The chief organizer of so-called “pastor policy briefings” in support of Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s re-election bid in 2005 is now calling on Congress to enact legislation “reestablishing the Bible in public schools.” In an email to recipients on his American Renewal Project list today, David Lane calls for congressional legislation reversing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling against state-sponsored prayer and devotional Bible study in public schools. That “foolish” ruling, he writes, “gave control of education to the secularists, who have imposed their values, their views, their politics, and their laws on America’s Christian heritage and Christian culture.”
Lane served as the executive director of the Texas Restoration Project in 2005. His organization, funded with $1.3 million in donations from major Perry campaign donors, hosted six “pastor policy briefings” in Austin, Houston, Dallas and San Antonio that year. Thousands of pastors and their spouses got free hotel lodging and meals so they could hear Gov. Perry and his political appointees and supporters give speeches in the run-up to Perry’s 2006 re-election campaign. The not-so-subtle message to pastors was to return home and essentially turn their congregations into parts of the governor’s re-election campaign. They were also encouraged to support a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Texas. Voters approved that amendment in the fall of 2005.
Lane has organized similar pastor gatherings in presidential election battleground states around the country, with each of the gatherings featuring speeches by selected Republican politicians like former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Pseudo-historian David Barton, head of the Texas-based organization WallBuilders, and other religious-right leaders have also spoken at those events. The umbrella organization American Renewal Project, which Lane runs, has been facilitating the events.
All of those events, including Gov. Perry’s 2011 prayer extravaganza at Reliant Stadium in Houston that Lane helped organize, have contributed to a massive list of pastor email addresses from around the country. Lane’s periodic messages to the pastors on that list promote a militant vision of a Christian America — a narrow and deeply politicized vision not shared by many mainstream Christians, other people of faith and, of course, nonbelievers.
In his email today, Lane promotes public school Bible study as a way to reverse what he sees as America’s decline since the Supreme Court’s 1963 ruling (emphasis in original):
The false gods of multiculturalism, political correctness and secularism have produced: red ink as far as the eye can see, homosexuals praying at the Inauguration, 60M babies killed in the womb, the U.S. Supreme Court imposing homosexual marriage on America…judgment is on us; and like Israel, “The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, so that He sold them into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the sons of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim eight years….”. Judges 3:7-8
You see this, right? The “adversary” of a Christian nation disconnected the Bible and prayer — the tie-in to God — from public education and America’s children in 1963.
Reestablishing the Bible in public schools is a first step toward regaining our Christian heritage and restoring a Christian culture. God will defend himself.
Lane then asks for help in finding “10 Congressmen who will sponsor a bill that calls for the return of the Bible, as a component to the curriculum, in public schools.”
This isn’t a call for an academic study of the Bible’s influence in history and literature, which the courts have said is constitutionally permissible in public schools. Lane’s purpose clearly is evangelical and political in nature:
America — having exalted and deified the false gods of multiculturalism, political correctness and secularism — is ripe for the taking. A pagan prostitute with an ounce of faith believed God and it was accounted to her for righteousness. Rahab surrounded by a “hostile and intimidating environment”, a perverse worldview imposed by a secular society, could see nothing with her eyes which would indicate the fall…she stood for the unseen against the seen, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
Will a Gideon or Rahab the Harlot please stand.
Texas, of course, already has plenty of experience with Bible courses that turn public school classrooms into Sunday school classrooms. Lane wants to see Congress essentially mandate the same experience in schools across the country.
Lane’s full email is after the jump.
Subject line: America was founded by Christians
“The most cruel war which God can make with men in this life is to leave them without that war which he came to bring.” Blaise Pascal
It’s easily defended that America was founded by Christians, “for the advancement of the Christian faith.“ Mayflower Compact
In the forward of The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States by Historian Benjamin F. Morris (1864) — Dr. Archie P. Jones writes, “Our forefathers in faith did not retreat from involvement in society and politics. They did not turn civil government, the making, enforcement, and adjudication of laws, over to Satan and those who serve him. They did not surrender the ministry of civil government to those who are in rebellion against God. Instead, they sought to base civil government and law upon the truth. They understood that God is the Lord of history who rules the lives of nations by His divine providence, and that He is in authority over our nation as well over all others. They knew that our nation’s civil government and law must be based upon God’s laws and principles of justice if we are to enjoy His blessings upon our land and people.”
“As M. Stanton Evans has pointed out in his important work, The Theme Is Freedom, it was Christianity — not paganism, “religious neutrality”, or secularism — which produced freedom and justice in the West and in America.”
How did America lose its Judeo Christian heritage, and now the by-product — a Christian culture?
Bill Bennett rightly states, “…the two essential questions Plato posed as: Who teaches the children, and what do we teach them?”
The foolish U.S. Supreme Court ruling in 1963 — removing prayer and the Bible from public schools on an 8-1 vote — provoked prophetic, lone dissenting U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart to thunder, “It led not to true neutrality with respect to religion, but to the establishment of a religion of secularism.”, and gave control of education to the secularists, who have imposed their values, their views, their politics, and their laws on America’s Christian heritage and Christian culture.
The false gods of multiculturalism, political correctness and secularism have produced: red ink as far as the eye can see, homosexuals praying at the Inauguration, 60M babies killed in the womb, the U.S. Supreme Court imposing homosexual marriage on America…judgment is on us; and like Israel, “The sons of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and forgot the LORD their God and served the Baals and the Asheroth. Then the anger of the LORD was kindled against Israel, so that He sold them into the hands of Cushan-rishathaim king of Mesopotamia; and the sons of Israel served Cushan-rishathaim eight years….”. Judges 3:7-8
You see this, right? The “adversary” of a Christian nation disconnected the Bible and prayer — the tie-in to God — from public education and America’s children in 1963.
Reestablishing the Bible in public schools is a first step toward regaining our Christian heritage and restoring a Christian culture. God will defend himself.
Proverbs 17:11, “An evil person fosters only rebellion, but a cruel messenger is sent against him.” Dr. Michael V. Fox, Proverbs Commentary, “The ‘messenger’ sent against the rebel may be human or angelic. Some would have it both ways. Sa’adia says that if a man rebels against the king, a human messenger is sent to punish him. If he rebels against God’s word, punitive angels are dispatched (Psalm 78:49; Ezekiel 9:2; etc…). It is possible that the punishment is executed by angels, because God himself, as this socially conservative book sees it, defends the political order, if it is just.”
Can we find 10 Congressmen who will sponsor a bill that calls for the return of the Bible, as a component to the curriculum, in public schools? We then go into each Congressional District when the Congressman is home and — with the local pastors, ladies and men from the church — visit with him asking him to vote to restore the Bible in public schools. If he will not we will replace the Congressman with someone who understands the role that the Bible played in the founding of this nation, and one that is willing to restore it to its proper place in the education of future leaders.
America — having exalted and deified the false gods of multiculturalism, political correctness and secularism — is ripe for the taking. A pagan prostitute with an ounce of faith believed God and it was accounted to her for righteousness. Rahab surrounded by a “hostile and intimidating environment”, a perverse worldview imposed by a secular society, could see nothing with her eyes which would indicate the fall…she stood for the unseen against the seen, “Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God.”
Will a Gideon or Rahab the Harlot please stand.
David Lane
American Renewal Project
How can a politician be so behind the times? Seems that if we allowed the Bible in public schools, we would also have to make time for the Koran.
Ew
Jerk, Opportunist, Nit-Wit
Idiots!
Well, I guess the question as to who has a “perverse worldview” is up for debate.
Can we teach that controversy in public schools?
That message sounds so much like other things I have heard. Now where was that? Where was that? Oh, yeah:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3eTSbC3neA
Let me see if I understand, David Lane is upset that secularists have imposed their values, views, politics and law on public schools. Therefore, Lane wants to impose his values, views, politics and law on public schools.
Do these Fundy Preachers intend for the story of Joseph Smith, Mormon, to be taught in schools along with Jesus and Allah and Rev.”Savior” Pat Robertson? Just curious!
ARGH#$%*%
Do not paint all religious people with the same brush. Ann Richards was a United Methodist and while I am not sure of Cecil Richards I believe in the beginning she wanted to share her faith or views of it with the religious right.
1st Amendment-NO
Enough said.
Will someone please point out to me the parts of the bible that talks about freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and freedom of religion?
Yes Mark. See Genesis, Eve, Fruit, and Free Choice. The Religious Right has taken upon itself to force upon mankind even that which God himself refuses to force upon mankind, which is just one of the many ways in which the Religious Right kicks God off his throne and says, “We’d make a whole lot better God than you. Here we’ll show you.”
That is the purified essence of “original sin.”
Not to worry, this isn’t going anywhere and neither is the current Perry campaign. Citing old Jewish speculations by the prophets was just another way of shaming the people into further submission. God gave and took everything was the mantra and there is a revival of thet crap today. Throw away church/state separation and vote for theocracy–it is working so well in the middle east. We have got to bring back God so he wont keep punishing us. Primitive thinking by the religious retailers. GAG
Lane and his theocratic ilk simply want to impose THEIR religious belief system upon
public governmental functions.
They consider themselves to be thoroughgoing American patriots, all the while they propagate notions of religious imposition that fly in the face of the genuine religious freedom contemplated by the founders of this nation.