Tag Archive for: Founding Fathers

An Untold Story of Battlefield Faith: The Birth of the American Army

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Over the weekend, President Trump celebrated his birthday, which coincided with the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army, with a “Big Beautiful” Military Parade in Washington, D.C. The White House also released another video in their “The Story of America” series to commemorate the anniversary. Produced by Hillsdale College and hosted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, they recounted the vote by Congress on June 14, 1775, the appointment of General George Washington as commander in chief, and some of the early battles.

Other than the blessings invoked at the end, God was not a part of this version of our history. Yet a closer look reveals that God was very much a part of the birth of the American army.

Faith Undergirds a Growing Army

In the late spring of 1775, the Massachusetts countryside was alive with a martial spirit. Following British-initiated bloodshed at Lexington and Concord on April 19, the patriot militia harassed the defeated red-coated regulars all the way back to their base in occupied Boston. During their retreat, Dr. Joseph Warren, who had dispatched Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott to warn fellow patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the “British are coming,” joined the action at West Cambridge and narrowly escaped death when a British musket ball grazed the side of his head, knocking out a hairpin.[i]

The next day, General Artemas Ward arrived from Shrewsbury and took charge of the Massachusetts militia.[ii] The 47-year-old veteran of the French and Indian War (aka Seven Years War) was described as a “God-fearing man, strongly believing in and living up to the religion he professed,” as well as “somewhat slow in speech and with a biblical turn to his conversation… fully convinced that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the land most approved by Providence, and that those of Massachusetts were the Chosen People.”[iii] Yet soon General Ward would find himself leading militia companies from other New England colonies, who were streaming into Cambridge, Medford, and Roxbury, encircling occupied Boston.

Among them, Peter Brown wrote his mother back in Rhode Island about God changing his summer plans:

“I had plan’d out to go to Connecticut where I expected to work the Summer; but the Allwise in his providence hath very differently plann’d my summers work, which I hope may turn to his Glory and my good… I was at Westford… call’d about Day-light, or a little after, and rode as post that forenoon, before I could get to Concord, after which I pursu’d with the rest and fought that day, tarried at Cambridge that Night… I did not know what I could do better than to en-list.”[iv]

Again, the air was filled with more than military tension ?” it throbbed with spiritual intensity. Even as troops from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island gathered in makeshift camps, resolved to fight against British tyranny, many turned to prayer and the Scriptures with the support of their pastors and chaplains who had marched with them.

Amos Farnsworth, a young soldier from Groton, Massachusetts, recorded in his diary the deeply religious rhythm of camp life. On Sunday, April 23, he recorded: “lay Stil in the fore noon in the Afternoon the Regiment to the meeting hous And herd a fine Sermon from Timothy 2[:]3 [?”] thou therefore Endure Hardness as a good Solder of jesus Christ.”[v] On April 25, he wrote: “in the afternoon we went up to the Genarals And Receved ordars and marched to Cambridge Agiin. oh the goodness of God in Preserving my life from Danger.”[vi] On the last day of the month, Sunday April 30, he recorded: “Retired alone in the morning for Secret Prayer. Preaded the Sun half a Nour hie for Prayers And then About Ten oclock went to a Barn And herd the Rev Mr Emerson from the first Book of Samuel 30[:]6 [?”] and Daved was gratly Distressed &c.”[vii] Rev. William Emerson was the bold Concord pastor, who raised the town militia, mustered with them when the alarm rang out on April 19, stood with them in the famed engagement at the Old North Bridge, and then marched with his parishioners to Cambridge.

Corporal Farnsworth continues: “And in the afternoon herd the Re* Mr Goodridge From those words in judges 20 C 22 & 23 Verses more Porticuly the last Claus in the 23 Varse And the Lord Said go Up Against him. An Exelent Sermon he incoridged us to go And fite for our Land And Con try : Saying we Did not do our Duty if we did not Stand up now.”[viii] These were not perfunctory pieties. These prayers and sermons were biblical bricks fortifying these men for battle, and for some, the ultimate sacrifice for liberty.

On May 2, Dr. Warren was elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, taking over for John Hancock, who would travel to Philadelphia along with Samuel and John Adams and others as delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Like Hancock the year prior, Warren was chosen to deliver the annual Oration commemorating the Boston Massacre to a standing room crowd at the Old South Church back on March 6, dramatically entering through a window, wearing a Roman senatorial toga, reprising his college portrayal of brave Cato, declaring:

“Our streets are again filled with armed men; our harbour is crowded with ships of war; but these cannot intimidate us; our liberty must be preserved; it is far dearer than life, we hold it even dear as our allegiance; we must defend it against the attacks of friends as well as enemies… The man who meanly will submit to wear a shackle, contemns the noblest gift of heaven, and impiously affronts the God that made him free.”

The next day, May 3, Warren requested that his current pastor, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper of Brattle Street Church in Boston, serve as Chaplain to the Provincial Congress.[ix] Dr. Cooper agreed to serve. Cooper and Warren were kindred spirits, with the former having been accused by Loyalist Peter Oliver as a member of the “dissenting Clergy, who took so active part in the Rebellion.” Indeed, Oliver labeled Cooper one of the “Black Regiment,” a nod to his black clerical robes, but no less deadly as a patriot militiaman armed with a musket.[x] Indeed, the ministers were more dangerous by means of their sermons because they were mass recruiters of their congregants, force-multipliers for the sacred cause of liberty.

General Artemas Ward Assumes Command

The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia at the State House, which is now referred to as Independence Hall. On that same day, Colonel Benedict Arnold, sanctioned by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, joined forces with Colonel Ethan Allen and his “Green Mountain Boys” with the objective of taking the British stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga in New York, confiscating the arsenal and artillery pieces. Allen famously seized the fort “in the name of the great Jehovah and the continental Congress.”[xi]

Under Dr. Warren’s predecessor, the Provincial Congress had set May 11 as a “Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.” In fact, Warren had written Samuel Adams previously: “I think religion and policy require that a day be set apart for publicly addressing the King of kings.”[xii] On the Fast Day, Corporal Farnsworth records that he heard Rev. Amos Adams of Roxbury, Joseph Warren’s former pastor, preach from Psalm 50:15 ?” “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me”[xiii] On May 14, he listened to Rev. Mr. Noble preach from Isaiah 59:1: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save.” Farnsworth jotted in his journal, “O the Goodness of God in Promoting me the Liberty of Prayer and to hear Preaching.”[xiv] On May 21, a Sunday, he wrote: “Etended Prayers on the Common in the morning… herd the Revent Docter Langdon from Hebrews 2:10… he incorridge us to Enlist our Selves under the Great Jeneral of our Salvation.” Dr. Samuel Langdon, the president of Harvard College and a former New Hampshire pastor, preached frequently to the troops.[xv]

On May 25, British military Governor Gage welcomed reinforcements to Boston as well as three new generals: William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. Also on May 25, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted a committee recommendation on providing chaplains for the army:

“Whereas, it is necessary that chaplains should be appointed in the Massachusetts army, under the command of the Hon. Artemas Ward, Esq…. and, whereas, it has been represented to this Congress, that several ministers of the religious assemblies, within this colony, have expressed their willingness to attend the army aforesaid, in the capacity of chaplains, as they may be directed by this Congress; therefore, Resolved, that it be, and it is hereby recommended, to the ministers of the several religious assemblies within this colony, that, with the leave of their several congregations, they attend said army in their several towns, to the number of thirteen at one time, during the time the army shall be encamped…”[xvi]

Thus, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress set an example, along with other colonies, for the Second Continental Congress to do the same on June 29, 1775. Then the Provincial Congress further: “Resolved, unanimously, that the president [Warren] be desired to deliver to Gen. Ward, the commission prepared for him by this Congress, as general and commander in chief of the Massachusetts forces.”[xvii]

As the newly minted commander in chief, General Artemas Ward had his hands full. While the militia forces that bottled up the British in Boston fluctuated between 12-20,000, they were a loose confederation lacking a regimented command structure. Assuming military action would be over quickly, most militia companies came unprepared and ill-equipped for a long campaign. Consequently, they came and went at the whim of their company officers. Though some of the older soldiers had seen action in the French and Indian War, most had never seen combat, having only drilled with their town companies and used their muskets to shoot wild game. In addition to their general lack of battlefield experience, they lacked sufficient quantities of the basic material of war: gunpowder, musket balls, and artillery pieces. Yet they believed that the Lord of Hosts was on their side, and that would make all the difference.

Joining the cautious General Ward in the war council was the aggressive Connecticut General Israel Putnam, another veteran of the French and Indian War. Indeed, he was a member of the famed Roger’s Rangers, a special warfare unit recruited and commanded by Captain Robert Rogers of New Hampshire, which specialized in long-range reconnaissance and covert operations. Roger’s Rangers were the predecessors of today’s Army Rangers. During his eventful service, Putnam had been badly burned while heroically putting out a fire in 1757, captured by Kahnawake Indians in 1758 but escaped their plan to burn him alive by ritual execution through a providential rainstorm, survived shipwreck in Cuba in 1762, as well as enduring other close calls in battle.

When Putnam returned from war to his homestead in 1765, his wife died, the mother of their 10 children, leaving behind a son in infancy. Yet in his grief, he turned to the Lord for comfort and hope, publicly professing faith in Christ and joining the Congregational Church in Brooklyn under the ministry of Rev. Dr. Josiah Whitney.[xviii]

Having come out of retirement and joining the militia companies around Boston, Putnam’s battle-scarred reputation as a fearless wolf hunter and grizzled war fighter was the topic of tall tales. His men apparently lionized him, as an acrostic in the newspapers of the day shows:

“Pure mass of courage, every soldier’s wonder,
Unto the Field he steps, enrobed with martial Thunder,
Tares up the elements, and rends the Earth asunder,
Nature designed him for the Field of Battle,
Unused to Statesmen’s wiles or courtier’s prattle,
Mars-like, his chief Delights, where thundering cannon rattle.”[xix]

In fact, “Old Put” was celebrated throughout Connecticut and other colonies, who described the conflict in biblical terms: “the British were the Philistines and Putnam, the American Samson, a chosen instrument to defeat the foe.”[xx]

Success in the First Naval Engagement of the War

Stuck in the middle between Ward and Putnam who were polar opposites, Dr. Warren once remarked to Putnam, “I admire your spirit, and respect General Ward’s prudence. We shall need them both, and one must temper the other.”[xxi] Nevertheless, Putnam convinced Warren, Ward, and the council to go on the offensive and conduct a covert operation on the night of May 26 to deprive the British of access to the free ranging livestock and fodder on Noddles and Hog Islands. Spearheaded by former-fellow Ranger, Captain John Stark, and his 1st New Hampshire regiment of 300 men along with Massachusetts Colonel John Nixon and his nearly 300, the overnight maneuver was successful in driving the cattle, sheep and horses across patriot lines and setting fire to the haystacks and barns.[xxii]

However, by mid-morning the next day, the British had discovered the patriot mischief, and Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves dispatched the HMS Diana, other gunships, as well as the Royal Marines, who engaged patriot forces. In response to the call for reinforcements, General Ward dispatched General Putnam and 1,000 men from Cambridge, one of whom was Dr. Warren.[xxiii] The combined forces were able to frustrate the British advance as well as destroy the Diana in the first Naval engagement in the War for Independence.

Another member of the operation under Colonel Nixon’s command was none other than Corporal Farnsworth, who records:

“Before we got from Noddels island to hog island we was fird upon by a Privatear Schooner But we Crost the river and about fiften of us Squated Down in a Ditch on the mash and Stood our ground. And thare Came A Company of Regulars on the marsh on the other side of the river And the Schooner: And we had A hot fiar untill the Regulars retreeted. But notwithstanding the Bulets fiue very thitch yet thare was not A Man of us kild Suerly God has A faver towards us : And He can Save in one Place as well as Another… At night Marchd, to Winnisimit ferry whare thare was A Schooner and Sloop Afiring with grate fury on us thare But thanks be unto god that gave vs the Victry [1 Cor. 15:57] at this time for throu his Providence the Schooner that Plad upon us the day before run Aground and we Sot fiar to hur And Consumed hur thare And the Sloop receved much dammage. in this ingngment we had not A man kild : But fore wounded but we hope all will Recover, one of the fore was A tounsing [Townsend] man belonging to our Company the bulet went throu his mouth from one Cheek to the other, thanks be unto God that so little hurt was Done us when the Bauls Sung like Bees Round our heds.”[xxiv]

Again, Farnsworth saw what happened through a providential perspective, giving credit to God. While British forces suffered significant casualties, the Pennsylvania Journal report is filtered through a biblical lens:

“Our killed none! Wounded three! Heaven apparently, and most evidently, fights for us [Deut. 20:4], covers our heads in the day of battle [Ps. 140:7], and shields our people from the assaults of our common enemies [Ps. 3:3]. What thanks can speak our gratitude! These interpositions, and our determined resolutions, may perhaps make our haughty enemies… leave us peaceably to enjoy those rights and liberties which God in our nature has given us, as our inalienable right, and which they are most unjustly endeavoring to wrest from us by violence.”[xxv]

‘I Shall Rely on Providence’: Washington Appointed Commander in Chief

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, President John Hancock presided over Congress and on Wednesday, June 14, they voted to establish a Continental Army:

“Resolved, That six companies of expert rifflemen, be immediately raised in Pensylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drum-mer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates. That each company, as soon as compleated, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army…

“That the form of the enlistment be in the following words: I ____________have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American continental army, for one year, unless sooner discharged: And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established for the government of the [aforesaid] Army.”[xxvi]

Furthermore, Congress appointed George Washington, Philip Schuyler, Silas Deane, Thomas Cushing, and Joseph Hewes as a committee to bring in a draft of “Rules and regulations for the government of the army.”[xxvii]

On Thursday, June 15, Congress took up the matter of choosing the commander in chief of the newly formed American Continental Army: “Resolved, That a General be appointed to command all the continental forces, raised, or to be raised, for the defence of American liberty… The Congress then proceeded to the choice of a general, by ballot, when George Washington, Esq. was unanimously elected.”[xxviii] On Friday, June 16, President Hancock informed Washington: “that the Congress had by a unanimous vote made choice of him to be general and com[mander] in chief to take the supreme command of the forces raised and to be raised, in defence of American Liberty, and desired his acceptance of it.” Dressed in his uniform, Washington stood and addressed the Congress with an attitude of humility, admitting “with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.” Yet he pledged: “I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for support of the glorious cause.”[xxix]

Washington then declined the pay offered, only asking to be reimbursed for his expenses. In reflection on this momentous event, he wrote his wife Martha, beginning with words with which every servicemember can sympathize:

“My Dearest, I am now set down to write to you on a subject, which fills me with inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased, when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you. It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the defence of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it… I assure you, in the most solemn manner that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity…”[xxx]

Having expressed his reluctance to be away from his wife and family in the service to his country, Washington then zooms out to consider the bigger picture, trusting in the providence of Almighty God:

“But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose… I shall rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence, which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you…”[xxxi]

Indeed, his confidence in God was not misplaced. After eight years of war that included several close calls, God indeed returned him safely home. Yet first, Washington must undertake the monumental task.

General Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday, July 2. Corporal Farnsworth wrote with gratitude to God: “Felt Lively to Day in Sperital things : Blesed he god for such A Ceson.”[xxxii] On Saturday, July 3, Washington proceeded to take command of the army. He was discouraged by what he found, such as the general lack of command structure, lack of discipline, lack of proper barracks and equipment, as well as a lack of camp and personal cleanliness.[xxxiii] There was much work to do in order to forge these loosely confederated militia companies from towns all over New England into a disciplined army.

Yet the one thing that had to encourage Washington was their mutual faith in God, a faith that he not only shared, but also reinforced by his example and through his orders. In fact, on Sunday, July 4, his general orders stated:

“The General most earnestly requires, and expects, a due observance of those articles of war, established for the Government of the army, which forbid profane cursing, swearing and drunkeness; And in like manner requires and expects, of all Officers, and Soldiers, not engaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine Service, to implore the blessings of heaven upon the means used for our safety and defence.”[xxxiv]

Washington continued to foster the deeply religious rhythm already observed by many of his men. Not surprisingly, Corporal Farnsworth journaled about his “attendance on divine Service” that Sunday: “Etended Publect worship And in ye forenoon herd ye Re? Mr Whitcome from Isaiah: furst Chapter: from ye twenty first verse to ye end of ye 24 verse. And in ye afternoon herd ye Rev Mr [David] Avery: from Stockbridge: who Spoke Exelenty from Job 35…”[xxxv]

The point of Washington’s general orders, as well as succeeding ones throughout the war, is that he intended that the Continental Army not simply put their trust in “chariots or horses” alone but place their trust firmly in “the name of the Lord our God” (Ps. 20:7). To prevail in their struggle against the greatest military power in the world, they unashamedly looked to God as their only hope. Now, 250 years later, America would do well to follow in their footsteps of faith.

AUTHOR

Kenyn Cureton

Dr. Kenyn Cureton is Vice President for Christian Resources at Family Research Council.

Notes:

[i] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument” 2d ed., (Boston: Little and Brown, 1851), 77.

[ii] Charles Martyn, “The Life of Artemis Ward” (New York: Artemis Ward, 1921), 90.

[iii] Ibid., 91.

[iv] Letter from Peter Brown to Sarah Brown, 25, June 1775 (p 1) as found at https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=725&img_step=1&mode=dual

[v] Samuel A. Green, “Amos Farnsworth’s Journal, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1897 – 1899,” Second Series, vol. 12, (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1897-1899), 78.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid, 79.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] William Lincoln, ed., “The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix, Containing the Proceedings of the County Conventions-Narratives of the Events of the Nineteenth of April, 1775-Papers Relating to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and other Documents, Illustrative of the Early History of the American Revolution,” (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), 184.

[x] Peter Oliver, “The Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View,” edited by John A. Shultz, (Stanford, CA: University Press, 1961), 41-44.

[xi] Ethan Allen, “A Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen’s Captivity, Written by Himself,” 4th ed., (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1846), 14-15.

[xii] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “Life and Times of Joseph Warren,” (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1865), 317.

[xiii] Farnsworth, 79.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid., 80.

[xvi] Lincoln, 247.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Increase N. Tarbox, “Life of Israel Putnam (‘Old Put’): Major-General in the Continental Army” (Boston: Lockwood, Brooks, and Co., 1876), 66.

[xix] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “Battle of Bunker Hill” (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1890), 18.

[xx] William F. Livingston, “Israel Putnam, Pioneer, Ranger, and Major-General, 1718-1790” (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 204-05.

[xxi] Frothingham, “Warren,” 505.

[xxii] See the detailed account by Robert D. McKay, “The Battle of Chelsea Creek: An account of the second engagement of the American Revolution,” May 27, 1775, (Chelsea, MA: n.p.,1925), 1-35 as drawn upon here: https://www.academia.edu/28170390/Chelsea_Creek_First_Naval_Engagement_of_the_American_Revolution

[xxiii] Frothingham, “Warren,” 497.

[xxiv] Farnsworth, 81.

[xxv] Pennsylvania Journal, June 21, 1775 as found in Frank Moore, ed., “Diary of the American Revolution from Newspapers and Original Documents” (New York: Charles Scribner, 1860), 1:86. Scripture references added.

[xxvi] Worthington C. Ford, et al, eds., “Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789,” 34 vols., (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904-37), 2:89-90.

[xxvii] Ibid., 90.

[xxviii] Ibid., 91.

[xxix] Ibid., 92.

[xxx] “From George Washington to Martha Washington, 18 June 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0003. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775??”?15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 3?”6.]

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] Farnsworth, 82.

[xxxiii] See the letter from George Washington to Samuel Washington, 20 July 1775 in W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., “The Papers of George Washington,” (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1987- ), Revolutionary War Series, 1:135. See also his letter to Lund Washington, 20 August 1775, “Papers of George Washington,” 1:335.

[xxxiv] George Washington, General Orders for July 4, 1775 as found in “George Washington Papers,” Series 3, Varick Transcripts, -1785, Subseries 3G, General Orders, -1783, Letterbook 1: July 3,- Sept. 30, 1776. July 3, 1775, 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw3g.001/.

[xxxv] Farnsworth, 82.

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Impeaching Federal Judges Protects the Constitution … If Used Properly

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A much-needed national debate about impeaching rogue judges has erupted over a federal judge’s order to return illegal immigrant terrorists and murderers to the American heartland — a power which, if exercised properly, holds the potential to restore constitutional government.

This week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, unsuccessfully ordered planes deporting Tren de Aragua gang members to be stopped in midair and returned to the United States. The ruling proved so outrageous that Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg, and President Trump has led broader calls to impeach the “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge.” Chief Justice John Roberts sharply responded that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” But America’s founders would disagree.

Boasberg is one snowflake in an avalanche of judicial activists waging lawfare against President Trump. At least 46 judicial opinions had enjoined the 47th president’s actions as of March 15, according to The New York Times, including:

  • U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee who identifies as LGBTQ, overturned Trump’s executive order to preserve military readiness by disallowing most people who identify as transgender from joining.
  • U.S. District Judge Lauren King, a Biden appointee, prevented Trump from shielding minors from transgender procedures, claiming his executive order violates the Fifth Amendment.
  • U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to pay USAID grantees $2 billion.
  • U.S. District Judge Julie Rubin, a Biden appointee, forced taxpayers to keep funding Department of Education grants funding DEI programs.
  • U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee in San Francisco, reinstated 24,000 fired federal employees at the behest of public-sector labor unions.
  • U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, halted Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
  • U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, a Biden appointee, stopped the Trump administration from ending grants that promote DEI extremism and transgender ideology.
  • U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, insisted the United States cannot stop admitting illegal immigrants who abuse asylum status by posing as “refugees.”

The New Yorker summarized bluntly: “Judges Are Blocking His Agenda.” Call it the Legal Resistance 2.0.

America’s Black-Robed Oligarchy

Yet judicial activists are doing far more than opposing the president. Nationwide injunctions against legislation in effect reverse the basis of American government.

Monarchs and despots of old ruled their subjects by the code of Rex Lex: The king is the law.

The Founding Fathers waged the American Revolution to institute the principle of Lex Rex: The law is king. Democratically ratified legislation becomes legally binding even on the highest magistrate, in a reflection of the biblical concept that one law should rule all people.

But in current-year America, the reality is Iudex Rex et Lex: The judge is the king and the law. Nationwide injunctions, which are a controversial and relatively recent development, give every one of America’s 670 unelected district judges veto power over the nation’s elected representatives. Over time, judges’ temptation to impose their personal views has become irresistible.

When judges can impose their private opinions without reference to the Constitution’s fixed original intent, America has become a black-robed oligarchy. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers gave Americans the tool to regain their sovereignty over their government, the very process Trump mentioned: impeachment of rogue judges.

In her ruling, Reyes cited the musical “Hamilton.” But Lin-Manuel Miranda never wrote a rap paeon to Alexander Hamilton’s position on judicial impeachment (nor of the immigrant’s restrictive view of immigration). Like the other Founders, Hamilton believed Congress has the right to remove judges whose rulings violate the Constitution before they become “a permanent tyranny.”

Impeachment: The Constitution’s Self-Defense Mechanism

In an 1802 essay written under the pen name “Lucius Crassius,” Hamilton addressed concerns that activist judges could one day become a “colossal and overbearing power, capable of degenerating into a permanent tyranny, at liberty, if audacious and corrupt enough, to render the authority of the Legislature nugatory, by expounding away the laws, and to assume a despotic controul over the rights of person and property.” But Hamilton said the Constitution institutes “a complete safeguard” against such “a palpable abuse of power” in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution: “the authority of the House of Representatives to impeach; of the Senate to condemn. The Judges are in this way amenable to the public Justice for misconduct; and upon conviction, removeable from office.”

Impeachment is the Constitution’s self-defense mechanism. Hamilton naively believed the threat of impeachment alone could stop bad judicial behavior. “There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations,” wrote Hamilton in Federalist No. 81. He once again referred to removing activist judges as “complete security” for American liberties.

But no security system works unless it is armed. And Congress has ceded much of its delegated powers to undemocratic commissions, federal regulators, and the ever-expanding encroachments of power-mad presidents and judges. (The fact that the Boasberg case involves a district judge enjoining an executive action demonstrates the growing irrelevance of Congress.)

Until the Left discovered it as a tool to overturn elections, impeachments had been rare. In America’s nearly 250-year history, “The House has impeached twenty individuals: fifteen federal judges, one Senator, one Cabinet member, and three Presidents. Of these, eight individuals — all federal judges — were convicted by the Senate,” according to a 2023 Congressional Research Service report. (Since its publication, the House impeached Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas last February over his refusal to secure the border.)

The exceptional nature of impeachment shows not only the Founders’ love of stability but also that the Supreme Court and the American people retained a largely Originalist constitutional orientation until just decades ago. A pivotal moment came in 1936, when FDR’s court-packing scheme intimidated constitutionalist Justice Owen Roberts into reversing his opposition to New Deal legislation, a change of heart history dubbed the “switch in time that saved nine.” Since then, all three branches of government have been free to expand federal power without proper constitutional restraint. Supreme Court justices now openly base their opinions on foreign law rather than the Constitution, e.g., in a notable case striking down a Texas law against sodomy.

The Left has since waged war on the ideology and legitimacy of the American project writ large. Destroying the image of America’s founders — and thus, the limits they imposed on government power — was the entire point of the 1619 Project.

Now, the culturally dominant liberals pressure judges to conform every opinion to the Left’s lone governing principle: Does it expand government power and further the social revolution? Hence, judges are good when they foist immorality on the American people by, for example, removing prayer and the Ten Commandments from public schools, or discovering constitutional “rights” to abortion and same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court became evil to the Left when it allowed the American people to halt the process democratically. This explains why liberals have no qualms opposing the impeachment of judges in one breath and trying to frame a specious “ethics code” as the first step to removing justices and packing (or “expanding”) the Supreme Court in the next.

Despite popular judicial impeachment efforts (such as that of the infamous Chief Justice Earl Warren), only in the second Trump administration does anyone seem poised to clean out the worst offenders. This escalation shows the American people realize that the last four years, to use the Left’s regnant phrase, were not normal. But that abnormality should also inform our qualified use of judicial impeachment going forward.

Judicial Impeachments Must Be Principled, Not Partisan

While the Founding Fathers held out impeachment, they assumed the vast majority of judges would faithfully serve the Constitution and the American people for life. They saw this as a major boon to the American people. Judges’ lifetime tenure gives them the “independent spirit” necessary to defy lawmakers, wrote Hamilton in Federalist No. 78. Courts, Hamilton wrote, must be free “to dispense the laws with a steady and impartial hand; unmoved by the storms of faction, unawed by its powers, unseduced by its favors.” Otherwise, the judiciary becomes “doomed to fluctuate with the variable tide of faction, degenerates into a disgusting mirror of all the various, malignant and turbulent humors of party-spirit.” Justices who bow to political pressure — like Owen Roberts in 1936 or John Roberts switching his Obamacare vote under pressure from the liberal media — degrade the American people’s liberties.

If wrongly pursued, the potent tool of judicial impeachments can undermine national stability. It is fitting the Boasberg ruling involves one of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts. The Adams administration’s only use of the laws came in prosecuting journalists who belonged to the other party. In many ways, the Alien and Sedition Acts were the original weaponization of government that set the tone for all future efforts. The Left has certainly never had any trouble accusing the president and his supporters of “sedition.” (The Alien Enemies Act was the only one of the four laws with a legitimate purpose.) It is hardly a stretch to foresee the mass impeachment of constitutionalist judges by a Democratic Party that cheers on the full disbarment of Trump lawyers and fantasizes about rendering Trump voters unable to earn a living.

To properly restore our government, the American people need both civic revival and spiritual revival. The necessary use of judicial impeachments cannot be based on politics or the political popularity of any one leader. Impeachment must be principled, not partisan. Judges must be appointed or removed based solely on their fidelity to the original intent of the U.S. Constitution as written. This must be accompanied by widespread cultural appreciation for the nation’s magnificent charter of liberties, the Constitution. And it must be informed by the deeply Christian (and overwhelmingly Protestant) worldview that inspired its framers.

President Trump’s speeches have done much to revive America’s flagging patriotism. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly discussed the importance of faith and family. Their Cabinet members, perhaps especially Pam Bondi, can speak to the glorious limitations the Constitution places on the State, paving the way for a Hamiltonian use of judicial impeachment. They should adopt the motto of Hamilton’s rival, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1798, “In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” As with illegal immigration, modest enforcement will likely induce judges to self-correct.

The Constitution gives the American people the ability to exercise the greatest government: self-government under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Texas State Board of Ed. Approves the Bible in Public School Curriculum

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One vote can make an enormous difference. In Texas, it was a single vote that allowed biblical material to be included in the local public schools through the state-authored curriculum, Bluebonnet Learning (BL). On Friday, eight of 15 Texas State Board of Education members voted it through. Although it was not free from controversy, last week’s decision means the new curriculum will be available starting in the spring and likely put to use within the 2025 to 2026 school year.

Notably, the biblical material included in BL is optional. As The Texas Tribune summarized, “The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies.” Some of the specific Christian references and teachings integrated into BL is Jesus’s parable of “The Good Samaritan,” which can be found in Luke chapter 10, and the “Golden Rule,” found in Matthew 7. The Tribune noted that these parables are “about loving everyone, including your enemies.” The Golden Rule, as stated in the Bible, says, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

Those who voted against this curriculum included all four Democrats who are on the board, as well as three Republicans. According to The Daily Wire, several Democrats who voted against it felt concerned it would “force Christianity on public school children.” Of those Democrats, Staci Childs verbalized her belief that the curriculum will eventually find itself in court. She told NBC News, “[I]f a parent or a teacher who didn’t feel comfortable teaching this were to bring this up to a court, I believe they would be successful.” Childs also noted that, in her opinion, “these materials are [not] yet reflective of the experiences and the nuance of Texas students.”

Conversely, Republican board member Will Hickman celebrated the future of Texas public schools now that BL has been approved. “In my view,” he said, “these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy. … [R]eligious concepts like the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule and Moses [are ones] that all students should be exposed to.” Apart from the board members, it appears parents were also divided on the topic. However, The New York Times reported on one mother’s opinion, in which she stated that the incarnation of Jesus “is and always will be the hinge of all of history.” This mother also posed the question: “How would the canceling of such fundamental facts serve the education of our children or contribute to shape them morally?”

To add to the conversation, Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, offered a comment to The Washington Stand. “The classroom will never be values neutral,” he said. “We’ve seen the aggressive way some classrooms have pushed the Sexual Revolution, which is essentially just a different religion. [So,] the fact that the curriculum includes biblical stories doesn’t mean its teaching Christianity, just that they aren’t pretending there is something dangerous about biblical stories anymore.”

Backholm agreed that “the history of America is largely Christian. It’s not possible to have a clear understanding of American history without understanding the role faith played in the lives and beliefs of our founders.” According to Backholm, “This is just one of the many ways that biblical knowledge is [simply] part of a basic education. If you learn American history, you’ll learn about the Bible.”

Ultimately, Backholm believes parents should “be the primary shapers and guardians of children, [but] we don’t want our fear of ‘religious instruction’ to make us afraid of giving a real education. [Because] in the American context, knowing about our history and culture requires knowledge of the Bible.”

FRC’s Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow of Education Studies, also weighed in with TWS. “The folks who are concerned about ‘teaching Christianity’ in classrooms have likely never batted an eye over mindfulness lessons or practice for children, Greek and Roman mythology, and other types of religious content in schools.”

She continued, “Biblical or overtly Christian content is too controversial for use in the classroom when viewed through the ‘lens of inclusivity.’” Agreeing with Backholm, she noted, “There is simply no way to separate America from its expressly Christian foundation, [even] though the educational industrial complex continues to try.” At the end of the day, Kilgannon said she’s “grateful for the Texas school board members who voted to support this measure. We must continue to pray for America’s schools, families, and school children. We must also support local leaders who take a stand for God and country.”

Kilgannon concluded, “Education has always been about state and local control. It’s our duty to pay attention to local matters and make sure our perspectives are heard.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council,

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

PERKINS: Once Again, the Sacred Fire of Liberty Is Preserved

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Last Tuesday, Americans spoke loudly and clearly to keep the American experiment alive.

A few years back, I visited the National Archives here in Washington, D.C., with a Member of Congress. We had the rare privilege of seeing some of our nation’s founding documents — papers not typically on public display. It wasn’t a “National Treasure” adventure, but it was an unforgettable moment for a student of history like me. One of these documents was the original U.S. Senate’s markup of the Bill of Rights, sent over from the House in 1789.

Another was a simple but profound page: George Washington’s inaugural address, delivered on April 30, 1789. His speech was brief — only about 10 minutes — but the words were powerful. As he took his first steps as the leader of a new nation, Washington said:

“Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

From the very beginning, our republican form of government — placing the power to govern into the hands of the people — was viewed as an “experiment.” Why? Because nothing like it had ever been tried before. Self-government, grounded in the rule of law and crafted for a nation this vast and diverse, was unprecedented. The Constitution was new, untested, and the Founders knew that true power now rested with the people, not a monarchy or ruling elite. They also understood that this experiment depended not only on good laws but on a bedrock of virtue and morality, rooted in timeless truth.

John Adams captured this reality in 1798. “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” he insisted. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Washington had previously stated this point in his Farewell Address in 1796. This grand experiment of ours, he reminded us, could not survive if truth and morality were ignored or discarded.

And thank God, there are still Americans who understand that reality today — who saw that what Kamala Harris offered was an agenda that would have aborted this experiment and snuffed out our hard-won freedoms.

But we can’t be lulled into complacency. The American experiment isn’t on autopilot; it is not “safe and secure.” Our work is far from over. Right now, we have an opportunity, a window, to fortify the moral foundation of this experiment — to restore, promote, and protect what Washington called the two great pillars of our political prosperity: religion and morality.

If America is to thrive, if we are to pass this precious experiment down to future generations, we must remember this: political and economic greatness cannot survive without moral goodness.

As the scriptures declare: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Biblical Roots of American Law and Why It’s Necessary to Return to Them

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America is at a crisis point. While it’s easy to dismiss presidential candidates brashly proclaiming November to be the most important election in the nation’s history as mere votemongering, their words may have a kernel of truth at their center. At present, America is facing something of an identity crisis: the principles and truths upon which the nation was founded have been largely shouldered out of the public square, leaving a sort of vacuum which demands to be filled.

The question before the nation now is whether to restore those principles and truths to their rightful place or attempt to retroactively replace the country’s foundation, which will likely result in chaos and will certainly result in the creation and proliferation of an entity radically different to the United States which has stood for nearly 250 years.

American Founding Father and the nation’s first vice president John Adams famously declared, “Our [C]onstitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This truth seems to have been largely forgotten and even inverted today. To read frequent disappointing judicial opinions and listen to the lectures and arguments of legislators, one might think that the Constitution was rather made to tame or shape an otherwise moral and religious people.

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin expressed this point of view when he chided a fellow state legislator for supporting the biblical definition of marriage. Raskin quipped, “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

Yet America’s founding principles are rooted in that Bible and in centuries of Christian theology, philosophy, and morality. It is not so much, as Raskin implied, that the Bible and the Constitution are mutually exclusive doctrines, but rather that the Bible itself upholds the Constitution. An attempt to use the Constitution to suppress the Bible is the proverbial attempt to saw off a tree branch that the man with the saw is sitting upon at that very moment.

Who devised the idea of community and society if not God — the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — who is Society itself? The very first thing in the created world that God named “not good” was solitude, an absence of community and society (Genesis 2:18). Who devised the idea of law, of right and wrong, if not God, who gave to Moses the Ten Commandments and who, through the prophets and finally in the Person of Christ, declared unequivocally what was right and what was wrong? Who devised the idea of government if not God, the King of Kings and Prince of Peace? And who determined that man was fit to rule if not God, who made man in His image and likeness, who gave to him free will, who granted him dominion over all other creatures?

The very tenets which the American Constitution is founded upon were established by God Himself and are in fact rooted in the teachings and truths enumerated in the Bible. Without those teachings and truths, chaos alone would reign. How could society possibly be defined — much less defended and bettered — by its own self? On what authority could a society or a portion of a society claim to enact and enforce law, to govern, or to give or deny others a say in law and government?

Without God and the truths He established in the Bible, there would be no authority. What man may claim to rule or argue that his notion of right and wrong is more right than another man’s if the highest authority he might cite is just his own self? All arguments would become circular then, resolved only by violence, by brute force. The only truth which could be relied upon, as C.S. Lewis so brilliantly explained in “The Abolition of Man,” would be fickle feelings and irrational appetites.

But those very tenets which the American Constitution was founded upon have been crowded out, silenced, and labeled second-rate. The Jamie Raskins of the world insist that a man’s sacred duty is not to uphold a sacred and divinely-ordained moral code, but a legal document written by demonstrably flawed and imperfect men nearly three centuries ago. Turning again to the wisdom of Lewis, we can see, “Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” Today, men are forbidden to honor the sacred scriptures, and so they honor instead an ever-expanding legal document which, cut off from the Word of God, is rapidly becoming poisonous.

This is not to disparage the Constitution, of course. The men who wrote it were learned and sincere, and many of them were wise. They were largely brought up on the classics, studying both the good ideas and the bad of the past several thousand years, but careful not to confuse the former for the latter or vice versa. Most prudently of all, they based their notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on the truth and morality which Christianity has lovingly preserved for some 2,000 years. The document they wrote, the Constitution, was a good one, but not a divinely-inspired one.

In fact, without the Bible and the truths it safeguards and passes down from generation to generation, the Constitution could not have been written and the American experiment never tried. It was the Christian understanding of the imago Dei which emboldened the Framers to declare that man might participate in government. It was the Christian notion of human dignity which enabled the Framers to rule that your vote counts the same as mine. And it was the example of Christ crucified which encouraged these men to not merely write down their ideas but to fight and, in many cases, die for them. A man would not go to war for the sake of a poem he has written, nor would he die for an ingenious work of fiction. It is the biblical truths upon which the Constitution is based which inspired the Founding Fathers to fight and die, in the hopes of preserving and safeguarding these truths for future generations of Americans.

But now the saw is nearly through the branch, and America is hanging precariously by a thread. The demonic anti-sacrament of abortion, the worship of the chief of the seven deadly sins in Pride Month, the diabolical practices of transgenderism are all clear and sure signs that a ghastly new religion has arisen from Hell to challenge Christianity and supplant it as the basis of Western civilization. If the American Constitution remains rooted — or is rather re-rooted — in Christianity, America will survive, prosper, and thrive. If not — if the cult of leftism has its way — if sin and degeneracy, butchery and debauchery are worshipped and idolized — if the word of man is placed on a par with or higher than the Word of God — then America, and indeed the whole of Western civilization with it, will be plunged into the abyss.

In its place will be erected a soulless facsimile, devoid of life, devoid of virtue, devoid even of the knowledge of virtue or the acknowledgement of the difference between virtue and vice. It will bear the same name, it will have many of the same buildings, the same domed Capitol, the same White House, the same Statue of Liberty, but it will be a radically different entity. The America of the past 250 years will have died, and something else entirely will have taken its dead skin and put it on like a suit, like a costume.

A return to the nation’s roots, to the Word of God, to an understanding of goodness and not virtue as defined by God — not by man! — is an urgent necessity if the nation is to live.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Expert: Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law Is Grounded in History and the Constitution

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Following the recent passage of a bill in Louisiana that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other left-wing legal groups filed suit in federal court on Monday to block the measure. But legal experts say that the new Louisiana law should withstand legal challenges in light of American history and constitutional law.

The following is a transcript of “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice’s interview with Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. It has been edited for length and grammar.

HICE: When it comes to constitutional law and our country’s founders, it’s well documented. They had a good understanding of the Ten Commandments being the basis for our laws and our legal system. So with that backdrop, why would someone oppose public school students from gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the foundational documents that our states and our national government really relies upon when it comes to legal matters and how we stand?

STAVER: The ACLU and groups like Freedom From Religion Foundation, they have an agenda, and that is to wipe away anything that has a Judeo-Christian heritage or history. And certainly the Ten Commandments predate America. I wrote a booklet called “The Ten Commandments in American Law and Government” going through all 10 of the commandments, and I did this based on litigation, where we were defending the Ten Commandments displays all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Since 2005, when the Supreme Court issued some decisions on this issue, we’ve never lost a Ten Commandments case, whether it’s a standalone case or it’s a case in the context of other legal documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and so forth.

If you go back to the Ten Commandments prior to even the founding of America, they have for thousands of years influenced law and government societies and certainly had a big influence in Europe. That influence carried over here in the United States. And that’s why when you go to the United States Supreme Court, the most prominent display of any symbol in this court, inside and outside, is the Ten Commandments, which appears around 50 times both inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Amazingly, the actual official seal of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — which has been infamously known to be a very activist court — that particular seal has the Ten Commandments as part of it. It is prominent all over the United States. Why? Because it is critically important and influential in American law and government.

In fact, if you go back to many of our early states and in our judiciary laws and many, many court decisions, they actually referenced the Ten Commandments, when we are referring to laws such as theft, murder, being truthful under oath, and so forth. All 10 of the Ten Commandments have been cited as bases for law, like, for example, blasphemy laws [having to do with] libel or defamation in the context of this would be referring to some of the first four of the Ten Commandments — very influential.

What we have seen, however, is back in the 1970s there was an activist Supreme Court. [Monday] we celebrate[d] the overturning of Roe v. Wade from 1973. Well, two years ago this month, the court also overturned the 1971 decision Lemon v. Kurtzman from that liberal ’70s. And it was that decision that caused all kinds of chaos and havoc. But even under that decision of Lemon v. Kurtzman — which distorted the First Amendment, Free Exercise, Establishment Clause, and free speech clauses — even under that, we won time after time after time Ten Commandment cases. Now, with Lemon being overturned as of two years ago, the Supreme Court says we need to go back to a historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And when you do that with the Ten Commandments, that’s exactly why Louisiana took this opportunity to pass this law. They are on very good legal standing.

HICE: So you feel good with the language that they’ve put into this? As I understand, they’re referencing some U.S. Supreme Court rulings, as you just mentioned, in the language that they have. Why is this case going to be so important?

STAVER: Well, I think it’s very important because it’s one of the first cases post the overturning of Lemon v. Kurtzman in 2022 that actually addresses a religious symbol. Now, we’ve had other cases involving free speech. Our case that was part of overturning Lemon was the Shurtleff v. City of Boston, where they used Lemon to censor private Christian viewpoints. The other case was the Coach [Joe] Kennedy case. Those two combined together, they used Lemon to censor private viewpoints. But Lemon is gone, it’s over. It can no longer be cited. It was cited or referenced 7,000 times in law review articles, and now it’s history. Now we go back to a historical approach. And what the Tennessee legislature did is they actually cited cases such as the Van Orden v. Perry case that came out of Texas that upheld that standalone monument.

But even greater than that is this new sea change. We certainly remember that Roe was overturned two years ago [Monday], which was a huge change in 51 years of bad Supreme Court precedent. And now we’re focused on a historical approach to the First Amendment that is huge, not only for the Ten Commandments in public schools or the Ten Commandments in public places, but nativity scenes and other kinds of expression of religious, particularly Christian, viewpoints, whether they’re Bible clubs or churches. We have more freedom now than we had two years ago, and we need to exercise that freedom. And that’s what we’re seeing in this law. I think we will see many states follow the lead of this particular development.

HICE: We hear a lot about the “Lemon test.” Can you explain what is meant by that phrase, but also just how huge this whole reversal of Lemon is. Let’s begin with what’s meant by the Lemon test.

STAVER: Yeah, it comes from a 1971 case called Lemon v. Kurtzman. And in that case, the Supreme Court developed three tests to determine whether something violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause. And in doing so, they distorted and twisted the First Amendment. So this is the beginning of the ’70s activism. You have ’71 on Lemon. You have ’73 on abortion. You have ’77 with regard to protection for people of faith in the workplace, and that was overturned one year ago. Then you had ’78 the affirmative action admissions to colleges and universities, all from the ’70s activist court because they didn’t like faith, they didn’t like Christianity, they were pro-death. And they had a very liberal activist bent.

So Lemon v. Kurtzman was a case that was used to develop a three-part test. And that test was used to allow a lot of subjectivity. For example, a nativity scene could be constitutional if it was set up by the government, like if the city wanted to have their own nativity display, but it depended upon how many other secular symbols of the holiday were in that display. And it also depended upon how close they were. Was Santa Claus close enough to the nativity scene? Was a Christmas tree secular, or was it sacred? Was it close in proximity to the nativity scene? And sometimes you’d have to get out your measuring stick to decide whether or not this is constitutional. It is really nonsensical. So it allowed a lot of judges to wield autocratic authority based upon their own ideology, to strike down a religious display or to uphold it. I remember a situation where the Ten Commandments was literally etched on the courthouse wall in Philadelphia, and during a lower court decision which struck it down, they covered it while it was up on appeal. And thank God, the Court of Appeals reversed it. But they were going to literally chisel that off the outside of this courthouse where it had been there for decades and decades if the Court of Appeals went the wrong way. So that’s the kind of nonsense that we face now.

Thank goodness we’re looking at the First Amendment from its historical meaning and purpose. And when you look at that in context, the Ten Commandments, more than any other document through thousands of years, but certainly in America, have influenced our American law and government. We don’t have our laws that we have now absent the Ten Commandments. They clearly grew out of the Ten Commandments and were shaped by the Ten Commandments. So no wonder why it would be an appropriate display in schools as well as in public places. And that’s why we’ve seen it in so many different locations.

But they would rather keep the Ten Commandments — about not murdering, not stealing, honoring God, honoring your parents — they’d rather keep that from their view while they indoctrinate them and make people protesters and anti-American. I think this is a great move by Louisiana, and I think it will be upheld. Certainly we will file an amicus brief in support. We have lots and lots and lots of research. I was amazed when we delved into it back in the early 2000 as to how much the Ten Commandments literally have shaped our American law and government. We would not be the same country without the Ten Commandments.

HICE: I’m sure the ACLU’s argument will be you can’t be cramming your morality down the minds of these children. But this is more than that. They are cramming their immorality down the minds of our children with their LGBT ideology. But you bring up the whole historical role of the Ten Commandments and how they have played such an enormous role in the founding of our country and our legal system.

STAVER: Yeah, they really have. It is really surprising when you go into the United States Supreme Court. When you walk in up the big steps to go into the Supreme Court, every fifth symbol is the profile of Moses with the Ten Commandments. When you walk in the double doors, the Ten Commandments are etched on both double doors — a lot of times you don’t see it because the doors are open when you walk in. When you sit in the pew and you exit, the Ten Commandments are at eye level on each pew, both to the right and to the left. The Ten Commandments is the only document that actually is written inside the Supreme Court, and on the outside of the Supreme Court in the back of the building, Moses occupies the very central seat holding the Ten Commandments, with all the other lawgivers looking up to him. And that is because the Supreme Court building was created in the 1930s. But when you go through our country, to places like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is 100+ years old. And that’s why it’s there on the seal. It’s a court of law, and the shorthand of that is the Ten Commandments.

In fact, if you go on a Google search for different kinds of research and you type in “Ten Commandments of” and an ellipsis, it’ll pull up tens of thousands of documents that will say something like “the Ten Commandments of gardening,” “the Ten Commandments of building a better house,” “the Ten Commandments of fixing your roof.” Why is that? Because the Ten Commandments have been shorthand for a rule of law. So we use it in a practical sense, but we’ve used it in a government sense and in a legal sense. It literally has shaped everything about our legal and governmental system in the United States, and not just in the United States, but throughout Europe and throughout millennia of human history.

HICE: Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, I can’t thank you enough. Liberty Counsel has done so much on this issue and so many other issues as well. We all just say thank you for your leadership and the incredible work of Liberty Counsel as well.

AUTHOR

TWS Staff Report

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘If You Can Keep It’: America’s Foundation Is Crumbling but Not Lost

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Pride Month is once again upon us — that special time of the year when governments, corporations, and seemingly every major institution band together to noxiously celebrate the chief of all sins, as well as a whole legion of sexual perversions, degeneracies, and aberrations.

As absolutely everything about it makes clear, Pride Month is not a matter of fostering tolerance nor even a misguided notion of affection for a marginalized minority (the very claim that the LGBT crowd is “marginalized” puts to shame even the most egregious cases of George Orwell’s “doublespeak”) but rather of insufferably demanding submission to grave depravity and psychologically browbeating the masses into accepting as “normal” that which is diabolically deviant. From leather bondage gear and public nudity at Pride parades to the mutilation of children’s genitals in surgical theaters, the accoutrements of Pride Month would have appalled generations past.

The top-down adoration of the LGBT agenda (for, of course, Pride Month is not a grassroots achievement but an innovation of the elite) is symptomatic of the decadence of America. Nigh-unfettered immigration pouring millions of third-world denizens across the border, rampantly rising lawlessness seeping out of urban hellscapes, the debilitating decline of both marriage and birth rates plaguing society, the stentorian campaign to slaughter untold thousands of unborn children, and the more recent corruption and subversion of the justice system to target lawful political figures like former President Donald Trump are also indicative of the impending demise of the Land of the Free.

While many on the political, social, and cultural Left like to hypothesize that America’s Constitution is out of date, designed uniquely for a people who lived and labored over 200 years ago and thus in need of revisions and updates according to modern standards, that is by no means the case. Certainly, America’s Founding Fathers likely never imagined the nightmare scenario of “doctors” chopping off the healthy breasts of teenage girls and the healthy penises of adolescent boys, blithely calling the whole barbaric affair “lifesaving,” but they were far from ignorant of degeneracy. Those on the Left pretend that the Founders never imagined or possibly foresaw the advent of such things as pornography, abortion, or the LGBT agenda.

Certainly, it is difficult to imagine the Founding Fathers sitting around their desks in Philadelphia, New York City, or Annapolis, Maryland and discussing whether or not there would be a time when “doctors” would cut off adolescent children’s sex organs, but the provisions they placed in the Constitution were intended to prevent such nightmares from ever becoming reality — by addressing the principles which could either prevent or permit such nightmares. But those principles rested upon and rest upon still certain conditions. When asked in 1787 what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had agreed upon for the fledgling American nation, Benjamin Franklin famously answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We have not kept it. But we can perhaps reclaim it. Franklin himself intimated how. In a speech before that Continental Convention on September 17, 1787, the scientist-turned-statesman proclaimed:

“I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and [I] believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

At the time, Franklin was nominally addressing the Convention’s president, the legendary George Washington. But the content of his speech was directed to three delegates present who expressed doubts about the form of government which their colleagues were crafting. In earnestly encouraging his fellow Americans to sign the Constitution, Franklin wisely observed that while other forms of government may devolve into despotism at one man’s whim, the American government was structured in such a way that only the will of the people could corrupt it. Franklin’s fellow Founder and America’s first Vice President John Adams put it more pointedly when he said, “Our [C]onstitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

America was once comprised of a moral and religious people, but no longer. Now, Pride Month is close to becoming a state-mandated religious observance, child sacrifice via abortion is a protected anti-sacrament across numerous states, drag queens preach the gospel of gay to children, the rank stench of marijuana hangs over most major metropolitan centers, the soul-sucking scourge of pornography is available at the click of a button on every cell phone and laptop, heartless hookup culture and DIY prostitution have their own trending apps, and all manner of godlessness is accepted and touted in the public square while Christianity is ostracized and shushed. This is the present state of the people.

Is it any wonder then that the American government — of those people, by those people, and for those people — is hurtling headlong into the very despotism that the Founders warned against? The Justice Department is abdicating its duty to the virtue it is named for and targeting pro-life Americans for the crime of standing up for the unborn; courts award government-run schools carte blanche to secretly transgenderify children, leaving American moms and dads in the dark; government “health” agencies commit fraud against the American people to bolster pharmaceutical sales; the legitimacy of authorities is smeared and castigated in pursuit of radical, unamerican agendas; and the dominant political party shields its own when the law is broken and just as wantonly breaks the law in persecuting its political opponents.

In establishing the American republic, the Founding Fathers also articulated how to reclaim it: morality and religion. The American government was, in fact, predicated upon morality and virtue, as the writings of the Founders evince — America’s foundation is morality and religion. This was not a novel concept, nor singularly unique to the new American government. The Founders were no simpletons: they were well-read men with a profound depth and breadth of knowledge of history and philosophy. Many of the Founders had enjoyed classical educations in the Christian West and were thus familiar with the most significant works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as the Bible and the writings of Christian saints and heroes over the previous centuries. All of these sources upheld virtue as a necessary prerequisite for a functioning society.

Greco-Roman political philosophy, shaped by men like Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius, considered virtue paramount and even fundamental to the city, state, nation, and empire. These pagan ideas were perfected upon by Christian thought. In his voluminous treatise “The City of God,” penned shortly after the Sack of Rome, Augustine of Hippo concluded that for any earthly nation to survive and eventually thrive, its people must be virtuous, as are the citizens of the Heavenly City. Almost 1,400 years later, Franklin’s speech before the Continental Convention closely echoed Augustine when the saint wrote:

“In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture [2 Peter 2:19] treats, it says, ‘For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.’”

Indeed, Augustine’s words perfect upon not only the philosophy of the pagan Greeks and Romans, but even upon the American ideals of Franklin and his fellow Founders.

Sadly, as the rampant degeneracy and lawlessness of today make clear, we have not kept the republic given to us by the Founders, the foundations of America are crumbling — but we can reclaim the republic, we can restore the foundation upon which America rests. To do so, we must mount a crusade of virtue, we must model ourselves after the citizens of Heaven, we must become again a moral and religious people.

We may very well, as Augustine warned and as our Founders themselves experienced, live for a time under the rule of the unjust, of the vicious and licentious, but if we keep our eyes fixed upon God and the Heavenly City, such trials will serve as “the test of virtue” and will become for us a strength. The nation is not lost, so long as we keep alive virtue in our hearts.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Secularism: The Forgotten Factor in Falling Fertility

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The decline in faith has precipitated a drop in procreation.

James McHenry is a lesser-known American Founding Father. A Scots-Irish Presbyterian born in County Antrim, Ireland, he came to the colonies in 1771, just five years before independence.

McHenry eventually became a military surgeon, signer of the Constitution and Secretary of War for Presidents Washington and Adams. Fort McHenry, of Star-Spangled Banner fame, bears his name. James McHenry was of the early American elite. He wrote:

“The holy Scriptures… can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.”

Holy Scriptures? How unwoke can you get?

Are we to assume that McHenry was racist, “homophobic,” nativist or a bigot? Can you imagine a member of the Biden cabinet referencing holy Scripture? Why, that would be a violation of “separation of church and state,” the Jeffersonian doctrine intended to prevent government from meddling in matters of faith. Today that doctrine has been wholly transmuted, weaponised to eradicate religious expression from the public square.

A different century

McHenry wasn’t the only American Founder whose words would get him cancelled today. How about the “father of our country” George Washington? Here is what Washington told a gathering of Delaware Indian leaders:

You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.

A compilation of religious sentiments by early American leaders would consume more terabytes than MercatorNet can handle. Needless to say, the Founders were people of faith. Back then, the West was commonly referred to as Christendom. As far as I know, no one found that offensive.

What does any of this have to do with demography?

Well, according to the World Atlas, “American women reaching child-bearing age in 1800 had on average of seven to eight live births in the course of their reproductive life.” In 1800, America was mostly rural and practising Christian.

In the early 1800s, two overarching factors influenced family life. The first was faith. The Biblical injunction “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” (Genesis 9:7, KJV) was taken quite seriously.

Also, having children was sound economics. Children meant more hands on deck at the farm and family business. That was early American family planning.

From 1800, however, US fertility steadily declined, bottoming out in the 1940s. Then the postwar “baby boom” brought a 60% bump. The decline has since resumed, attributed to better public health (lower infant mortality), urbanisation, industrialisation, higher incomes and women in the workforce.

However, one tremendously significant reason for fewer children is usually omitted from demographic analyses: secularism.

What is secularism?

The term was coined c.1850 to denote a system which sought to order and interpret life on principles taken solely from this world, without recourse to belief in God and a future life. It is now used in a more general sense of the tendency to ignore, if not to deny, the principles of supernatural religion.
— The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

According to Merriam-Webster, secularism is “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.”

The US is today’s secularist imperium. Secularism is a major contributing factor, usually overlooked, for persistent below-replacement fertility worldwide.

It is no secret that, on average, religious folks have more children than the non-religious. Why? Quite often, people of faith seriously follow the Biblical injunction to go forth and multiply. They believe in salvation and are usually somewhat less egocentric and materialistic than the average modern Joe.

But today we are in the age of Economic Man, defined by Merriam-Webster as

… an imaginary individual created in classical economics and conceived of as behaving rationally, regularly, and predictably in his economic activities with motives that are egoistic, acquisitive, and short-term in outlook.

By adopting the model of Economic Man, Western societies abandoned believing that humanity’s intellectual, spiritual and moral essence were in the image of God, a view that had sustained them for at least 18 centuries. This stone-cold secularism would eventually lead to Communism and the many other atheistic ideologies we suffer from today.

Major General JFC Fuller, in volume 3 of his Military History of the Western World, posited that “the myth of Economic Man [was] the fundamental factor in Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism.”

We are also addicted to the Idea of Progress, defined by the web’s Conservapedia as

… a worldview mainly promoted by globalists and liberals that argues “that the human condition has improved over the course of history and will continue to improve.”[1]

It is closely associated with the concept that man is perfectible and at some point in the future will, in fact, be perfect. While popular in contemporary culture, this idea has several serious flaws.

Flawed indeed. Shallow belief in the inevitability of human progress and unlimited temporal advancement disregards the transcendent, giving rise to the “prosperity gospel” and rank materialism.

Many prosper, but post-World War II affluence is proving to be ephemeral. Something is lacking. That is why China popularises Confucius, Russia subsidises Orthodoxy and Hungary promotes Catholicism in hopes of boosting birthrates. The US mandates wokeism and relies on immigration.

Today politicians rarely invoke religious faith except in throwaway lines for public consumption. People made of sterner stuff like James McHenry and George Washington are vilified and cancelled, their names expunged and statues removed. What will tomorrow’s children know of their heritage?

Yes, we’re oh-so-modern, high tech, sophisticated and secular. Having children is uncool. Modernity is slowly but surely killing us. The idea of progress that venerates Mammon, radical environmentalism, egocentrism and wokeism has Homo sapiens on the path to extinction. But as the old saying goes, “Fish are the last to notice the water.”

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

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EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.