Tag: Constitution News

The Founders Meant to Keep Government Out of the Church, Not God Out of the Government

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The 4th of July makes us think of our independence and freedoms. And legal battles in recent years over religious liberty in the U.S.A. raise serious questions about the freedom to worship in America. So when our Founders came up with the First Amendment, were they trying to keep the government free from religion, or religion free from government?   These days, the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” has come to mean keeping God or His believers from having a big effect on government and public life. But that’s far, far from what the Founding Fathers were thinking of when they were separating church and state.

Fear of an All-Powerful State Church Wed to the Power of the Government

They were afraid of what so many of the Old World countries had: a religion established by the state as its one true religion, that would tyrannically rule over the faith and conscience of every citizen. As the Providence Forum’s Peter Lillback put it, “They recognized having a monolithic church was a dangerous thing.”  That’s because it made the king not only their physical sovereign but also their all-powerful spiritual ruler. Before the Pilgrims fled England, Wallbuilders’ David Barton recalled, “The Pilgrims’ pastor was executed because he made the statement that Jesus Christ is head of the church. And the monarch said, ‘Oh no, I’m the head of the church. You’re dead.’”

Wouldn’t Allow a Church of America Like the Brits Had the Church of England

Knowing of such terror and tyranny, AmericanMinute.com historian William Federer explained how the Founders felt: “Their big fear was the federal government was going to follow the blueprint of every country in Europe and pick one national denomination.” So what they meant by saying in the First Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion” was that the federal government was banned from creating – or “establishing” – a national religion with the national government wedded to it. “They didn’t want to have a national, established Church of America like you have the Church of England, forcing people to believe something that they didn’t believe in,” said Jerry Newcombe, host of the radio program “Vocal Point”. “What they said was, ‘We don’t want a state church here. Consciously, therefore, they were separating the church from government,” Lillback said. But that was strictly to protect the churches and each believer’s faith and conscience from the government.

All About Protecting Each American’s Conscience and Freedom to Believe

Not only did the First Amendment say, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion,” but it also said, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” “What they wanted was the freedom that we have in the Bible: the rights of conscience,” Barton said. “And they didn’t want the state telling us how we could or couldn’t practice our faith.” Lillback said the Founders keeping government control away from faith meant, “Each of us has a right to be who we are before God. It has been well said and it’s a classic statement of religious liberty that man is not free unless he is free on the inside.  We have to have the freedom to believe what we believe. That’s what the First Amendment protects.”

God: He’s on Both Sides of the Wall’

And that’s what Christian historian Eddie Hyatt explained Thomas Jefferson was talking about when he wrote the letter that first used the famous “wall of separation” phrase to a group of worried Baptists. “He said that the First Amendment had erected a wall of separation that would protect them from any intrusion of the government,” Hyatt stated. “In Jefferson’s mind, the wall of separation was a uni-directional wall, put there to keep the government out of the church; not to keep the influence of the church out of the government.” There was no antipathy towards the Lord in all of this, Lillback insisted, saying, “But the idea of God: He’s on both sides of the wall. And He’s welcome there. And He should be.”

The Government Is Reaching Over that Wall, Bossing Around People of Faith

But today, there’s been a complete flip. Lillback said, “Those who once believed in this really high and impregnable wall of church and state, we now see the government reaching over that wall and saying, ‘but don’t preach that text of scripture.’”   Barton added, “All of a sudden the government’s regulating religious activities, which is what Jefferson said they would not do because of separation of church and state.” Hyatt lamented, “The Founders would be so distressed to see how that statement has been turned on its head.” As Newcombe explained, “They absolutely did not mean the separation of God and government, which is what’s often being practiced today.”

No One ‘Under Government,’ but Each One

‘Under God’ Lillback encourages Americans to remember what the nation’s Founders intended. “This is a theistic government. So God was not separated from government,” he insisted. “So any interpretation of the First Amendment that takes God out of government is turning the whole story on its head. Rather it was taking a formal state church out of the equation, leaving it up to each individual. But all, as we still say, ‘under God.’ That was the view of our Founders.” They believed a nation based on liberty could only stay free if its citizens were godly people. As Barton pointed out, believers in God have their eyes on eternity, and it makes them practice self-control.  

Knowing You’ll Answer to God

Makes You Govern Yourself “When you’re God-conscious, you realize, ‘ya know, I’m going to have to answer to Him for what I do,’ and it limits my bad behavior,” Barton stated. Newcombe added, “That’s something the Founders believed very strongly: that we’re going to be accountable before God.” Hyatt said of those Founders, “They knew that they were creating a nation for a free people, but also for a virtuous people who would govern themselves from within.” You need very little police power if people, because of conscience, will police themselves.

Green Bean Control Laws?

“Self-control is what you need,” Barton explained. “We can pass all the control laws we want. But unless you control the heart, you’ll never control behavior. I mean, I can kill somebody with a can of green beans. What are we going to do?  Pass green bean control laws if somebody does that? No. It’s on the inside.” And the Founders knew to keep America true and free, they also needed the perfect law of a loving, all-wise God. As Lillback put it, “There was a clear understanding that the government needed to have an ultimate check and balance, even beyond the people that ran it and their elections. And that is the transcendent law of God.  And so that is why when we look at our Declaration of Independence, there are four references to Deity.” Going through the Declaration, Lillback laid them out: “‘We’re endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights.’ The laws of God and nature. And it tells us there’s an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world. And, finally, a dependence on the Providence of God. Four references to Deity.”

Not Godless at All

But then came the US Constitution, which some say is a godless document because God isn’t mentioned in it. As soon as they were done with it, though, the Founders called for a day of Thanksgiving to God. “They were not thinking ‘let’s get rid of God,'” Lillback stated. “They said, ‘We have been given now a new Constitution, and now amendments that give us our freedoms. And where do we turn? We turn to heaven and thank God for this.'” “Now, if their intent was to get rid of God from government, boy did they miss their point,” Lillback said.  “Because they turned around and thanked Him for everything that they had. It shows the utter historical absurdity of ‘the godless Constitution’.”

Constitution’s Last Words Reference

Christ And God isn’t really absent from the Constitution or its authors’ lives. “They are not godless,” Lillback insisted. “They are people who, at the very end of their work, said, ‘In the year of our Lord, 1787.’  The very last words in the Constitution are a reference to Jesus Christ.” He concluded, “It’s no surprise then that the ultimate motto is We are One Nation Under God.”

*This story was originally published in July 2020.  Author Paul Strand

Source: The Founders Meant to Keep Government Out of the Church, Not God Out of the Government | CBN News

Therefore whatever you have spoken in the dark will be heard in the light, and what you have spoken in the ear in inner rooms will be proclaimed on the housetops.
Luke 12:3

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Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

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“to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” Dr. Anthony D. Douglas

Many years ago, Otis McDonald, a 76-year old retiree living in a high-crime area of Chicago testified that he had “been robbed numerous times in his Morgan Park home; [he’d] witnessed too many crimes to count and …been threatened with pistols around his home.” The gangbangers and drug dealers had “taken over” his neighborhood, and he wanted to keep a handgun in his own home to protect himself, something that Chicago law at the time prohibited. Mr. McDonald was the named plaintiff in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the landmark challenge to the handgun ban, and his experiences helped persuade the United States Supreme Court to overturn the law as a violation of the Second Amendment.

The Court dismissed Chicago’s and other municipalities’ arguments as “at war with our central holding in Heller: that the Second Amendment protects a personal right to keep and bear arms for lawful purposes, most notably for self-defense within the home.”     A University of Chicago trauma doctor, testifying before the Illinois House Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, is seeking to turn back the clock. Responding to concerns over pricing lower-income gun buyers out of the market, Dr. Anthony D. Douglas declared that “to the point about pricing poor people out of owning firearms, I think poor people don’t benefit from owning firearms.” This “concern about poor people being able to, are benefit from owning firearms or being put out of being able to afford firearms is, I think, we are a little bit distracted from what poor people and poor communities actually need.” 

Dr. Douglas is “the mastermind behind HB3320/ SB2279,” the Responsibility in Firearm Legislation (RIFL) Act. This 122-page legislation would, if passed, require firearm manufacturers in Illinois to obtain a RIFL license, and distribute license fees proceeds to “victims of firearms” (“firearm injury” means any gun-related injury, suicide or homicide). License fees would be set at an amount estimated to be “equal to the public health costs and financial burdens borne by the State and its residents as a result of firearm injuries,” using the incidence of firearm injuries in the previous year; however, in the first year the total annual aggregate fee would be capped at $866,000,000.  Each licensee would be required to pay the portion of the total annual aggregate fee equal to the market share of the firearm manufacturer. A program established under the law would compensate “victims of firearms” for all direct costs incurred as a result of firearm injury for up to three years post-event, which payments would be tax-exempt. Anyone suffering a firearm injury (including out-of-state residents), their next of kin, legal guardian, dependent, first-degree relative, second-degree relative, and employer could qualify as “eligible victims.”

License fees, in reality a “punishment tax,” would add at least $1,600 to the cost of each firearm sold in the state, according to a lobbyist for the Illinois State Rifle Association. Guns for self-defense or subsistence hunting would become unaffordable luxuries for the poor and eventually, for just about everyone, once the legislation destroys the Second Amendment in Illinois.  Dr. Douglas and other bill supporters argue that the gun industry should “pay for the bloodshed it helps to create” by shifting “the direct costs away from taxpayers and place[] them where they belong: on the gun industry.” Manufacturers would “pay according to how frequently their products are recovered in injuries and deaths in Illinois. If their products are never recovered, they pay nothing…The logic that ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ is passé.” Besides driving up prices, and creating new fees and bureaucracy, the bills seek to override the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects the heavily-regulated gun industry from liability for a third party’s criminal misuse of their products.

The legislation also ignores the pesky logical issue that violent crime is, in fact, the product of gangs and criminals and enabled by soft-on-crime public officials advocating “non-punitive” justice, all of which have nothing to do with the gun industry and none of whom will share the financial burden imposed by the RIFL Act. An inconvenient truth at odds with Dr. Douglas’s narrative is that Chicago’s poor and minorities, in common with those throughout America, remain the most at risk of crime and violence and therefore have, if anything, an even more pressing need for the tools of self-defense than most. The Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3) research organization, notes that minority communities in the city’s South Side and West Side face poverty rates “of nearly three times the citywide average,” and an analysis shows, further, that “low-income areas of the city and Black and Hispanic Chicagoans are much more likely to experience crime.”

Source: NRA-ILA | Self-Defense: Another “Luxury” the Poor Can Do Without

But I say to you who hear: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who spitefully use you.
Luke 6:27-28

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Trump Administration Continues to Deliver for Gun Owners with Recent Initiatives

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Amid a steady stream of headlines highlighting anti-gun legislative proposals in the states, ongoing litigation battles, and regulatory uncertainty, there is also good news to report on the Second Amendment front, courtesy of the Trump Administration. Recent news from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) and the United States Postal Service (USPS) provide reason for optimism. While the broader landscape of gun rights remains complex and contentious, important shifts at the federal level signal real progress is continuing. Last week, the USPS announced a proposed rule to modify its regulations to allow certain firearms to be legally shipped through the mail.

This legal reassessment is in response to the recent Department of Justice Office of Legal Counsel opinion concluding that the nearly 100-year old federal prohibition on mailing “concealable” firearms is unconstitutional. The proposed rule includes important clarifications and policy changes: Revisions to Publication 52 specify clear definitions of “mailable firearms” and “nonmailable firearms” consistent with OLC’s opinion. The proposed revisions expand the scope of mailable firearms compared to the existing regulations by allowing lawful handguns to be mailed under the same terms and conditions as lawful rifles and shotguns. These conditions continue to require, among other things, that mailed firearms be unloaded. Additionally, otherwise nonmailable handguns will remain mailable between authorized persons consistent with Section 1715.

The rulemaking process allows for public comments to be submitted until May 4, 2026. While the usual option of submitting comments through the government’s online portal does not apply in this case, emails will be accepted. USPS advises: “If sending comments by email, include the name and address of the commenter and send to PCFederalRegister@usps.gov, with a subject line of ‘Shipping Firearms.’”  Also, in news that our nation’s veterans have long deserved to hear, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), have undertook coordinated action to remove from the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) records of VA beneficiaries who were wrongly reported as prohibited persons solely because they were assigned a fiduciary to assist in management of their benefits. In February, the VA announced it would end this decades-old practice.

NRA-ILA can now report that, according to sources within the government, updates to NICS were made on March 6. Additionally, letters have begun being mailed to the fiduciaries of affected beneficiaries providing formal notice of the steps being taken to end this longstanding injustice. Those letters note: Under a directive from the Secretary of Veteran’s Affairs, VA will: Work with the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) to remove all names previously reported on this basis from NICS. End all future reporting of fiduciary program participants to NICS. Update VA policies to reflect this change. And, finally, to cap off the recent positive momentum, last week, Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for DOJ’s Civil Rights Division (CRIT), announced a focused effort to hire and train more lawyers specifically for CRIT’s Second Amendment section. 

A report from The Washington Times stated, “her office’s goal is to have all state regulations that are inconsistent with pro-Second Amendment cases be struck down, settled or withdrawn by the time she leaves her post.” While certainly an ambitious agenda, Dhillon is clearly invested in making progress on this historic undertaking. It has been just over one year since President Donald Trump issued his Executive Order on Protecting Second Amendment Rights, which launched a federal review of prior regulations and actions that have restricted lawful firearm ownership to ensure constitutional compliance. That audit and reset effort has been paying dividends ever since. DOJ’s commitment to expanding its legal firepower to counter state infringements will only strengthen its ability to continue the campaign against unlawful restrictions on Second Amendment rights. Ultimately, these latest actions reflect a broader federal willingness to treat the right to keep and bear arms as a core civil liberty demanding affirmative protection through policymaking and the courts.

Source: NRA-ILA | Trump Administration Continues to Deliver for Gun Owners with Recent Initiatives

The LORD is on my side; I will not fear. What can man do to me?
Psalm 118:6

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