George Grant

“It is the exceptions that will determine the rule of your spiritual life. Do you have a secret sin? Everything in your life may be in order, but that secret sin will eat away and fundamentally alter all that you are and all that you do. It’s that one little exception, that tucked away secret sin, that one unfought battle, that will be your undoing.”

“Henry de Bracton’s famous 13th century dictum, “Not under man, but under God and law,” was understood by the Americans to mean that any government official, including the king, had to act on the basis of the law and could not change the structure of the government or the laws without the consent of those governed. Furthermore, there were fixed standards of law established in God’s decrees—found in the Bible—and in His created order—found in nature—that were to be obeyed by everyone, at all times.”

“The current dogma of the "wall of separation" between Church and state is thus a far cry from our founding fathers' intent. It is, in fact, a denial of the multiplicity of institutions and jurisdictions. It cripples the Church and exalts the state. It denies the universal sovereignty of God over all institutions and asserts the absolute authority of the state. It excludes believers from their God-ordained ministry of social, cultural, and political involvement. This "wall of separation" idea was slow to catch on in our nation. Until the War Between the States erupted, Christianity was universally encouraged at every level and by every level of the civil government. Then in 1861, under the influence ofthe radical Unitarians, the Northern Union ruled in the courts that the civil sphere should remain "indifferent" to the Church. After the war, that judgment was imposed on the Southern Confederation. One hundred years later in 1961, the erosion ofthe American system of Biblical checks and balances continued with the judicial declaration that all religious faiths were to be ''leveled" by the state. By 1963 the courts were protecting and favoring a new religion — "humanism" had been declared a religion by the Supreme Court in 1940 — while persecuting and limiting Christianity. The government in Washington began to make laws "respecting an establishment of religion" and "prohibiting the free exercise thereof." It banned posting the Ten Commandments in school rooms, allowed the Bible to be read in tax supported institutions only as an historical document, forbade prayer in the public domain, censored seasonal displays at Christmas, Easter, and Thanksgiving, regulated Church schools and outreach missions, demanded IRS registration, and denied equal access to the media. It has stripped the Church of its jurisdiction and dismantled the institutional differentiation the founding fathers were so careful to construct.”