Welcome back to
the Liberty Insider.
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Before the break, I was reading
from an interesting article
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in Liberty Magazine from 1914,
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on the Constitution.
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And as you would,
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I think, expect
Seventh-day Adventist Christians
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putting this together
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were very
concerned for the protection
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of Christianity
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and with an awareness
of the Seventh-day Sabbath,
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very concerned to
protect that right,
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that doctrinal uniqueness,
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and not allow the Constitution
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or those
claiming to act within it
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to be used to advance
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or restrict any
religious practice.
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So let me just share
a few more paragraphs.
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It says, "The
observance of a day of rest
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is a religious act.
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It is a duty between
the individual and God
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and this duty can
be directed only by,"
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and they're quoting here,
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"reason and conviction
not by force or violence.
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As a free people that
says we should view with alarm,
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the fact that Congress
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is continually
besieged with petitions
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requesting the enactment of laws
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favoring the
observance of Sunday."
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Liberty Magazine
itself goes back to 1906,
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I think was the year
that we began publishing,
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I wasn't alive then.
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Began publishing
Liberty Magazine.
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But it was a
continuum of a periodical
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that was
previously named the Sentinel,
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Sentinel of Liberty,
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edited by Alonzo T. Jones.
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And in 1888,
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he and the Adventist Church
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and a few other
civil organizations
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and a few churches
objected to a proposal
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before the US Senate
for a national Sunday law.
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And it nearly passed.
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And you can go
online and read it.
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It's quite horrific,
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because it mandates
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the ceasing of
all secular activity
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under punishment of law,
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and directs all people
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to worship the Lord on that day.
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That's a Sunday law.
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Might have given some sort of
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sanctimonious
religiosity to the state,
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but it was against
the principles of civil
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and religious freedom.
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And that was
defeated at that time,
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but it really laid its
mark on the Sentinel of Liberty,
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and then Liberty
Magazine as it began,
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and at various time
since there have been attempts.
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And there are
continuing organizations
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that have that as they go.
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I can remember many
years ago now in my life,
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but not long in the great stream
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of Liberty Magazine.
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But maybe about 15 years ago,
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I sat next to a
major conservative leader,
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I won't name him,
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and I have
great respect for him,
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but a leader in the
conservative movement.
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Had a media ministry and so on.
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And he said to me,
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when I
introduced myself, he says,
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"You Seventh-day
Adventists think that
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I'm bringing the
Sunday law, don't you?"
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And I said, "No, I
don't think that you are,
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but I said much of
what you're involved with
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has that as its
natural consequence."
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And there are some
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who openly are pushing
for both Sunday legislation
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and other legislation,
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slated forms of their
religious doctrinal outline.
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And so we need to
guard against that,
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not because they're bad
people, but they're misguided.
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And if the goal of religion
is to change the hearts of men,
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if the goal of
religion is to prepare the way
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for the kingdom,
eternal kingdom of the Lord,
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surely it should be
the most logical thing
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that coercion of
unregenerate people
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is hardly the
way to go about it.
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It's using the
devil's methods in a vain hope
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that it will bring
about the kingdom of God.
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It says here,
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continuing on this article,
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it says, "Sunday is not a civil
but a religious institution
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and is therefore
beyond the purview
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of the civil power.
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Let Congress legislate
but once upon the question,
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and the step will be followed
by disastrous consequences."
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And then quoting from
a Senate report in 1829,
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it says,
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"Let the national
legislature once perform an act,
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which involves the decision
of a religious controversy
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and it will have
passed its legitimate bounds.
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The precedent will
then be established
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and the foundation laid
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for the usurpation of
the divine prerogative
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in this country,
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which has been
the desolating scourge
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of the fairest
portions of the old world."
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Should be obvious
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that the experiment
of religious coercion
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didn't work.
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And not just the
Spanish Inquisition
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but other attempts.
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You know, the
St. Bartholomew's Day
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Massacre in
France comes to mind,
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horrible things
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where church
and state were mixed
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and bloodshed followed.
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The absence,
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and this is another quote
from a book Church and State,
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says, "The absence of
the names of God and Christ
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in a purely
political and legal document
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no more proves
denial or irreverence
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than the absence of those names
in a mathematical treatise,
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or the statutes of a
bank or railroad corporation."
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Much has been made of that,
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both the absence and the slight
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in the year of our Lord
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like that
religious acknowledgement.
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It says, "The title holiness
does not make the Pope of Rome
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any holier than he is.
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And it makes the
contradiction only
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more glaring in such
characters as Alexander VI."
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It says, "We may
go further and say
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that the Constitution
not only contains nothing
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which is
irreligious or un-Christian,
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but it's Christian in substance,
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they're not informed,
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it is pervaded by
the spirit of justice
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and humanity."
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Things that are
being argued about
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and demonstrated for,
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as never before
in the United States,
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which are Christian, it says,
these are Christian principles.
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The First Amendment
could not have originated
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in any pagan or
Mohammedan country,
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but presupposes
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Christian
civilization and culture.
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Christianity
alone has taught men
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to respect the sacredness
of the human personality,
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as made in the image of
God and redeemed by Christ,
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and to protect its
rights and privileges,
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including the freedom of worship
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against the encroachments
of the temporal power,
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and the
absolutism of the state."
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You know, these
are powerful words
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from the past.
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And, you know, I
want to repeat these now,
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because we have forgotten them.
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These were the trumpet cries,
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through most of the
history of the United States,
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reiterating these
with the Constitution
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as evidence,
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that of itself
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that it was not to
meddle in religion.
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Let me conclude with
one more statement here
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that I saw
earlier, which was good.
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It says, "The
publishers of liberty protest
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against Congress making
any law respecting religion."
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In other words, we
uphold the First Amendment.
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"They do this
because they are Christians,
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because they love
religion in the nation,
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and do not wish to
see the ship of state
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wrecked upon the rocks
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of the union of
church and state.
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Let our
constitutional liberties remain
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in violet.
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That's worth remembering now.
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I intend in another
program to talk about
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the dynamic that's emerged
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during the COVID emergency
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where it's not
said in so many words,
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but given that,
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to gather together in churches
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is to sort of invite contagion.
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And the syllogism has drawn that
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therefore
religion is antithetical
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to the survival
of a free society.
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It's not good. It's
not a good dynamic at all.
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Religion is
important to our personal life.
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And it was so important
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that the Constitution
was designed to protect it
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by leaving it alone,
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not restricting it,
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no law, respecting religion,
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nor prevent the
free exercise thereof.
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I mean, that's a
wonderful prescription
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for continued religious freedom.
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But how we will maintain
that in the years ahead,
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as we have religious
diversity on a level that,
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you know, we grant
almost semi profit status
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to the founders or the framers
of the American Constitution,
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but they were mere men.
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I am sure they
could never have imagined
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the religious diversity
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and, of course, the diversity
of those who are informed
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not by faith or
tradition, but by "science,"
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which often means a
sense of rationality
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by people who are not rational,
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nor always knowledgeable,
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but cynical and
suspicious of faith
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absolutes that
have come down to us.
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You know how those men
could have imagined that never.
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We're in a
stressful circumstance
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for the very assumptions
that formed the Constitution.
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But we need to
cling to that idea
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of a separation
of church and state,
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and religion.
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We can work itself out
versus the power as Jesus said,
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the powers of hell
shall not prevail against it.
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If there is faith on this earth
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and Jesus worried
that it would disappear,
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it can take care of itself,
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but let the state decide
that it will either support
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or worse oppose religion.
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And either way, a
great travesty is enacted.
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It's a privilege for all of
us to live in the United States
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where more than most any country
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in modern history,
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the United States is
enshrined a great reverence
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for the practice
of religious faith.
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And it's worth remembering,
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it is enshrined
in the Constitution.
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It is a dynamic of separation.
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And it's so integrally
tied to the very survival
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of this great experiment
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that Abraham
Lincoln so extolled.
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You know
whether it will succeed,
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we need to respect it.
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