model of Christian devotion to the Post Office and other departments of the federal government in due course. Earlier, George Washington had established a national day of public thanksgiving to God. Later Abraham Lincoln did likewise.
In short, the "separation of church and state" is not a clause appearing in the Bill of Rights, nor does it demand that the government stamp out the free exercise of religion (the First Amendment explicitly forbids this), including free exercise in public places — such as, for instance, Congress. Or the Public Square.
They just said that religious "exercise" did not require government approval; indeed, government approval was the forbidden thing. Religious "exercise" did not depend on, or have anything to do with any kind of formal government charter of any particular religious creed; which entails that the government cannot legitimately "infringe" upon the free exercise of any religion at all. The government, though encouraging religious experience, does not command that such experience be experienced in any politically favored doctrinal way.
Underscore "free speech" here. And also "free conscience," and "free exercise." And also "free association".... All guaranteed First Amendment rights of the free citizens of the United States of America.
All these lawyers who want to tell us all about the "wall of separation" between church and state ought to go back and read the original sources, before they start shooting off at their mouths.
That they evidently don't suggests two possibilities to me: (1) They either find human history useless as a guide to human experience; or (2) it is so good a guide that they'd just as soon get rid of it — to clear the decks for their own utopian visions and innovations....
Me, I'll stick with what I know — my ancestors paid the dear price for that knowledge. I cannot possibly disparage it.
And God is in charge of all, from beginning to end. I place my trust in His Truth — so clearly discerned by the Founders/Framers of our nation.
May God ever bless you, dear pastor — May the Holy Spirit be with you, and inspire your flock through you, consecrated medium of His Holy Grace. JMHO FWIW.
Many, who are not busy pastoring standard churches, will openly tell you that they believe all to be myth, but put them in a church where the next offering is important, and they suddenly go covert operative on you....wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Thank you so much for your insights, dear brother in Christ!