“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.” –President George Washington

President Washington,

It is with grave sorrow I report that the United States of America has thrown caution to the wind! For two centuries the governing structure for which you Founders pledged your lives, fortunes and sacred honor protected the influence of Christian principles on the culture. But in 1942 a radical change occurred. The Supreme Court, virtually ignoring time honored precedent, decided in the case, Everson vs Board of Education (1942), to elevate a simple phrase, “separation of church and state” out of an obscure letter written by your compatriot, Thomas Jefferson, above the constitution. It’s been used, since then, as a rationale and campaign to eliminate religion from the public square. Whether they intended it or not, those Justices opened the door for competing ideas to enter the public arena, some of which are openly hostile and antagonistic to liberty and self-rule!

Good Sir, you knew a free society could only be supported by a moral and educated people. I dare say, you’d be shocked to see the moral decay and the erosion of a sound educational foundation. Most of our colleges, much less our grade schools, have no requirement to study and esteem our own rich religious history, choosing to focus, rather, on lies and half-truths about America, denying the character and foundational principles of American Exceptionalism! This decay occured swiftly following another Supreme Court decision in 1963, Engel v Vitale, in which a very small minority (less than 3%) of parents objected to a simple morning prayer the State Board of Regents of New York approved for daily recitation. The prayer went like this:

“Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country.”

With deep regret I report it is now illegal to pray, read the Bible or post the Ten Commandments in public schools and government buildings! With that ruling we damned reason, rule of law, majority rule, religious conscience, youthful innocence, precedent and our own history to the sand heaps of nations that fell beneath their own moral morass.

The news only gets worse from here, dear Sir. Since another Supreme Court decision in 1973, Roe v Wade, America has condemned over 50 million of its citizens to death before they saw the first light of day and could make any contribution to the blessings of society! And since we now have such little regard for life, we no longer hold anyone accountable for their own. Half the citizens of this country are receiving government handouts of one form or another leaving the productive people, from whom wealth is being confiscated and carelessly given away, resentful and despondent. Perhaps fearful, as well, watching a mounting national debt totaling in the trillions (yes, Sir, trillions – I imagine you could only dream of the kind of wealth that could be created by the free and plundered by the unscrupulous) of dollars. Debt that will end the “unalienable right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” for future generations of Americans!

This is not the America you left for us. Ever since those unmoored decisions by ruthless gatekeepers we now watch with growing despair this kind of erosion:

• Confusion over the definition of marriage, where, again court judges are overstepping their authority to redefine marriage and promote all kinds of destructive legally protected living arrangements. America is now the number one country in the world in divorce, and rapidly leading in redefining, in the most heretical of terms, the historical meaning of marriage.

• Unmarried couples living together soared over 1,000%. Sexual assault is on the rise on college campuses and in the military where moral restraints have long ago been torn down. Single parent homes now comprise a hugely disproportionate percent of the family experience shaping our nation’s youth in their formative years.

• Birth rates and sexually transmitted diseases among unmarried teens has skyrocketed since those court decisions nearly 460%.

• Any kind of measure for scholastic aptitude demonstrates the undeniable connection between moral strength and academic achievement because America’s ranking among industrial nations has plummeted in the decades since these insidious decisions.

• When you asked, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert…?” When public policy prohibits its citizens from even seeing the Ten commandments displayed we now know the answer: since the court’s decisions to abandon Christian influence violent crime has escalated over 470% and we are now the world’s leader in total crimes committed!

How little comfort I’m sure you’d glean from knowing you were right in warning the American people, in no uncertain terms, to maintain a deep commitment to religious principle and faith in Almighty God. But alas, we are getting the government we deserve as we care little for men of character and choose, rather, those who would make us feel good than be good. Would that we could, like our current Secretary of State lamented at his own folly, turn the clock back on our national indifference and express the moral outrage those Supreme Court decisions deserved.

We may not have the keen foresighted, strong, moral and faith-filled leadership calling the American people to their knees in fasting, prayer and repentance but we do have tens of thousands on their knees asking our merciful God to forgive us, revive us and raise up godly, virtuous leaders! May we not, as another compatriot, Benjamin Franklin, bemoaned, “Without His concurring aid…become a reproach and a byword down to future ages.”

With an ever growing appreciation for the moral fiber woven into our national fabric by the calibre of people which the Lord God blessed us at the inception of our country, I humbly submit this report.

Sincerely,
Charlie Lyon

Quotes & Statistics from America’s Godly Heritage by David Barton, Copyright 1993.