"The Surrender to Secularism"

The Story of Nations and the role of Secularism in America is a story of our nation that is unique in many ways. America was not "in chains" at birth as were other countries. The Founders and Framers of our government and nation were men of spiritual faith. They had inherited the Moral Law and the Bible from earlier generations, and they brought the concept and importance of religious liberty with them across the oceans. We think of emmigrants from England, Scotland, France, Germany and other countries bringing the Gospel, as a prime reason for crossing the oceans.

How unique that is, so very unusual in the birth of a nation. Many people in many countries wore chains for generation after generation before receiving the liberating Gospel.

Because our Founders were so strong with morality they incorporated many barriers to infringements by government to damage our religious liberty.

Thomas Jefferson spoke of erecting a "wall of separation" between church and state in order to protect both. This was not to diminish the importance and authority of both church and state. Each would have its Providentially ordered sphere of power and influence in building our Christian Constitutional Republic.

So long as men recognize that God is the Creator and that the rights of man have to come from Him, men can enjoy freedom. Why is it that so many nations have attempted and yet failed to recognize these Truths?

During my long lifetime, I have seen our nation move from Religious Liberty in practice, to Selfishness, to Secularism, to Complacency, to Socialism. As a teacher of American History for nearly half a century, I have made it my practice to try to understand how such a thing has

happened in America.

The very founding documents of our nation have Christian references and refer to Divine Providence. The governmental structure of our three branches of government fit into our Biblical World View.

It is so evident that the entire globe is under siege with the primary goal of eradicating spiritual faith and replacing it with Secularism, Socialism, Fascism, Communism; whoever holds "the chains."

Recently, we had the privilege of sharing an article from the Cardinal Mindszenty Foundation, and I requested permission to quote from their booklet, titled, "The Surrender to Secularism," first published in 1967. A current reprint is available today in its 12th printing.

In the 1960’s, the foundation shared the experience and writing of a Catholic Bishop, Father Cuthbert O'Gara, who was imprisoned by the Communists in China for a number of years.

Having gone to China as a Christian missionary in the 1940s, Father O’Gara became widely known throughout China as the "Stretcher-Bearer Bishop,” as he was so often seen carrying the wounded to his mission hospital. When a stretcher was not available, he was seen carrying the wounded on his back.

He was twice arrested, once by the Japanese, and later by the Communists who took over China. In 1951 they took him before the altar of his church, stripped him of his robes, and cast him into prison, where he suffered every kind of inconceivable torture. After several years of suffering unbearable abuse, two priests managed to carry him to Hongkong on a stretcher.

The insights in his writing are so appropriate for us to read and to ponder in 2017 America. I quote some from his journal and pray that we can understand today's secular culture that predominates our present day.

From Father O'Gara's journal:

“When the Communist troops overran my diocese they were followed in very short order by the propaganda corps – the civilian branch of the Red forces – an organization, if anything, more disciplined, more zealous, more fanatical, than the People's Army of Liberation itself.

“The entire population, city and countryside, was immediately organized into distinctive categories – grade school and high school pupils and teachers, (Catholic, Protestant and pagan), merchants, artisans, members of the professions, yes, and even the lowly coolies. Everyone, for a week or more, was forced to attend the seminar specified for his or her proper category, and there willy-nilly in the servile submission, listen to the official Communist line.

“Now, what was the first lesson given to the indoctrinees? One might have supposed that this would be some pearl of wisdom let drop by Marx, Lenin, or Stalin. Such however was not the case. The very first, the fundamental, lesson given was man's descent from the ape

– Darwinism!

“This naturally shocked the Christians, (Catholics and Protestants), attending the seminars and as might have been expected, they reacted violently. The non-Christians who constituted the majority in China, were equally antagonistic to the ape theory, because from time immemorial the Chinese people in a nebulous sort of way had believed in a Supreme Being, in a soul and in an existence after death.

“Are you surprised that the Chinese Communists chose Darwinism as the cornerstone upon which to build their new political structure? At first, this political maneuver amazed me. I had taken for granted that they would begin by expanding the economic theories of Marx. Later on when in a Red Jail, the reason for this unanticipated tactic became very obvious to me. By that time, I knew very well that the primary purpose of the People's Government in Peking was to extirpate all religious belief and practice from China, particularly to destroy the Catholic Church. After two years of house arrest and suffering with my fellow priests and religious Sisters every manner of annoyance and humiliation, I knew only too well that the clause "Freedom of Religion" written into the 1948 Constitution had been inserted there to hoodwink foreign governments, and had no relevancy whatsoever within the territorial limits of Red China. The official policy, rigid and ruthless, was transparently clear: Religion delenda est: Religion must be destroyed.

“Darwinism negates God, the human soul, the after-life. Into this vacuum, Communism enters as the be-all and the end-all of the intellectual human slavery that it has created. In the Red prison in which I was held, the slogan, ‘Bring your mind over to us and all your troubles will end’ was hammered into the minds of the prisoners with brutal and numbing monotony. Nothing but a groveling holocaust of the human person can satiate the lust for dominance of Peking's Red Regime.”

So wrote Father O'Gara.

When he returned to America, he spoke warning to the American people about John Dewey and Horace Mann, and the impact of Secularism in our American culture and in the schools. He saw America as surrendering to this secular way of life sweeping across the land.

Grieving over what he had observed, he warned us well, as God's Word is now banned from schools of the land, and unwelcomed in the public square. He reminds us: “Communism is an evil that menaces us from without; Secularism is a deadly cancer eating at the very vitals of our national life. The corrosive influence of Secularism has already made tremendous inroads into every phase of our national existence. Business and government, labor and education, religion, the arts, the sciences, all have felt its base impact. No department of our national life is immune.”

“Basically, Communism and Socialism are one; both are predicated on the same premise – the materialistic concept of life. They are one in their materialism, one in their pragmatism, and one in their atheism.”

Thinking of the American school classroom, Father O'Gara wrote, "Within the borders of the United States, the same perfidious principles are being continually expounded before our American youth, that there is no God, no soul, no after-life, no absolutes, no stable morality; that what the majority decrees and does, however outrageous to our Christian morality, or contradictory to the teachings of Christ, is the accepted standard of modern morals and good manners."

Father O'Gara is right!

"In other words we are nourishing in our breast at home the very viper whose head, with so much fanfare and sinister hypocrisy, we set out to crush in the far corners of the globe.” How can we be so blind?

“Which Way Americans?”

America was clearly established as a Christian Constitutional Republic, and only in recent decades have we departed from this foundation.

Those radicals, who called themselves "progressives", reject Biblical Morality, Justice, Freedom, and Order. Their goal is to replace Creationism, Biblical Morality, and Law, with Darwinism, Evolution, and a march toward world government (Globalism).

Will we accept their radical changes, their views, and practices relating to human sexuality, polygamy, Shariah Law, Jihad, and the evolutionary "godhead" in the family; even promoting new structures and definitions for what is called "the family”?

Shockingly, “One federal judge declared in 1996, in a Texas court, ‘Parents give up their rights when they drop their children off at public school.’” (Wall Street Journal 10 /8/ 96)

We are in a war over God Himself, and His Word. Our national motto is "In God We trust." This is the line of battle. Our Founders stated the liberating Truth:

"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." – Declaration of Independence 1776

This was once the heritage and legacy of every family and every school child. The Northwest Ordinance provided, before and after the adoption of the Constitution, free land for the placement of schools. For many years only Christian schools existed in America, and many families home schooled their children, as well.

Patrick Henry made it clear that the vital issue in life is Liberty, and that the only ground for Life and Liberty is in Jesus Christ, through our personal Christian faith and practice. In his will, Henry’s charge to his own family was that “the religion of Jesus Christ is the only inheritance that can make them rich indeed."

Early government schools were promoted by Unitarians and early socialists. For real changes to be made in today’s education, modern Social Studies would have to be abolished and replaced with true American Christian History.

The modern U.S. Supreme Court has outlawed prayer in school and defied the intent of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. So we ask the individual Christian believer who reads this article – which way? Will we restore this Christian Constitutional Republic by our faith and practice, or will we give satan the victory that he has been working for?