This Monday, May 31, 2010 is Memorial Day here in the United States of America. Regardless of our antipathy to any particular conflict or even to war in general, on this national day of remembrance we honor the sacrifices of the fallen, the injured, and the families of them all. On Monday, patriotic music will fill the air. Some songs will highlight our country's natural beauty, others the virtues of its diverse and often dissonant people. Our national anthem recounts the heroics and horrors of battle, including the observation that "the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, gave … [Read more...]

 A gracEmail subscriber asks whether the United States is God's nation in any special sense, and whether Americans as such can claim God's Old Testament promises to Israel as his covenant people. *          *          * Americans are not God's people in any special sense, although the United States inherited a semi-Christian culture from its European founders and it includes many Christians today. The much-quoted promise of 2 Chronicles 7:14 was not given to any modern nation but to God's ancient covenant people of Israel. It applies indirectly today to God's people in Jesus Christ, whether … [Read more...]

A gracEmail reader asks, "Is America a Christian nation? Was it ever one?" *          *          * Our nation was founded on belief in a Supreme Being and in broad biblical principles of morality. The founders expressed these convictions in the nation's charter documents and frequently in their own speech and private writing as well. Some, like George Washington, were committed practicing Christians. Others, like Thomas Jefferson, were deists who rejected the deity of Christ and biblical miracles but believed in one true God who is sovereign over the world. The percentage of the general … [Read more...]

There can be no doubt that a culture war is underway in our country. Anti-religious forces, personified by the American Civil Liberties Union and other such groups, constantly exploit the legal system to further their values of secularism, pluralism and "diversity," and to drive every trace of our Judeo-Christian heritage from public view. The entertainment industry and much of the media support the same anti-biblical agenda. In the face of all this, what are we as Christian citizens of the United States to think and to do? First, we should give thanks. Despite all the victories of the … [Read more...]

In the 1971 case of Lemon v. Kurtzman, the U.S. Supreme Court provided a three-part test for deciding whether a law or governmental action constitutes an "establishment of religion" and is therefore unconstitutional. Under this "Lemon test" a court asks: (1) whether the law or action of government has a genuine secular purpose; (2) whether it has the primary effect of either advancing or inhibiting religion; and (3) whether it excessively entangles religion and government. By answering these questions, courts attempt to walk the tightrope between the two Religion Clauses of the First … [Read more...]

For about 150 years, the First Amendment applied only to the federal government; states were free to discriminate between religions if they wished. Following the Civil War, however, a seed was planted that would eventually change the legal landscape in a way the founding fathers never envisioned. That seed was the passage of the 14th Amendment which provided in part that "no state shall . . . deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law." In the 1947 case of Everson v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court held for the first time that the First Amendment's … [Read more...]

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees religious liberty with two clauses: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof." If asked what these two clauses mean, many Americans would respond that they mean whatever their authors meant when they wrote them. History makes plain what the founders meant. They intended for the newly-formed federal government to keep its nose out of religion within the various states, leaving the states to do just about anything they respectively wished. Ten of the original 13 … [Read more...]

A gracEmail subscriber has asked for my comments, as an attorney and a Christian teacher, regarding the controversy surrounding the installation of the Ten Commandments in the Alabama Judicial Building and the federal judge's order to remove the monument on which they are inscribed. * * * Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore is much in the news lately. As a trial court judge, he hung a framed copy of the Ten Commandments in his Alabama courtroom. More recently, as the highest-ranking judge in his state, Mr. Moore had a 5,280-pound granite monument installed in the Alabama … [Read more...]