The American Soul
The American Soul
God vs the World: Choosing Sides in Modern America
What happens when a nation forgets its spiritual foundations? In this thought-provoking exploration of America's Christian heritage, Jesse Cope connects seemingly disparate current events—from China's role in the fentanyl crisis to universities' embrace of DEI policies—to reveal a common thread: our collective unwillingness to acknowledge ideologies fundamentally opposed to our founding principles.
The heart of this episode centers on an illuminating examination of the 1811 New York Supreme Court case "People v. Ruggles." Through Chief Justice Kent's powerful opinion, we discover how early American jurisprudence understood religious freedom in a way dramatically different from today's interpretations. Kent unequivocally declared America "a Christian people" whose morality was "deeply engrafted upon Christianity," distinguishing the true faith from what he called "imposters." This historical perspective challenges our modern assumption that the First Amendment requires treating all religions equally.
Cope brilliantly articulates that the First Amendment was never intended to "separate God from the state" but rather to prevent the government from favoring particular denominations—a crucial distinction lost in contemporary discourse. Drawing from James Chapter 4, he confronts listeners with a fundamental choice between friendship with the world and friendship with God, warning that pursuit of the former inevitably leads to conflict with divine principles.
For anyone concerned about America's spiritual direction, this episode offers both sobering analysis and hopeful perspective. As Calvin Coolidge once observed, "The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease." Have you made God your checkbox or your compass? The answer to this question might determine not just your personal faith journey but our collective future as a nation.
The American Soul Podcast
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Hey folks, this is Jesse Cope, back with another episode of the American Soul Podcast. Hope y'all are doing well, wherever y'all are, whatever part of the day you're in. I do appreciate y'all joining me and giving me a little bit of your time and a little piece of your day. I will try and use it wisely. Hopefully I will give us all some extra tools for our toolbox, myself included, and hopefully help our nations here in America, and whatever nation you're in around the world listening, move back toward God and Jesus Christ, and ourselves too, just a little bit back toward God and Jesus Christ, and ourselves too, just a little bit back toward God and Jesus Christ. For those of y'all that continue to pray for the podcast and tell others about it, thank you Very, very grateful for that. And for those of y'all who continue to pray for the podcast and for me, thank you Most especially, very grateful for your prayers, need them and desire them, treasure them. So thank you very much. And for those of y'all that are new, if this is the first time you're listening to the podcast, I'm glad you're here, hope you enjoy it, hope you come back.
Speaker 1:Father, thank you for today. Thank you for you, father, and your Son, jesus Christ, and your Holy Spirit. Thank you for your love and your mercy, your grace and your mercy, for giving us all the blessings that we don't deserve and for not giving us the punishments that we do deserve. Thank you for the time that you have given us To try and turn our nation back to you and your son, jesus Christ. The opportunity, the doors that you've given For us to try and save lost souls Help us to remember what the point is truly of us being here, and if we're given extra time to remember that, then too, thank you for the time to record this podcast for the people that listen to it. Be with them, be with their families wherever they are. Father, please guide them, bless them, surround them with your angels. Protect us all from evil of any kind. Be with those who are listening, who are injured or who have illness, who are heartbroken over something. Give them your peace, comfort them, guide them. Forgive us our sins, father. Please forgive us our pride and our greed and our selfishness, our lust, our lack of gratitude for the blessings you bestow upon us, our judgment of others, our lukewarm attitude toward you and your Son, jesus Christ. Forgive us when we go through the motions, as I far too often do. Father, you know of just checking the box. Help us to get our priorities back in order, get our priorities in line. And God, my words here. Father, please, in your son's name, we pray, amen.
Speaker 1:Have you made time for God today? Have you made time to read his word? Have you made time to pray, to talk to him? Is it your top priority, your last priority, somewhere shoved in the middle of the day? If you have time and if you're married, does your spouse know it? Does your spouse know it? Do you? Do they go to bed each night when their pillow, when their head hits the pillow? Do they know that they are your second priority every day, behind only God and Jesus Christ? Or do they wonder? Or do they know that they're not?
Speaker 1:I've got a few things. I think overall it'll fall into two main categories I'm going to try to. It's a bunch of little stuff. I'm going to try and get to it in this next little segment.
Speaker 1:So there's a few articles out of the Epoch Times, combined with a couple quotes out of the William Manchester biography, that I want to talk to you about. One is an article China's Role in US Smetana Crisis Detected by Regime Leadership or Directed by Regime Leadership. Experts Say this is an article. All of these are out of the Epoch Times and I'll give you a date if I can get there. This is the April 2nd to the 8th issue, and this particular article is by Terry Wu and Olivia Lee. There's two quotes in here. I wanted to read to you one. It is precisely due to this is a quote from oh, I don't know where the name went folks in here yon ongbing, if I said that, right, a law professor at Peking University.
Speaker 1:It's precisely due to Xi's directives that we're now seeing a dramatic increase in both the production of fentanyl precursors in China and the export of these chemicals, fueling the ongoing fentanyl crisis in the United States. A couple little extra stats here in the United States. A couple little extra stats here 200 people per day in America die due to fentanyl overdoses. And also just as kind of an incidental, I guess it ties in Do you have any idea what the leading cause of death among Americans from the age 18 to 45 is? I was kind of surprised by this. Maybe most of y'all aren't. You can probably see where I'm going Accidental drug overdoses, right, it's a pretty good article. It talks about the purposefulness of China's role in creating the chemicals used in fentanyl and then getting them out there in the world, particularly on the way to the United States. Again, the article is China's Role in US Fentanyl Crisis and the authors are Terry Wu and Olivia Lee.
Speaker 1:Out of the opinion section, same paper, there is an article titled Pentagon's War on Wasted Dollars by Wilson Beaver and Anna Gustafson, and then another article, how Will College Presidents Deal with Trump's DEI Order, by Mark Bowerline if I said that right Out of the Pentagon article. One of the things that was fascinating. I've heard this, just haven't seen it in print so that I felt a little more secure about it. The DOD, department of Defense, has failed all of its last seven audits. A couple of the spending issues they've got They've already this. Department of Government Efficiency, doge, has already detected about $80 million in wasteful spending. 1.9 of that was DEI transformation and training right, diversity, equity, inclusion and 3.5 was in Defense HR Support for DEI. And then this other article, college President's Dealing with Trump's DEI Order.
Speaker 1:Right the president, the White House is starting to pull funding for colleges like Columbia and Harvard or I think they already have, according to this article for Columbia, but the others. It's coming many almost universally at these ivy leagues, the top tier administration. They've made it there over the last several decades by. One of the things that they've done is they've pushed this dei stuff, promoted it stood for, it said, hey, this is you know, this is what we're about. And so now, all of a sudden, in order to keep their funding, they're going to have to do it about face and he was saying it's not really going to be honest. You know they're going to do the bare minimum and they're going to try and hide anything they can from people that actually care about the country and care about education for their children to their supporters and say, look, I really didn't want to do this, but I'm going to do it because I have to, in order to get us our money in. But let's just, you know, let's just hold tight and as soon as, as soon as we can get through this, we'll turn right back around and start doing the stuff that we want to do.
Speaker 1:As far as this DEI and folks, all DEI is is just justified racism, bigotry. It's looking at people based on skin color, ethnicity, which the department of education and our colleges and universities have been doing for a long time. You know, if you're, if you are female, or if you have the right skin color or the right ethnicity, you have a leg up in academics, and and if you're not, then you don't. And they've started to try and do that in the military. They've done it for decades. As far as women go, giving spots to women that could be filled in our military and military academies, the men that are more qualified, and then so, so, all of this, right, there's a couple quotes, so this is 39, going over to the Churchill biography, and this is June, july, august, timeframe.
Speaker 1:Right, europe's running out of time, hitler's about to go into Poland, and there's a couple of quotes in here that I wanted to read. That I wanted to read. One is by a man named Macmillan and said that Hitler was always regarded by British politicians as if he were a brilliant but temperamental genius who could be soothed by kindness or upset by hard words. It was this fearful misconception about the nature of dictators that was the root cause of much that went amiss in these tragic years. And then, so that's a quote by a man who I should know, because I've read this book this far, macmillan, but I can't remember to tell you what his position is. And then the other one is a comment by Manchester, by the author that he wrote in here.
Speaker 1:Despite Hitler's shredding of the Munich Agreement, despite daily reports of Nazi outrages in Austria and shattered Czechoslovakia, and despite brutal incidents on the border between German and Poland, the beatings of civilian Poles by Nazi thugs, neville Chamberlain remained serene in his stateroom on the Titanic right. Chamberlain continued to think that they could pacify the Nazis, that there was a path to peace there. So how am I tying all of this together? And this is really just the first bucket. I don't think we're going to get time to get into the second bucket today. But this first bucket, how does all this, how does fentanyl from China and DEI and the military and our schools and these couple of quotes about Hitler back in 39 as they're going into World War II, how does it tie together?
Speaker 1:We have for too long not believed the left when they told us what they were going to do and when they've done it. For years they have been promoting policies and values that were specifically anti-Christ and therefore because the principles of Christ are the foundation of our nation anti-American Principles that blatantly show the disregard and really the hatred for liberty, for America and for Jesus Christ. And you can go down the list. You can talk about outright rejection of God, feminism, abortion, lgbtq relationships, dei, crt right. Critical race theory kind of in the same bucket. Affirmative action, illegal immigration right. There's some.
Speaker 1:More and more is coming to light about how the Biden administration, just in the last four years, much less the last three or four decades, or five or six decades, and go all the way back to Reagan and the amnesty in the 80s that the left managed to push through there, right. But this just concerted effort across the board to destroy the nation, and a huge chunk of that was education. Right. You separate children we talk about this so often from God and from their family. Then you can control the future of the country, future of the country.
Speaker 1:We have to stop pretending that peaceful coexistence with citizens inside the United States that demand, that insist on following the values of the left or Islam also as a side note, which goes hand in glove with leftism, communism, socialism, right. We have to stop pretending that peaceful coexistence is a possibility with a gentleman who is near and dear to me recently, and we were talking about the fact that we just don't want to acknowledge that. We don't want to acknowledge that the people that we know in our lives, in your life, in your community, wherever you are across the United States, around the world, not in some huge city, some random, far off people that you don't know folks, but those people in your community, in your nation, in your little village or town or your suburb, in your churches, in your communities, in your schools, in your business organizations that live on your street, these people that vote for the left, that support the ideology of the left, that support the ideology of Islam Folks. They're not just some harmless, you know, temperamental as that quote from Macmillan talking about Hitler. They're not just these people that need to be handled with kid gloves. And if we handle them long enough with kid gloves, for long enough, they'll finally come to the light and see the truth. That's not going to happen. That's the same thing that would have happened with the loyalists in the Revolutionary War if we would have had that mentality, or the Confederates in the Civil War if we would have had that mentality. Well, if we're just nice enough to them for long enough, they don't really mean any harm. They're not really going to do any damage. They're just all talk, talk, folks. The second citizens who support the left or support Islam get controlled. The second they will start to treat those who follow Christ in particular, but anybody who truly loves America and liberty if you're in a different country other than America, will start to treat you in a heartbeat the same way that Stalin treated his own citizens or those in countries around him. That Hitler did, that Mao does, or did I mean? And that the Chinese communists still do, that the Muslims do in Iran, nigeria, syria, so many other places. That's what is going to happen.
Speaker 1:They've been telling us for a long time, folks, and you need to really think about that a little bit, as opposed to sitting down today and watching Netflix or Hulu or Prime or scrolling your social media Instagram, facebook aimlessly. You need to think about that just a little bit and kind of get your brain wrapped around it. And and what do you say? Okay, great, cope. Well, what do I do? You know? What do I do? Well, what? What led into the revolutionary war decades before that? What really started decades before the civil war? What really started? A great awakening. Turn back to god. That's what we need to do, and not just as some random Civil War, what really started the Great Awakening? Turn back to God. That's what we need to do, and not just as some random, maybe priority that we get to every once in a while, but as the main part of our day, as the first priority following God and his principles. Following God and his principles. And I promise folks, if we start to do that, the conflict will come. Not because we want it, not because we're pushing for it, but because the true core value of the left socialism, communism, leftism, nazism, fascism and Islam the true core value is antichrist. And if you don't understand that, if you don't accept that, you're never going to understand why they do so many of the things they do, really everything, not really. You might kind of understand it on a superficial level, superficial level, but again, it's not that we want the conflict, folks, but if we will start to follow God and Jesus Christ, the conflict is going to come.
Speaker 1:James, chapter 4. Things to Avoid. What is the source of quarrels and conflicts among you Is not the source your pleasures that wage war in your members. You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Speaker 1:You, adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that Scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell in us, but he gives a greater grace. Therefore it says God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore it says cleanse your hands, you sinner, and purify your hearts.
Speaker 1:You double-minded, be miserable and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned into mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the presence of the Lord and he will exalt. You Do not speak against one another, brethren. He who speaks against a brother or judges his brother speaks against the law and judges the law. But if you judge the law, you are not a doer of the law, but a judge of it. There is only one lawgiver and judge, the one who is able to save and to destroy. But who are you who judge your neighbor? Come now. You who say today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit. Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say if the Lord wills, we will live and also do this or that. But as it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do it and does not do it, to him it is a sin.
Speaker 1:Verse 2. You lust and do not have, so you commit murder. You are envious and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because you ask with wrong motives so that you may spend it on your pleasures. How many of us want what somebody else has? How many of us envy what other people have? How many of us go to God in prayer asking for things so that we can spend it not on helping the poor, the needy, the widow and the orphan, but on ourselves, on more land, bigger house, new cars? I'm 100% guilty. Here, folks, I'm talking to myself as much as anybody else of y'all that are listening. But how many of us, when we go to prayer, go to God in prayer, when we ask for things, we're asking with motives so that we can spend it on pleasure. There's nothing wrong with going to God and bringing your heartache to him or your needs, right. But I think these verses are a really good reminder to check our motives and ask ourselves why are we asking for something from God? Is our goal to serve him? Is our goal to follow the commands of his son? You know, love him, love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves. Love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbors as ourselves.
Speaker 1:Verse 4. You adulteresses, do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that Scripture speaks to no purpose? He jealously desires the spirit which he has made to dwell within us. Again, I'm I'm not a theologian folks. I'm not a pastor or priest. So remember that when I'm talking about this, I'm hopeful that, if anything, at least I get us to read a little bit of the word of God each day, but at least I get us to read a little bit of the Word of God each day. But this is kind of what I was trying to say probably pretty poorly in that previous segment, and that is, if we'll focus on God, if we'll focus on drawing near to God, on being a friend of God and Jesus Christ, on serving, following God and Jesus Christ, on loving God and Jesus Christ, it's going to make us an enemy of the world and those who follow the world. Not because we wish it, folks, just because it does.
Speaker 1:You go back and read about the Revolutionary War, our founders. They didn't want to fight, they wanted to be reconciled to Great Britain. Even up until the point after the war had started, even A large number of them desperately wanted desired reconciliation with Great Britain. But they were going to do the best they could to follow the general principles of Christ, to unite around them and to strive to obtain liberty. And where's the Bible again? You know, the Bible tells us liberty is to be found where the Spirit of God is, and only there. Right? So if you want liberty, you've got to draw close to the Spirit, the Holy Spirit of God. So if we truly follow God, we're going to make ourselves enemies those people who really follow the world and love the world. And that's the thing, folks, when I was reading this conversation that I had years ago I mentioned it on this podcast it really stuck with me.
Speaker 1:Having a conversation with a woman years ago and she was talking about the fact that she had some friends whose I don't remember son or daughter was getting married either to a man or, like it was a homosexual marriage, which is an oxymoron, right, you can't have that anyway. But they were going to pretend to get married, right that anyway. But they were going to pretend to get married, right and? And she was really struggling because she felt like she wanted to go and support the parents and support this kid that she had known as they grew up over the years, but she didn't want to support that evil. You can't do both folks. You can't have your cake and eat it too. You're going to make enemies. You're going to lose friends we're going to. There's going to be people that don't like us. There's going to be people that love to see us fail. There's going to be people that want the worst possible for us if we follow God. And the question is do we want to be friends with God or with the world?
Speaker 1:John Quincy Adams, again and again, duty is ours. Results are God's. Duty is ours. I'm telling myself just as much as y'all, folks, every day. God, what do you want me to do? Duty is ours. I'm telling myself just as much as y'all, folks, every day. God, what do you want me to do? Duty is ours. Help me to do that. Draw me close to you. Help me to draw close to you, father. Give me the wisdom to see what you want me to do and the courage to do it.
Speaker 1:It's going to force a conflict with the world, folks, and inside America at least, that likely is going to lead to another civil war, a third civil war. And if it doesn't, folks, if we want that really? The ironic thing is, if we really pursue peace with the world, peace with the left, peace with Islam inside the United States, what do we end up with? We end up with Hitler, stalin, mao, pol Pot, the Red Guard, the Nazi secret police, etc. Etc. Right, that's what we end up with. And we need to realize that. And we don't. We got a logical disconnect right now and we say we do like?
Speaker 1:I'm pretty sure a lot of y'all, if I was talking to you face to face, you'd say I know that, I know, I know history, I know where we're going, but man, we don't act like it. We're not really striving, are we? I know that. I am working on that. Definitely not there. All right, we're going to get back into, if I can find it, people versus ruggles. I think this is where we were at. So this is 1811, people versus Ruggles.
Speaker 1:This is out of the Supreme Court of New York and the opinion is given by Chief Justice Kent. And the opinion is given by Chief Justice Kent. And so we're just going to pick up where we left off. And so the background on this, if you're just joining us today, the background on this is there was a man who came in and made some really egregious comments about Jesus Christ and his mother, by the way, about Jesus Christ and his mother, by the way, and I think God too, but the quote in the opinion here is just Jesus Christ and his mother. And so he was fined according to blasphemy laws and this is the court's opinion.
Speaker 1:Continued the free, equal and undisturbed enjoyment of religious opinion, whatever it may be, and free and decent discussions on any religious subject is granted and secured. But to revile with malicious and blasphemous contempt the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right. Nor are we bound by any expression in the Constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Muhammad or of the Grand Lama, and for this plain reason that the case assumes that we are a Christian people and the morality of this country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters. There's a lot right there, folks. So freedom of religion, enjoyment of religious opinion, it says, free and decent discussions on any religious subject is granted and secured. But to revile with malicious and blasphemous contempt the religion professed by almost the whole community is an abuse of that right. So you get your religious freedom. You get to talk about and act on religion in whatever way that you want to, but not in such a way that you are reviling with malicious and blasphemous contempt Christianity, because that was the religion professed by almost the whole community at that point. And that reminds you right, and this is part of the problem that we have today. That reminds you of Calvin Coolidge's quote, and that is the strength of our country is the strength of its religious convictions.
Speaker 1:The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them If faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country. And they have. And why have they? Because we don't teach the Bible anymore at home or in school. And why is that? Because we go back to 1947, and even before that, if you want to look at feminism right, but 1947 and rejection, the Supreme Court ruling in Everson v Board of Education, and starting to kick God out of our institutions. Not separation of church and state, that's what they said, but what they really meant was separation of God and state. And so if we don't have Christianity right almost universally here, we're going to lose the ability to support our society and our government.
Speaker 1:But going back to Kent here in this New York State Supreme Court decision opinion, you don't have the right to abuse Christianity in America. That's not part of religious freedom, and here's a great little addition to that. Nor are we bound by any expression in the Constitution, as some have strangely supposed either, not to punish at all. So there's no requirement from the Constitution that we don't punish those who revile and blaspheme against Christianity. We absolutely have the ability and right and really duty to punish those who revile and blaspheme against Christianity. Nor is there any expression in the Constitution that requires us to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Muhammad or the Grand Lama.
Speaker 1:Islam, buddhism, hinduism, atheism, satan. We don't treat all religions equal. Because why Kent puts it here, right here? For this plain reason. Why Kent puts it here right here? For this plain reason that the case assumes that we are a Christian people and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters. Islam is an imposter. Buddhism, hinduism, atheism, which includes socialism, communism, leftism, imposters, imposter, imposter, imposter. Right, we don't have any requirement to treat those imposters the same way we do the one true faith, christianity, and the one true God, the Father, jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, because we are a Christian people and the morality of our nation at the foundation was deeply engrafted upon Christianity. There's your First Amendment, folks. There's your First Amendment from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 1811, a heck of a lot closer to the ratification of the Constitution than any of the extremely educated individuals that you hear today telling you that you have to treat all religions equally in America.
Speaker 1:Besides, the offense is oh, I'm going to murder this Latin folks, I'm sorry Crimin Malicia, no idea. And the imputation of malice could not be inferred from any invectives upon superstitions equally false and unknown. The imputation of malice could not be inferred from any invectives upon superstitions equally false and unknown. Again, we don't have a responsibility here, in a Christian nation, to treat offenses or invectives upon superstitions that are false and unknown, whether it's Islam, buddhism, hinduism, atheism or some other god of a savage tribe somewhere, which he's going to mention in just a second. We don't have a responsibility to treat those the same. They're not the same. We are not to be restrained from animadversion upon offenses against public decency, like those committed by Sir Charles Sedley or by Juan Rolo, merely because there may be savage tribes and perhaps semi-barbarous nations whose sense of shame would not be affected by what we should consider the most audacious outrages upon decorum.
Speaker 1:It is sufficient that the common law checks upon words and actions dangerous to the public welfare apply to our case and are suited to the condition of this and every other people whose manners are refined and whose morals have been elevated and inspired with a more enlarged benevolence by means of the Christian religions. It's a lot of big words there, folks, but basically the only faith that we have a responsibility for the state to protect here in America is the Christian faith, and we have a responsibility as a Christian people not to allow God and Jesus Christ to be reviled or maliciously, blasphemously, contemptuously treated. All faiths are not the same. They're not equal.
Speaker 1:Though the Constitution has discarded religious establishments, it does not forbid judicial cognizance of those offenses against religion and morality which have no reference to any such establishment or to any particular form of government, but are punishable because they strike at the root of moral obligation and weaken the security of social ties. The object of the 38th article of the Constitution was to guard against spiritual oppression and intolerance by declaring that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, should forever thereafter be allowed within the state to all mankind. This declaration, noble and magnanimous as it is when duly understood, was never meant to withdraw religion in general, and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligation from all consideration and notice of the law. It will be fully satisfied by free and universal toleration, without any of the tests, disabilities or discriminations incident to a religious establishment. To construe it as breaking down the common law barriers against licentious, wanton and impious attacks upon Christianity itself would be an enormous perversion of its meaning, would be an enormous perversion of its meaning, would be an enormous perversion of its meaning. That's exactly what we've done. We have perverted enormously the meaning of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1:It was not meant to separate God from the state. It was meant to prevent the state from choosing a particular church denomination to favor and to discriminate against those who didn't adhere to it, which is exactly what happened via the Catholic Church. Orthodox Anglican Church in Europe. Orthodox Anglican Church in Europe. You had the states choose a particular denomination, not the general principles of Christianity, but a particular denomination, man-made denomination and require that people be a part of that particular denomination. The First Amendment didn't say we're just going to throw Christianity out and treat it equally with all the other false, all the other imposters, right, the fakes. It said we're going to not allow the state to form a bond with one particular denomination and deny people the ability to serve God and Jesus Christ in the manner that best seems fit to them.
Speaker 1:The proviso guards the article from such dangerous latitude of construction when it declares the liberty of conscience hereby granted shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the peace and safety of this state. The preamble and the proviso are a species of commentary upon the meaning of the article, and they sufficiently show that the framers of the Constitution intended only to banish, test oaths, disabilities and the burdens, and sometimes the oppressions, of church establishments, and to secure to the people of this state freedom from coercion and equality of right on the subject of religion. This was no doubt the consummation of their wishes. It was all that reasonable minds could require, and it has long been a favorite object on both sides of the Atlantic, with some of the most enlightened friends to the rights of mankind, whose indignation had been roused by infringements of the liberty of conscience and whose zeal was inflamed in the pursuit of its enjoyment. That this was the meaning of the Constitution is further confirmed by a paragraph in a preceding article which specially provides that such parts of the common law as might be construed or established or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers were thereby abrogated. The First Amendment, folks, was to keep the state from requiring test oaths allegiance to particular denominations, like a particular Orthodox church or the Roman Catholic Church or the Anglican Church or another particular Protestant denomination Right Any particular denomination of Christians. But that was it. That was theomination of Christians. But that was it. That was the extent of it. That was, as Kent says here, the consummation of their wishes. It was all that reasonable minds could require. That was all the framers of the Constitution intended. They didn't intend to separate God and state. They didn't intend to kick Jesus Christ out of our courts, our laws, our institutions, new York Supreme Court, state Chief Justice Kent right, we talked about this yesterday One of our greatest legal minds, much closer to the ratification of our Constitution, the beginning of our nation, than we are today, would be much wiser to listen to him in this particular case than the people that are out there squawking today and have been for the past several decades.
Speaker 1:The legislative exposition of the Constitution is conformable to this view of it. Christianity in its enlarged sense as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our law. The statute for preventing immorality consecrates the first day of the week as holy time and considers the violation of it as immoral. This was only the continuation and substance of a law of the colony which declared that the profanation I'm not sure I pronounced that right to profane the Lord's day was the great scandal of the Christian faith. The act concerning oaths recognizes the common law mode of administering an oath by laying the hand on and kissing the gospels right, the gospel of Christ, the Bible. Surely, then, we are bound to conclude that wicked and malicious words, writings and actions which go to vilify those gospels continue, as at common law, to be an offense against the public peace and safety. They are inconsistent with the reverence due to the administration of an oath and, among their other evil consequences, they tend to lessen in the public mind its religious sanction. Folks, the point was, again and again, the point of the First Amendment was not to kick God and Jesus Christ out of the state. It was to prevent the state from choosing a particular denomination to favor Our laws. You look back at these comments. I mean Christianity in its enlarged sense as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is not unknown to our law. It gives the examples right. The statute preventing immorality consecrates the first day of the week as holy time, considers violation of it as immoral. It's just a continuation of the law of the colony that said if you profane the Lord's day, it's a great scandal, the great scandal of the Christian faith Concerning oaths. What do we do? We lay our hand on and kiss the Gospels. George Washington, first president, kissed the Bible. All of our presidents have put their hand on the Bible. Why have we allowed this lie created by the left and the Supreme Court over the last 80 years to continue? It's just a lie, folks.
Speaker 1:The First Amendment wasn't written to lower Christianity to the level of Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism, as Chief Justice of the New York Supreme Court Hint said here. Those imposters, those fakes. You remember the game a few years about the kids. I was around kids at that point quite a bit and I remember I think it was called imposter, but I don't remember. But the whole goal, they had different places that you could do this. Everybody played the game and there was one imposter, there was one fake and you had to try and figure it out. Well, in this case it's the reverse. There's only one real right and I guess you could look at it that way. There was only one real criminal killer. That's the game, sadly was killing the other people off. There was only one In this case, there's only one true faith.
Speaker 1:There's only one true religion. There's only one religion, faith that our nation has a responsibility to protect, and it's not a particular denomination, it's the general principles of Christianity, of Jesus Christ. We have got to get back to that. Understanding, folks, of our First Amendment have to. People versus Ruggles 1811. Chief Justice Kent, great little opinion here. Read it if you get a chance. If you're in a position of teaching children, highly recommend that you teach it. God bless y'all. God bless your families. God bless your marriages If you're married. God bless America. God bless your nation, wherever you are around the world. Listen, folks, we'll talk to y'all again real soon. Looking forward to it.