First American Right

Details: 21 October 2011

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An unusual attack by secularism in one of its many recent attempts to impose that anti-religion on all Americans and to twist the first amendment to our American Constitution, in order to require the government to be hostile to religion, had come a few years ago from a Senator in the Unicameral of the State of Nebraska. It was a lawsuit brought about in 1983 by the notorious Ernest Chambers, an eccentric personality and a darling of the secular media, who recently and absurdly even sued God for causing tornados. He claimed back then that the practice of the legislature to have a chaplain chosen biennially by the Executive Board of the Legislative Council and paid by public funds violates the establishment clause of the first amendment. At that time the legislative chaplain was a Nebraska Presbyterian Minister named Robert E. Palmer. He was paid $319.75 a month when the legislature was in session. Chambers sued a State Official over the matter, and thus the lawsuit was called "Marsh versus Chambers". Chambers lost initially, but then won in the Federal Court of Appeals. This was followed by an appeal and a final judgment against Chambers and the overturning of the judgment of the Court of Appeals by the U.S.Supreme Court on July 5, 1983. On that occasion Chief Justice Burger delivered the opinion of the court, from which it appears there were three dissenting Justices. Many knowledgable observers say that were the case to be decided nowadays, 28 years later, the decision might be different, so we must rejoice in the circumstances that brought it about at the time that it did.

Chief Justice Burger wrote: "The opening of sessions of legislatures and other deliberative public bodies with prayer is deeply imbedded in the history and tradition of this country. From colonial times through the founding of the Republic and ever since, the practice of legislative prayer has coexisted with the principles of disestablishment and religious freedom. In the very courtrooms in which the United States District Judge and later three Circuit Judges heard and decided the case, the proceedings opened with an announcment that concluded, "God save the United States and this Honorable Court", which is the same invocation that occurs at all sessions of this Court.... Clearly the men who wrote the first amendment religion clauses did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that amendment, because the practice of opening sessions with prayer has continued without interruption ever since that early session of Congress. It can hardly be thought that in the same week members of the First Congress voted to accept to pay a chaplain for each House and also voted to approve the draft of the first amendment for submission to the States that they intended the establishment clause of the amendment to forbid what they had just declared acceptable. In applying the first amendment to the States through the fourteenth amendment, it would be incongruous to interpret that clause as imposing more stringent first amendment limits on the States than the draftsmen imposed on the Federal Government."

Burger noted that when in history John Jay and John Rutledge objected to a motion to begin the first session of the (pre-Constitution) Continental Congress with a prayer, Samuel Adams led the majority who voted them down, saying: "I am no bigot, and I can hear a prayer from any gentleman of piety and virtue who is at the same time a friend of his country." Burger concluded: "In the light of the unambiguous and unbroken history of more than 200 years, there can be no doubt that the practice of opening legislative sessions with prayer has become part of the fabric of our society. To invoke divine guidance on a public body entrusted with making the laws, is not, in these circumstances, an establishment of religion or a step toward establishment. It is simply a tolerable acknowledgment of beliefs widely held among the people of this country." Thus "Ernie" Chambers was thwarted in one of his first efforts to force his anti- religion of secularism on Nebraska and its people.

Calendar Secularism

Another area where secularism of a virulent anti-Christian character has entered our culture and is striving to force itself upon the people can be found in the changes demanded and often now used in substitution for the calendar expressions that previously have been used for almost 2000 years by all of Western civilization. The semi-official newspaper of the Holy See, "L’Osservatore Romano", said that "this change reflects a wider effort to cancel every trace of Christianity from Western culture."

The change being done is dropping the reference to Jesus Christ in the expressions A.D. (Latin for "Anno Domini" -"the Year of our Lord") and the term B.C. ( in English "Before Christ") and in place of them using the expressions B.C.E. (meaning "Before the Common Era") and C.E. (meaning "Common Era"). The fanatic followers of the anti-religion of secularism claim that this usage would be "more neutral religiously". Many critics have joined L’Osservatore Romano in pointing out the hypocrisy of this undertaking, since those new dating abbreviations still use the birth of Christ as a reference point but try with a change of words to escape acknowledging the connection. Hatred for Jesus seems to be a hallmark of secularists.

Since the more recent archaeological discovery of the exact date for the death of King Herod the Great, we now know that the monk who made the calculation we use in the calendar was mistaken by at least five years. Nevertheless, we have used and understood his intention to place the birth of Jesus at the center of the entire human experience and to mark everything in history that has occurred after His birth as "year of the Lord" and everything in human history that happened before His birth as leading up to it and, therefore, rightly called "before Christ". L’Osservatore Romano says, "To deny the historically revolutionary importance of the coming of Christ on earth, which is also accepted even by those who do not recognize Him as the Son of God, is an act of foolishness. From the moment God became incarnate, our world and its history have changed, and, therefore, Christ must be always seen as the Fulcrum of history and its Center."

National Thanks

On September 25, 1789, the First Congress unanimously passed a resolution "that a joint committee of both Houses be directed to wait upon the President of the United States (George Washington) to request that he recommend to the people of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a constitution of government for their safety and happiness."

Washington did this, stating at the beginning of his proclamation that "it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor...." Secularism was never the established religion ( or more accurately the anti-religion) of the United States. It certainly will become so soon, however, unless God-fearing and believing Americans are ever vigilant and do not allow our freedoms to be gradually eroded and destroyed by the insidious work of the secularists and their (often unwitting) allies.