Today’s activist judges, socialist politicians, and the liberal media use the term “separation of church and state” as though it were in the Constitution. It is not. What is part of the Constitution is the first amendment: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” It was the fear of an establishment of a state religion by the government and the threat that they might “prohibit the free exercise thereof” that President Thomas Jefferson was addressing when he used the phrase in a letter to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut.
The phrase was resurrected in 1947 by the Supreme Court in the case of Everson v. Board of Education where the court stated, "The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach." We’ve been hearing this phrase used (or should I say misused) quite frequently ever since. And its meaning, as it is commonly employed today, is directly opposite of what Mr. Jefferson intended.
Since 1947, the consistent application of “separation of church and state” in Supreme Court decisions has brought about the gradual insidious erosion of America’s Judeo-Christian foundation. During this time, the extensive deterioration of bedrock Biblical beliefs, which formed this country and made it strong and great, has resulted in damage so devastating, it now appears irreparable.
In 1962, in the case of Engel v. Vitale, the Supreme Court made the decision to prohibit prayer in schools. This was followed a year later in 1963 with the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, where a landmark Supreme Court ruling ended official Bible reading in American public schools. Madalyn Murray O'Hair, along with other atheist activists, had essentially expelled God from our schools. And we’ve been feeling the negative effects ever since as our society moves further and further away from our Creator and His teachings.
The 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision legalized abortion in this country. And on June 26, 2015, in a 5-4 decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, five justices pronounced same-sex marriage as the law of the land—countermanding God’s holy word, ignoring thousands of years of human history and completely redefining God’s original design for marriage.
Both abortion and same-sex marriage have been packaged and sold as civil rights issues which have brought success to their supporters. But they are moral issues for the Christian, which places them in direct conflict with our deeply held sacred beliefs.
Psalm 33:12 wisely proclaims, “Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD.” This was once true of us. But in today’s sophisticated culture, God is deliberately banned from our society and believers are increasingly prohibited from openly acknowledging Him or their Christian faith. As in the days of the Judges, with no spiritual direction or moral guidance, everyone does that which is right in his own eyes (Judges 21:25). Such is the fruit of a godless society.
