Usurpation of Church by State: Part Two

This is the second part in a series addressing how the government has overtaken the church in the role of shepherding the American people.

The Silencing of the Church
In the decades following the Roosevelt era, the role of America's courts and legislatures was radically transformed. The next blow to the Church’s role in American society came in 1954. Five months before the November elections, Senator Lyndon Johnson (D-TX) was being targeted by nonprofit organizations that felt that he was too sympathetic toward communism. On July 2, 1954, in an effort to silence these groups, Johnson proposed an amendment to major tax code legislation banning tax-exempt organizations (i.e. churches) from engaging in political activity. Without public debate or explanation, Congress had suddenly forbade the nation’s pastors to educate their congregations on the potential dangers of candidates or pending legislation.

Threatened with burdensome taxation if they chose to speak out, most pastors opted to remain silent. Churches were removed from the political equation for the first time in U.S. history.

The Impact of Unelected Judges
In this silence, the courts utterly abandoned the bedrock of America's liberty and virtue. A nation that had been uniquely founded upon the belief that all rights were unalienable because they came from God (not government) had begun a vicious mutiny to remove God from our national consciousness. In direct conflict with the will of the American people, the U.S. Supreme Court:

- Prohibited school prayer (Engle v. Vitale)
- Barred the Bible from public school lessons (Abington v. Schempp)
- Mandated Darwinian evolution in classrooms (Epperson v. Arkansas)
- Legalized abortion-on-demand (Roe v. Wade)
- Removed the Ten Commandments from schools (Stone v. Graham)
- Barred Creationist science lessons (McLean v. Arkansas)
- Struck down prayers at graduation ceremonies (Lee v. Weisman)
- Created a constitutional right to sodomy (Lawrence v. Texas)
- Utilized foreign laws to decide cases (Lawrence v. Texas)
- Forbade public displays of nativity scenes. (Allegheny v. ACLU)
- Barred moments of silence as unconstitutional (Wallace v. Jaffree)
- Abolished laws against child porn (Free Speech Coalition v. Ashcroft)
- Overturned a ban on partial-birth abortion (Carhart v. Stenberg)

The Judicial branch has all but ensured that our children will grow up in a godless and immoral culture. Meanwhile both the Executive and Legislative branches have buried this nation in a financial abyss. Now, America is on the path toward both moral and financial bankruptcy.

The Great Society and The Welfare State
Lyndon Johnson is guilty of more than silencing the church. Following the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963, Johnson was sworn in as President. During his first three months in office, he declared an “unconditional war on poverty.” Less than one year later, Johnson campaigned for the 1964 Presidential election, promising his "Great Society" of social programs — another mammoth expansion of the federal government’s welfare role. Between 1965 and 1968, federal spending rose 68.4 percent — up to $178.13 billion.

In addition to escalating America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, President Johnson was responsible for massive government programs including Medicare, Medicaid, and a huge expansion of federal housing subsidies. He created a myriad of governmental bureaucracies including the Job Corps, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, and the National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts.

The scope of the Great Society was so enormous that Johnson was forced to reverse the tax cuts of President Kennedy — increasing the top marginal federal income tax rate to 75.25 percent. In addition to draconian federal taxes, American citizens and businesses were yoked by state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and even death taxes. America’s small business owners, entrepreneurs, and philanthropists were crippled by the gluttonous Washington spending machine.

Thus, the feud between limited government Republicans and big government Democrats was born. Barry Goldwater, a father of the conservative movement, warned, "Government big enough to supply everything you need is government big enough to take everything you have."