What Wall? (Alison Agins)

A guest editorial by Alison Agins.  It was originally published on her blog “Progressive Christian on the Wall” at http://aliagins.wordpress.com/2010/10/18/what-wall/

Our Founders in the late 1700′s were very familiar with what happens when the church runs the state. They were not ignorant of the Puritans fleeing to the new country to practice their brand of Christianity. A Christianity that also persecuted those that dared to be free thinking individuals.

Those men sought to form a government that would be free of church influence in state matters and laws. They also sought to form a government that would respect the individual. They attempted to write into the Constitution the very wording that would always be enough down through the years to keep the state free from Popes and Prelates.

Perhaps they could have written it with more detail outlining a more through case so that no persons or courts would dare see fit to try to take over the government or the courts with an agenda to overturn the Constitution and bring in a governing body made up of the Bishop and Preacher class.

It seems nearly before the ink was dry there were those of just that class of persons that thought to improve things by forcing compliance of laws reflecting those of the Ten Commandments. The fourth commandment is the Sabbath Commandment that clearly states that the 7th day is the Sabbath. But the churchmen of the day didn’t seem to be able to read a calender and set aside the 1st day of the week as the Sabbath and made laws that punished those that dared to “break” those laws. That is the consequences of making any law. Man made laws always have man made punishments for breaking those laws.

I wonder if those that signed the early documents later as time passed sat and reflected on “what if’s”. You know how that is, “what if I had just said something a little different.” “What if I had been clearer in my thinking and writing. Maybe I could have done it better.”

The New World had from the very beginning been full of churchmen. England would send the sons that had not inherited the family estates or gone into the military, into the ministry. Often these sons that only received the least of a family’s good fortune were scoundrels and were without a true “calling”. They were sent to start setting up God’s Kingdom in the new land of rich opportunity. Their salaries were guaranteed by the Crown and by the King’s tax men. Something that the farmer’s and land owners were not all that keen on paying. New religions were not accepted such as the Quakers or Anabaptists.

In doing my family genealogy I found that one distant relative that was a Quaker had his ear sliced off as punishment for bringing a wicked and terrible plague of a new faith to the colonies. They would punish them severely and send them back to England.

It is interesting that after 1776 and those following years when the taxes no longer paid the salaries of churchmen, the people were free to decide what church they would belong to. It didn’t take communities long to donate land for a church and to bring their own preachers. I also found that sometimes several families would move together to a new place hungry for land and for belonging to the church that they were part of.

In the 1800′s there was The Great Awakening and a fervor for God. There was not long before the Civil War the start of several new churches. Denominations that have grown to being very large by this time. Seventh-day Adventists and other Adventists, Mormons, Jehovah Witnesses are three of these new denominations. All three have experienced a good deal of persecution by the authorities for their beliefs.

The government sent Federal troops after the leadership of the Mormons. Sunday laws in various parts of especially the South sent Seventh-day Adventists to jail and prison during the 1800′s for violating the Sunday laws. Woe to the Adventist that hung their laundry out to dry on Sunday. The JW have seen jail and mob activity for not saluting the flag or saying the Pledge of Allegence.

But, here’s the thing….. Our Constitution promises that the lone individual has rights and those rights are to be respected. We are a Republic! We are not a Democracy in the true sense. The majority is not to rule over the minority.

Now those Founders were pretty smart. Really prophetic. They sensed and knew that mankind just really wants nothing more than to impose the majority’s will on the little guy. The lone holdout. We see it all the time in grade school. It seems to be genetic. And that is where fair play and right thinking about these things must be taught early and often.

We have this Wall. Not of bricks or steel but one of an idea that came to birth on time and in the right place. A new land and new citizens that could grasp the concept that they were given by their Creator the essence inside their brain called “Free Will”. They were smart enough and bold enough to make up their own minds whom they would worship – or not. And even though there have always been those that hated the idea and have wanted to tear the Wall down and smash it, there has always been those that were thankful to God that it was still standing. There have been cannons fired at it. Some have tried to breach it. It shows the scars of over two hundred years of enemy fire, but it is still standing.

Today it is receiving the fury of forces that would tear it down completely and enforce a theocratic government upon all of us. They will stop at nothing. They have infiltrated government at all levels in this land. From school boards to mayors to law enforcement, the military and military schools, congress, governors, and right into the White House itself during the Reagan, Bush, Bush/Cheney years. Our foreign policies have been tainted with the Rapture Theory and how we respond to the leaders of other countries is carefully looked at through the eyes of how and where they stand in the Rapturists take on world events. And in all this is another theory waiting to move in and take over.

This is the Christian Supremacist or also known as Reconstructionists or Dominionists and Christian Imperialists . They are the actual danger more than any other to our Constitution. They openly talk of tearing the Wall down. They claim that this is a Christian country and the laws of the Bible should be the law of the land.

http://www.discernment-ministries.org/ChristianImperialism.htm

http://www.yuricareport.com/Dominionism/TheDespoilingOfAmerica.htm

http://www.theocracywatch.org/dominionism.htm