Beware The False Apostles of “Americanism” Part One
BEWARE OF THE SPECIOUS CLAIM that America was founded by Christian men on Christian principles. The claim has long been touted by ideologues men (and women) who are in the business of falsifying information to suit their “noble” agenda. Their agenda includes other similar unsubstantiated and false claims made about the Catholic church.
These men and women (primarily Christian ideologues who correlate Christianity with the United States, capitalism, and the constitution) seem to have no problem distorting, changing, and twisting the Church’s sacred documents just as they mangle and pervert American historic documents so that they can present an untrue picture, a picture that matches their distorted script about God, history, current events and even the end of the world and a supposed pre-tribulation rapture.
False prophets such as these have difficulty distinguishing their religion from their politics. Somewhere along the line they conceived the idea that America is the “light of the world”, a nation with a God-given destiny to establish a “New Order of the Ages” or as it says on the nation’s currency, “Novus ordo seclorum”. Men such as these place their political philosophy in front of their moral and spiritual theology. Then disguised as disciples of Christ, they attempt to foist their false political and messianic agenda on the world in the name of Christ. They are so convinced by the righteousness of their cause that they are willing to distort the truth in order to advance their highly cherished but fallacious world views.
Somehow, they seem to think that it is the will of God, the Supreme Law Maker and Omnipotent Ruler of the Universe, that Americans should draft laws without Him, that He endorses the separation of church and state whereby He is shut out of the political, economic and social arenas, effectively denied a voice in the public affairs of the nation leaving it to elected officials to promulgate their own secular-statutory laws in disregard of the divine law given by God to mankind in both the Old and New Testaments.
Almost every American man, woman, and child has accepted this idea (the secularization of the state and promulgation of man-made laws rooted in the supposed sovereignty of the people rather than in the sovereignty of God). Popular sovereignty and the separation of church and state are liberal political slogans that have become sacred American dogma. Neoconservative politicians, who give requisite lip service to Christ, act like it is their sacrosanct duty to spread political, economic and social “Liberalism” aboard as if it were derived from God, when in fact, on many points, “Americanism” is antithetical to the laws given by God to govern His people – antithetical and deadly.
The ultimate consequence of this American dogma practically speaking (that is not theoretically, but practically, what in fact has, and is taking place) is the denial that the Gospel and the Church’s social teaching, (drawn from it) have any applicability in the broader political, social, and economic realm. These broad public realms were declared off-limits to the Church. As a result of the Framers privatization of religion, these realms have slowly become secularized and ultimately dehumanized “structures of sin” that manifest a “culture of death“ (Pope John Paul II ” (Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, 36-37-38-39-40).
It is the exclusion of God from the public forum and the corollary rejection of Divine Law, inherent in the system established by the Framers, that are the root causes of the problems that the church has condemned as “Americanism”.
By portraying the Founding Fathers as Christian men who bequeathed the nation a Christian Constitution, and then further insisting that it be treated as a sacred document, Americans have mistakenly replaced Divine Authority with human authority and elevated a secular man-made law over and above God-given Divine Law. Knowingly or not, we have exiled the omniscient and omnipresent God from the America political playing field and in the process institutionalized secular rule. This mistake is perpetuated by insisting that Founding Fathers, the “wise” and “virtuous” men who gave us a sacred Constitution, be continually placed on sacerdotal pedestals – including, wherever possible, church pedestals – when in fact, all they left us with is a secular Constitution subject to the whim of the “people” and to be freely interpreted by any political ideology that might suit the Justices. As long as the Founding Fathers are revered above the saints and the prophets or somehow judged to be equal in stature to them, we will continue to perpetuate the polysemous and ambiguous secular and philosophical ideas on which they founded this nation.
Love of country and patriotism are splendid assets; however, when people raise the Constitution with one hand and tout the bible in the other claiming they are both sacred documents from God, beware “Americanism”. Such people, in the guise of patriotism are often misguided and wayward “nationalists.”
Pope Leo XIII addressed these concerns in his encyclical Testem Benevolentiae Nostraeto in which he condemned several false ideas that Catholic prelates were introducing to the church in America; thereby slowly transforming her into an institution governed by, and therefore subject to, the same secular and democratic ideas that the United States government was founded upon, ideas such as majority rule, the cherishing of practical action and social work over prayer and contemplation, popular sovereignty, and the separation of church and state and a deficient idea of the “natural law”. Pope Leo was, in effect, attempting to protect the church from the false prophets of Americanism; these were the men (and women) who had blindly subordinated their faith to their politics, and were bringing the latter into the church rather than the former into the latter.
Due to the increased secularization of American education, virtue was increasingly understood as a civic character trait (something very different than that taught by Aristotle, Aquinas, and Doctors of the Church) manifest in utilitarian excellence and the ability to achieve practical results strengthened by a democratic character whereby tolerance is turned into false-liberty increasing characterized by nihilism, skepticism, and an ever increasing acceptance of moral relativity as logical outgrowths of Dewey’s utilitarian philosophy and disdain for Christian ideas.
“There is (he said) no God and there is no soul. Hence, there is no need for the props of traditional (Christian) religion. With dogma and creed excluded, then immutable truth is dead and buried. There is no room for fixed law or permanent moral absolutes” (John Dewey – The Legacy).
John Dewey was made the President of the National Education Association, which facilitated the ideals and liberal values of the new secular government, which were slowly but inevitably incorporated into the curricula of newly created public schools until the privatized religious and moral sphere morphed with and became increasingly congruent with the secular version of morality introduced in the public sphere.
According to Dewey and his disciples who gained control of the public school system:
“The behavioral sciences are providing new natural explanations of phenomena so extraordinary that once their supernatural origin was, so to say, the natural explanation.”
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“Geological discoveries …have displaced Creation myths which once bulked large.” And
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“The social sciences have provided a “radically different version of the historic events and personages upon which Christian religions have built” (John Dewey, A Common Faith, Yale University Press, 1934, pg 84).
Making progress on all these fronts vis a vis Christianity Dewey, as early as 1908, was able to superciliously proclaim that the new civic religion of America was replacing the Christian religion:
“Our schools … are performing an infinitely significant religious work. They are promoting the social unity out of which in the end genuine religious unity must grow. …dogmatic beliefs (articles of Christian faith)…we see disappearing…. It is the part of men to… work for the transformation of all practical instrumentalities of education till they are in harmony with these (above) ideas” (John Dewey (1908) The Hibbert Journal, Dennis L. Cuddy, Ph.D. Chronology of Education, pg. 11.).
The secular “experiment” undertaken by the Framers in 1787 bore its penultimate fruit in 1933, when John Dewey and a group of leading American intellectuals signed the “Humanist Manifesto”, which brought the slowly developing secular program into plain view; listed below are its more salient points:
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Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created.
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Man is a part of nature and that has emerged as the result of a continuous process.
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The traditional dualism of mind and body must be rejected.
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The nature of the universe depicted by modern science makes unacceptable any supernatural or cosmic guarantees of human values.
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Man is at last becoming aware that he alone is responsible for the realization of the world of his dreams, that he has within himself the power of its achievement.
Educational leaders such as John Dewey set the nation’s schools on a secular path on which liberal ideas (and more developed dogmas) in the guise of civic virtue were to replace long held sacred beliefs. After successful implementation throughout the nation, it was America’s God-given task to carry these dogmas throughout the world.
Students therefore imbibed large droughts of “Manifest Destiny”, a toxic brew served up in civics classes throughout the nation, a brew so intoxicating that it was preached from church pulpits thereby successfully giving birth to a new civic-religion containing doctrines that in many ways stood in opposition to the doctrines given them by Jesus Christ. Inebriated and pumped with missionary zeal and love of country, they welcomed ideas about exceptionalism and zealously manned the ramparts when their teachers told them that it was their sacred duty to spread Americanism abroad. They were so pumped with love of country, with its “Manifest destiny” that they failed to see the blasphemy in their newly acquired views, views that presented America as the “Light of the World” and the “City set on a Hilltop” ordained by God to lead the nation of the world to freedom.
This is nothing but political hype repeated by zealous nationalists, men and women who place the Constitution on a pedestal along with the Holy Bible and then proceed to enthusiastically foist their erroneous political ideas on the rest of mankind; thereby zealously enslaving the world in the name of liberalism while claiming to set it free.
It was Jesus Christ, not the American government, that died to make men free; but the Framers had left Him out of the Constitution, had left any mention of God whatsoever out of the Constitution, and Dewey scornfully saw to it that He was excluded from the public schools, which became the vehicles for promoting new and false secular ideas about liberty. Nice as the pursuit of liberty might sound, no government can advance the cause of liberty without Him and especially without the Church that He commissioned for this purpose, viz., to set all men free (John 8:36). Jesus is the way and the truth and the life, there is no other name under heaven by which men are saved; yet the Constitution demands that He remain out of the state’s business.
A secular government can achieve nothing (truly) good for man without God (John 15:5); yet they demand the constitutional right to do everything without Him. When Christians put the Framers on a Sacred Pedestal, equate the Constitution with the Bible, and then support foreign policy more than they do Christian missionaries, we have a problem.
“Unless the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it. Unless the Lord keep the city, he watcheth in vain that keepeth it” (Psalm 127:1).
When Benjamin Franklin proposed that the delegates assembled to draft the Constitution pray before they continued to work, 51 of the 55 delegates voted against the proposal. On June 28, 1787, Franklin registered a plea to begin each day with prayer to the “Father of Lights”. A simple and sane request made to a group of supposedly Christian men ended up in an overwhelming rejection. According to Franklin himself, 51 of the supposed Christian delegates did not think prayer necessary. In his own words:
“With the exception of 3 or 4, most thought prayers unnecessary.” (Ferrand, Records of the Federal Convention of 1787, rev. ed., Vol. 1, p. 452.)
The Lord either builds the house or He doesn’t; we either cooperate with Him or we build a city without Him, the “city of man” rather than the “City of God.” Are the words of Psalm 127 just empty words or are they words of wisdom; if they are wisdom than we have acted like fools—it is clear that the Lord did not build the American house, nor was he, according to John Adams, even consulted.
“It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service (the writing of the constitution) had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven…it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived by the use of reason and the senses (not faith and the bible)…Thirteen governments founded on the natural (versus supernatural) authority of the people alone” (John Adams, “A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” (1788).
The fact is that the “God of Nature”, the god known by “reason” was the god of the leading Founders (Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Franklin et al). They preferred the god of nature to Jesus Christ and His Bride, the Church, whom He divinely established to “feed His sheep and to shepherd His lambs” and to “teach all nations” in the name of the Holy Trinity. No, they preferred reason and reason’s god, the “God of Nature.” Adams and Jefferson both boasted of this lamentable fact:
“The question before the human race is, Whether the God of nature (the Deist, Masonic, Epicurean and Gnostic god) Shall govern the World by his own laws, or Whether Priests and Kings Shall rule it by fictitious Miracles? Or, in other Words, whether Authority is originally in the People? or whether it has descended for 1800 Years in a Succession of Popes and Bishops, or brought down from Heaven by the holy Ghost in the form of a Dove, in a Phyal of holy Oil” (John Adams)?[i]
No, the Lord who gave the world His Divine Law (old and new) was not consulted when the “Founders” established their own laws without Him; He was purposefully and admittedly ignored. Despite the fact that America was a nation of Christians, Jesus Christ is not mentioned one time in our nation’s supreme document[ii]. Consistent with this American commitment to the “God of Nature” is the equally irreverent privatization of the Church under the guise of doing Her and all Americans a big favor. In other words, Christ was “kicked out” and the deed was conducted with cunning arrogance.
Pope Pius XI recognized the absurdity of this kind of social and political arrogance in his encyclical, Quas Primas (1925) in which he quoted the Prophet Daniel who foretold the universal kingdom founded by Christ. If His kingdom is universal and respected by Christian men, it is to be expected that such men would enshrine it as a beacon for the nation rather than relegate it to the private sphere unsupported by laws, tax dollars, public education, statue or ordinance. Christ established a kingdom to stand forever, and the Framers were intent on building their own without Him.
“The kingdom that the God of heaven shall found, ‘shall never be destroyed, and shall stand forever” (Daniel 2:44).
Pope Pius reminds us that after the resurrection, Jesus solemnly affirmed his omnipotence and conveyed His power and authority to His Church[iii]. He did not confer divine power on any secular nation, nor did He direct any nation to be a “City on a Hilltop” or a “Light to the World”. Those are things He delegated exclusively to His Church (Matthew 5:14) to whom He also delegated His own authority and power, something the Founding Fathers had a real difficult time understanding and respecting.
“…when giving to his Apostles the mission of teaching and baptizing all nations he took the opportunity to call himself king, conforming the title publicly, and solemnly proclaiming that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth.”
If, as Daniel foresaw, Christ established a kingdom that will never be destroyed and that will stand forever, why did we exclude Him, why did Jefferson and Adams believe that the Church established by Christ was suffering from a “mortal wound” and would soon die?
“Cabalistic Christianity, which is catholic (sic) Christianity, and which has prevailed for 1,500 years, has received a mortal wound, of which the monster must finally die. Yet so strong is his constitution, that he may endure for centuries before he expires” (John Adams, (July 16, 1814) Letter to Thomas Jefferson).
Obviously, many of these men were out of the spiritual loop. They excluded Christ because they envisioned America as His new church, his new kingdom and empire and themselves as a new priesthood. The new nation was to be governed exclusively by them and not by Catholic priests and Protestant clergy, against whom they had vowed “eternal” hostility“.
“The clergy…believe that any portion of power confided to me [as President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And they believe rightly: I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man” (Letter of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Benjamin Rush, September 23, 1800)
John Adams referred to the Protestant ministers as “yahoos” the great enemies of “free inquiry” who should be endured no longer.
“And ever since the Reformation, when or where has existed a Protestant or dissenting sect who would tolerate A FREE INQUIRY (Adams’ own emphasis)? The blackest billingsgate, the most ungentlemanly insolence, the most yahooish brutality, is patiently endured, countenanced, propagated, and applauded.”[iv]
Jefferson concurred, the Christian clergy are:
“… the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.”[v]
Catholic priests and Protestant clergy were the great deceivers, the tyrants over the minds of men whom Jefferson had sworn upon the altar of God to eradicate:
The Framers must have thought very highly of themselves. Likewise, Americans who believe the “Christian” myths about them probably believe themselves to be very special people, although more and more people around the world are having difficulty seeing it.
Christ’s kingdom is not of this world – that is, it is not founded on anyone’s political power; it is conveyed fully to His Church; the Church that our “Founders” excluded from public life and left to fend for itself without a dime for His cause and without any public show of support either from the schools from which He we also excluded or from the public dais from which He was forbidden. This was, and is, certainly a funny way for a “Christian nation” to treat its King, an odd way to reverence the one whom you claim to serve.
If the Framers in the name of reason and reason’s god (the “God of Nature”, on whom they built the new nation) removed Christ from the public arena and were at war with the Christian clergy (the so-called “Antichrist”)”, we can be quite sure who the “God of Nature” is and who the men that profess loyalty to him are. How can any authentic Christian clergyman claim that America is a holy nation founded by men who loved Jesus and therefore established a Christian foundation? The fact is (beside clergy who are just ignorant “blind guides”), men who stridently profess such things in the name of Christ are themselves enemies of Christ, dispensational bigots who have no problem forging documents and distorting facts to push their agenda and catch people unawares in the idolatrous trap of “Americanism”.
One of America’s unsung founders was Elias Boudinot. Boudinot was a president of the Continental Congress, a United States Congressman and from 1795 to 1805 he was the director of the U.S. Mint.
Boudinot was alarmed by the disregard for Christian principles by many leaders of the new American government;
“But has not America greatly departed from her original (17th century) principles, and left her first love? Has she not also many amongst her chief citizens, of every party, who have forsaken the God of their fathers, and to whom the spirit may justly be supposed to say, “ye hold doctrines which I hate, repent, or else I will come unto you quickly, and will fight against you with the sword of my mouth.”[vii]
The fact is, the foremost founders were not Christians. The leading lights among them hated both the Trinity and the Church established by Jesus Christ. The current successors of these men who claim to be Christian ministers, ministers who tell us that the Founders were Christian, and that the Constitution is a Christian document, are wolves in sheep’s clothing (Matt 7:15). Many are deceiving ministers who dress in sheep’s clothing; that is, in lay garb rather than clerical garb (because they have like Jefferson and Adams rejected the clergy and set themselves up as guides). Priests do not wear sheep’s clothing, i.e, the clothing of the flock they shepherd. They wear clerical garb. Wolves dressed in sheep’s clothing are lay ministers who wear business attire rather than ecclesial or liturgical attire. The truth is that these so-called Christian-American zealots do not have Jesus Christ for their God or the Church for their Mother; they have no king but Caesar; that is, their allegiance is to the Republic before it is to the Church, even though they claim to be minsters of Christ.
Not all who claim allegiance to Christ have allegiance to Christ, but only those who do the will of his Father.
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name? Did we not drive out demons in your name? Did we not do mighty deeds in your name?’ Then I will declare to them solemnly, ‘I never knew you.* Depart from me, you evildoers (Matt 7: 21-23).
Pope Saint Pius X saw threw the charade,
“We must repeat with the utmost energy in these times of social and intellectual anarchy when everyone takes it upon himself to teach as a teacher and lawmaker – the City cannot be built otherwise than as God has built it; society cannot be setup unless the Church lays the foundations and supervises the work; no, civilization is not something yet to be found, nor is the New City to be built on hazy notions; it has been in existence and still is: it is Christian civilization….It has only to be set up and restored continually against the unremitting attacks of insane dreamers, rebels and miscreants.” (St. Pope Pius X, Notre Charge Apostolique, April 15, 1910).
Because many of these self-styled “pastors” are “miscreants”, “rebels” and “dreamers”, it should come as no surprise that many so-called ministers, men who are supposed to be lovers of the truth and “ambassadors” of Jesus Christ, the way and the truth and the life”, seem to have no problem telling a lie to gain fame or to make a buck, or worse, in order to advance an agenda that makes them guilty of that which they accuse others, viz.,being unchristian.
The truth is, many of the so-called conservative fundamentalists and dispensationalists ministers who claim that “liberals” are distorting the facts about the Christian roots of American government are the real ones that are doing the distorting; their scholarship is often so offensive that it makes an honest man blush and then (as will be shown in the follow-up article) so incensed that they move into action to expose its falsity). The output of Christian nationalists has become legion. Perhaps you have seen their websites, or read their books and media tracts claiming that the Unites States Constitution was written by stalwart Christian men totally committed to Christ and the building of a Christian nation.
What many of their readers are unaware of is that many of the quotes they use to defend their claims are fabricated, misunderstood, or misrepresented.
End Part One:
Go to Part Two