Wings of Liberty • July 21, 2024

Is America a Christian Nation?

The political temperature in America, already hot, has increased to a boil following the assassination attempt on former President Trump. The stunning (and thankfully unsuccessful) attempt has served to galvanize the right, bringing a unity improbable a few short weeks ago.


It is not hard to understand why. Trump is not only beloved by many, but he has long been the target of the deep state. There is a strong sense among some, even those who were not ardent Trump supporters, that it is possible the attempt on his life was something more than a lone gunman on a slanted roof that was “accidentally” unsecured by Kim Cheatle’s (and Alejandro Mayorkas’s) Secret Service.


After all, Mayorkas’ failure to secure the southern border is intentional. Thinking people are now solemnly considering the implications of the failure to secure the rooftop at Butler, PA, a task which also falls under the purview of the Secretary of Homeland Security.1 As former Navy Seal and Blackwater founder, Erik Prince, stated, “the fact that [the Secret Service] allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yards to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.”2


Of course, the deep state is conducting its own investigation,3 while running interference to impede congressional investigation.4


Christian Nationalism


Unsurprisingly, the assassination attempt appears to have vitalized certain religious elements within conservativism. But even before the attempt on Trump’s life, the assertion that “America is a Christian Nation” had been gaining force for some time.5


Most recently, at the 2024 National Conservatism Conference and five days before the attempted assassination, Senator Josh Hawley claimed (incorrectly) that America was founded in the tradition of Augustine as carried on by “stern Puritans”, and stated:


And I’m sure some will say now I am calling America a Christian nation. And so I am. And some will say that I am advocating for Christian Nationalism. And so I do.6


Senator Hawley’s assertions are false, and Americans of all political persuasions need to understand they are false.


Most of the Founding Fathers were not Puritans, nor could any sort of viable argument ever be made that they were. George Washington, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin: none of them were Puritans, nor were they followers of Augustine. Far from it.


Augustine of Hippo was born in 354 AD, died in 430 AD, and repeatedly advocated for torture and forced conversion.7 His tyrannical views on the subject formed the basis of both the Crusades carried out by the Roman Catholic Church and the Inquisition, including the torture and murder of supposed Protestant “heretics”.8


Augustine was opposed to liberty of conscience, not in favor of it. Augustine, if he were alive, would have been opposed to the Declaration of Independence, and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.


In contrast, the Founding Fathers passionately believed in liberty of conscience and were fiercely opposed to state coercion on religious grounds. This was the foundation of America – a land for all, without king or Pope, where no religious zealot could use the power of the state to impose his creed on his fellow men.


Senator Hawley stated the following in the same speech:


Twenty thousand practicing Augustinians made their way to these shores to found a society here on his principles. History knows them as the Puritans. Inspired by the ‘City of God’ they founded “The City On a Hill”.


We are a nation forged from Augustine's Vision a nation defined by the Dignity of the Common Man. The twenty thousand Puritans that arrived on the shores of North America were most certainly “practicing Augustinians” when they arrived…9


Again, Senator Hawley’s comments are demonstrably false. America was not “forged on Augustine’s vision”, but was founded most decidedly in opposition to Augustine’s tyrannical ideas. The Founding Fathers speak for themselves.


James Madison stated the following regarding liberty of conscience and religious freedom:


That Religion or the duty we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it, being under the direction of reason and conviction only, not of violence or compulsion, all men are equally entitled to the full and free exercise of it according to the dictates of Conscience.10


It is the duty of every man to render to the Creator such homage and such only as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent, both in order of time and in degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.11


Conscience is the most sacred of all property.12


We are teaching the world the great truth that Governments do better without Kings & Nobles than with them. The merit will be doubled by the other lesson that Religion Flourishes in greater purity, without than with the aid of Government.13


In the fight to pass the Virginia Bill for Religious Liberty, Madison remonstrated with that generation’s version of “Christian Nationalists” who tried to insert the words "Jesus Christ" in a preamble. Madison stated, "The better proof of reverence for that holy name would be not to profane it by making it a topic of legislative discussion..."14


Benjamin Franklin stated, "When a religion is good, I conceive it will support itself; and when it does not support itself so that its professors are obliged to call for the help of the civil power, 'tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”


George Washington, in a letter to Touro Synagogue to assure the religious freedom of the Jews in the U.S., stated:


The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for giving to Mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation...It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection, should demean themselves as good citizens.


May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.15


Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote of inalienable rights for every person under the sun.


We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men…16


According to the Founding Fathers, it is for the purpose of securing and protecting “these rights” – the very rights that Augustine opposed – that government is instituted. Augustine’s endorsement of torture and persecution is not only un-Christian, it is un-American. In fact, that is the very point of America: it was the intention of the Founding Fathers to render the creation of a persecutorial Augustinian state forever unconstitutional.


It is strange to have Senator Hawley invoke Augustine and Puritans instead of the Founding Fathers. But Senator Hawley is correct about the Puritans insofar as it is true that the Puritans were just as tyrannical and intolerant as Augustine. The Puritans were so persecutorial, most of the Pilgrims settled south of Massachusetts to get away from them.


They were especially cruel in their persecution of the Quakers, whom they drastically outnumbered, and with whom they had certain theological disagreements.


Beginning in 1656, Puritan church-state laws forbade any sea captain to land Quakers in Massachusetts. “Any individual of that sect was to be committed at once to the House of Correction, to be severely whipped on his or her entrance, and kept constantly at work, and none were suffered to speak with them.”17


“It was decreed that any Quaker arriving in the Colony should have one of his ears cut off. For another offence, he should lose the other ear. Every Quaker woman should be severely whipped. For a third offence, the tongue was to be bored through with a hot iron.”18


Quakers were sentenced to death in several cases at Boston.19


A 1661 law ordered that “any wandering Quakers be apprehended, stripped naked from the middle upward, tied to cart’s-tayle and whipped thro the town.”20


As Providence designed, however, Roger Williams, the eventual founder of Rhode Island, was raised up to face the Puritans’ intolerance. America was forged on Roger Williams’ vision of a free land.


As a preacher standing for civil and religious liberty and against the intolerance of the church/state, Roger Williams’ preaching made a clash with Puritan Governor John Winthrop and the leadership in Massachusetts inevitable. Roger Williams insisted that “forced worship stinks in God's nostrils.” He held “God requireth not a uniformity of religion.” Williams held that, “[E]nforced uniformity confounds civil and religious liberty and denies the principles of Christianity and civility. No man shall be required to worship or maintain a worship against his will.”i21


Williams was summoned to return to England to face the charge of sedition, but before his arrest word from the coiner of the phrase “City of God”—John Winthrop warned him to flee before capture. William Jackson Armstrong, an author and citizen of Ohio referenced Roger Williams in 1889 as follows:


The civil power has no jurisdiction over the human conscience. Conscience belongs to the individual, and is not the property of the body politic. All human laws which prescribe or prohibit religious doctrines are damnable and unjust. Magistrates are but the agents of the people; on them no spiritual power whatever can ever be conferred.


Down amid the shadows and fogs of his sea-girt land, there had fallen upon this man [Roger Williams] an inspiration that was to roll back the tide of human hate and fear that had devastated this world for forty centuries. Reflecting upon the suffering of his race from religious cruelty, there had broken into his brain the conception, simple and sublime, of the words of Jesus of Nazareth to the Herodians with the tribute money : "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."


From that declaration of Roger Williams, two hundred and forty years ago, was born the American Constitution. Presbyterian England in the first half of the seventeenth century was not big enough to hold this inspired man. His continued presence would have split the throne of the Tudors and Plantaganets. From English religious persecution Roger Williams fled to the Puritans of New England. These gentlemen, too, had fled from Europe to enjoy (as they said) the blessings of religious liberty. But they had only enough liberty for Puritans and not enough for Roger Williams. So this brave man fled once more from the New England Puritans to the wilderness, and, among the barbarians of the North American forests in the Province of Rhode Island, established the first government according religious tolerance ever founded on this earth.22


Historian, professor and religious liberty advocate Alonzo T. Jones succinctly points to the roots of Puritan intolerance:


But yet those ambitious prelates of the fourth century were not content with stopping all manner of work, and closing public places on Sunday. They had secured the power of the State so far, and they determined to carry it yet further and use the power of the State to compel everybody to worship according to the dictates of the church. And one of the greatest Fathers of the church, was father to this theory. That was the great church Father and Catholic saint, Augustine— and by the way, he is grandfather to National Reform, too, as we shall prove one of these days.


Augustine taught that,— "It is indeed better that men should be brought to serve God by instruction than by fear of punishment or by pain. But because the former means are better, the latter must not therefore be neglected . . . Many must often be brought back to their Lord, like wicked servants, by the rod of temporal suffering, before they attain to the highest grade of religious development."23


Notes the theologian and historian August Neander, “It was by Augustine, then, that a theory was proposed and founded, which . . . contained the germ of that whole system of spiritual despotism, of intolerance and persecution, which ended in the tribunals of the Inquisition.”24


The Woke Left as Intolerant as the Puritans


It is doubtless true that the woke Left is as intolerant as the Puritans. It has used its increased power in education, media and government to impose its intolerable ideology on society. Large and hairy men who think they are women dominate women’s sporting events. Children are taken from parents by force and given cross sex hormones and have their genitals cut off. Sodom owns the month of June by government edict.


Millions of babies are aborted every year in cold blood. Governments collude with social media companies to make war on free speech. Organized groups loot and burn in large cities with impunity. The border is open and millions of illegal immigrants have entered the country, and the Left thinks they all ought to be allowed to vote.25


Is it any surprise that the cry arises: “America is a Christian Nation! We must go back to God!”


The state of society is dire. We are witnesses to the moral, social, and economic decay of not only America, but of all the western world in real time. Rome fell from corruption, decadence and profligacy, and the West falters similarly.


But the solution to America’s problems does not lie in so-called Christian Nationalism, a union of church and state, or government legislation to compel some tortured and hypocritical pantomime of the Christian religion. Shall we replace the forced confession of preferred pronouns with forced compliance or confession of some religious tenet?

Make no mistake – what many dislike most about the Left is its tyrannical use of government to cram its hideous ideology down our collective throats. A neutral state ought not to be controlled by religious or ideological partisanship. The state is tasked with the governance of a vast multitude, with vastly different spiritual and religious views. There ought to be no rainbow flags flying at the White House any more than there ought to be flags with a cross or a crescent moon flying at the White House.


The U.S. Constitution makes no mention of God, or Jesus Christ. The first clause of the First Amendment forbids Congress from passing any laws tending to the “establishment of religion”. There is no state religion in the U.S.


In 1796, in the last year that George Washington was President, the Treaty of Tripoli was signed to protect American merchant ships from piracy by the Barbary States. Article 11 states as follows:


As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion, - as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen [Muslims], - and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.26


The Treaty was unanimously ratified in 1797 by the Senate, and copies were provided to every senator. Then President of the United States, John Adams, endorsed it as follows:


Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.


There are increasing calls for a church-state union. Friends, we already have one. That’s what government by left wing idealogues in the Church of the Woke is. How do you like it?


It is no more a solution to America’s problems to have religious tyrants legislating their religion than it is to have left wing zealots legislating their ideology. Tyrants are tyrants. Tyranny is tyranny.


Unity in the political right is desirable if it is in favor of the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights. A new intolerant Puritanism is as anti-American as the ideological oppression of the Left.



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1 https://thenewamerican.com/opinion/why-well-never-know-what-really-happened-in-butler-pa/


2 https://www.zerohedge.com/political/massive-secret-service-failure-led-nearly-successful-assassination-donald-trump


3 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/secret-service-check-box-senate-briefing-leaves-questions-infuriating


4 https://www.foxnews.com/us/congress-denied-access-crucial-trump-protection-plan-screams-cover-your-mode-expert


5 https://thehill.com/homenews/house/3540071-boebert-says-she-is-tired-of-separation-between-church-and-state-the-church-is-supposed-to-direct-the-government/


6 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgNbGxdDZ2I – see minute 4:20.


7 Augustine's Letters #185 Ch.6: "It is indeed better (as no one ever could deny) that men should be led to worship God by teaching, than that they should be driven to it by fear of punishment or pain; but it does not follow that because the former course produces the better men, therefore those who do not yield to it should be neglected. For many have found advantage (as we have proved, and are daily proving by actual experiment), in being first compelled by fear or pain, so that they might afterwards be influenced by teaching, or might follow out in act what they had already learned in word."


Augustine's Letters #185 Ch.6: "Why, therefore, should not the Church use force in compelling her lost sons to return, if the lost sons compelled others to their destruction? Although even men who have not been compelled, but only led astray, are received by their loving mother with more affection if they are recalled to her bosom through the enforcement of terrible but salutary laws, and are the objects of far more deep congratulation than those whom she had never lost. Is it not a part of the care of the shepherd, when any sheep have left the flock, even though not violently forced away, but led astray by tender words and coaxing blandishments, to bring them back to the fold of his master when he has found them, by the fear or even the pain of the whip, if they show symptoms of resistance; especially since, if they multiply with growing abundance among the fugitive slaves and robbers, he has the more right in that the mark of the master is recognized on them."


8 https://victorspen.wordpress.com/2015/03/30/the-horror-of-the-inquisition/; https://churchandstate.org.uk/2016/04/the-dark-side-of-christian-history-the-inquisition-and-slavery/


9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgNbGxdDZ2I


10 James Madison, Amendments to the Virginia Declaration of Rights, June 1776


11 James Madison, Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments, circa June 20, 1785


12 James Madison, essay on Property, March 29, 1792


13 James Madison, letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822


14 https://vftonline.org/EndTheWall/VFT-UL/candst/detach.htm


15 George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation in Newport, Rhode Island, Aug. 18, 1790 in: The Writings of George Washington, p. 766-67.


16 https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript


17 https://historicipswich.net/2022/11/29/persecution-of-quakers-by-the-puritans/


18 Ibid.


19 https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/15/Mary-Dyer; https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Barrett-Dyer


20 https://www.quakersintheworld.org/quakers-in-action/15/Mary-Dyer; https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mary-Barrett-Dyer


21 https://www.inspirationalstories.com/quotes/roger-williams-enforced-uniformity-confounds-civil-and-religious-liberty/


22 William Jackson Armstrong “Romanism and Civil Liberty” https://documents.adventistarchives.org/ 7

Tracts/SL/SL18891015-20.pdf


23 Schaf, Church History, Vol. II, section 27.


24 Neander, Id., p. 217. "


25 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13621419/democrats-republicans-vote-illegal-aliens-voter-id-trump.html


26 https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/bar1796t.asp



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Earthquakes and Tsunamis: Signs of the Second Coming of Christ

By Wings of Liberty • July 30, 2025
The largest earthquake to hit the planet in 14 years struck off the coast of Russia on July 29, 2025. The monster 8.8 magnitude quake triggered global tsunami warnings, including officials urging the evacuation of the Hawaii islands coastline. Sirens blare. Anxious millions watch the internet for news updates, concerned for themselves and the safety of their loved ones. People watch and wonder. Floods and storms and earthquakes. War and disease and famine. What do these things mean? It is all a fulfilment of Bible prophecy. Nearly two thousand years ago, Jesus warned humanity of the signs of the end of the world, culminating in His return to this planet to raise the dead and rescue His faithful believers - 1 Thessalonians 4:15-18, and the destruction of the wicked – Matthew 13:30. We should expect to hear of “wars and rumors of wars” – Mathew 24:6, and to see “pestilences and famine” – Matthew 24:7. The Lord specifically referred to earthquakes and the roaring of the waves. Christ warned: And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh. Luke 21:25-28 The signs of the times are everywhere, friend. While officials can tell you to evacuate the coastline, and news agencies can inform you of the devastation which took place from this or that natural disaster, the explanation and deeper meaning of the increasing agitation and unrest in our world is found only in the Bible. These are the signs of the approaching Creator and Redeemer. Are you ready? Today is the day of salvation - 2 Corinthians 6:2, the door of mercy is still open. Christ is ministering in the courts in heaven on ehalf of humanity. But when he returns to this earth it will already be too late for repentance. The work of intercession will be finished and the door of mercy closed. Today is the day to seek the Lord while He may be found!. It is not safe to trifle with the call of mercy.

THE CURSE OF CHURCH AND STATE, PART 2: SILENCE, HERETIC

By Wings of Liberty • July 23, 2025
Control is the aim of all religionists who desire civil power. They want the power of government for one single reason: they are not content to allow their religious ideas to stand or fall in competition with other religions and philosophies in the marketplace of ideas, judged by each person for themselves as true or false. Instead, they intend to dominate human thought and behavior by having government compel their religious views on society using the force of law. Since they have lost the argument in the public square, they will win it by force. Some of these religionists may have vague intentions of altruism, hoping to reform a corrupt society through religious compulsion. But, regardless of motive, as soon as the objective is obtained it is inevitable that the union of church and state will result in persecution. This is because the power of government is to make laws for society. When religionists have this power they will make laws for their religious purposes, and laws to punish breaches of their religious laws. The result is religious persecution, and the corruption of church and state. There are many examples to demonstrate that the above proposition is true. In theocratic Muslim countries where the church controls the state, censorship of media of all sorts is enforced, from books to movies, and the internet. There are religious restrictions on every aspect of society, and these restrictions are for the good of society in the minds of those who pass them and enforce them. Compliance is mandatory, and a person is considered an enemy of the common good if he dissents. In Islam, as in all religions, the ultimate dissent is considered to be conversion away from one’s former religion. But when the mosque controls the state, one converts from the religion which controls the government. In much of Islam, conversion is to be punished by death. Islamic teaching stipulates that a delay of three days for “reconsideration”, is appropriate prior to carrying out the death penalty. i The Roman Papacy also wants control of government, even global government, i and it long ago proved that it persecutes dissenters. For centuries it banned books and persecuted their authors, ii justifying it actions with the claim that reading John Locke, Galileo, and John Milton, was “heresy” and “contrary to morality”, and suppression of writings is necessary for the common good. Many martyrs were tortured and killed for possession or creation of prescribed religious materials. This censorship and persecution is supposedly justified by the papal teaching extra ecclesiam nulla salus - "outside of the Church, there is no salvation”, and, “it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” iii Thomas Aquinas, often lauded by Catholic scholars, agreed that "to be subject to the Roman Pontiff is absolutely necessary for salvation." iv Thus, the Papacy justifies censorship by the following perverse argument: since only Catholic doctrine can save society, dissenting or heretical views must not be tolerated if society is to be saved. This position is not only ancient, but also modern. In advocating for a new reinterpretation of the Constitution through a lens of Catholic social doctrine deceptively called “common good constitutionalism”, v Harvard legal scholar and Catholic Integralist, Adrien Vermuele, stated: The libertarian assumptions central to free-speech law and free-speech ideology – that government is forbidden to judge the quality and moral worth of public speech … [should] fall under the ax. Libertarian conceptions of property rights and economic rights will also have to go, insofar as they bar the state from enforcing duties of community and solidarity in the use and distribution of resources. vi Carefully consider Vermuele’s assertions in this vein and it will slowly dawn on you that he is quietly but vehemently opposed to American independence, the Bill of Rights, and probably apple pie. Vermeule believes the United States government should be subordinate to the Roman Catholic Papacy. When he advocates for government censorship of public speech that is low in “quality and moral worth”, what he means is that the Catholic Church should direct the government to suppress public speech it opposes. Vermeule’s contentions prove the proposition that a union of church and state results in wickedness and oppression, as President John Adams wrote. vii But there may be another word to describe his intentional attack on US independence. What do you call a proposition that your country’s government and Constitution be subordinated to the Pope of Rome, who is not only a religious leader but a foreign monarch, and that your fellow citizens be stripped of their freedom of speech and property rights? While these menacing thoughts are published under the sometimes-subversive cloak of academia, Vermuele betrays enough of an inner latent Torquemada that there should be serious alarm bells for liberty lovers. Take David French, for example. French, a lawyer, former editor of the National Review, and Protestant twice has debated Sohrab Amari, a well-known Catholic Integralist and editor of the New York Post, on the subjects of American liberty and Originalism versus a Catholic social doctrine reinterpretation of the Constitution. viii French is a staunch supporter of individual rights, and the defense of civil liberties as enshrined in the Bill of Rights. Amari believes the government should be subordinated to the Catholic Church, and that the Constitution needs to be “reinterpreted” so that it conforms with Catholic doctrine. French handily won both debates. But if the Catholic church controlled the government, the French/Amahri debates probably do not end with a handshake. They end with French’s writings proscribed, his house expropriated and converted into a camp for Catholic migrants, ix and French himself chained to a rack and tortured for heresy. That is the difference when the church controls the state. Many Protestants today want civil power, and claim to be setting up a kingdom for Jesus Christ. They claim there will be more liberty in this kingdom, not less. But Protestants who believe in a union of church and state are not much different than Papists. They have behaved like Papists when they have had civil power and there is every reason to believe they will again if they obtain it again. There are many examples of the foregoing, but one or two will suffice. In Scotland, “The National Covenant or Confession of Faith” was first created in 1580 and certified by an act of Parliament in 1640. The law was approved by Charles II in 1651 as a condition precedent of his restoration to power. As noted by author and liberty advocate A. T. Jones, the Covenant “declares, in approval of various acts of the Scottish Parliament, as follows: … do condemn all erroneous books and write concerning erroneous doctrine against the religion presently professed, or containing superstitious rites and ceremonies papistical, … and ordains the home-bringers of them to be punished … and ordains the users of them to be punished for the second fault as idolaters. i In order to protect the Covenant religion, the Covenant declares that “all within the realm are bound to profess it”, and states all must: … recant all doctrine and errors repugnant to any of the said articles, and all magistrates, sheriffs, etc., are ordained to search, apprehend, and punish all contraveners; … that none shall be reputed loyal and faithful subjects to our sovereign Lord or his authority, but be punishable as rebellers and gainstanders of the same, who shall not give their confession and make their profession of the said true religion. ii Magistrates were required by the Covenant to: Maintain the true religion of Jesus Christ… and be careful to root out of their empire all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God who shall be convicted by the true Kirk of God [Church of God] of the aforesaid crimes. iii Scottish Reformer Jon Knox himself stated that “none provoking the people to idolatry ought to be exempted from the punishment of death”, and “it is not only lawful to punish to the death such as labor to subvert the true religion, but the magistrates and people are bound to do so unless they will provoke the wrath of God against themselves.” iv As noted, this is far from the only example of Protestant misdeeds when they obtain civil power. John Calvin had Michael Servetus arrested and murdered over a religious disagreement. Zwingli endorsed violence to encourage conversion, and Melanchthon drowned an Anabaptist for the “heresy” of being rebaptized. Thus we see a union of church and state in Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism all yields the same evil result. The supposedly “true” religion (as declared by thin-skinned religionists who cannot stand to have their ideas debated and adopted or discarded as the individual decides) is established by civil law, dissenting views are censored, and the expositors punished, persecuted and murdered. That is the lesson of history in all ages, and it is the prophecy of Revelation 13 that so will it be at the end of time. Revelation 13:11 And I beheld another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon. 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. 15 And he had power to give life unto the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 16 And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: 17 And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six. The next installment in this series will examine the links between Catholic social doctrine, the labor movement, and the push for church and state union. 

THE CURSE OF CHURCH AND STATE, PART 1: Canon and Feudal Law

By Wings of Liberty • July 6, 2025
In times of persecution and danger, anonymity has long been the necessary cloak for the truth. Speaking of the oppression under which the truth labored as the Revolutionary War approached, the eventual second president of the United States, John Adams, anonymously stated the following in the Boston Gazette in 1765: Every body knows how dangerous it was to speak or write in favour of any thing in those days but the triumphant system of religion and politicks. And our fathers were particularly the objects of the persecutions and proscriptions of the times. It is not unlikely therefore, that, although they were inflexibly steady in refusing their positive assent to any thing against their principles, they might have contracted habits of reserve, and a cautious diffidence of asserting their opinions publickly. These habits they probably brought with them to America, and have transmitted down to us. i Adams was saying that the pilgrims who fled Europe passed down a knowledge of the dangers which public opinions could bring from kings and priests. The Papacy was hostile to not only religious freedom, but to freedom of thought, speech and the press. English monarchs, both Catholic and Anglican, had harshly punished dissenting views. The “fathers” Adams references are those who suffered for their faith and opinions in the public square, even to the point of martyrdom. They had consequently learned to be careful when expressing their views publicly, especially on the “triumphant system of religion and politicks”. Today, many so-called Christians loudly (and often arrogantly) demand that church and state once more come together in America and enforce their version of Christianity on the population by force of law. ii But of course such a system will result in the same oppression and punishment of dissent as it has in the past. Politicians and advocates of church/state union in America might be surprised to hear the second president of the United States speak with such ardor against their cause. But John Adams denounced the union of church and state as “tyrannical” and “wicked”. Hear this father of American independence in his own words: Since the promulgation of Christianity, the two greatest systems of tyranny that have sprung from this original, are the canon and the feudal law … By the former of these, the most refined, sublime, extensive, and astonishing constitution of policy that ever was conceived by the mind of man was framed by the Romish clergy for the aggrandizement of their own order. All the epithets I have here given to the Romish policy are just, and will be allowed to be so when it is considered, that they even persuaded mankind to believe,faithfully and undoubtingly, that God Almighty had entrusted them with the keys of heaven, whose gates they might open and close at pleasure; with a power of dispensation over all the rules and obligations of morality; with authority to license all sorts of sins and crimes; with a power of deposing princes and absolving subjects from allegiance; with a power of procuring or withholding the rain of heaven and the beams of the sun; with the management of earthquakes, pestilence, and famine; nay, with the mysterious, awful, incomprehensible power of creating out of bread and wine the flesh and blood of God himself. All these opinions they were enabled to spread and rivet among the people by reducing their minds to a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity, and by infusing into them a religious horror of letters and knowledge. Thus was human nature chained fast for ages in a cruel, shameful, and 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, although 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 canon law, it was soon adopted by almost all the princes of Europe, and wrought into the constitutions of their government. It was originally a code of laws for a vast army in a perpetual encampment. The general was invested with the sovereign propriety of all the lands within the territory. Of him, as his servants and vassals, the first rank of his great officers held the lands; and in the same manner the other subordinate officers held of them; and all ranks and degrees held their lands by a variety of duties and services, all tending to bind the chains the faster on every order of mankind. In this manner the common people were held together in herds and clans in a state of servile dependence on their lords, bound, even by the tenure of their lands, to follow them, whenever they commanded, to their wars, and in a state of total ignorance of every thing divine and human, excepting the use of arms and the culture of their lands. But another event still more calamitous to human liberty, was a wicked confederacy between the two systems of tyranny above described. i You likely were unaware that Founding Father John Adams spoke so strongly against a union of church and state. And you will not likely hear his views repeated by most modern conservative thinkers or politicians. You will not hear them from the Opus Dei-linked Heritage Foundation, which authored Project 2025, or from Harvard scholar and Catholic Integralist Adrian Vermeule, who openly advocates that the Catholic Church should control the U.S. government. i You will not hear of John Adams treatise on canon and feudal law from adherents of the New Apostolic Reformation, who believe they have a mandate from Christ to control every major aspect of society. ii All these would prefer John Adams be buried in the dustbin of history because he speaks contrary to church/state ambitions. In denouncing canon law, John Adams condemned the Roman Papacy as an engine of superstition and oppression, designed to imprison the minds of the populace in “a state of sordid ignorance and staring timidity”. In denouncing feudal law, he condemned that system of nobles and lords who owned the land, while all the common people were required to serve them, supposedly in exchange for protection. Medieval feudal law finds its echo in the policies of the World Economic Forum. The oft-repeated claim that “you will own nothing and be happy” is in fact nothing less than a call to return to serfdom. The devil, prince of this world, tempted our Savior in the wilderness with the allure of earthly power – the same earthly power that many Christians covet today. Satan took Christ up into an exceedingly high mountain and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them and said unto Him, “all these things will I give thee if Thou wilt fall down and worship me.” Jesus replied, “get thee hence, Satan” – see Matthew 4:8-10. It is the antichrist of the Scriptures, that man of sin, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalt himself above all that is called God, who desires temporal power. As soon as he had it he turned persecutor. As soon as modern Christians have civil power, they also will turn persecutor. This has been proven time and again in history, as will be discussed in the next article. In denouncing both canon and feudal law combined, John Adams condemned the unconstitutional aims of a growing and ambitious group of modern Christians who intend to make their “Christianity” the law of the land for the common good of society. The heart of humanity has not changed. Such a system was a curse in the time of the Inquisition, and it would be a curse in our day should it be recreated.