On June 26, 2003, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco, declared the Pledge of Allegiance unconstitutional because of the words “under God.” The Pledge, over 100 years old, has been recited by school children across America in its present form since 1954, when Congress added the words “under God.” In spite of this long history, two of the 9th Circuit’s three federal judges supposedly saw what had eluded all others for decades, namely, the Pledge of Allegiance’s violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

In August, the attention of our nation was riveted on another constitutional showdown. This one took place at the Alabama State Judicial Building, where Alabama’s Chief Justice, Roy Moore, had installed a 2 1/2 ton granite tribute to the Ten Commandments. A single federal judge, Myron H. Thompson, ruled the Ten Commandments monument unconstitutional and ordered it removed from the State Judicial Building. Chief Justice Moore refused to remove the monument and appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to review it, despite the fact that the Ten Commandments are displayed inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court Building. Though the monument has since been removed from the Alabama State Judicial Building’s rotunda to “a private storage area,” the controversy surrounding it rages on.

According to Judge Thompson, the core issue in the case is whether the state can acknowledge God. According to his decision, the answer is a resounding no! If Judge Thompson’s decision is left standing, all of our nation’s historic and current acknowledgments of God could be outlawed as unconstitutional. In other words, our un-elected, non-accountable and despotic judiciary could erase all references to God from our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance, national anthem, motto, currency and oaths of office.

With the majority of Americans opposed to their efforts to remove all acknowledgments of God from public property and the public forum, secularists have been unable to accomplish their goal at the polls. Therefore, they have taken their crusade against all things religious to the courthouse, where their wishes are being shoved down the majority’s throat by judicial ideologues. If you doubt this, consider the following: In 1948, the courts outlawed voluntary religious instruction in the public schools. In 1962, the courts outlawed school prayer. In 1963, Bible reading in the public schools was declared unconstitutional. In 1980, the courts prohibited public schools from posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls. In 1985, the courts decided that a “moment of silence” at the start of the school day was unconstitutional. In 1989, the Supreme Court ordered a Nativity scene removed from the grounds of a county courthouse in Pennsylvania. In 1992, the courts outlawed prayers at high school graduations. In 2000, the Supreme Court ordered students to stop praying over loudspeakers at high school football games.

Many may dismiss my opinion on this matter, as being that of a man ignorant of jurisprudence. However, the opinion of William Rehnquist, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, is not so easily dismissed. In a stinging dissent to the Court’s 2000 decision outlawing student prayers at high school football games, the Chief Justice wrote, “This Court’s decision bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life.”

As our courts continue to expel God from the public schools and to exile Him from the public square, America’s majority remains silent due to the secularist’s masterful ruse—THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE. Having been duped into believing that the United States Constitution mandates the separation of church and state, America’s majority silently submits to the efforts of an imperious judiciary to impose upon us a uniform national atheism.

Nowhere does the United States Constitution mandate the separation of church and state. The First Amendment, which the secularists herald as the impregnable wall between government and religion, simply states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...” That the First Amendment was intended by the Founding Father’s to prevent government interference in religion, not the government’s acknowledgment of God, is proven by the fact that the day after the Bill of Rights was passed, George Washington, at the request of Congress, proclaimed a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed acknowledging with grateful hearts the many and signal favors of Almighty God.” If President Bush made a similar proclamation today, it would undoubtedly instigate an ACLU lawsuit and be struck down by the courts as an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

The Framers of our Constitution clearly intended to protect the church from government and to guarantee freedom of religion. Today’s courts, however, have reinterpreted the Framers’ intent to mean the exact opposite—the protection of government from the church and the guarantee of freedom from religion.

The words “separation,” “church” and “state” do not even appear in the First Amendment. The statement about “a wall of separation between church and state” does not come from the Constitution, but from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. This letter, written to squelch a rumor that Congress was about to establish a national church, assured Connecticut’s Baptists that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment prevented government from imposing on them a national church, as well as from interfering in any way in their Church. Today’s courts, however, would have us believe that Jefferson’s “wall of separation” mandates government to impose upon us all a national atheism.

To justify their crusade against all things religious and to conceal their contempt for people of faith, the secularists and their coconspirators—today’s judicial despots—have contrived the ruse of church and state separation as a basis for their profaning of America. As a result, they can pretend to base legal decisions on America’s Constitution and laws, when in reality they are pulling them out of thin air, with no constitutional grounds or legal precedence. For instance, since the First Amendment forbids Congress from making any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, what law is Judge Thompson's order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building’s rotunda based on? If it is based on a law, it was unconstitutional for Congress to make it. If it is not based on a law, Judge Thompson had no basis for his decision and no authority to rule in the case.

A second masterful ruse being perpetrated on the American people by today’s secularists and their co-conspiring jurists is that the courts are the final arbiters of all constitutional questions. In other words, the last word belongs to the courts. Once the court has spoken, the citizenry is to hush up, line up and blindly follow the dictates of judges. Anyone daring to object to a judge’s ruling or refusing to follow a judge’s order, no matter how unfounded and ridiculous it may be, is immediately condemned for disrespecting the law or, even worse, advocating anarchy.

When did judges become kings, the bench a throne and gavels scepters? When did respect for the law and the rule of law become respect for lawyers and the rule of judges? When did government by the people and for the people become the tyrannical rule of the courts over the people? These questions are of grave consequence in today’s America.

      Thomas Jefferson once said, “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions [is] a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.” He went on to warn that granting the judiciary alone “the power of declaring what the law is” makes it into “a despotic branch” of government, makes judges into “despots” and makes the Constitution into “a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please.” According to Jefferson, this notion of judicial despotism must be rejected, lest the judiciary “slyly and without alarm” accomplish “what open force would not dare attempt”, namely, the undermining of our Constitution and the overthrow of our government.

If we fail to rise up against today’s judicial despotism, as Thomas Jefferson admonished us to, we may soon find every semblance of our Christian faith stripped from public view. The day may even come when we find ourselves without representation and disqualified from serving in public office. Before dismissing such foreboding as utter foolishness, consider one final constitutional crisis of our day.

According to the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, the President has the power, “with the advice and consent of the Senate,” to appoint federal judges. To pass the requisite for Senate “consent,” the President’s judicial nominees must win a simple majority—51 votes. Knowing they lack the votes to defeat President Bush’s conservative judicial nominees, liberal Democratic senators are unprecedentedly filibustering them. Since breaking a filibuster requires 60 votes (a super majority) and the Republicans can only muster 55, the Democrats are successfully circumventing the Constitution, hijacking presidential powers, holding the nominating process hostage, and keeping anyone who disagrees with them from serving as a federal judge.

When asked about supporting a filibuster against judicial nominee, Bill Pryor, Charles Schumer, Democratic senator from New York, explained how he would object to “anybody who had very, very deeply held views” serving on the federal bench. Pryor, a professed Christian, believes Roe v. Wade was a constitutional abomination, and that abortion itself is a moral abomination. According to Senator Schumer, anyone sharing Pryor’s Christian faith and convictions—“deeply held views”—is disqualified in his mind from serving as a federal judge. No wonder we find so few friends in and receive so few favorable rulings from today’s federal judiciary.

In view of the following: the secularist’s continuing crusade to profane America, the reinterpretation of our Constitution by today’s courts and the efforts of Democratic senators to ban those with Christian convictions from serving on the federal judiciary, it is no longer far-fetched to foresee a day in America when every public expression of our Christian faith will be deemed unconstitutional. Could the day be fast approaching when even the church’s public proclamation of the gospel will be outlawed in America? Although such a thing was once unimaginable in these United States, it is now certainly plausible and possibly looming.

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