How America Has Become a Battlefield for the Minds of Its Citizens

On January 9, 2021, Mark Robinson became the first African American Lieutenant Governor in North Carolina history. When we met him early this year in February, he expressed his surprise about the day-to-day life of holding elective office: “I thought I was entering into public service but found out that I had stepped into the middle of spiritual warfare.”

His assessment was reinforced when secularists erupted in furious rage over some of his remarks at the Asbury Baptist Church in Seagrove, North Carolina, in June, where he said: “There is no reason anybody, anywhere in America should be telling any child about transgenderism, homosexuality, or any of that filth [in public education].

“To me, it is against the tenets of my religion. … But we do not live in a theocracy, and I do not have the right to tell anyone what they practice in their home. Teaching about those issues in public schools, however, is absolutely off limits.”

In response to what was deemed “hateful, homophobic, open discrimination, and completely unacceptable,” Robinson said: “I’m not bigoted against LGBT individuals. I’m sorry they feel contrary to the way I feel in a spiritual aspect. The issue, as it is being raised right now, I believe, is an attempt to intimidate people [of faith] into not speaking up against it being introduced into the classroom.”

What homosexuals do in the privacy of their homes is of course their own business. But times have changed. Their once libertarian stance—something to the effect of ‘please leave us alone and allow us to live our lives in the privacy of our homes’—has been replaced by a spiteful totalitarian readiness of forcing Christian bakers, photographers, florists, and retreat centers to take part in homosexual weddings, or going out of business.

On the question of what the greatest commandment in the Law is, Jesus answers that there are two. The “first and greatest,” the “greatest and most important” is “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.” [Matthew 22:37-38]

The second law is like the first, although not of equal importance: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” [Matthew 22:39]

In America’s current cultural and political climate, clamorous rhetoric prevails over sound prudence, and self-righteous sentimentality takes prideful precedence over common sense. In such a climate, one’s own outrage is readily mistaken for righteous indignation and virtue, absolving one from the necessity to think clearly.

Dennis Prager put it this way: You set the standard in the macro [homosexuality and adultery are sin] and love in the micro [love sinners, for we all need mercy].

Following our pastors’ event of October 5 in Asheville, NC, with Lt. Gov. Robinson, the left-wing NC Policy Watch argued: “The American Renewal Project—and its state arm, the North Carolina Renewal Project—provides a pipeline for conservative politicians to reach highly motivated Christian voters and activists on the political right. The group rejects the notion of a separation between church and state. It argues that churches are at the forefront of a culture war, and pastors should run for office to ensure victory. A particular theme is that of persecuted Christianity and the need to institute religious teaching and principles into all areas of civic life, particularly public schools, which they say should be reformed according to their religious principles or abandoned by Christian families.”

Let’s examine this more closely:

Famously there are two separate clauses in the 1791 First Amendment – the ‘No establishment’ clause and the ‘Free exercise’ clause. Not intended to be in opposition, they were both designed to protect religious freedom. Long before Thomas Jefferson [1743-1826] used the term ‘wall of separation’, the term was used by Roger Williams [1603-1683], the founder of Rhode Island. His aim was to protect the church from the government, not the government from the church.

When Jefferson used the term in writing to the Danbury Baptists in 1802, he did not mean strict separation, as can be understood from his practice to invite Baptists and Episcopalians to worship in the White House and by attending worship in the Capitol whenever he was in Washington, D.C. The idea of strict separation was first introduced into law in the Everson Case in 1947 – ironically by a Baptist Justice who was out to prevent any Roman Catholic influence in the public square.

Religious freedom flourished under the First Amendment, not despite disestablishment but because of it. Religion was and is voluntary and based on the dictates of conscience alone. To be sure, the First Amendment disestablished religion only at the federal level, but the established state churches that remained [Congregational in Connecticut, for example, and Episcopal in Virginia] were abolished one by one, New Hampshire being the last. Government disestablishment was the precondition of religious freedom for all.

The American Renewal Project firmly repudiates theocracy and believes in the proper separation of church and state. It does not believe in the modern notion of strict separation, which removes all religion from public life and favors the ideology of secularism. What the Founders intended was the institutional separation of church and state, rather than the separation of religion and public life. Strict separation is a falsehood foisted on America over the last 100 years to help religious secularists obtain political advantage, to ensure that their secular ideology and its values reign supreme in the public square.

With that said, there is no such thing as “neutrality” regarding religion. All schools teach some form of religion. To believe or not to believe in God, both are religious beliefs. American Founder Fisher Ames [1758-1808], co-author of the First Amendment to the Constitution, could not have been any clearer on the wishes of the Founders when writing in 1789 that the Bible should be “the principal text in our schools.”

In an interview with John Solomon of Just the News, Lt. Gov. Robinson said: “This movement to intimidate American citizens and intimidate parents because they’re speaking up at school board meetings [by Attorney General Merrick Garland] … and intimidate me, because I’m speaking up against pornography in our schools … Americans are sick and tired of being browbeat.

“The average American law-abiding citizen [putting in 50-hour workweeks, raising their families, coaching Little League, and teaching Sunday school] are the ones getting kicked in the teeth [by those seeking to impose a socialist agenda]. The people of this state are tired; and I’m tired of it. It’s time for us to stand up and fight back.”

Last Monday, YouTube notified the American Principles Project [APP] that its eight-year-old organizational channel had been permanently suspended. No prior warning had been given and no specific explanation was provided as to why its 2-minute video violated their so-called community guidelines, aside from the “shadowy” statement that “It’s our job to make sure that YouTube is a safe place for all.”

See if you can determine the content that violated YouTube’s “safe place for all.”

By en masse abandoning the public square, Christians have virtually authorized secularists to establish an idolatrous religion in America, making it America’s national church, all with its attendant priests—Big Tech, Big Media, Big Pharma, and Big Government—zealous fanatics happy to assault liberty and censor or ban free speech. In their willingness to deceive, distort, disguise, and doctor statistics [of Covid], thereby propagating epidemic hysteria, mass neurosis, and mandatory vaccination, their mind is set on the permanent achievement of coercive control.

A Gideon stands in North Carolina. {eoa}

David Lane is the founder of the American Renewal Project.

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