The Lives of Your Children at Stake

Church and State

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: Education

Genre: Speech

Lesson: 5 of 5

Track: 70

Dictation Name: RR146C5

Date: 1960’s-1970’s

[Rushdoony] When the U.S. constitution was written the idea of a secular, a Humanistic state was unknown. Not until the French Revolution began a few years later was the idea even broached in Western History. As a result to read that document as though there were not Christian presuppositions behind it is a serious error. The men who sat at that convention by and large represented a very strict Christian perspective. They had been trained by Christian teachers. Moreover they were interested in creating a Federal Union, not a national government. What we have today is a national government. As a result they felt that the basic government belonged to the states and the counties. To this day that pattern still prevails to a considerable extent. The courts that handle both civil and criminal action that you in most cases will have anything to do with are county courts. Local and county courts, our basic law is still on the local level. We are in process of being transformed into a national humanistic state however.

But what we too often fail to realize is that the first amendment to the constitution was written in because the clergy of the various states demanded it. They would not work for the adoption of the federal constitution unless that were included. Now the constitution was written as an express powers document. By that is meant the federal government had no powers except those expressly stated in the constitution. As a result the men who framed it said “we have given on power to the federal over the church, over anything that is within the province of Christ’s work.” However the clergy said “We want a guarantee added that there will be interference.” And so the first amendment at the instance of the clergy was included. Congress, it’s limited to the federal government, congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a re-dress of grievances.

The purpose was to preserve the local establishments of religion. It meant the state could be a Baptist state if it chose, although none of the Baptists so chose. Some of them were congregational, some Episcopal, some simply had Christianity (which was a far superior solution) as the established religion, no church but just Christianity. And this very soon became the pattern in all the states, that Christianity was the established religion of the state, that no church had a preferential status but all, all Christians could recognize that their state and local government represented a Christian establishment. As late as 1912 this was still, incidentally, in the constitution of New Hampshire, and no doubt in other states as well. Very clearly there was no intention on the part of any of the states to drop Christianity. They knew that nothing was possible in the way of a law structure without a religious faith.

This issue came up very early in the last century in the famous Mormon polygamy case. Mormon polygamist went to the courts that their religion was being violated; that they were being prevented from the free exercise thereof because there was legislation against polygamy. The Supreme Court wrestled with this, they didn’t handle it to well but they made a first step in that direction when they said in any absolute sense there can be no freedom of religion. Because there are religions in the various tribes of the world that make not only polygamy permissible, but murder, or require the murder of non-believers, that require various perversions, that require human sacrifice, that require virtually everything which we in this country feel because of our Christian background to be immoral, illegal. If we have therefore an absolute freedom of religion as these Mormons request it will mean that there will be no law possible, you can only have anarchy, every man doing that which is right in his own eyes; and they were right. Because there is not a practice anywhere in the world that some religious cult or another has not at some time approved of. Therefore in the name of religious liberty if you had an absolute freedom of religion you would have to eliminate all law from any society, and that would be the end of civilization. This is why subsequently, the Supreme Court felt it necessary to state that this is a Christian nation. This did not mean they were establishing any church; there is a difference between a separation of church and state and a separation of religion and state. You can separate and I believe we must separate the church from the state, but you cannot separate religion, some religion of one form or another, from the state.

Now what we have been seeing therefore in recent years is the progressive separation of Christianity from the state and the imposition of humanism as the new religion upon the people of the state. Remember the Mormon decision. It was an open recognition that absolute religious freedom meant that every practice of every kind of crime of every kind of perversion would be permissible because there is somewhere some cult practicing every one of these. Hence the recognition some religion must provide the basic faith that undergirds the law of the state. This is a recognition that Sir Patrick Devlin in a famous lecture in Britain about 15 years ago set forth also. And he said to the modern state, modern civil governments throughout the world are facing a crisis. The crisis is that they must either affirm a religion or face legal anarchy; because it is impossible not to have a religious foundation to law. And of course we have been seeing since then more and more openly that religious foundation asserted, humanism; the new established religion in more and more countries around the world. Every political order is an establishment of religion because ever political order is a law order. Now if that point hasn’t come through in these lectures so far let me go over it again. Every law order, every political order, is a moral order because every law says “thou shalt, or thou shalt not do such and such things.” Or it establishes procedures for the enforcement of those laws. Those are moral principles, and they are best enforceable if there is a faith behind them in the people as well.

To cite traffic laws, because people will raise the question “what’s the moral principle in traffic laws?” Very simple, “thou shalt not steal” by destroying somebody’s property, and “thou shalt not kill” by killing him with your recklessness. Now it’s interesting we have the lowest accident and death rate from driving of any country in the world. Why? Because we have the still strongest Christian faith amongst our people. I recall a few years back driving with a French journalist who was visiting in this country and I think it was about 1-1:30 when our visit broke up in home and I took him home and I stopped for a red light, there wasn’t a car in sight in any direction, and he laughed. He said “you Americans, you’re still Puritans. You’re the only people who at two a.m. or three a.m. will stop for a red light when there isn’t a cop or another car in site for a mile.” But he said “you all do it” he said “you’re puritans still.” Well he had a point. Now that doesn’t happen in other countries, in some countries they can’t get them to pay any attention to traffic lights. A friend of mine who was visiting in the orient said it was one of the most hair raising experiences he ever had to take a drive with some of the native drivers because they paid no attention to anybody. If people didn’t get out of the way so much the worse for them; and he said every trip he took aged him.

You see laws are expressive of a moral order; and morality is an aspect of theological order. So you can’t have laws without a religion undergirding them. Every law structure is an expression of a religious faith. SO that every civil government is an establishment of a religion; and the question is, which religion? Which religion; this is the battle we are in today, the attempt to establish humanism as the religion of our government. It is the religion of our schools; it is becoming the religion of our courts. It was very definitely the religion of the Supreme Court in the last twenty years or so. One or two recent decisions indicate very timid hesitancy about plunging further into humanism. Not because of any Christian faith but because they’re getting worried about the consequences. The issue that they have not yet faced up to and they will be forced to face up to as a result of the Christian school cases is which religion? This confronts them [As a result you are in the forefront of a battle that is going to determine which way this country is going to go; because it will be decisions with respect to the Christian schools that will bring to the fore this issue. What kind of law are we doing to have, and what kind of education? Christian or Humanist? I think your supreme court here in this state began to be aware of all that it was involved just a little bit of the curtain was unveiled, but it was enough for them to begin to realize the implications. How far they will go remains to be seen, but this has been a very interesting step. But it’s only the opening gun in a long battle.

Now there are many who would say that we should be obedient to state laws. Romans thirteen is thrown at me so many times that I just expect it automatically and now I come up with it in the course of a talk. In fact one person told me I had no right to criticize the Federal Reserve System, this was a minister, turned out that his uncle was a member of the federal reserve board. Or that we have no right to criticize politicians, well I hardly see that; and it’s wrong for us to resist. Well that always leads me to ask in return “well what was saint Paul doing in prison so many times?” Now what Romans thirteen tells us is that the powers that be are ordained of God indeed. But it also tells us they are to be ministers of God. That God has ordained on the one hand a ministry of grace, and then a ministry of justice. Now do you mean if I’m sitting in a church where the ministry of grace is being turned into a ministry of abomination by a modernist preacher I’m to say nothing? I’m to protest. And if I’m in a state where the ministry of justice is turned into a ministry of injustice I’m do use every Godly means to protest that. And what is wrong with using the law to protest? That is a Godly means of protesting. So we cannot use Romans thirteen to silence Christians, that’s an excuse to evade Christian responsibility.

Then I’m often told but if we continue with what we’re trying to do, and if we say that the state schools are teaching religion and therefore they have no business, nor any right to exist, because according to contemporary law that’s unconstitutional, then who is going to educate all those millions of children? They bleed so for these children, as long as the money is coming from the state. Now my answer to them is this, we are already educating close to one third of all grade school children, about fifteen percent of high school children and the high school percentage is rising very rapidly. But before the state entered into the business of education Christians were taking care of the millions of immigrant children through Christian schools.

A few years ago, and this will be in my next book this is a plug, my next book is entitled Revolt Against Maturity because my point is that against contemporary psychology mans problem is not that he’s not childish or mature, but that he was created mature. Adam was created a mature man and sin is a revolt against maturity; so you don’t explain sin in terms of childhood hang ups and family problems you explain it as a revolt against maturity. And today there is a wide spread revolt against maturity. Everybody wants to be perpetually young, woman of seventy going around acting as though they were a kitten of sixteen; and men dying their hair so that their gray hair won’t show. Well I’m proud of the grey hair in my head and hair; I worked for them believe me. Sin is a revolt against the requirement of maturity that God places upon all of us. Sin is childishness, deliberate childishness. It’s a rebellion against responsibility, a rebellion against maturity.

Now I started to say that in this book Revolt against Maturity that’s another plug. I trace in a chapter or two Salem Massachusetts 1795-1845, fifty years. IN that time it went from two thousand five hundred, a small village to forty-five thousand, a small city. So you can see it doubled and redoubled every few years, but at the end of that time it was still a Puritan community. It should have been catholic, why? Because the people of Salem, and this was common place throughout the United States then, had all kinds of tithe agencies. They had a tithe agency that created a society to take care of sailors who landed at Salem port. They provided the lodging for them and they had a chapel for them and they had a pastor to take care of them. Incidentally pastors in the Puritan era were called fathers. It would be “Father Leatherwood” for example; and members called each other brother and sister you see. That part has still survived, but he was a father in Christ. Interesting the Catholics called their priests mister, but they picked up the Puritan usage and then the Protestants dropped it; very interesting.

Well at any rate in Salem the societies were created for a variety of purposes, to educate the immigrant children in Christian schools, to teach to immigrant mothers homemaking in the new world, to introduce them to the new foods and vegetables that they had here; job training societies to take care of the immigrant fathers, to teach them the trades and things that they would have to learn in this world. They had all kinds of agencies to minister to every human need imaginable in the name of Christ. This is why this country is not Catholic today. Do you know that most Irishmen in this country are protestant? Catholic priests made a survey of them just a few years ago in the past decade. The overwhelming majority are protestants, and a very large percentage of them Presbyterian because the Presbyterian were right on hand to meet the Irishmen; very interesting. This is what tithe agencies then did when they had millions of people pouring into this country, and the population of the country doubling every few years.

Let me tell you something further, in those days there were no immigration laws and what the people in Europe did, the governments, civil governments, was to clean out their jails regularly and load everybody on board and ship them to America. That was routine, and what they did also if a family there had a girl who became pregnant, they would just load her on a ship and send her to America, get rid of the family disgrace. And they’d land here without any money, it was a horrible thing. And the slums of New York when De Tocqueville arrived here in the late 1820’s he described as the most fearful things he had ever seen. Because hundreds of thousands were pouring in, they were sinking to the levels of utmost degradation, they were hoodlums and criminals they were a terror in the areas. The five points area in New York police men didn’t dare go into alone or in pairs even. Only a large number dared go in. So De Tocqueville said “America had only one solution, large standing armies would have to be raised.” We had a standing army in those days of a few hundred. “And put in all cities, Baltimore, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, all of them. Or else there would be a revolution by these criminals.” We never did raise a standing army, what happened? Tithing agencies very quickly became aware of the problem and so there was all kinds of missions started in the slums. No time at all they turned them into God fearing Bible believing people.

That’s what we ought to do today in the ghetto’s, that’s what we ought to do into every part of this country wherever there’s a problem. We need to establish Christian schools, Christian missions there. It was done then, why can’t we do it now? And of course the key is God’s way as usual. God has the answer to our every problem, the answer is tithing. Now according to scripture we are to tithe a tenth of our income faithfully to the Lord, and if we do not we are cursed with a curse. But remember when Malachi gives us this word of the Lord, that if we are faithful, we are blessed, if not cursed, he doesn’t say just tithe; tithes and offerings. The offering is above and over the tithe. I hope I don’t offend some of the clergy here, but one percent of the tithe goes to the clergy or the church work, some goes to music, the rest covers a broad sphere of what we call health, education, and welfare. Once all hospitals were Christian hospitals, they were owned and run by Christian tithe agencies. All welfare was Christian.

Did you know that it was a politician that started the idea of state welfare? There was a depression, was it 1907 or 1909? I forget which year it was, and as usual Christian took care of all the people that were out of work. Some of the tithe agencies that ministered to welfare actually bought rock quarries and fixed rock and stockpiled it and later sold it for road work, for construction and what not and got their money back. They took care of everyone. Well one politician got the idea, if the state takes over think of the power I will have? So he went around and told Christians “confine yourself to Spiritual things, you’re wonderful people; the Lord’s work is purely spiritual, and let us take over. If we add a fraction of a penny to the tax bill we can take care of all these needs and accumulate funds for them. Of course he had no real concern for the poor; his concern was for political power. That man’s name was Tom Pendergast, do you recognize Pendergast’s name? He created the first most powerful political machine, and all other politicians quickly followed suit. The purpose of state welfarism is state power. But with the tithe we can take care of all these things. We are today without tither’s already building churches enough to house all the people of this country, we can build schools enough to take care of all the children.

I often find young people who tell me that they feel that should go to the public schools to witness there. Well, why don’t you join a Buddhist mission and witness to the Buddhist’s and see how far you get as a member of a Buddhist mission? What business do you have in a humanistic missionary organization? And that’s what the state school is. Now the term “secular humanism” is often used in our day to indicate that somehow this is not religious humanism. But the term is deceptive because the meaning of secular is first of all pertaining to the present world and life. Well that’s what humanism is about; it confines its interests to this world and says this is all that matters. And second secular means one in holy orders who is not bound by monastic vows. Well secularists are men in humanistic holy orders in the world and concerned with the present world only. They’re highly religious men, and their fundamental thesis is that of Satan in Genesis 3:5 “Ye shall be as God”. Every man his own God knowing, determining, for himself what constitutes good and evil. Now a Marxist pediatrician in Poland, Doctor Olag Zesepky {?} a difficult name to say and I won’t repeat it, wrote recently and I quote “the environment is decisive. Young people are what we have brought them up to be.”

Now this question was asked of me this noon about environment and heredity. Of course this is the old humanistic physician, that we are a product of our environment and heredity. Well if you are a humanist you have a faith that makes you that. Why? Because the humanist believes in evolution; evolution says that man is the creation of a long evolutionary process so he is a product of his evolutionary heredity and environment. So if you’re a humanist you’re going to be a product, your faith will condition you for that. But if you are a Christian you are God’s creation, called to exercise dominion and to subdue the earth. So you’re not a product of your environment and of nature, but master over it in Christ. So you approach the world in a different way, you are God’s creature not natures heredities or environments. But under God do you have a responsibility to be the master, the one who exercise dominion over your heredity and your environment. You’re not going to be the creature of your past, but the creature of God; and so when you are redeemed you begin to conform yourself to the word of God. Not to what your family was, not to what your environment is, but to the word of God.

Now conforming to the word of God means that we have to conform our lives and our schools to the pattern God requires. I’m going to say something that I like to say to Christian school people, especially to Christian board members everywhere, and I must say that it is easier for me to say then you, because I’m going to leave. And if you say it you have to stick around and take the fire. But the word of God says that they that labor for the Lord are worthy of double honor. Now what does this mean? Goes back to the law in Deuteronomy “thou shalt not muzzle the ox which treadeth out the corn” well our Lord and Saint Paul make it clear that this means that the laborer is worth of his hire; if it’s true of an ox, how much more true of man? And Saint Paul then says “Those that labor worthily for the Lord are worthy of double honor.” Now what is meant by that term honor there is double pay. [Amen’s and laughter] Now I was waiting for the amen’s because I figured you’d like that. Now that’s something I’ve fought for, not very successfully, but under God I felt I had to witness to that to the congregations I served. Why? Because if a pastor or a Christian school teacher is not honored as God requires, God is dishonored. Now I do not believe a Christian church or a Christian school can really be in the long run blessed by God if God’s word is despised and His law violated, and His law is “thou shalt not steal.”

Nothing makes me more disgusted and angry when somebody says the pastor should sacrifice, after all he’s in the Lord’s work, or the Christian school teacher should sacrifice because he’s doing the Lords work. Well when I had my children in school I felt that I should sacrifice. Not somebody else for my children. And to make the teacher sacrifice or the pastor sacrifice so that the congregation can have what they want and the parents can have the education they want without going without a new car or color television or a vacation and so on, well that’s according to God’s word, theft; means if I do that I’m a thief. Now I have six children. Well six children cost something to support, Christian schools are a must, I’ve never owned a new car, always gotten used cars. My wife and I have taken our vacations by resting at home. Only now that the six children are gone can we begin to do a few things that we couldn’t before. That was only right and proper, they were our children; why should a teacher or a pastor sacrifice because I choose to have six children? If I require them to sacrifice for me I’m a thief. They that worthily labor for the Lord are worthy of double honor, double pay. I heard a crack a while back on one of my trips that I really jumped somebody for and left town [laughter]. He made a nasty remark about rich Baptist preachers; [more laughter] and I told him what scripture had to say. I encountered one church board that refused to vote their pastor a pay, and the key man said “if I vote for that pay raise he’ll make more money than I do.” That’s being a thief.

Now we have to build our schools and our churches in terms of the word of God, and this means giving honor where honor is due. So tell some of these people who believe in Romans thirteen what that involves; because it involves honor to whom honor is due in every realm, and they that labor for the Lord are worthy of double honor. The school is the Lord’s, this mean therefore that the school cannot embody what the parents or what the teachers want, but what the Lord requires. We have to treat the school as his property and the church as his property. And it means therefore at all times we must remember we’re expendable, Christ’s kingdom is not. And therefore we cannot tamper with what is His, we cannot impose upon it that which pleases us rather than what is in conformity to His word. Well I see that my time is up, I want to thank you for being such good listeners. I’m grateful to almighty God that you have made the stand here in Ohio that you have done, you’ve raised a banner for the whole country. I believe that it will have far reaching repercussions, both with the enemy and with Christians. I believe we’re in a bitter battle and there’s going to be some very serious causalities on our side before it’s over. But it’s the Lord’s battle and the Lord has not yet lost a war. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee that Thou art our Savior and our Redeemer, that Thou hast made us strong by Thy word and by Thy Spirit. That Thou art ever gracious and good unto us who so often cannot be good to ourselves. How great and marvelous Thou art oh Lord, and we praise Thee. Forgive us our many sins and trespasses; forgive us our ignorance of Thy word and our neglect thereof. Make us now and always zealous in Thy service, joyful in obedience and triumphant knowing that this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. Our God we thank Thee, in Jesus name amen.