Usurpation of Church by State: Part One

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

In his Inaugural Address, Thomas Jefferson proclaimed, "A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."

As April 15 approaches, we can all attest that the government is no longer hesitant to snatch bread from the mouths of working Americans. In this article I hope to show how this radical transformation of governmental philosophy has crippled America's churches and catapulted our country toward collapse.

Government to the Rescue?
At one time, Americans were hard-working, self-reliant, and capable of shame. The seeds of today's shameless culture of entitlements were planted in 1932 during the Great Depression. President Franklin Roosevelt was elected to office promising to rebuild the U.S. economy with “a new deal for the American people.” His plan consisted of a series of government programs designed to increase employment and offer financial security to those struggling in poverty.

Less than twenty years after the 16th Amendment (1913) was ratified giving Congress the power to impose a federal income tax, Roosevelt and the Congress began to raid the public treasury in an attempt to revive our nation via massive government bureaucracies. These programs (e.g. Works Progress Administration) and expensive promises (e.g. the Social Security Act) were designed to serve as safety nets for the elderly and the impoverished.

Roosevelt’s programs may have helped to bring this nation out of the Great Depression, but these New Deal programs thrust a number of financial drains upon the American taxpayer. For good or bad, America had abandoned the desires of our nation's Founders that we should have a government limited in power and responsibility.

The Obituary of Fiscal Restraint
During the four terms of President Roosevelt (1932-1945), government spending rose more than 2500% — from $3.58 billion in 1931 (the year before he took office) to well over $92 billion in 1945. And though World War II accounted for a large percentage of 1945 government spending, one thing was clear: the days of limited government and fiscal restraint were gone.

These rapidly expanding government programs began to usurp the traditional roles of the Christ's Church — feeding the poor, educating children, caring for the elderly, and other forms of charity. At one time, the church was largely responsible for establishing schools, universities, hospitals, shelters, and rehabilitation programs. With the introduction of the New Deal, the impoverished no longer sought helping hands from family, neighborhood churches, or friends. Instead, many grew comfortable receiving "free" handouts from impersonal entitlement programs that require absolutely no accountability.

Packing the Court With Liberals
Roosevelt zealously championed each of his social programs. As a result, a vicious feud developed between Roosevelt and the Supreme Court when it struck down a few of his initiatives. From that point forward, Roosevelt was determined to pack the Court with liberal judges who would support his proposals for big government. In fact, he went so far as to propose the Court Packing Plan of 1937, asking Congress to increase the number of Justices on the Court — just so he could ensure that there were enough Justices to create a majority in his favor.

Thankfully, Congress rejected his court-packing plan. Regardless, during his 13-year Presidency, Roosevelt managed to appoint eight associate justices and one Supreme Court Chief Justice. With the exception of Washington, no single president has ever wielded such an enormous influence on the federal judiciary, as did Franklin D. Roosevelt. In the years to come, an enormous transformation would take place in the history of American jurisprudence.

A Radical Departure From America's Foundation
In 1931, only one year prior to President Roosevelt’s election, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in the case of United States v. McIntosh. The Court wrote, “We are a Christian people… according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.”

By 1947, when the Court considered the case of Everson v. Board of Education, every single Justice serving on the U.S. Supreme Court had been appointed by either Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman — both Democrats. In the Everson case, the Court considered the constitutionality of a New Jersey law allowing financial reimbursements to parents who chose to send their children to Roman Catholic parochial schools on public buses. In a 5-4 decision authored by Hugo Black (a former Alabama Klansman), the Court ruled, “The First Amendment erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”

In only sixteen years, America’s judiciary was transformed from a self-consciously Christian Court into a secular oligarchy—abandoning “the duty of obedience to the will of God” in exchange for a pledge to maintain a “high and impregnable” wall between religion and the public realm.