De-Christianizing America

This wasn't supposed to happen here

[Reprinted from Issues & Views December 31, 2001]

How was America de-Christianized? Answer: Tyrannically, and with surprisingly small resistance from a people whose forebears rank among history's fiercest enemies of undemocratic rule. . . .

Where the First Amendment prohibited Congress from making any law "respecting an establishment of religion," and required Congress to respect the "free exercise" of faith, the Supreme Court reinterpreted the words to justify a preemptive strike on Christianity. All Christian Bibles, books, crosses, symbols, ceremonies, and holidays were ordered out of the public square and public schools. Out went Adam and Eve; in came Heather Has Two Mommies. Out went paintings of Christ ascending into heaven; in came pictures of apes ascending into Homo erectus. Out went Easter; in came Earth Day. Out went Bible teachings about the immorality of homosexuality; in came the homosexuals to teach about the immorality of homophobia. Out went the Commandments; in came the condoms.

Going back fifty years, the Supreme Court has inflicted an almost uninterrupted string of defeats upon the faith of our fathers. In 1948, voluntary religious instruction was outlawed in public schools. In 1962, school prayer went. In 1963, voluntary daily reading from the Bible was declared unconstitutional. In 1980, a Kentucky law that called for posting the Ten Commandments on classroom walls was overturned because the Commandments serve "no secular purpose." . . .

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Sensing Christianity was on the run, lower courts began to outdo the Supreme Court. In 1996, the Ninth Circuit ruled that a large cross erected as a war memorial in a public part in Eugene, Oregon, violated the Constitution. In 1999, the Sixth Circuit ordered the Cleveland Board of Education to cease opening its meetings with a prayer, though Congress does every day. . . .

From kindergarten through twelfth grade, the public schools shape the hearts and minds of America's children and the future of the nation. This is where children are taught what to believe, what to value, how to think, how to live. Now, Christianity, like some vagrant, has been ordered off the school grounds, another bloodless coup of the revolution. . . .

Thus, while America remains a predominantly Christian society and country, her public institutions and popular culture have been thoroughly de-Christianized. . . .

By the twenty-first century, the de-Christianization of our public life was complete. Easter celebrations, Nativity scenes, Christmas carols, and Christian books, stories, pageants, and holidays had all but vanished from public schools and the public square. The schools were no longer run according to the wishes of the parents of the children who attend them, or the taxpayers who sustain them, but according to the dictates of courts imposing the agendas of the ACLU and Humanist Manifesto. . . .

The dethronement of God from American public life was not done democratically, it was done dictatorially, and our forefathers would never have tolerated it. Why did people of a once-fighting faith permit it, when prayer, Christmas carols, Bible reading, and posting the Ten Commandments were backed by huge majorities? Because we live under a rule of judges, Congress is unwilling to confront. If America has ceased to be a Christian country, it is because she has ceased to be a democratic country. This is the real coup d'état.

-- Patrick Buchanan, excerpts from his new book, The Death of the West (St. Martin's Press).

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