Ask some people what ‘secularism’ is and the response may be something like ‘oh, that’s just separation of church and state.’ Such a response, however, is terribly naïve.
Secularists don’t just want religion separated from government. They want religion and religious beliefs emphatically rejected and excluded from all social systems. They want religion banned from the public square.
Far too many on the Left today are secularists. They are anti-religion. And, more specifically, they are anti-Catholic.
When those on the Left use the phrase “freedom of worship” they do not mean freedom of religion. What they really mean is “go to church on Sunday if you want to, but keep your religious beliefs to yourself.”
The Left wants us to forget about making “disciples of all nations” (Mathew 28:19). They don’t want us to do as Jesus Christ commands.
As the meme says, “Shut up, he explained.”
When it comes to God’s truths, a secular society rejects them outright. Secularists, tend to be socialists, atheists, and agnostics. Some are even Gnostics. They don’t want to hear what Catholicism or Christianity has to say about morality. They want to decide what is moral and what is not.
Rob Dreher said it fairly succinctly recently: “what the Left is pushing for, and is getting, i[s] an American version of the French policy of laïcité — a hard secularism that pushes religion hard to the margins of public life. The only kind of Christianity that is going to be tolerated is Joe Biden’s kind: the sort that doesn’t contradict anything that secular progressives want.”
Not convinced? Then consider how the Left treats Biden (a “devout Catholic”) compared to how it treated Amy Coney Barrett (a “Catholic extremist”).
Secularism Ramping Up
Three Democrats, representing the Secular Democrats of America, submitted a lengthy document late last year to then President-Elect Joe Biden entitled “Restoring Constitutional Secularism and Patriotic Pluralism in the White House.”
Representatives Jamie Raskin (Democrat-MD) and Jared Huffman (Democrat-CA) submitted the document. Rep. Jerry McNerney (Democrat-CA) endorsed it. The document is 28 pages of hypocrisy and warped thinking.
Right from the start the document attempts to rewrite history and downplay the role Christian beliefs played in our country’s founding. It urges President Biden “to lead our nation on a path that revives the Founders’ vision of religious freedom in our government and promotes a unifying patriotic pluralism—not dogmatic religious chauvinism—in American society.”
But the authors really don’t want true religious freedom. They want a secular government and society. So the hypocrisy is evident right from the start.
The document goes on to say that “A secular government governs on the basis of reason, science, and evidence.” And there you go. Secularism ignores religion and God’s moral truths.
Christian men founded our country as a Christian nation and intended that it be governed as such. The author’s statement conveniently ignores the fact.
Natural law and God’s Moral Laws are the foundation of our government. Our nation’s Founding Fathers made this clear in the Declaration of Independence. In the very first paragraph, they talk about “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.”
The Founding Fathers did not intend that our country should be a secularist nation. Their only intent was that our government should not favor one denomination of Christianity over another.
Just a Snippet
There is a ton of hypocrisy and warped thinking in the Restoring Constitutional Secularism document. It would take a document of equal size to refute all the idiocy. But taking a look at one section may serve to make the point.
On page five the authors say, “. . . taxpayer dollars should not be funneled either to contractors or grantees that discriminate on the basis of religion, or to programs that promote a sectarian agenda, such as private religious schools, crisis pregnancy centers, and abstinence-only sex education” [Italics added].
And there you have it – religion discriminates. And note the use of the word “sectarian.” The word has long had a “Catholic” connotation.
On the very next page the authors say:
“We urge your administration to disincentivize state funding for programs that are not evidence-based and which can cause harm by spreading misinformation, such as crisis pregnancy centers and abstinence-only education programs.”
That’s quite a statement: pro-life crises pregnancy centers and abstinence-only education programs “cause harm by spreading misinformation.” Unbelievable. No doubt they have some junk-science study they can trot out to validate such a bald-faced lie.
The Left’s Playbook
CS writer Steve Smith recently likened secularism to a disease against which we need to develop spiritual herd immunity. But the devil is tutoring the Left. They have an offense already in play for such a defense.
The Left’s game plan is simple – never let up. They are going to constantly bombard us with their irrational, wrong-headed ideas. Developing a spiritual herd immunity to their warped thinking is not going to be easy.
If you say artificial contraception and sex outside of marriage is immoral they will probably just laugh at you. But if you say homosexual “marriage” is immoral you will be soundly shouted down. You will also be shouted down if you say abortion is evil, or men can’t be women and vice versa.
If you call them out loud enough and often enough they’ll try to cancel you. They might even dox you. They’ll say you are homophobic, misogynistic, or transphobic. And if you are white, they may even accuse you of being a hater and insufficiently woke. (Name-calling is childish yet it is one of their favorite tactics.)
And all the time they will continually and constantly spew their warped ideas, without any let-up.
It’s Getting Worse
Unfortunately, these heathens own social media. They also control the educational system, the news media, and the entertainment industry. They are going to keep beating the drum until they have beaten anyone and everyone who disagrees with them into silence.
If you live in Illinois, for instance, and even if you do not live there, you need to get familiar with the “Culturally Responsive Teaching and Leading Standards For All Illinois Educators” rule recently adopted by the Illinois State Board of Education. The Joint Committee on Administrative Rules (JCAR) of the Illinois General Assembly will decide on February 16 whether to officially enact the rule.
This rule mandates that teachers in Illinois must not only adhere to all the progressive secularist relativistic junk being spewed they also have to teach it. As an article at the National Review proclaims, “Step aside, California. Minnesota, hang your head. Illinois is the wokest of all, and what it does will spread.”
Satan is probably very happy about all of this.
Be the Church Militant
There is a line often attributed to Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It has been used a lot in recent years. Its relevance should be obvious by now.
Good, devout Catholics should not let themselves be silenced.
Fortunately, St. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians tells us what we need to do. He tells us not to cower but to stand up and confront immorality and evil.
“[D]raw your strength from the Lord and from his mighty power.
“Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil.
“For our struggle is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the world rulers of this present darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens” [Ephesians 6:10-12].
The secularists are not going to let up. We cannot let up either. Keep telling them that they are wrong. Don’t let yourself be silenced.
12 thoughts on “Satan Wants Us All To Be Secularists”
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Assuming, for the moment, that the author is correct that the founders intended a “Christian society” where the government would not favor one Christian denomination over another (but, apparently, could choose Christians collectively over Jews or any other non-Christians, according to the author), anything other than a secular standard in the public sphere would still be required. The spectrum of “Christian belief” is nearly (if not equally) as broad as those of Christians and non-Christian faiths. How could any other public sphere standard accommodate liberal Catholics, Unitarians, Episcopalians, etc., on the one hand and traditionalist Catholics, Southern Baptists, evangelicals, etc., on the other? My “natural law” probably is not exactly the same as your “natural law.” Calling something a universal standard doesn’t make it one. Not by any means.
John, the Founding Fathers did intend a Christian society. This is evident from the writings (letters, books) of the founders. Here are just two salient quotes.
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams, 11 October 1798
“Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” — George Washington (Farewell Address, 1796)
Additionally, the founders did not envision a strong federal government riding roughshod over the people or the states, as James Madison notes in the Federalist Papers #45;
“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”
Actually secularism in its dictionary meaning DOES simply mean separation of church and state. But it is currently MISused to mean imposing Christophobic atheism as the state religion. This goes far beyond the French compromise of laicite.
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Gene,
Just food for thought. The Founders were divided on religion and its sphere of influence, just as we are today. It’s one of the recurring controversies of US History.
“The government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.”
—John Adams
Thomas Jefferson in an April 11, 1823, letter to John Adams:
The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus by the Supreme Being in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter. … But we may hope that the dawn of reason and freedom of thought in these United States will do away with all this artificial scaffolding….
JoeJoe, no, the Founders were NOT divided on religion and its influence. This is a modern day notion that has been spread in our ‘government schools’ for the last 50 years by secularist progressives in an attempt to make us a secular nation.
Your quote is wrongly attributed AND taken out of context! Adams did not say or write that. It was Adams’ Secretary of War James McHenry who wrote that in a letter to Secretary of the Treasury Oliver Wolcott, Jr. protesting that statement in the Treaty of Tripoli. Here’s the compete statement:
“The Senate, my good friend, and I said so at the time, ought never to have ratified the treaty alluded to, with the declaration that ‘the government of the United States, is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.’ What else is it founded on? This act always appeared to me like trampling upon the cross.”
Regarding Jefferson, his views on religion shifted as he grew older, as his letter to Adams shows. Note the date – it was written when he was 80 years old. He was a still a firm Theist but by then he had come to reject the Divinity of Jesus Christ.
The Secular Democrats of America have submitted a 28 page document listing the agenda for the new administration.
The full pdf and an article is on the link below.
I believe this is a shot over our bow.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/mercercountyoutlook.net/2020/12/17/secular-democrats-of-america-urges-biden-harris-administration-to-restore-separation-of-church-and-state/amp/
Hey Gene–Well done. You nailed it with this piece. Way to go
Thank you Larry.
Dear Gene,
This is a timely and cogent analysis.
I grew up in Southern England in the 1970s in an envivonment of polite, ethical fudge.
Fence-sitting on moral matters was easy and it was hard to find good right answers or indeed any person happy to talk about truth . The focus was on “niceness” and “manners”
I’ve seen the wriggle-room shrink steadily over the past three decades and especialy over the past year.
Powerful people are now making a bonfire of our civil liberties and each one of us is being forced inexorably towards deciding whether we join them in stoking the fire and feeding the flames, whether we cheer them on , or at least hold their coats and look the other way or whether we challenge them and try and stop them.
Not a comfortable moment, especially when so few people now seem to care about what is true and so many desperately even violently cling to a shiny, brittle , false perspective which casts the iconoclasts as heros and anyone who raises questions as heretics who must be silenced. However, as Christians we have had few comfortable moments in our history. I’ve just been looking at the trailer for Ben-Hur.
Thank you for your article and for your wake up call.
Going with the current flow is sending us straight over the waterfall and we desperately need to paddle against the stream for our own sakes and for that of our children.
Any way, I’ve no doubt that it is what Our Lord wants us to do.
Bless you,
Karen in Cambridge, UK
Thank Karen. Dóminus vobíscum.