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LEADER TIMES WEEKEND RELIGION COLUMN FOR

July 11, 2015 by William H. Scarle, Jr.

The article in the Oklahoma State Constitution which was used to order the Ten Commandments monument removed from the capital grounds reads as follows.

“No public money or property shall ever be appropriated, applied, donated, or used directly or indirectly, for the use, benefit, or support of any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion, or for the use, benefit, or support of any priest, preacher, minister, or any other religious teacher or dignitary, or sectarian institution as such.”

Whoever wrote this article likely defended it as an accurate interpretation of the first amendment of the U.S. constitution.  That discussion will have to wait until next week.  For now let us see what such a policy would involve if applied nationally.

First, it would involve a major redesign of the Supreme Court building in Washington.  As you approach the building you will notice over the entrance a major sculpture of the world’s famous law givers.  They are all facing the figure in the middle that we recognize as Moses holding the Ten Commandments.  Moses is the only figure facing forward.

As you enter the building you notice that the two enormous oak doors are inscribed with the Ten Commandments on the lower portion of each door.  Sitting in the courtroom you can view the wall just above where the Court Justices sit where a display of the Ten Commandments is inscribed.

Washington’s buildings and monuments are replete with biblical inscriptions.

However, this is only beginning of troubles if we take this Oklahoma article as an accurate rendition of the First Amendment.  We would have to rescind and deny the Declaration of Independence.  It speaks about “The laws of nature and of nature’s God.”  It speaks about creation and grounds our human rights on the privileges granted us by our Creator.  It speaks of God as the dispenser of justice and the sovereign over history.

Even the Constitution itself needs to come under scrutiny since it marks the date of passage as “The Year of Our Lord.”

Patrick Henry put the matter bluntly when he said, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly that this great nation was founded not be religionists but by Christians…not on religions but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Every nation is founded on some religious/philosophical ideological foundation.  Communism is established on atheism and the Hegelian system proposed by Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx.  Adolf Hitler followed Frederick Niche and Charles Darwin.  Islam worships a war god.

In his “Democracy in America” Alexis de Tocqueville stated, “Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions, for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.”

If this changes, and it seems to be changing, Freedom will vanish.

(Bill Scarle can be contacted at ravscarle@verizon.net).  END-whs