Is the First Amendment Being Used to Persecute Christians?
Years ago, someone said fascism would come to the United States in the name of fighting fascism to save freedom.
- R. J. Rushdoony
On hundreds of state college and university campuses across the country, a major threat faces campus religious ministries which are Christian. In two federal district courts, judges have ruled that state universities may not allow such religious use of their facilities. In one case, the Christian student group was told that it could use campus facilities for a nonreligious party, or if for religious use, only twice in a quarter, with application and payment of rent. One person remarked, “It’s almost as if we pay rent if we use the word ‘God’; but if we add the word ‘damn,’ it’s free.” In other cases, public high schools have sought to bar Christian student groups from meeting on the premises during lunch, after school, or at any time.
In other words, if your religion is atheism or humanism, you may use school or university facilities, but not if you are a Christian.
All this is done in the name of the First Amendment and the separation of church and state. But this is not all. When Christians in California organized as Californians for Biblical Morality, one newspaper called this a violation of the First Amendment. In other words, it is all right for homosexuals or prostitutes to organize for legal action, but Christians should be forbidden to attempt to influence politics.
The plain implication is that any one may have all the freedom he wants, and use public infrastructure also, provided he is not a Christian. In the name of the First Amendment, freedom is denied to Christians. Why should campus Marxists, atheists, humanists, and homosexuals have freedom, but not Christian students? What kind of judges are we appointing to the bench, that they use the First Amendment to deny freedom to Christians?
Years ago, someone said fascism would come to the United States in the name of fighting fascism to save freedom. I was reminded of that when I learned that someone who wants freedom denied to Christian groups insisted that he is thereby fighting fascism!
The days of freedom are numbered in the United States if such things continue. And continue they will as long as most people are indifferent to the growth of bigger and bigger civil government and the decline of our freedom. Are we any better off today for having concentrated so much statist power in Washington, D.C., and the state capitol? Unless we begin to change things, we will soon be no more than slaves of the state.
Taken from Rushdoony’s Our Threatened Freedom: A Christian View on the Menace of American Statism.
- R. J. Rushdoony
Rev. R.J. Rushdoony (1916–2001), was a leading theologian, church/state expert, and author of numerous works on the application of Biblical law to society. He started the Chalcedon Foundation in 1965. His Institutes of Biblical Law (1973) began the contemporary theonomy movement which posits the validity of Biblical law as God’s standard of obedience for all. He therefore saw God’s law as the basis of the modern Christian response to the cultural decline, one he attributed to the church’s false view of God’s law being opposed to His grace. This broad Christian response he described as “Christian Reconstruction.” He is credited with igniting the modern Christian school and homeschooling movements in the mid to late 20th century. He also traveled extensively lecturing and serving as an expert witness in numerous court cases regarding religious liberty. Many ministry and educational efforts that continue today, took their philosophical and Biblical roots from his lectures and books.