Wings of Liberty • August 14, 2025

THE CURSE OF CHURCH AND STATE, PART 3: LIBERTY THREATENED

THE CURSE OF CHURCH AND STATE, PART 3:

LIBERTY THREATENED


 

Nearly a hundred and forty years ago there was a major national initiative to unite church and state in America and impose what was claimed to be Christianity on society. The push united representatives from at least eleven denominations, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. After a severe struggle the movement failed.i Today, America is facing another similar crisis.

THE HISTORICAL PUSH FOR CHURCH AND STATE UNION IN AMERICA


In the late 1800s, the National Reform Association (NRA)ii achieved country-wide political momentum for its initiative for a religious amendment to the Constitution to make the United States a Christian state. Its proposed amendment was worded as follows:


"We the people" would acknowledge "Almighty God as the source of all authority and power in civil government, the Lord Jesus Christ as the Ruler among nations, His revealed will as the supreme law of the land, in order to constitute a Christian government..."iii


The stated purpose of the NRA was to unite church and state. It’s organizational constitution contained the following purpose:


To secure such an amendment to the Constitution of the United States as will declare the nation's allegiance to Jesus Christ, and its acceptance of the moral laws of the Christian religion, and so indicate that this is a Christian nation, and place all the Christian laws, institutions and usages of our government on an undeniable legal basis in the fundamental law of the land.iv


The practical result of the proposed constitutional amendment was stated in the Christian Statesman, the flagship publication of the NRA, on February 21, 1884. Writer Rev. J. C. K. Milligan asked the question, “How is the Amendment to be carried out practically?viii In answer he stated:


“In brief, its adoption will at once make the morality of the ten commandments to be the supreme law of the land, and anything in the State constitutions and laws that is contrary to them will become unconstitutional.v


Another proponent of the NRA, Rev. Jonathan Edwards, D. D., stated the following in a speech at the New York National Reform Convention:


We want State and religion—and we are going to have it. It shall be that so far as the affairs of State require religion, it shall be revealed religion, the religion of Jesus Christ. The Christian oath and Christian morality shall have in this land ‘an undeniable legal basis.’ We use the word religion in its proper sense, as meaning a man’s personal relation of faith and obedience to God.vi

 


Those who opposed the religious amendment to the Constitution were declared to be “infidels” and “lunatics”, and Jews, deists, Seventh-day Baptists, and all others, including Seventh-day Adventists, were classed with the atheists, and pronounced as ‘atheists’ themselves by Mr. Edwards:


These all are, for the occasion, and so far as our Amendment is concerned, one class… They must be counted together.... they must be treated as [atheists], for this question, one party. Now look at it—look at the controversy. The question is not between opinions that differ, but opinions that are opposite, that are contradictory, that mutually exclude each other. It is between Christianity and infidelity. It is between theism and atheism, between the acknowledgment of a God and the denial that there is any God… They “are conjoined with the other members of this class by the accident of differing with the mass of Christians upon the question of what precise day of the week shall be observed…vii


After stating that those who opposed the NRA religious amendment were only a “minority”, Mr. Edwards proceeded to describe the unfitness of such people for “advanced” societal participation:


“I would tolerate him [the atheist, including Jews, deists, Seventh-day Baptists, etc] as I would a conspirator. The atheist is a dangerous man.... But he shall be tolerated. He may live, and go free, hold his lands, and enjoy his home; he may even vote; but for any higher, more advanced citizenship, he is, as I hold, utterly disqualified.viii



The NRA ultimately failed in its initiative to have a national Sunday law passed and the push to unite church and state sullenly subsided for a time. Today, however, a resurgent coalition of parties, Protestant and Catholic, has largely already succeeded where the NRA failed. Christian Dominionism, including the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025, and adherents to the New Apostolic Reformation, have seized political power and are altering government to implement religious policy and goals, as Revelation 13 foretells. We believe this union of church and state represents the image to the beast recorded by John in Revelation:


Revelation 13:12 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed.


13 And he doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men,


14 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast; saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live.ix


EXAMPLES OF CHURCH/STATE UNION TODAY


There is no shortage of examples to evidence that religious power is influencing, or outright controlling in some instances, the state. For example, Christian dispensationalism controls foreign policy in the Middle East, as Senator Ted Cruz recently admitted in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Ecumenical Christianity is convinced that whoever blesses the nation of Israel will be blessed, and whoever curses it will be cursed.

 

As Tucker Carlson alluded to in this interview, the flimsiness of the theology behind this belief has done nothing to suppress its popularity. Since World War 2, Israel has been the largest single foreign recipient of US aid by far,x and these figures do not include direct and indirect military and intelligence assistance.


This religious narrative is held by House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is also a believer in the Christian dispensationalist view that the temple must be rebuilt in Jerusalem to usher in the final events of Bible prophecy, and who was recently in Israel for both diplomatic and religious reasons.


A strong ecumenical Christian lobby led by Paula White Caan (herself a third temple advocate) has the ear of the President, who for his part had promised that Christians would receive political power like they never imagined.xi



Christian dominionist Pastor Doug Wilson believes in a union of church and state, and his pastoral staff supports the rescission of the 19th Amendment, which guarantees the right to vote to American women. One of his congregants, is Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defence, who is also a vocal advocate for the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

We are living in incredible times. A dramatic shift is under way, and it is a fulfilment of prophecy. Today, Christian Dominionists argue for the reinstatement of blasphemy laws, claiming falsely (and ridiculously?) that suppressing public speech for religious reasons is entirely consistent with the Founding Fathers’ vision for America, as though the American Founders had not fled that very type of persecution in Europe!


Note minute 41 in the following video:


THE NEW PUSH FOR SUNDAY SACREDNESS


Sunday laws were a central aim of the NRA in the 1800s, and they are central to Christian Dominionism today. Right now, in our time, demands are rapidly increasing for the implementation of Sunday sacredness by government edict.xv


The Heritage Foundation, creator of Project 2025, is linked with Opus Dei, and is intimately connected with the current administration of the executive branch of government.xvi Multiple contributors to Project 2025 are serving in cabinet. The full extent of the reach is unknown, but the Heritage Foundation’s influence over government is explicitly religious in nature.


Project 2025 contains a proposal on page 589 to legislate religious doctrine in the form of Sunday laws. In the section on reforming the Department of Labor, the following statement is made: “God ordained the Sabbath [Sunday] as a day of rest, and until very recently the Judeo-Christian tradition sought to honor that mandate by moral and legal regulation of work on that day.”xvii


The individual who wrote that provision, attorney Jonathan Berry, has been nominated to take the position of Solicitor of Labor in the current administration. His nomination has been contested, and congressional hearings have not yet occurred.


It is no secret, however, what Project 2025 or Jonathan Berry wish to do with political power. In a 2024 article in the publication First Things, Mr. Berry outlined his argument for government laws to compel observation of what he terms “the Christian Sabbath”.


Mr. Berry discusses the intentional new embrace by the Republican Party of labor unions, which were previously aligned with the Democratic Party, and discusses how Sabbath (Sunday) rest laws should protect workers, then writes as follows:


The biblical account of work does not end with work. “And on the seventh day, God ended his work . . . and he rested” (Gen. 2:2–3). Rest completes work, for human beings as it does for God. It preserves workers’ dignity as co-creators. As the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church explains, Sabbath rest “constitute[s] a barrier against becoming slaves to work whether voluntary or by force” and thus gives us a “fuller freedom”.

The revival of “blue laws” and other measures to guard Sabbath rest is thus one more example of a prudent policy intervention to protect the subjectivity, the personhood, of workers.xviii


Mr. Berry makes no effort to hide the fact that this is an overtly Catholic view of work/rest in which one earns rest by working, and in which Sunday is the reward for union labor in a world which has exploited their efforts without properly compensating them. He invokes both Pope John Paul II, and Father John Ryan,i the latter of whose writings on Catholic social doctrine influenced the New Deal economics of Franklin Roosevelt to argue that America is broken, and only Sunday laws will fix it.


Berry concludes his article, entitled “Renewing Labor”, with a strange paragraph that could well be viewed as a threat if the demands for protection of workers rights and union favors are not met. Read the article for yourself and leave your comments in the chat below.


As we previously discussed, Sunday is the mark of the authority of the first beast of Revelation 13, the papal power, a fact which we suspect Mr. Berry is well-aware of.


The Catholic Church explicitly claims the move of the 4th commandment of the Decalogue as the mark of her authority.


Q. Have you any other way of proving that the Church has power to institute festivals of precept?


A. Had she not such power, she could not have done that in which all modern religionists agree with her; —she could not have substituted the observance of Sunday the first day of the week, for the observance of Saturday the seventh day, a change for which there is no Scriptural authority.


—Rev. Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism; New York in 1857, page 174


Q. In what manner can we show a Protestant, that he speaks unreasonably against fasts and abstinences?


A. Ask him why he keeps Sunday, and not Saturday, as his day of rest, since he is unwilling either to fast or to abstain. If he reply, that the Scripture orders him to keep the Sunday, but says nothing as to fasting and abstinence, tell him the Scripture speaks of Saturday or the Sabbath, but gives no command anywhere regarding Sunday or the first day of the week.


If, then he neglects Saturday as a day of rest and holiness, and substitutes Sunday in its place, and this merely because such was the usage of the ancient Church, should he not, if he wishes to act consistently, observe fasting and abstinence, because the ancient Church so ordained?


—Rev. Stephen Keenan, A Doctrinal Catechism; New York in 1857, page 181

Question: Which is the Sabbath day?


Answer: Saturday is the Sabbath day.


Question: Why do we observe Sunday instead of Saturday?


           Answer: We observe Sunday instead of Saturday because the Catholic Church transferred the                             solemnity from Saturday to Sunday.


—Rev. Peter Geiermann C.SS.R., The Convert’s Catechism of Catholic Doctrine, p. 50


Of course the Catholic Church claims that the change was her act. And the act is a mark of her ecclesiastical power and authority in religious matters.


—C. F. Thomas, Chancellor of Cardinal Gibbons, in answer to a letter regarding the change of the Sabbath, November 11, 1895.

“Sunday is our mark of authority. . . . The church is above the Bible, and this transference of sabbath observance is proof of that fact.” –The Catholic Record, London, Ontario, September 1, 1923



CONCLUSION


Nearly a hundred and forty years ago there was a major national initiative to unite church and state in America and impose what was claimed to be Christianity on society. The push united representatives from at least eleven denominations, and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. It ultimately failed.


Today, America is facing another similar crisis, but a great change has taken place in the resolve, education, and independence of the population. We are equal parts deceived and entertained by mass media, loaded with personal and national debt, and collectively uncomprehending of the stakes, and thus indifferent. Most Americans are detached from the history of the Founding Fathers through miseducation and wilful neglect of history, and today’s contest finds resistance to the new theocratic aggression unprepared.


The well-known aphorism, “those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it”,xviii is applicable to America. This nation is founded on the express rejection of the despotism of church and state. A return to a papal model where religionists control government marks the end of the American dream. As was pronounced over a hundred years ago, “When Protestant churches shall unite with the secular power to sustain a false religion, for opposing which their ancestors endured the fiercest persecution, then will the papal sabbath be enforced by the combined authority of church and state. There will be a national apostasy, which will end only in national ruin.”xviii


 

The next article in this series will discuss further instances of church and state union, both in America and the western world abroad.





i The authors believe that Alonzo T. Jones submissions to the U.S. Congress in 1888 were pivotal in the defeat of the national bill for Sunday sacredness advanced by Senator Blair, and supported by the NRA. These submissions may be read here: https://documents.adventistarchives.org/Tracts/RLT/RLT1892-102.pdf


ii The National Reform Movement had and has no relation or connection to the National Rifle Association.


iii Miller, Randall M.; Stout, Harry S.; Wilson, Charles Reagan (1998). Religion and the American Civil War. Oxford University Press. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Reform_Association_(chartered_1864)


iv Beck, Luke (2018). Religious Freedom and the Australian Constitution: Origins and Future. Routledge.


v. The American Sentinel, A. T. Jones, December 1886.


vi Ibid.


vii Ibid.


viii Ibid.


ix Revelation 13:12-14


x https://usafacts.org/articles/which-countries-receive-the-most-aid-from-the-us/


xi Christianity will have power,” he said. “If I’m there, you’re going to have plenty of power, you don’t need anybody else. You’re going to have somebody representing you very, very well. Remember that.” https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/09/us/evangelicals-trump-christianity.html


xii https://adventmessenger.org/the-christian-post-claims-that-americas-spiritual-renewal-begins-with-reclaiming-sunday-as-the-lords-day/;https://adventmessenger.org/the-christian-reformed-church-in-north-america-says-keeping-the-sabbath-is-no-longer-optional/; https://adventmessenger.org/respect-our-holy-day-public-backlash-as-rugby-tournament-is-scheduled-on-sunday/


xiii https://www.afge.org/article/new-trump-administration-packed-with-project-2025-architects/


xiv https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24088042-project-2025s-mandate-for-leadership-the-conservative-promise/#document/p589


xv https://firstthings.com/renewing-labor/


xvi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Ryan


xviiGeorge Santayana, The Life of Reason


xviii Ellen G. White, Manuscript 51, 1899




By Wings of Liberty August 14, 2026
It is apparent that there are obvious media biases which result in coverage blackholes with both the left-wing media and the right-wing media. The leftist media avoids stories that are politically problematic for the left, and the right-wing media avoids stories which are unfavorable to the political right. Unless you are a complete partisan-loyalist-come-what-may (and these abound, to be sure) you know both sides of the media have their agendas. And they push those agendas with the issues they cover, how they cover them, or whether an issue gets covered at all. Control of information = control of people. If you needed any further evidence that the western media is bought and sold, major broadcast networks ABC, NBC, and CBS, along with cable news outlets CNN and MSNBC, largely ignored the stunning release of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s diary entries leading up to his testimony, or rather non-testimony, at the Senate on July 29, 2026. [1] The Fauci diary files, which can be read here , expose a number of lies Fauci told the public versus what he recorded in private, [2] including conflicting stories about the origins of the virus and its actual versus claimed risk of fatality to the public. Following the hearing on July 29, during which Fauci refused to answer questions and pled the Fifth Amendment 111 times, most major news outlets either gave cursory coverage to the testimony, or actively defended Fauci’s conduct. Similarly, most major news outlets failed to report the bombshell revelation that Bill Gates held Q level security clearance through the Department of Energy (equivalent to top secret clearance issued by the Defence Department) during COVID, or questions Fauci refused to answer from Senator Rick Scott related to Fauci’s involvement with Bill Gates, [3] or Gates’ funding of virus research. Bill Gates’ top level security “typically applies to positions involving nuclear weapons design, national laboratories, critical energy infrastructure and classified scientific research”. [4] Fauci is stonewalling Congress and the American public and the world at large has yet to learn exactly what Fauci and Bill Gates were up to regarding gain of function research and the subsequent MRNA “vaccine” which was imposed and coerced so forcefully onto the public. Was this just about money? Make a virus, sell a “cure”? Or was it also about something even darker – like depopulation? The Covid shots were not only ineffective in preventing infection or transmission of Covid-19, they killed and maimed a lot of people. In 2010, Gates said that “if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower [population] by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.” [5] Despite an almost superhuman media campaign to recast this statement as benign, there just seems to be no amount of media weaseling that will make it go away. And since “reproductive health services” is often just the sleaze ball way of saying “abortion”, reasonable people have reasonably concluded that a good translation of what Gates said in the 2010 TED Talk is just what it sounds like: that if the elites abort more babies and inject people with more dangerous pharma cocktails, the population of planet earth will decrease by 10-15%. Which is a goal the Club of Rome and other elite orgs have been talking about for decades. [6] But back to Fauci: facts are facts. Fauci knew the virus was intentionally genetically modified: he had funded that research through the NIAID. Fauci publicly pushed the narrative during the pandemic that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein was natural, and evolved from a wet market, which was false. It looks just like a man covering his tracks. Analysis of the virus revealed a novel furin cleavage site found at the S1/S2 boundary of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, which is absent in closely related natural coronaviruses like SARS-CoV. This specific additional sequence creates the mechanism whereby SARS-CoV-2 can infect human airways by facilitating viral entry by pre-cleaving the spike protein and significantly increasing infectivity, tropism, and syncytia formation. Fauci was aware that this very mutation was the purpose of NIAID funding and gain of function efforts, all while attempting to convince the public that the virus was natural. If you haven’t watched the full July 29, 2026 Fauci Senate hearing, you should. The link is here. And, as you may already know, in the intervening time between then and now, another shoe from the millipede has dropped. It has come to light that Fauci knew early on that the Covid vaccine could cause baby miscarriages in pregnant women, but he publicly informed the world that pregnant women should take it, and that it was safe. [7] If it looks like a depopulation agenda, and it walks like a depopulation agenda… But there is another story which the western media, left or right, refuses to cover regarding Tony Fauci, and that is his link to the Vatican. Sometimes what is not said is just as informative, if not more so, than what is said. And that is why it is so notable that both left and right wing media avoid investigation and coverage of the Vatican’s involvement in the narratives of both Anthony Fauci, as well as another public perp named Jeffrey Epstein. [8] If you watch Fox News, you will see that it is almost as averse to criticism of the Vatican or investigation into Fauci’s connection with the COVID-19 pandemic, vax mandates, as left-wing media outlets like CNN. It’s the same with Epstein and the Vatican. Radio silence from legacy media, be they left or be they right. Yes, its true that Fox News has turned on Fauci – but it doesn’t really have a choice at this point because the story has become too big. It’s either cover Fauci, or lose all credibility with that segment of the conservative base which smells all the dead rats under Fauci’s floorboards. So, Fox News covered Fauci’s diary and his narcissistic obsession with fame. It covered allegations Fauci misled Congress on the origins of the virus. It covered Fauci’s gross exaggeration of the fatality rate of Covid-19 in public, while privately documenting that it is actually far less dangerous. Fox News covered all of that. But Fox News is awfully quiet re Fauci and the Vatican. And there definitely is a connection between Fauci and the Vatican that any investigative journalist worth their salt should want to dig at. It’s not just that Fauci is Catholic, and the Vatican is the civil power of the church-state union of the Catholic Church. It’s not just that Fauci is being sheltered and aided in the midst of congressional scrutiny and public exposure by the Jesuits at Georgetown University, [9] which of course he is, or that the Jesuits are the militant arm of the Papacy, which of course they are. It’s not just that Joe Biden (Catholic) gave Tony Fauci (also Catholic) an unconditional pardon for all of his crimes during the pandemic no matter how heinous, or that the popes of old used to grant such plenary indulgences for all sins to the crusaders who furthered their wars. Isn’t that how it works in the confessional, behind the scenes? “Forgive me father, for I have sinned.” “What have you done, my son?” “Do you have the internet? I killed millions of people with a genetically altered virus and then told the whole world they needed to take a poison shot to save them from the virus.” “Yes, its all forgiven, my son. Ego te absolvo. Go do 33 ‘hail Mary’s’ and keep your head down at Georgetown for awhile.” The reality is that the Vatican and Fauci were teammates during Covid. The Vatican pushed lockdowns and Covid shots globally arguably as hard as Tony Fauci, and brought all its moral and spiritual influence to bear on the reluctant to overcome their misgivings. The Pope told every Catholic in the world that they have a “moral obligation” to take the Covid shot. [10] He told them it was “morally licit” even though derived from cell lines from aborted foetuses. [11] The Vatican even minted a coin celebrating the imposition of the Covid shot on the human family. [12] In doing so it publicly celebrated oppression, force, deception, coercion, and corruption. It celebrated everything that is anti-Christian, and anti-liberty of conscience. And early in the rollout of the Covid shots, the Vatican held a symposium to chart a course for world governments to overcome vaccine hesitancy in the face of public reports that the shots were killing people. The event was hosted by Pope Francis, and included the CEOs of Pfizer and Moderna. Opening remarks were delivered by none other than Anthony Fauci. What did Tony Fauci say at this conference hosted by the Pope? Well, among other things, Fauci informed the crowd that moral authority needed to be brought to bear to overcome the doubters. The right voice was needed to overcome the hesitant, and those who did not want an experimental gene editing franken-shot under threat of punishment via the loss of civil liberties. Fauci said the key to overcoming current vaccine hesitancy is pairing the right medical message with the right messenger. “You have someone who’s a deeply religious person who will listen to their clergy.” [13]  Oh yes. There are plenty of dead rats in the Tony Fauci’s former office. One by one Congress will ensure that some of them are found and publicly ventilated. Fauci may take a public fall, and some media outlets will be compelled to cover some of his disgrace. But no mainstream media dares to touch the involvement of the Vatican with Fauci. And you should ask yourself what that means. And when you have thought about the implications you may know a little more about who really runs this world.
By Wings of Liberty July 7, 2026
TO: THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE Via EMAIL: RLC@usdoj.gov RE: RECOMMENDATIONS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY COMMISSION Thank you for the opportunity to provide feedback to the recommendations of the Religious Liberty Committee submitted to President Donald J. Trump on June 26, 2026. While we are mindful of the Committee’s labors which resulted in the 12 recommendations released June 26, certain of which we agree with, we write to voice our concerns and objections to the Committee’s first and ninth recommendations, 1 and its obviously insufficient consideration of the warnings of the Founding Fathers of the dangers of a union of church and state, or the many lessons of history regarding same. The Committee recommended that the Department of Justice “issue guidance clarifying the proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and separation of church and state.” 2 At the formal release of the Committee’s recommendations on the same day, Committee Chair Dan Patrick publicly stated that, “The separation of church and state is not in the constitution, ” and that the phrase “ has no constitutional basis .” 3 As citizens and students of history, and as Christians, we are alarmed, lest the flawed and unconstitutional view of the Chair of the Committee of the so-called “ proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state”, prove influential or worse, instructive, to the Department of Justice. If the Committee’s opinion of the so-called “proper understanding” of the Establishment Clause is the same as that of its Chair, it is apparent that its understanding is not proper, but rather improper. Founding Father, “Father of the Constitution”, and fourth President of the United States, James Madison, contradicted Chair Dan Patrick’s claim that the separation of church and state is not in the Constitution. Madison stated that, “ Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion & Govt in the Constitution of the United States , the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history." According to James Madison, the separation of church and state is in the Constitution. As to whether James Madison, who is the principle author of the Establishment Clause, or Dan Patrick, is the greater authority on this subject, we think it not difficult for reasonably minded people to ascertain. Certainly, the Founding Fathers were all aware of the persecution of the Baptists, Quakers, Jews, and others in some of the colonies. They had seen first hand the ear croppings, whippings, imprisonment and hangings in Massachusetts and other colonies. In Europe, the persecution of the martyrs is well documented. Today we take the Bible for granted, but forget that William Tyndale was executed for translating the Bible into the English language not by atheists, but by religious bigots. It was a union of church and state which suppressed speech and the freedom of the press in England. It was a union of church and state which prohibited the work of translation of the Bible which changed the world. It was a union of church and state which necessitated his flight to Europe. It was a union of church and state which killed him. We respectfully ask that the Department of Justice, in considering the issue of public guidance of the separation of church and state, consider the history of William Penn, founder of Pennsylvania, and early Founding Father, who was repeatedly jailed for his religious faith in England. Pennsylvania Colony became a haven, not from atheist persecutors, but religious persecutors who did not believe in the separation of church and state. The same is true of Roger Williams, founder of the colony of Rhode Island, who was ordered arrested for declaring that the civil magistrate cannot enforce the first table of the Decalogue. We ask that the Committee take into account the brutal public whipping of President Abraham Lincoln’s five-time great grandfather, Obadiah Holmes, in Massachusetts colony, for the “crime” of religious dissent. Obadiah Holmes was not whipped by atheists. He was whipped by Puritan bigots who did not believe in the separation of church and state. We respectfully request that the Department of Justice consider this history in the issuance of public guidance on the subject. We are concerned that the Committee neglected to take into account the impact of the separation of church and state on the other rights codified in the First Amendment. Free speech and freedom of the press, for example, owe their flourishing in the modern world in large part to the separation of church and state in America. Prior to the protections in the First Amendment, the Roman Catholic Church for centuries maintained a list of banned books called the Index Librorum Prohibitorum. The books were subject to confiscation, and the possession of them resulted in the punishment of the owner. Unfortunately, the Committee makes no mention of the censorship in this context of Galileo and Kepler, Kant and Locke, John Milton and Maimonedes, John Stuart Mill and Jeremy Bentham, David Hume and Edward Gibbon, and many others, all at the behest of the Roman Papacy, which is itself a union of church and state. Free speech in the western world is the legacy of those who risked the wrath of a unified church and state, often at the cost of their lives. We would also ask that the Department of Justice consider the repeated modern calls from the papal power today for the censorship of the internet, and the suppression of free speech, contrary to the First Amendment. 4 We have no doubt that the censorship of Galileo, Kepler, Milton and others was prosecuted under the justification of the censorship of misinformation, also. The Roman Church was not alone in this persecution, either. We would ask the Department of Justice in its formulation of public guidance on the separation of church and state to remember the religious persecutions carried out at the behest of John Calvin in Geneva against religious dissenters such as Michael Servetus, who paid with his life for his writings and teachings. Servetus was executed by a union of church and state. We are concerned at the public statements of those who would create such a system in America. 5 Therefore we respectfully ask what proper guidance can the Department of Justice hope to give to the public on the “proper understanding of the Establishment Clause and the separation of church and state” if it is directed in its object by a Committee and a Committee Chair, who has neglected to more fully analyze the reasons for the separation of church and state, or the reasons why the United States codified the disestablishment of church and state in the First Amendment in the first instance? Reference to the wall of separation between church and state is not only mentioned by President Thomas Jefferson in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, which of course it is. 6 What is often left out of the narrative is that Jefferson said that he personally believed that the principle of the separation of church and state is codified in the Constitution. Therein, Jefferson wrote: Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, ¬t opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. 7 James Madison wrote, It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. 8 Lastly, we object to the recommendation of the Committee that the Johnson Amendment be removed. As followers of Jesus Christ, we are mindful of Our Lord’s words that we “render to Caesar what is Caesar, and to God the things that are God’s.” 9 Jesus Christ established the principle of the separation of church and state, and taught that what belongs to God cannot be rendered to Caesar. The application of this teaching is that religionists, ambitious for civil power, and politicians ambitious for their endorsement, are to be kept separate in the American system of politics, as the Constitution requires. The union of church and state results in the corruption of both, a result which neither should desire, and neither can afford. Madison stated that “The number, the industry, and the morality of the Priesthood, & the devotion of the people have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the Church from the State." 10 And he was right. If the Johnson Amendment is removed, religionists who want civil power will publicly stump and promise their votes and congregational dollars in exchange for political favors, and the politicians will be doubtless all too eager to reciprocate in the form of legislation which the religionists desire provided they will aid their attempts to gain office. In his anonymous treatise published in the Boston Gazette, John Adams, later the second President of the United States, wrote that canon law was a tyrannical form of government, as was feudal law, but that the worst of all forms of governments was a union of the two. 11 And it was Madison who stated that, “In the Papal System, Government and Religion are in a manner consolidated, & that is found to be the worst of Governments.” We respectfully request therefore that the Department Justice not adopt recommendations 1 and 9 of the Committee, and that it does adopt recommendation 1 of the Committee that it convene a public hearing, with written and oral submissions from the public, to more comprehensively study the question of the separation of church and state in history, and in American history in particular, a study which we would enthusiastically support. We remain yours truly, [THE UNDERSIGNED] ------------------------------------------------------- 1 https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/president-trumps-religious-liberty-commission-delivers-historic-report-draft 2 Ibid, [Emphasis added]. 3 https://www.chron.com/politics/article/dan-patrick-church-state-constitution-viral-22323383.php 4 https://reclaimthenet.org/pope-francis-calls-on-social-media-platforms-to-censor-more-misinformation ; 5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAUkMwlWYB8 ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMBiPIfx-UA 6 https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html 7 https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html - Jefferson here is clearly referring to Congress. That Congress is prohibited by the Constitution from making a union of church and state. 8 James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments 9 Matthew 22:21 10 James Madison, Letter to Robert Walsh, March 2, 1819. 11 John Adams, Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765. https://www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers/index.php/view/PJA01dg2 Since the Promulgation of Christianity the two greatest systems of Tyranny that have Sprung from this source, are the Cannon and the feudal Law. The Desire of Dominion, however noble and useful on the whole, is however, when unawed and unrestrained by Hopes and Fears, an encroaching, grasping, restless and ungovernable Principle. And among all the Variety of iniquitous systems that have been contrived by the great, for the Gratification of it, in themselves was never So successful, as in the Invention and Establishment of the Cannon and the Feudal Law. In the former, the most refined, sublime, extensive and astonishing Constitution of Policy that was ever conceived by the human Mind, we find was framed by the Romish Clergy, for the Aggrandisement of their own order. All the Epithets, that I have given to the Romish Policy, will be owned to be just, when it is considered, that they found it practicable to persuade Mankind, that God almighty had intrusted them with the Keys of Heaven, whose Gate they might open and Close at Pleasure—With a Power of Dispensation over all the Rules and Obligations of Morality—With an Authority to Licence all sorts both of Sins and Crimes.—With a Power of deposing Princes, and absolving subjects from their Allegiance.—With a Power of procuring or witholding the Rain of Heaven and the Beams of the Sun—With the Management of Earthquakes, Pestilence and Famine—Nay with the misterious, awful Incomprehensible Power of Creating out of Bread and Wine the Flesh and Blood of the great Creator of the Universe. And all these opinions, they were enabled to propagate and rivet in the Minds of the People, by reducing the Minds of the Common People them to a State of Sordid Ignorance and staring Timidity, and by infusing into them a religious Horror of Letters and Knowledge of every Kind. Thus was human Nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, deplorable Servitude, to him and his Subordinate Tyrants, who it was foretold, would exalt himself above all that was called God and that was worshiped. In the latter We find another System, Similar in many Respects to the former: which, altho it was originally formed, perhaps for the necessary Defense of a barbarous People, against the Inroads and Invasions of her neighboring nations; Yet for the Same Purposes of Tyranny, Cruelty and Lust, which had dictated the Cannon Law, it was soon adopted by allmost all the Princes of Europe and wrought into the Constitution of their Govt. It was originally a Code of Laws 110for a vast Army in a Perpetual Encampment. The General was invested with the Sovereign Propriety of all the Lands within their Territory—of Him the first Rank of his great officers, held the Lands, immediately, and the other subordinate Ranks, held of them, and all held by a Variety of Duties and services, tending to bind the Chains the faster on every order of Mankind. In this Manner the Common People were held together in Clans and Herds in a State of Servile Dependance on their Lords, bound by the tenure of their lands to follow them to their Wars whenever they commanded, and in a state of total Ignorance of every Thing divine and humane, excepting the Use of Arms and the Culture of the Lands. But another Event, still more calamitous to human Liberty, was a wicked Confederacy between the two Systems of Tyrany above described. It seems to have been even stipulated between them that the temporal Grandees, should contribute every Thing in their Power to maintain the Ascendancy of the Priesthood, and the Spiritual Grandees in their turn, shold employ that ascendancy over the Consciences of the People, in impressing on their Minds a blind, implicit obedience to civil Magistracy. [emphasis added]
By QV.tv July 2, 2026