This week we will take a bit of a different look at Christianity and politics by showing a couple of examples where Christians and a church were not afraid of offending while public school leaders were ‘scared to death’ of offending. Maybe these ‘leaders’ should have studied the foundations of this nation before they received their “Doctorates of Secular Appeasement”! So many run around today wringing their hands in a ‘woe is us’ fear of guns not realizing that the fear is not based in guns but in the culture that we have allowed to develop outside of the Word of God. To ignore those foundation principals gives us what we have today…family is passe, life is a matter of convenience for some and meaningless to others, forgiveness is in the hands of the powerful and handed out sparingly, and faith in God is for the poor, ignorant masses. So much for my observations. Let’s see where Christians and churches have had an impact.
Last week we took a look at a ‘silencing’ in Dexter, Georgia. This week we will start with Brandon, Mississippi. One Friday night the ‘lights were out’ as there was to be no halftime show at the Brandon High School football game. The marching band had been benched. The band was ordered off the field because of the Christian hymn “How Great Thou Art” was part of their halftime show. Performing it would be a violation of a federal court order…that’s politics in action. In 2013 a student sued the district…this is not a powerful anti-God group but a student…over a series of Christian meetings that had been held on school property. The district later settled the lawsuit…cowards that they are…and acknowledged they had violated the student’s First Amendment rights…’poor baby’, what about the Christian student’s rights or do they matter? [Kate Royals,”Brandon Band Reportedly not Allowed to Perform Christian Hymn”, www.clarionledger.com, August 22, 2015]. US District Court Judge Carlton Reeves ruled the district had violated an agreement after a Christian minister had committed the ‘criminal act’ of delivering a prayer at an awards ceremony. Judge Reeves, an Obama appointee, came down hard on the school district, ordering it to pay thousands of dollars in fines…money that is our tax money meant to educate our children. He went on to warn that future violations would cost the district ten thousand dollars. His order read,”Defendants are permanently enjoined from including prayer, religious sermons or activities in any school sponsored event including but not limited to assemblies, graduations, award ceremonies, athletic events and any other school event”. [Ibid]. Shouldn’t this judge be included as part of the problem our schools are experiencing? Again, politics in action! Locals would have nothing of it and gathered in local coffee shops and garages to devise a plan. Their plan would come to be known as the ‘musical shot heard around the world’. During halftime at the next Friday’s night game a lone voice began to sing the ‘forbidden’ song’. “Then sings my soul, my Savior God to Thee”, the lone voice sang. One by one people began to stand. The sound started out as a hum but got louder. [“Brandon High School Fans Sing ‘How Great Thou Art’ at Halftime”, YouTube video, August 22, 2015. posted by Mississippi PEP]. It was truly an incredible moment to watch hundreds of people singing together in the stadium…their churches had trained them well. One parent commented,”We may be pictured as toothless, barefoot, uneducated people around the country, but we are far from it. I’m from Mississippi, and I’m not afraid to take a stand”. [Mandy Miller in communications with Todd Starnes, August 2015]. With one voice the citizens sent Judge Reeves a stern message. Mandy went on to say,”This is the kind of thing that makes me proud to be from the South. We are getting tired of being told to sit down and shut up. People are ready to fight back.” [Ibid]. The time has come to stand up to the secularists. Time has come to put an end to their cultural jihad. Time has come to stop the godless indoctrination in our schools. More gun laws, metal detectors, no back packs, and limited number of doors in our schools are not going to solve the problems. It’s lack of respect for God and others that have brought on these problems and the churches must get involved in the repair process. It’s difficult to respect the legal process when we realize it is manned by so many ‘god-haters’.
This story is one of a church getting involved in the community and of a community that came together because of the church. Churches can get involved with ‘politics’ if they have the fortitude to do so. Asking a Baptist preacher to baptize is like asking Colonel Sanders if he wants a bucket of chicken, so when a high school football coach in Villa Rica, Georgia, asked to be baptized on the football field the local First Baptist Church was more than pleased to accommodate. [Mike Morris,”Pastor Thought Baptism on Georgia School Field Was by the Book”, Cox Media Group, September 4, 2015]. So at the end of the school day a group hauled out an old feeding trough and positioned it in the end zone and filled it with water. A crowd of about seventy-five folks, black and white, young and old, gathered in the August heat to watch the coach take the ‘Baptist plunge’…baptism. Inspired by their coach some of the team’s players also asked to be baptized. On lookers prayed, rejoiced, and applauded. [VR High School Baptisms”, YouTube video, September 16, 2016, posted by First Baptist Villa Rica]. Little did anyone know a rite of Christian passage would soon spark national ‘outrage’. The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a group of perpetually offended ‘god-haters’ and ‘free-thinkers’ saw the video and fired off a nasty letter to the Carroll County School District superintendent. Their attorney alleged it is illegal for coaches to participate in religious activities with students (we certainly wouldn’t want the students to be led away from their secular activities), including prayer and baptisms. Nor can coaches allow religious leaders to gain unique access to students during school sponsored activities. [Tyler Estep,”Carroll Schools Investigating ‘Mass Baptism’ at Football Practice”, Cox Media Group, September 2, 2015]. FFRF called the full immersion baptisms an ‘egregious constitutional violation’. [Freedom From Religion Foundation in communication with Todd Starnes, September 2015]. Maybe an Episcopal priest should have handled the baptisms. The school could have just turned on the sprinklers and had the coach and players run down the field. FFRF would not have known the difference. The ‘godless bullies’ demanded the school district to launch an immediate investigation. [Ibid]. Step forth the ‘cowardly’ school board…politics…and we don’t think it’s important to know who we vote for to put on the school board?! Kevin Williams, First Baptist Church pastor, said the football field baptisms were held after school and were completely voluntary…a field paid for by the local tax payers. First Baptist has a long history of ministering to the community, including the football team. Maybe it would have been better to hold up on the prayers until a service to honor school shooting victims made itself available? Pastor Williams emphasized that these people got baptized at their freely made choice. Times had been tough in Villa Rica, especially for young people. Over the past few years several teenagers had committed suicide. [Winston Jones,”Parents Seek Training on Teen Suicide Prevention”, Douglas County Sentinel, March 28, 2015]. The Church was trying to help the community by reaching out to these kids and love on them and show them there’s a better way…there’s hope. Politics could have none of that. The question the community had to face was whether the ‘atheist carpetbaggers’ would bully the school district into silencing people of faith into silence. As Pastor Williams stated,”When did it become illegal to bow your head and pray? When did it become illegal to say ‘I’m a Christian’?”. Our Founding Fathers never got that message. That afternoon a coach, several young men, a crowd of supporters, and a church decided to take a public stand for our Lord. [VR High School Baptisms”, YouTube]. The young men, both black and white, emerged from the waters no longer just teammates, but brothers. They found something that our secular…politics…government has yet to find.
Our school administrators are not finished yet, though. Next week we will see more stories of ‘educated doctorates’ in action. We need to be very careful where our young people go for their ‘higher’ education…in some cases it’s ‘lower’ education.
– Bob Munsey
P.S. Let’s keep the Boy Scouts of America organization in our prayers. This has been an organization that has upheld the moral teachings of the Bible for over 100 years and as we will come to see, this was something that the liberal, atheists, god-haters could not stand. So as part of their plan they have infiltrated the Boy Scouts. This became apparent last month when BSA announced that girls would be allowed to fully participate in local Boy Scout Troop programs including starting with the Cub Scouts. Further, the word “boy” was to be removed from the name to form a new genderless “Scouts BSA”. The Girl Scouts of America were not silent on the subject:”The Boys Scouts’ house is on fire. Instead of addressing systemic issues of continual sexual assault, financial mismanagement and deficient programming, BSA’s senior management wants to add an accelerant to the house fire by recruiting girls.” To cap off this total dissolution of moral training offered our young men, the World Organization of the Scout Movement released its health and safety guidelines for the World Jamboree to be held in West Virginia in 2019. Included in these guidelines are that all scouting organizations must ensure that condoms are readily and easily accessible for all participants. The guidelines also have exceptions, allowances, and instructions for the consumption of alcohol. This sounds more like “Woodstock” than a scout world jamboree. Pray that our churches who support these troops will lay out non-compliance guidelines or will cease support of certain troops. There is always Trail Life USA. [Florida Family Policy Council, May 21, 2018]. Where is your church on this subject?
Geezer Politics 