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.
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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”.
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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
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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.
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“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/
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
