O'Donnell's Gift

Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell delivered a gift to the people of Delaware and to all of the American people when during a debate with her Democrat opponent she asked him if the separation of church and state is in the Constitution, and if so, to point out where.

The left-wing audience at the law school venue dutifully laughed at O’Donnell’s question, and her opponent dutifully launched into the standard left-wing interpretation of the First Amendment. Both are dead wrong, and Ms. O’Donnell has performed a great service if the aftermath of enduring the scorn causes some actual honest thinking on this topic. In some very important ways, getting the answer right is critical to America’s survival.

The words ‘separation of church and state’ do NOT appear in the U.S. Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. The phrase was picked up from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association (his actual words referred to a ‘wall of separation between Church & State’), in which he was seeking to assure them that the national government would not get involved in the establishment of an official national religion.

The godless intellectual left has forever sought to distort, pervert and otherwise extrapolate from Jefferson’s words a national ban on God from American public life. Even more specifically, though more subtly and deceitfully, it has sought to ban Judeo-Christian teachings from American public life. And to get to real nub of it, the godless left has sought to ban Christianity from America.

In this second era of American tea parties, Americans are fighting back. There have been reports of significant increases in numbers of pocket-sized Constitutions distributed to the people and read by them. The more they learn and refresh their memories, the more they understand how the godless left has set up the façade of ‘good intentions’—we must not offend our atheist or otherwise non-Judeo-Christian citizens--time after time after time in what is in fact an effort to remove the Ten Commandments, Christmas and Easter from public acknowledgement and reverence. Instead, we are to revere the ACLU. These efforts have eroded the moral and spiritual and even physical health of American society, resulting in a level of cultural decay that only the willfully blind cannot see.

The truth isn’t complicated. America was founded predominantly by those seeking refuge from religious persecution. They did not want a king with authority to tell them what and how to worship. But the idea that they wanted to set up a nation free from God or the influence of God? As John Wooden would have said, “goodness gracious sakes alive!!!” Read the Declaration of Independence, for crying out loud! It invokes the name of “Creator”; it affirms the Creator as that which endows man with inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; it affirms the spiritual truth that all men are created equal by God; it resolves to go forward with the Declaration of Independence with ‘firm reliance on divine Providence’. It is not possible to honestly argue that the founding fathers sought a God-free nation; on the contrary, they plainly envisioned a God-dependent and frankly, a God-glorifying nation whose citizens enjoyed freedoms that human governments could not take away. They expected a nation where the Judeo-Christian religion would permeate the laws of the land. And for most of America’s 230+ years, that is what Americans have had.

So Christine O’Donnell should be thanked for taking on one of the sacred cows of liberal orthodoxy. She has highlighted in yet another important way the reason why, in 2010, Americans want the America of the founding restored and preserved.

When American government is again populated by men and women who know the truth about the American founding, the nation will be on its way to recovery. Here’s hoping Christine O’Donnell is one of those women.

And here’s the last related and critical point that Americans are gradually waking up to. America as founded is in fact a Judeo-Christian nation, not by edict of the government, but by the enduring faith, prayer and practice of its people, exercising their freedoms under documents based upon the nature and character of the Judeo-Christian God.

This is why it will not be possible to accommodate Islam in America over the long term. We’ve written here and here and here on this topic, but for those deeply resistant to face it, here is a simple starting point: make a thorough study of the deity figure that Islam calls “Allah”, and of the interpretations or communications of Allah’s nature provided by Mohammed. This is not a concept of Deity or a set of religious teachings that could possibly call forth the sentiments of the Declaration of Independence; is it not a concept of Deity or a set of religious teachings that can possibly be reconciled with those sentiments.

One concept of God and His teachings have led to the freest, most prosperous, generous, just and non-discriminatory society in human history; the other has led to tyranny, oppression and bloodshed wherever it dominates (just ask the Iranian people). Americans know which one they are founded on and intend to follow.

Ms. O’Donnell did not venture into this last topic, but by highlighting the truth and the history of America’s founding, she is helping the cause of clarity in what we as a nation are facing. God bless her.

Paul Gable

October 19, 2010