The Blessings of Living in a Land of Religious Freedom

Tom Sheppard

7/5/2018

This Sunday (July 8, 2018), I will be giving a short talk on the blessings of living in a land of religious freedom. I will be the concluding speaker in a 70 minute meeting that begins at 1pm. All are welcome. The location is The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at 1601 Cooper Ave, Kannapolis, NC 28081. The remarks below are not the text of my talk.

For Me, Religious Persecution is First a Family Heritage

My ancestors, on my mother's side of the family, suffered persecution for their religion.  According to family tradition, they were run out of the German states for being Mennonites.  From there, they fled to France where they were run out for being Huguenots.

And, when I say, they were run out, what I mean is that they were beaten, raped, robbed of their property, many were tortured and killed.  Those who survived were forcibly pushed out of the country.

After being forced out of France, they came to the British Isles.  Here, the story of my mother's ancestors becomes less tradition, and more history.

"The Rev. James RENWICK, the last Scottish Presbyterian Martyr to be burned at the stake at the Grassmarket in Edinburgh, 1688, was an only child and unmarried.  His tomb is in Edinburgh and he was an early member of this line.  The inscription and epitaph upon the monument in the Greyfriars Churchyard at Edinburgh reads:

JAMES RENWICK

Halt, passenger, take heed what you do see,

This tomb doth shew, for what some men did die.

Here lies interr’d the dust of those who stood

‘Gainst perjury, resisting unto blood:

Adhering to the covenants, and laws

Establishing the same; which was the cause

Their lives were sacrific’d unto the lust

Of Prelatists abjur’d.  Through here their dust

Lies mixt with murderers, and other crew,

Whom justice did justly to death pursue;

But as for these, no cause in them was found

Worthy of death, but only they were sound,

Constant and steadfast, zealous, witnessing,

For the prerogatives of Christ, their King.

Which truths were seal’d by famous Guthrie’s head,

And all along to Mr. Renwick’s blood.

They did endure the wrath of enemies,

Reproaches, torments, deaths and injuries,

But yet they’re these who from such trouble came,

And now triumph in glory with the Lamb.

"Thereafter follows this prose:
            "From May 27, 1661, that the most noble Marquis of Argyle was beheaded, to the 17th February 1688, that Mr. James Renwick suffered, were one way or other murdered and destroyed for the same cause about eighteen thousand, of whom were executed at Edinburgh about an hundred of noblemen, gentlemen, ministers, and others, noble martyrs for Jesus Christ.  The most of them lie here.  (Ref. - Cloud of Witnesses - Wodrow’s, Crookshank’s, and Defoe’s histories of the Church of Scotland, and “Scotch Irish” by Chas. Augustus Hanna, Vol. II, pp. 260-261.)
            "The above monument was first erected by James Currie, merchant, Pentland, and other in 1706; renewed in 1771.
            "Added to the monument at a subsequent date: -

Yes, though the sceptic’s tongue deride

These martyrs who for conscience died -

Though modern history blight their fame,

And sneering courtiers hoot the name

Of men who dared above be free,

Amidst a nation’s slavery; -

Yet long for them the poet’s lyre

Shall wake its notes of heavenly fire;

Their names shall nerve the patriot’s hand

Upraised to save a sinking land;

And piety shall learn to burn

With holier transport’s o’er their urn."

From The Renicks of Greenbrier

Obviously, since Reverend James Renwick was "an only child", my mother is not descended from him.  She is, however, descended from the Rennick (Renwick, Rhinewick) family, and hence, so am I.  This makes the religious martyrdom of the Reverend Renwick, a part of my family history.

For Me, Religious Persecution is Also a Religious Tradition

At the age of 13, I became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, variously known as LDS or Mormons.  When I joined, I had no notion of the history of religious persecution which I was adopting into, but it is extraordinary, the more so because its worst persecutions occurred right here in the United States of America where the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is written expressly to protect freedom of religion.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."

Today, many people mistakenly believe that this amendment was designed to protect government from religion.  The opposite is much more accurate.  It was designed to protect religion from the government.

In the case of The Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints the state of Missouri issued a warrant allowing anyone to kill members of the church.  It was Executive Order 44, called the Extermination Order. It was issued by Governor Lilburn Boggs in October 1838.  It was not repealed until June 1976.  President Polk reviewed the facts of the rape and plunder of church members in both Missouri and Illinois and, while acknowledging that their cause was just, refused to help them by enforcing the laws of the land, because to do so would cost him the votes of those who were plundering the church members.  Finally, President Buchanan ordered the US Army to "pacify" the church members in Utah.  Remember that they already had been working hard to "pacify" the Native American nations, so everyone knew that the President meant for them to kill, destroy and pillage the church and its members.  Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed and the Army was eventually able to peacefully enter the Salt Lake Valley and establish a fort nearby.

Regardless of the fact that the issue was settled peacefully in the end, it is extraordinary to consider that in the nation which stands "as a beacon on a hill" proclaiming liberty to the world, the government declared war and initiated hostilities against a group of its own citizens, based wholly upon the basis of religious bias.

Religious Persecution is the History of Governments

Throughout history, governments have consistently, and repeatedly, adopted one religion or another and turned it into an arm of the state in order to gain greater control over the populace and to forcibly align spiritual salvation with obedience to the dictates of the state, granting those political dictates the semblance of both temporal and eternal powers over both the body and spirit of the people.

Whenever a government has co-opted a church to become the religion of the state, other religions were aggressively persecuted and even exterminated as being inimical to the powers and desires of the political state.  Reverend Renwick was killed because he was a Presbyterian (a protestant) in a time when the state was embracing Episcopalian-ism (another protestant faith) as the official religion with the monarch of England as the supreme religious leader of the British Empire. 

Government use of religion inevitably meant that those with dissenting religious views were almost forced into rebelling and seeking to overthrow the government in order to establish a country where their views could be practiced.

The brilliance of the framers of the Bill of Rights is that they anticipated the despotic push of government into religion and took strong measures to prevent that.  I do not think it is a matter of chance that freedom of religion, speech, the press, assembly and redress are all mentioned together and are the very first of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights as the very first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America.  They knew that these rights are of paramount importance to protect the rights of the people against the potential tyranny of government.

The day before this post we citizens of the United States of America celebrated the signing of The Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.  The truly revolutionary part of The Declaration of Independence lies in the assertion that, governments derive their "just powers from the consent of the governed."  When The Declaration of Independence was published, the governments of all the known world were monarchies.

With a monarchy, all the branches and authority of government are vested in the king or queen.  Anyone within the kingdom exercising authority of any form is only operating under a delegation of authority from the monarch.

In contrast with a monarchy, the authority of the Government of the United States of America is limited to whatever specific authorizations which the people of the United States delegate to the government.  This is why the Tenth Amendment, the last one included in the original Bill of Rights declares that, "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people."  This means that the people, whose consent is the basis of the authority of the government, are actively retaining to themselves all authorities which they have not expressly granted to the federal government or to the government of the each individual state.

Anti-Religion is Becoming Persecution

But, what happens when some of the people decide that they want their religion, or anti-religion, to become the law of the land?  If the government is reordered, either by the passing of laws, the rulings of the courts, or the orders of the Executive (the President), so that the exercise of religion and conscience is made unlawful, that will effectively establish a state religion.  It may be the religion of anti-religion.  Just because it has no houses of worship or ordained clergy, and has as its only accepted doctrine the hatred and oppression of obedience to deity, that does not mean it is not a religion.  In fact, anti-religion is the worship of humanity.

Anti-religion rejects the notion that there is any creature with supernatural or godly powers that is intervening, for good or ill, in human affairs.  Anti-religion utterly rejects the idea that after this life we will be held accountable for our actions in this life, regardless of whether or not they were discovered by our fellow human beings.  Anti-religion generally rejects the notions of absolute right and absolute wrong (evil).

Three Pillars of Anti-Religion

These three points tend to be the three pillars of anti-religion:

1. There is no such thing as god, or any intelligent power outside of nature (nothing supernatural).
2. There is no life beyond the death of the brain and body.
3. There is no absolute right or absolute wrong, absolute good or absolute evil.

On the last point, there is at least one noted anti-religionist (or atheist), who asserts that there are external, universal, and observable criteria which can be used to categorize certain actions as wrong or right.  The avowed atheist Sam Harris in his book The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values makes the case for the existence of absolute right and wrong based upon the unambiguous positive or negative effects of certain actions on humanity, both individually and collectively.  Because of his writings, I have moderate the extent of the third point with the word, "generally."  It is important to understand these three pillars, and why they are a threat, not only to religion, but to humanity.

No Such Thing as God

The rejection of the existence of god, means the rejection of the existence of any higher order of being beyond humanity.  This places humanity at the top of the metaphysical pyramid.  Being the apex of the universe frees humanity from any but self-imposed constraints.  The absence of any being of an higher level of power means that no other being can impose their restrictions on humanity.  So, if humanity decides that there is nothing wrong with murder or theft, then there is no source of opprobrium that can enforce a different view point.  Essentially, the absence of deity puts the intellect of humanity, individually or collectively, in the place of god.  The smartest individual is the most god-like.  And, if you believe that together we are smarter than we are separately, that puts the group as the most god-like being in the universe.

If the group is god, the governments represent the collective will and intelligence of deity.  This is how we move into the realm of Godvernment: Government as God, people looking to government as the source of their spiritual and temporal salvation.

No Life Beyond Death

The second pillar, no existence beyond this mortal life, means that there is no power beyond nature, i.e., the supernatural does not exist.  This denial of the supernatural is essential to anti-religion because the existence of any supernatural power, be it god, ghosts, or the spirits of trees and animals, means that there is some intelligent being which can possibly intervene in the world of nature, either for good or ill and that being is not able to be controlled or exterminated by humanity.  For anti-religion to stand supreme, there can be no powers beyond those of humanity and nature - and humanity believes it can eventually find ways to control all aspects of nature.

No Absolute Right or Wrong

The third pillar, the absence of absolute right and wrong or good and evil, means that humanity decides what is good and what is bad.  We have seen much of this in recent years.  For millennia, with few exceptions, societies deemed homosexual activity to be wrong or evil and religious adherence to be right or good.  In recent years, many societies have removed the stigma on homosexual activities, considering them to be as non-evil as heterosexual activities.  At the same time, some societies have begun to stigmatize religious activity and adherence as anti-social, bad, wrong, or evil behavior because it embodies dissent from the desired view point of those trying to rule the society.  For those who fully embrace Judaeo-Christian traditions, this is a direct fulfillment of the words of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah.

Calling Evil Good and Good Evil

In Chapter 5 of Isaiah is the parable of the vineyard.  In this parable God explains how he took good care of the vineyard and instead of getting good fruit, he got unusable "wild" fruit.  He then goes on to say how the fruit is wild and what the results of this wildness will be.  He notes in verse 20, "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" In verse 21 he goes on, "Woe unto those that are wise in their own eyes, and prudent in their own sight."  In verse 24 he declares their fate, "Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust:"

Godvernment and anti-religion is all about "those who are wise in their own eyes."  If you have no objective standard of measure to gauge your thoughts or conduct, then you are relying wholly upon your own wisdom and if you believe you are doing right, it is no more nor less than being wise in your own eyes, instead of being seen as wise by an absolute, external standard.  That is a much easier standard to measure up to.

The anti-religionists want to make anti-religion the religion of the state.  They will then use the powers of the state to exterminate religion.  They will stigmatize the belief in God and his commandments as anti-social behavior.  Criminal activity is anti-social behavior.  That means religious behavior will become criminalized, not just marginalized.

Religious persecution in the land of the free and the home of the brave is not new, but it is moving toward a much deeper and wider level than has ever before happened in the history of our republic.  It will happen, the only question is will you be on the side of the persecutors or will you be one of those standing up for the freedom of religion and conscience?

Tom Sheppard is a business consultant and coach to small business owners and individuals. He is a recognized author with dozens of titles in business and fiction to his credit. One of his endeavors is to help those who want to see their own book in print. He does this through his trademarked Book Whispering Process (TM). 

The author is not an official spokesperson for any organization or person mentioned herein. (c) 

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