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Bob Meyer: Don’t Be Silenced By The Mythical ‘Wall Of Separation’ · Worldview Matters With David Fiorazo

• 0:00
  Hello, friends. Family in Christ. A very important and misunderstood topic today. We're going to be focusing on the mythical wall, so-called wall of separation of church and state with columnist Bob Meyer. He's in a studio today. That's next.
• 0:18
  Welcome to World View Matters, discussing controversial issues, discerning current events, defending biblical Christianity. No topic, off limits. And now, here's your host, David Virazo.
• 1:08
  And he's known by his opponents as a clever rhetorician. I'll let him explain what that means, who often exposes the fallacies of knee jerk arguments presented in local papers. And he's been writing for RenewAmerica.com. He's got a column there RenewAmerica.com for many years. And he's in studio today. Bob Meyer, welcome to World View Matters. Good to see you, brother.
• 1:33
  I see you, David. Now, always great to be interviewed by a movie star.
• 1:37
  Another life. Yeah, another life. Well, so a very important topic today. You've probably written a lot about this. But before we get into the establishment clause, I want to just mention some other articles you've written.
• 1:51
  Why I can't vote for any modern Democrat. The real reason the elites load Trump. How about this one? This is I've talked about this to abortion on demand, sacrament of the Democrat party, competing religious claims and more and more and more.
• 2:09
  We're going to talk about today why the establishment clause is not affirmative action for secularists. So first, in overview before we dive into your piece, Bob, on why do you think there's so much misunderstanding of this separation of church and state?
• 2:29
  Well, I think first of all, what you get is somebody will chime in about separation of church and state. And then, of course, the astute Christian or conservative will come along and say, well, that statement is nowhere in the Constitution or any formal government document.
• 2:45
  But they kind of miss the point when they say that what they say is true. But the real problem here is that there is a concept of church and state separation enshrined in the first amendment. However, the historical concept of separation of church and state has been morphed to mean something more like like you say affirmative action for secularism.
• 3:10
  Or it's been understood more as an ideological separation between church and state rather than a jurisdictional and functional separation.
• 3:19
  So I want to just quote you from the article. Have you elaborate here? You say given that the free exercise of religion is the very first right enumerated in the Bill of Rights and that the Bill of Rights always restricts the government and not the individual or citizenry.
• 3:40
  Let's stop right there for a moment and recognize the importance of that statement that the Bill of Rights restricts government and not the people, not the individual.
• 3:50
  Yeah, that's very interesting because once again, Congress shall make no law. Well, Congress is the only body that can make laws. And so when this has moved a lot into the school system, we always have these issues come up with some coach wants to pray at midfield and say, well, that's a violation of church and state and all this.
• 4:15
  And I guess the real issue is how this this moved from the very narrow understanding of Congress making no law establishing a religion to all of the sudden anything in government can't have anything to do with a biblical precept.
• 4:32
  I want to quote the article again, a very fascinating point that Justice Joseph story made who wrote the first commentary of the US Constitution in the 19th century.
• 4:45
  And I'm just going to read a part of it, the real object of the first amendment and then he talks about it was to exclude all rivalry among Christian sex, S E C T S and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment.
• 5:06
  Let's pause right there. So in context, the whole idea was the founders didn't want one Christian religion or denomination to be higher than the other or have more power than the other. Is that would that be accurate, Bob?
• 5:23
  It'd be very accurate, you know, the Anglican church dominated everything in the colonial era and they had rules and regulations, any other organization, any other church had to go through them to be licensed.
• 5:36
  They had restrictions, things like, well, if you didn't go to church once a month or something, you could be fine. And that's kind of what they tried to avoid in passing the first amendment, that type of situation in proper church and state alliance.
• 5:52
  How do you respond? And I know we could do a whole podcast on this to someone who might say, well, there should be separation of church in state. You should keep all religion out of the public square. And that's what our founders meant.
• 6:09
  Well, there's no way they could have meant that because you see further along in the article, I do quote Washington. Do you want me to read the.
• 6:17
  Oh, sure, sure. Washington says, and this can be found in Washington's farewell address. I believe it's paragraph 27. I could be wrong about that, but it, but it is in there. And this is what it Washington says of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports in vain.
• 6:41
  And with that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of duties of men and citizens, the mere politician equally with the pious man ought to respect and cherish them.
• 6:57
  The volume could not trace all their connections with private and public Felicity, let it simply be asked, where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation, dessert, the oaths, which are instruments of investigation and courts of justice, and let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.
• 7:23
  Like what you said right after that, you said, I think it's very unlikely that Washington later forgot, you know, what this meant, this language that was adopted of the First Amendment. And all of not all of our founders, but most of them, if they weren't Christians, biblical Christians, they at least had some sort of understanding or support for a creator, a deity and prayer to a higher powers.
• 7:50
  Isn't that correct? Yeah, that's very true. I can't say, you know, we can't say every founder, every key founder was a born again Christian, but all of them saw that there was a connection between religious precept and good government, all every one of them.
• 8:07
  So let's just go back to Thomas Jefferson now, you mentioned him in the article that he clarified his position in an excerpt from his second inaugural address, this was 1805. By the way, wasn't it around, was it 1798 or 1802 when that famous letter of Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association? Isn't that around the time that that letter, I believe 1802.
• 8:32
  That was where, you know, people get this misunderstanding that you need to keep government out of religion, and that wasn't the case at all, we couldn't speak about it, right?
• 8:43
  That's right. Yeah, actually what had happened there is the, the Danbury Baptist were a minority in New England, the Congregational Church dominated there.
• 8:55
  And the Baptists were very concerned that if there was a national religion established that they would be crowded out, so to speak.
• 9:03
  So they essentially sent a letter congratulating Jefferson on his position, and they also agreed with the idea of church and state separation, because for them what it meant was that a minority religion could practice in a place where there was an overwhelming denominational support for other,
• 9:24
  of other denominations. So I'm going to read what he said in this second inaugural address, and I want you to explain in more layman's terms.
• 9:34
  He said, this is Thomas Jefferson, in matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general, i.e. federal government.
• 9:48
  I have therefore undertaken on no occasion to prescribe the religious exercises suited to it, but have left them as the Constitution found them under the direction and discipline of state or church authorities acknowledged by the several religious societies. Please explain that.
• 10:11
  Yeah, during the first administration of Jefferson, he was criticized a lot because, like Washington and Adams before him, he did not issue formal national days of prayer and things like that.
• 10:24
  And so people were saying, well, you know, Jefferson must be an infantil and all that. And what he was, what Jefferson was trying to say is that the jurisdiction of issuing those things in his mind under the Constitution,
• 10:40
  belonged to the states, the individual states, and the religious societies, and that the government should stay out of that. Now Washington and Adams were less strict about that.
• 10:55
  But what he was pointing out is that he felt that there was sort of a wall of separation between the states and the federal government, a principle called federalism.
• 11:07
  Now, when Jefferson was governor of Virginia, he did in fact issue days of prayer and fasting and so forth as governor of the state, but he did not do so as the magistrate of the United States of America.
• 11:26
  And interestingly enough, if we look at the preambles, I used to have a list. I may have it somewhere.
• 11:34
  Of the states.
• 11:35
  We look at the preambles of the states. Yes, we see that God is mentioned in every state preamble, probably up until the time Alaska and Hawaii were brought into the union.
• 11:46
  Wow. And that's a very important point that we very rarely hear, because of course the media won't repeat that truth, that in the preambles of all the states, there was a belief or a shout out to God, Almighty God creator.
• 12:01
  Final question before we have to take a very brief pause, Bob. And by the way, again, friends, the website renewAmerica.com. And you can find Bob's column there.
• 12:11
  He goes by Robert Meyer.
• 12:14
  Did America establish a secular government then, even though they were many of them were believers? And then you answered the question.
• 12:24
  You can elaborate here. You answer the question. It depends on what you mean by the word secular, because if you mean non ecclesiastical, then yes.
• 12:34
  If you mean anti-biblical government, then no, explain that.
• 12:39
  Yeah, exactly. Again, this is one of those things that secularists have sort of jumped on.
• 12:45
  In other words, we did not establish a government that was ruled by clerics. I believe they referred to that as an ecclesiocracy.
• 12:53
  Something like what you have in the Middle East where the government leader is essentially the puppet of the cleric.
• 13:02
  But when I say anti-biblical, no, because we did not say that biblical precept could not in some way influence public policy.
• 13:14
  All right. We're going to take a brief pause. When we come back with Bob Meyer, we can't let this episode end without talking about the misunderstood Johnson amendment.
• 13:26
  You may have heard a lot about, especially when President Trump first campaigned to be the Republican nominee. He was going to appeal or repeal the Johnson amendment.
• 13:35
  We're going to talk about that and more when we come back.
• 13:38
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• 14:09
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• 14:18
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• 14:28
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• 14:41
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• 14:52
  So you brought up something really briefly during the break you reminded me before we get to the Johnson amendment, which is very important to talk about the misunderstanding and how the left is used that as a battering ram for churches to shut up and be silent and keep your church.
• 15:07
  Keep your religion behind closed doors. You mentioned the old testament. Tell us about that.
• 15:12
  Well, you know, frequently people say to you, well, Meyer, you know, if you want a theocracy, go over to the Middle East. I'll pay for your plaintiff. You know, that type of thing.
• 15:22
  But, you know, and even in the old testament, you had a separation of church and state. I mean, it is a biblical idea. Now, if you look at the record, second Chronicles, chapter 26, starting in verse 16, it is regarding King Uzziah.
• 15:39
  And what he did is he went into the temple and burned incest and he was confronted by the chief priest and the priest who said, hey, this doesn't pertain to you. This is not your job. Again, jurisdiction and function is comes out there.
• 15:55
  And he said, and they were in the king. You can't go into the temple and do the duties of priests. That that isn't for you to do. And Uzziah King Uzziah persisted and was struck and down with leprosy as a punishment for that.
• 16:09
  Now, see, even in the Old Testament, there was a distinction between what goes on in the temple, what goes on in the palace. And there were those distinctions. The differences, there was not an ideological separation where God was somehow thrown out of the whole concept of government.
• 16:27
  That's on that last point. And that's almost what a lot of people on the left want. They want God completely thrown out of the conversations. They want to make it all about politics, but keep your morality to yourself.
• 16:40
  But the Bible, you've got to, you cannot separate your faith from your politics. I cannot go, when I go to vote, for example, I can't go into the voting booth and leave Jesus in the car.
• 16:53
  The biblical worldview guides how I see things, policies, government, everything to do with legislation, your thoughts on that.
• 17:04
  Yeah, I complain all the time at how people will try to compartmentalize their lives, you know, they'll say, well, I'm a Christian on a particular day of the week and the other six days of the week, they do things completely contrary to the Christian worldview.
• 17:17
  They're not countenancing in Christian worldview, despite the fact that they make a profession of faith.
• 17:23
  So before we get to, you know, close off the article that we were talking about, the Johnson Amendment.
• 17:31
  So I have a good understanding of this. You probably have an excellent understanding of what happened with Senator at the time, Lyndon Johnson from Texas running for reelection.
• 17:42
  Is it true that there were either anti-communist groups or at least conservative groups non-profits trying to campaign against him and raise awareness about some of his big government ideas? What happened there?
• 17:57
  Yeah, I believe there were two churches in New York that were put newspaper ads against Johnson and then of course Johnson wanted to do a reprisal against that.
• 18:10
  So that's where the whole idea of the pastor cannot speak about anything political came from. That was never something that was ordained by the First Amendment.
• 18:21
  If you go back to the early founding era of the country, you'll see that preachers had sermons on all kinds of issues we would consider quote political nowadays. That was just commonplace.
• 18:34
  And they called them election sermons.
• 18:36
  Yes, they did. I've got a whole book that's entitled election sermons. So if anybody wants to dispute that, that's very easy to disprove.
• 18:43
  So friends, do you see do you see this this change in the voice or I should say lack of voice of the American Christian, the church in America, the pulpit pulpits have been silenced and I wrote a book years ago, the cost of our silence.
• 18:59
  And I did go into the Johnson Amendment there because the way he even passed it from what I remember, they were debating in Texas, they were debating a tax code reform bill or something like that.
• 19:12
  It was a massive bill and he slipped in the Johnson Amendment and it went through it past, but but they were told the pastors were told now you cannot say anything political or endorse a candidate or speak from the pulpit.
• 19:28
  Which was wrong, right? That's correct. Yeah, they threatened them with losing their tax exemption and so forth.
• 19:37
  And the 501 see through that's a whole another topic. And of course, the separation of church and state, the concept guarantees that you don't you are tax exempt.
• 19:47
  So basically friends, we have free speech and I've always said this and now we've got pulpit Sunday, pulpit freedom Sunday where hundreds and hundreds of churches from around the country at this on the same Sunday.
• 19:59
  I think it's October, maybe, but don't quote me on that family research centers behind this and many others. All these pastors are preaching directly political sermons mentioning candidates, talking politics and they're sending their sermons to the IRS.
• 20:15
  And not from my understanding Bob correct me if I'm wrong, not one church has ever had their 501 see three status revoked because of that none none that I know of at all.
• 20:26
  I don't know. And that's just amazing. Yeah, because you know the left would put that out there as a fear tactic. If a church did lose their status for being political quote unquote.
• 20:36
  Yeah, and there tends to be a lot of pressure on pastors not to speak on so called political issues, but I always ask what is the distinction between a spiritual issue and a political issue. I don't see any at all really.
• 20:49
  You made a really good statement right there, really good point. I was just speaking with Roland Warren of Carenet and he wrote a book on, you know, abortion, the alternative to abortion.
• 21:01
  And he makes the case that we unfortunately even the church went along with this we kind of got duped into the idea the faulty idea that abortion is a political issue.
• 21:13
  And we've lost a lot of ground on that. And so preachers and pastors don't want to talk about thinking it's political, but this is a biblical moral issue of life preborn human life and mother's womb.
• 21:27
  Bob, I don't know what gets more moral and spiritual than that.
• 21:32
  I agree with you and I don't know why we haven't seen churches taking a bigger stand on that another issue that really confounded me was when Wisconsin was going to pass the marriage amendment.
• 21:45
  And what really got me is that I drove by the local Unitarian Fellowship and I saw them with a big billboard that said, you know, vote no on this.
• 21:55
  And I thought now if any Christian church put up a sign that said support traditional marriage, they'd be criticized, pilloried saying they were violating the separation of church and state being called hate mongers and all that other stuff.
• 22:09
  They're organizations freely express their views like that and get away with it. Did you say Unitarian? Yes. Okay. So in this context now we need to put air quotes around church.
• 22:21
  When you talk about certain, I mean some of them have gone off the rails of biblical morality, biblical Christianity decades ago, Episcopal.
• 22:30
  So many denominations unfortunately, but let's get back and wrap up these these final thoughts on your article on the establishment clause.
• 22:37
  You say the church represents grace and charity. The state deals with the administration of justice and punishment, which is basically a some summation of Romans 13. Would you care to speak to that?
• 22:51
  And that's what the separation, that's another aspect of the separation right there is the jurisdiction and the function. Okay. The function of the church, as I said, grace, things that pertain to grace and charity.
• 23:05
  The state handles justice, criminal punishment. The church should not be burning people at the stake or doing any other type of corporal punishment for violations.
• 23:17
  The highest thing that the church can do is excommunicate a member who does not listen to reproof. And so when you had that type of amalgamation going on, that's that was improper. And I think there's a quote I've got from James Madison, often used by secularists. And it's this.
• 23:38
  This is during almost 15 centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have it's been its fruits more or less in all places, pride and indolence of the clergy, ignorance and stability of the laity in both superstition, bigotry and persecution.
• 23:56
  Now, when Madison says this, he's speaking in the 18th century and he says 15 centuries of the establishment of Christianity. He's talking about a certain event in Christianity, obviously, Constantine's making Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire, probably under penalty of law.
• 24:20
  So what he's saying, he's not going back and criticizing the doctrines of the apostles or the early church, but saying that when they when they endorsed Christianity and made it obligational, that's when you started running into problems.
• 24:37
  So you link to at the bottom of your article, you link to heritage foundation, there's an article called the mythical wall of separation, how a misused metaphor changed church, state, law, policy and discourse.
• 24:56
  Very important article, but I want to close maybe with the quote from Supreme Court Justice Chief Justice William Rehnquist and have you wrap us up here two and a half minutes left. He said, in by the way, this, this is his descent to a 1985 decision.
• 25:14
  He said, no amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make the errors true. The quote wall of separation between church and state, end quote, is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging.
• 25:37
  It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned end quote, you share your final thoughts in the last two minutes.
• 25:44
  Yeah, in fact, in that descent, Jeffrey versus Wallace, Rehnquist does kind of muse at the fact that the wall of separation metaphor using the words of Thomas Jefferson, he finds that somewhat unusual given the fact that Jefferson himself was in an ambassador ship in Paris, France at the time the Constitution was drafted.
• 26:08
  Now, he had influence on the Constitution through his correspondence with Madison, but Rehnquist found it kind of interesting that they would use Jefferson's words as opposed to anybody who was actually at the convention at the time.
• 26:23
  And that, that would be the, the Jeffrey versus Wallace would be the other link besides Daniel drives box article that David had mentioned.
• 26:32
  You can read both of these. These aren't real lengthy. You can read both of them and less than a half an hour. And if you can master what's written down there, you'll be able to hold your own with any secularists.
• 26:44
  Amen, brother. RenewAmerica.com slash columns slash Meyer, me, why are. And if you want to go look up more of his articles, so important friends, because the left, the Democrats, the socialists, they're going to try to silence us.
• 26:59
  But we should not self censor and silence ourselves by not speaking up in the public square, not speaking about so many important biblical issues.
• 27:09
  And these things matter. They're not quote unquote political Bob Meyer. Thank you for being in studio today. It was fun. So glad to be here and look forward to being back David.
• 27:19
  Yep. It was a great topic. Very important topic friends. Go look up more on this, the so-called separation of church and state. I think that's like the second biggest lie in America, the separation of church and state.
• 27:32
  And I'll let you guess what the first one is. I'll let you know next time. But anyway, God bless you friends. And as always, keep speaking the truth about things that matter.
• 27:49
  You