By Marshall Harris
This is not a sermon, not a speech, not a lecture. There is a compulsion for just an ordinary and aging World War II veteran with limited years left to speak to America about our Judeo-Christian heritage and what is happening to it. If you are interested, please read on. If not, you will save about 15 minutes of your time by moving on to something else.
Our nation will forever mourn the loss of the children and adults whose lives were cut short by the senseless act that took place at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. This writing does not pretend to have an explanation or a solution to that terrible atrocity, or any other of the senseless attacks on our nation’s schools in recent years.
Some would ask, “Where was God when that terrible assault on small children was taking place?” Oh, if we could only answer that question. When that question came up, the first thought was that our Supreme Court system locked God out of our schools 68 years ago by ruling against American history and Judeo-Christian religious principles and faith. This decision was called Everson vs Board of Education. This was handed to the Supreme Court by the ACLU. In a 5 to 4 vote, one man threw out nearly 200 years of Judeo-Christian and religious principles and faith. In that decision, the very liberal Justice Hugo Black, quoted the phrase, “There should be a wall of separation between church and state.”
It was in 1947, just after sixteen million of us came home from the Second World War. We fought a war that had placed everything America stood for in jeopardy. Those millions of American military, with 26 Allied Nations, shed blood in every country and Pacific island, where the tentacles of evil had reached Germany, Italy, and Japan. Over 550,000 of our military paid the ultimate price of war in that conflict and were buried in almost every country where the fighting took place. Many of those that sacrificed their lives are spending eternity in a watery grave.
We were fighting for the preservation of America’s religious principles, for the American flag, that silent sentinel of freedom, the soul of our nation and the inalienable gift from our maker, God, the gift of freedom and individual rights, including those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The Everson decision, handed down by the Supreme Court, started a landslide of restrictions and ushered in this un-Godly immorality that we see today.
What you have read thus far is only a background of information. Now let’s talk about the total negative effect that imaginary “wall of separation” has had on America, words that do not appear in our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, amendments or articles.
Winston Churchill once said “An untruth or outright lie will travel the world while truth is still home putting on his boots.”
Since the Everson ruling:
• The Ten Commandments have been removed from any place in our schools
• School prayer is basically declared as unconstitutional
• It is unconstitutional for any student to arrive early, forming a prayer group
• It is unconstitutional for a Board of Education to use or refer to the word “God” in any of its official writings
• If a child in school asks his or her teacher “whose birthday are we celebrating at Christmas time?” she dare not answer and the question is unconstitutional
• School graduation ceremonies are constitutionally prohibited from saying an opening and closing prayer. (Just think of this one folks, those students have spent 12 years in the education process. They have worked hard and accomplished a great deal. Now, we as a nation are sending them into the world of commerce or further education with not one word about our creator or any degree of spiritual uplift.)
Please think this over, if you will. This should make your skin crawl as there have been nearly 500 cases against religious expression since the Everson decision in 1947.
It seems to be clearly evident, an opinion shared by millions of Americans, that the Everson decision in 1947 had beyond a doubt, changed the way our Nation regards the relationship between church and state. The “wall of separation” is a figment of one’s imagination as it does not appear anywhere in our founding fathers writings.
A short statement by one of our founding fathers poses an important question for America to ponder.
John Quincy Adams stated, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was that it united in one indissoluble bond, the principles of Christianity and the principles of civil government.”
“Where was God when that heinous attack was taking place in Newton, CT?” The Supreme Court locked God out of our American schools in 1947. The answer may come to us all with God’s help through prayer and action.
My question is this… Which generation of Americans, free Americans, will throw down the gauntlet to challenge this ungodly trend in our nation? Will we ever have the courage and conviction to overturn such rulings?
Marshall E. Harris
Former U.S. Marine
WWII Survivor & the Battle of Iwo Jima