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KICKED OUT OF CHRISTIANITY CLASS FOR DEFENDING CHRISTIAN IDEALS?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, a number of pundits have said, concerning the California Supreme Court case where pro-life centers have been asked by the State of California to promote state-funded abortions, “You better be careful. This is not just a freedom of religion situation. This is a freedom of speech situation.”
DR. REEDER: Tom, there’s a very interesting case here in the United States on one of our campuses. In a class on Christianity, there was an attempt to promote a transgender ideology in opposition to a Biblical world and life view of gender. When the professor was confronted with a simple statement of the student, freedom of speech became an issue then.
TOM LAMPRECHT: It took place at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Lake Ingle, a senior there, basically challenged the professor, Alison Downie, and questioned her concerning the fact that he says, “Biology says there’s only two genders.” He was a Religion major — he needs this class to graduate. He was booted out of this class for making that statement.
DR. REEDER: And, amazingly, what was the class name, Tom?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Christianity 481: Self, Sin and Salvation.
DR. REEDER: Here’s a guy in Christianity 481, a Religion major, who speaks up for the Christian world and life view that God’s actually made two sexes, male and female, is now silenced and booted out of class and told, “If you say that again, you can’t stay in the class. And, by the way, that’ll just cost you your degree that you’ve been laboring on.
Here, again, we see another tether between freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Tom, now let me just back up just for a moment. Let’s go to school with me in the ninth grade. My father and mother had a very incorrigible son — that son was me.
Even in the midst of my self-absorbed rebellion against God, I had a teacher named — I still remember him — Robert Woodburn. I’ll never forget how he would show up to class passionate about his subject which was, in the ninth grade, the requirement in a class on civics and the civic foundations of this country and it utterly fascinated me.
WHY IS RELIGIOUS FREEDOM SO PROMINENT IN THE CONSTITUTION?
Here’s what I begin to see, not that every founding father was a Christian, but the Christian world and life view and the founding fathers that were Christians greatly affected the non-Christians, even the deists, even the lukewarm deists like a Thomas Jefferson and a Benjamin Franklin, who kept kind of coming in and out of the influence of Christianity through preachers like George Whitfield and his own pastor there in Philadelphia.
And the result is, as Os Guinness has noted and we have noted, this extraordinary Declaration of Independence with these four references to God in the content as the source of our inalienable rights and that, in true submission to true authority, you must resist tyrannical authority, not only as a right but as a responsibility.
The result is this providential intervention of God in the winning of our American Independence under the Declaration of Independence. The influence of Christianity on that document was already seen by those in England when a Parliamentarian named Horace Walpole stands up and says, “Well, that’s the end of it. America has run off with a Presbyterian parson,” and they were referring to not only the influence of Christianity and the influence of the Presbyterians and the influence of a particular Presbyterian named John Witherspoon who had a direct influence on 13 of the commissioners in the Constitutional Congress.
And the result on one of them was the major role of James Madison, who had two degrees from Princeton underneath the influence of John Witherspoon and, basically, the borrowing of the Presbyterian system of government in the church and applying it to a federal government. Notice the federal headship and the covenantal nature of government as a reflection of the federal headship of King Jesus over His covenant people and His provision of three offices of a Minister of the Word and of Deacons and Elders and how there is to be a king.
KINGSHIP OF CHRIST COMES IN RECOGNITION OF FREEDOMS
However, in the government, the way you honor the kingship of Christ is to make His Law king and the influence of the Law of God over what becomes the king of America, Lex Rex — the law is king — and that is the Constitution that is given to us as it is signed “In the Year of Our Lord,” therefore, the sovereign hand of God upon the Constitution.
Then, the enormously effective movement of the 10 Bill of Rights: the personal rights and the rights of the states in this new federal government. The first Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, with its six affirmations of liberty, and perhaps the three most important was the first one, the freedom of religion; the second one, the freedom of speech; and thirdly, the freedom of the press in order to hold accountable government.
And, therefore, an open public square for the free exchange of ideas, which meant also the free practice of religion, not just in the walls of the church or in a state-approved church, but in the lives of the people and their families. And this freedom that had been won had been ordered — instead of moving into the anarchy of the French Revolution, had been ordered — by the Constitution and now was matured and maintained in its continual development by the Bill of Rights, in general, and the First Amendment, in particular, and the free speech, and free practice of religion and free press provisions, specifically.
WHY DID THE FOUNDING FATHERS CONSIDER THIS SO IMPORTANT?
Tom, out of all of the discussions around the Constitution, in general, and the Bill of Rights, in particular, out of all of the discussions, Tom, the one that took the least was the freedom of religion and the one that became passionately embraced was the freedom of speech. Why? Because our founding fathers knew that the way the state would establish its supremacy at a federal level would be to control the church, silence the church and control and silence the free speech of its citizens.
And they were attempting to protect both of those because a fascist state or a tyrannical state always shuts down freedom of speech, freedom of press and the free practice of religion in order to maintain its supremacy and expand its authority and supremacy. It is no accident that we’re seeing legislative initiatives and judicial tactics to silence, to shame and to marginalize the free practice of religion and the freedom of speech.
It is the very anticipation of this that caused our founding fathers, from a Christian world and Life view, to affirm the Bill of Rights, particularly the first right, the right of liberty and free practice of religion, free press and free speech.
HOW CHRISTIANS RESPOND TO RISING OPPRESSION OF FREEDOMS
TOM LAMPRECHT: How ought the Christians react to this attempt to restrict the freedom of religion and the freedom of speech?
DR. REEDER: First, Christians should be praying for both boldness and effectiveness as they stay faithful to Christ and the mission of making disciples through evangelism and discipleship; the second thing, Tom, a reliance on the power of the Holy Spirit; thirdly, to be passionate; and fourthly, to be persistent and stay the course.
Whenever the government and the media attempt to remove not only God-given rights and freedoms protected in the Constitution, whenever that happens, Christians and churches are not going to be able to hide. They may think if they cower away like a frightened puppy into our little Christian corner that they’re going to get away and be tolerated.
No, they will not. They’ll either leave their faithfulness to their message and their mission and, therefore, come under the discipline of the Lord or they will be further isolated until they just simply become a part of the culture of the world instead of the salt and light of the kingdom of God in the world.
COMING UP: SINGLE PARENTHOOD IS LAUDED WITH NATIONAL DAY?
TOM LAMPRECHT: Harry, on Wednesday’s edition of Today in Perspective, I want to note that March 21st was National Single Parent Day. That has caused an interesting debate between The New York Times — Robert Samuelson, who’s a syndicated columnist — and Tucker Carlson has also weighed in on this issue.
DR. REEDER: The unlikely intersection of Tucker Carlson and Robert Samuelson and their response to a New York Times editorial.
Dr. Harry L. Reeder III is the Senior Pastor of Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham.
This podcast was transcribed by Jessica Havin, editorial assistant for Yellowhammer News, who has transcribed some of the top podcasts in the country and her work has been featured in a New York Times Bestseller.
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