The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1892 that "Christianity, general Christianity, is, and always has been, a part of the common law ... not Christianity with an established church ... but Christianity with liberty of conscience to all men."

More recently, a Michigan High School, after having rejected a valedictory speech on the grounds that it might offend non-Christians, relented out of court and permitted the speech, which specifically mentions Jesus as an inspiration.

This is a welcome victory against what has amounted to a leftist political "war against Christianity."  But there are reasons to be cautious.  Some historical perspective is needed to explain why.  

Any reading of the Mayflower Compact proves beyond doubt that this earliest governing document of our nation clearly and specifically states that the Pilgrims, "[h]aving undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith," instituted a colony on North America.  

Despite the overwhelming evidence of our Christian foundations, the past half-century has seen a determined effort by the left to remove all influence of Christianity from the public sphere and replace it with an array of atheist, socialist, and (quite discordantly) Islamist doctrines.  

That seems to have come to a head, beginning in the 1970s, after which leftist administrators of schools abandoned their claim of neutrality regarding religion and undertook decidedly hostile, anti-Christian policies, while at the same time promoting (again discordantly) homosexual and Islamic celebrations in the classroom.  

The left points out, quite accurately, that the Constitution itself makes no specific mention of God.  But this absence of mention is not a rejection of God; rather, it is an outcome of the Constitutional Convention, where the document was painstakingly composed by a group of men who had widely differing views on religion and religious freedom.  Despite those differing views, not one of them, I am certain, intended that religious freedom would ever include the proselytism of Satanism, to public schoolchildren, for example.  Their published views on what they called "Mohammedanism" were far from tolerant.  And while they might have tolerated atheism and agnosticism, they most assuredly did not intend those to force Christian principles out of government.

Let it be a warning that a great many Americans on the left have no tolerance for Christian views, and especially for those views expressed by the Founders.  They despise the idea that our highest loyalty is not to government, but to God, the Creator, Jesus, the Messiah.  

Their recent retreats from their policies of oppression have nothing to do with tolerance, nor with an enlightened attitude.  They have to do only with the legal expenses involved and the risk of an adverse precedent that might be set in the Court should they sue prematurely and lose.  Tactics, not principles, are their motivation.  

Notice that their hostility toward Judaism has grown more public and more extreme.  This will continue until the Jews learn from their Christian younger brothers that "never again" requires considerable effort, and not just by Israel.  

This brings us to the poison pill.  If the only tool we use is the idea of "religious freedom," as widely interpreted by legalists, then we are going to be confronted with a Satanist valedictorian at some time in the near future.  The left is too clever to let this opportunity pass by.  Leftists will orchestrate it and use the new precedent, which they will set, to further their pro-Satanic teachings in the schools.  Not that they have failed to do this already, but when they can certify a court ruling, the hard-won victories for Christian freedom of speech will be diluted.  Christianity and its opposite, Satanism, cannot coexist.

We must anticipate this tactic and adjust our response accordingly.  The day we deny the inherent Christianity of our American heritage is the day we will finally lose our nation to the enemy, the one that roars like a lion and seeks to devour whom he may (1 Pet. 5:8).

Image via Max Pixel.

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