I have been watching Mike Huckabee and seeing the MSM’s lack of reaction to his fundamentalist background, and reading about House Resolution 888 which is trying to establish an ancient untruth – that America is a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. I am not a Christian but I was raised a Southern Baptist and I graduated from Baylor University many years ago. I have many friends, some of whom are now dead, who became Baptist preachers throughout the South. I live in the heart of fundamentalist Texas only a few miles from the Creationist Evidence Museum. My county puts on a passion play each year with the local citizens playing the roles. I have been immersed in this irrationality longer than most of you have been alive.
When at Baylor in 1960 during the JFK election, religion was a hot topic and I was known to be non-Christian and so I was under assault as a JFK supporter and as someone whose soul needed saving. I was visited often in my dorm by ministers-in-training and for a while it was fun, then I tired of it so I would ask them, "What do Religion and France have in common?" They didn’t know of course and then I would give them the answer, "They are both foreign nations."
Our Constitution says that we will not interfere in the internal affairs of Religion, just as we will not interfere in the internal affairs of France. Religion, like France, is free to make its own internal laws, have its own internal courts, its own internal flag, its own internal Pledge of Allegiance, and its own Constitution – and it has all of those institutional elements. But France can’t send its citizens to vote in our elections, Religion can and does. France can’t contribute to our political candidates, Religion can and does. France must have government permission to establish protected French outposts in villages and cities throughout our nation, Religion is free to make as many such outposts as it pleases, and it does. France can’t come into our nation and try to persuade our citizens to become French citizens while maintaining the status of United States citizenship, Religion can and does. France does not have a constitutional goal of overthrowing the United States Constitution, Religion does. France, when hiring Americans to work in its permitted outposts in the United States, is free to discriminate on the basis of age, gender, and race if it wishes, so is Religion. In short, Religion exists outside of the part of the United States that is governed by our Constitution, and so does France. Religion is extra-Constitutional. It is a foreign nation, a foreign theocracy to be precise.
Religion says that our Constitution is not legitimate. The following is from the Southern Baptist Convention’s Baptist Faith and Message:
"Church and state should be separate. The state owes to every church protection and full freedom in the pursuit of its spiritual ends. ...Civil government being ordained of God, it is the duty of Christians to render loyal obedience thereto in all things not contrary to the revealed will of God."
But our Constitution says that our government is ordained by "We the People":
"We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."
In the view of the Framers, permission from someone’s supernatural god was not needed for America to establish a democratic nation. Do not for one minute think that this is not an important point to religionist extremists. The Baptists have deliberately used the "God" language to be able to claim in the privacy of their houses of worship that our Constitution is illegitimate. I have heard them do it with my own ears.
Please notice that the Preamble to our Constitution also sets out the national goals, our reason for being. Our national goals are different from the goal of the Southern Baptist Convention, the largest Protestant denomination in the country. Their single purpose is set out again in the Baptist Faith and Message. :
"It is the duty and privilege of every follower of Christ and of every church of the Lord Jesus Christ to endeavor to make disciples of all nations.
The United Methodist Church has the same goal, you can see it on their website, umc.org. They want to convert our nation to a Christian nation, and they have made no secret of this. They even try to rewrite history, and elect candidates who want the same thing.
So Christianity is founded on entirely different principles from those the Framers put into the Constitution. In fact, it is painfully obvious that the Framers could have established a theocracy if they wanted to, except that the American people of the day would have not ratified such a proposal. Try to imagine what would have happened if the proposed Constitution had been written to establish a single church as the national church. It would have been exciting.
So the Framers decided to make Religion a foreign nation and they did.
But many of our citizens have dual citizenship, and they need to make a choice, are they Christians only within the walls of their churches or do they intend to overthrow the Constitution and install a theocracy. In America, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, not the Bible, or the Southern Baptist Convention.
But many Americans have already made this choice and they chose Mike Huckabee.
Christians represent, I think, about 50% of our population. Those folks need to decide which flag they are going to pledge allegiance to, because the Christians have their own flag and their own pledge. You can google this all you want with "Christian flag pledge of allegiance" and variations thereof. But I can save you some time. One Christian pledge to the Christian flag goes like this:
"I pledge allegiance to the Christian Flag, and to the Savior for whose Kingdom it stands. One Savior crucified, risen and coming again, with life and liberty for all who believe."
I found this pledge in Michelle Goldberg’s book Kingdom Coming on page 134. She said that the pledge was given at the Reclaiming America for Christ Conference where former Republican Vice President Dan Quayle gave the inaugural address.
Just as you might expect, there are several versions of Christianity and several versions of this pledge, but the sentiments expressed here are found in the others. Their meaning is plain.