I can't believe Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch could be so ignorant about our founding. I can only assume he's "just" a coward. I'm always happy to defend the Christian roots of our country.
Welcome to Politics by Faith. It's where we take the news of the day, we bring it to the Bible, so we can walk away with peace and perspective. There's new headlines every day, but Ecclesiastes says there's nothing new under the sun. So thanks for being here to get the true story, the story of the day -to -day Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch denies our founding. Here's what happened. Conservative Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch was on PBS.
This clip is just totally ignorant about our nation's founding. This is very sad. It's very disturbing that someone could become a conservative Supreme Court justice and get this so wrong. It's bad enough that like a Sotomayor or a Justice Jackson gets it wrong. You expect that out of them. You would think at least we can rely on a conservative justice to get this right.
And he's not even close. And he's oddly giddy and confident about it. If you can see this clip we're going to play here, if you're watching on our YouTube page, which by the way, youtube . com slash apolitics by faith, you can see not only him, but pay attention to the person interviewing him, Margaret Hoover. If you see the clip, she's like, oddly aroused by this. It's weird.
She loves what Gorsuch is saying. She loves it. She loves when he says that we are not founded as a Christian nation. It's very, very weird. So here's Neil Gorsuch, conservative Supreme Court justice. You make the point also that there is no common religion or cultural heritage of Americans.
Yes. We are a creedal nation. Creedal because we believe in the creed, we believe in those three founding ideals which you mentioned previously. That sentiment, particularly as expressed by you, has received some criticism from conservative circles and drawn backlash, where people have said how wrong you could be about this. But how would you respond to those who say, we absolutely had a common cultural heritage and religion?
Well, first of all, did you know that there is a Catholic signer on the Declaration of Independence? Charles Carroll. Right? And we were founded in a lot of our colonies for religious pluralism, right? And the opportunity to practice your own faith in your own way. And we were never supposed to be a nation that was about one race or one religion.
It was about those ideas. Those things are perfect ideas that speak to every human heart and that unite us all. Is there a revisionism in, as we tell our story now? We're not just a creedal nation. We have a creed, sure, but we are a real actual place made up of particular people who came from a particular place, who created a nation based on particular values, based on a particular culture that they came from. We are seeing now more than ever, that there are other peoples from other places with different values based off of different cultures from different places.
And they're not the same. And you can't snap your finger and become an American just like that. All of our founders, all of them, rejected this idea that you could just magically become an American all of a sudden. All of them rejected it. But now Neil Gorsuch knows better. And his proof of religious pluralism, the problem with that is it opens up the door for Muslims.
which are totally foreign to our founding fathers and still to our country today should be. And he's opening up the door to this religious pluralism talk because of Charles Carroll, because he was Catholic. Come on, Neil. I don't want to stop it again. Let me just finish the end. We've always been a white Christian nation.
I just don't see it that way. I mean, Charles Carroll, right. From Maryland. Catholic. Right. When he went to sign his name, they kind of poke fun of him when he went to sign his name on August 2nd.
and said, Charles Carroll, that's like John Smith. The British will never figure out who you are. So he added of Carrollton, his hometown, so that everyone would know exactly who it was. And America is supposed to be about those ideas. And America is available to each and every one of us. And it's up to each and every one of us to see that those ideas continue to flourish.
But you refute the idea that we came from the same heritage and the same religion. Well, I mean, it's demonstrably not true that we came from the same religion. I mean, think about the Amish who came here in the 1600s on a handful of rickety boats, a third of them dying along the way for their freedom and populating much into Pennsylvania and down into the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia and now throughout the rest of the country. What, they weren't part of the American experiment? Of course they were. The Quakers, same story?
Of course they were. And so America was not found, I mean, we have a First Amendment for crying out loud. No established religion. Everybody has the freedom of religion. Everybody has the freedom of speech. We are all equal under law, okay?
Now, you cannot believe in those ideas. Fair enough. Then we have a problem. But those three ideas are something all of us can unite behind. Yeah, we got a problem all right, Neil. His point of bringing up Charles Carroll is so ridiculous.
Charles Carroll was from Annapolis, Maryland. Back then it was pronounced Maryland because it was a colony that was originally founded as a safe haven for persecuted Roman Catholics. Now, Puritans then took over the government and it became less of a particularly Catholic colony. Of course, its influence was still there. And also they, of course, still allowed Catholics to positions of prominence. But to take that religious freedom, and then extrapolate that to Muslims and Buddhists and Hindus and pagans and Wiccans.
That is suicidal, Neil. Absolutely suicidal. You think you're a good person. You think you're so pluralist and open and blah, blah, blah. That is suicidal to our nation. Our religion in this country is Christian.
That is how we were founded. And then as other evidence are the Quakers and the Amish. Our religion is Christian. I'm more than happy to go over the religious tests of every colony and then state. that they had to run for office, a religious test, a religious test that was so fundamentalist that most Christian churches in America aren't as stringent as like the state of Delaware. Like to join a church today, you barely have to proclaim these truths.
Like you used to have to run to be the dog catcher. The, uh, we'll go Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, 1776. I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration. That's your oath of office in Pennsylvania. Delaware said, I do profess faith in God, the Father, and in Jesus Christ, his only son, and in the Holy Ghost.
By the way, if you're a Muslim, you couldn't do that. You couldn't say that because you don't believe that Jesus Christ is the son of God. And in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore. And I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are given by divine inspiration. That's Delaware. Maryland?
The law says that as it is the duty of every man to worship God in such manner as he thinks most acceptable to him. Ooh, does that mean Muslims? Here's the rest of it. All persons professing the Christian religion are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty. Christian religion, Neil! That's our founding.
New Jersey said, there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Providence. No, see, that allows Muslims too. And it goes on, and that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right on account of his religious principles, but that all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect shall be capable of being elected to any office of prophet or trust. " This was never about protecting Muslims and their right to hold office. My goodness, Neil. Does he not understand that the First Amendment is not about, it's about create, it's about not creating a national religion.
But the reason why our founders didn't want to create a national religion and didn't want to give the federal government the power to do that is because every state already had their own religion. It wasn't because they hated religion. It's because they loved theirs so much of their own state. They didn't want a federal government mandating it for theirs. How can Neil Gorsuch be so ignorant about that? That is so sad.
Our special this weekend, give you a little sneak peek. is about the consequences of sin. And one scripture I want to go over is Proverbs 14, 34, which says, righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. And this fact is true for people, it's true for individuals, for families, for towns, for countries. And I love this analysis from Charles Bridges, early 1800s. He said, no nation is so low as not to sink even lower under sin.
The strongest nations are given an indelible blot if they're overcome by sin. Check out this line. What an enemy. an ungodly man is to his country. He may talk eloquently about his patriotism, but even if God should elevate him in his work, he will only bring disgrace on his people. " Wow.
That's amazing. All right. So what's broken in this story, what Neil Gorsuch did right there, my producer gave a kind assessment of Gorsuch, more kind than I wanted to give initially. We'll go, we'll call it a charitable take that Neil Gorsuch, he's less of a fool, more of a coward. Maybe that's more charitable. Maybe he's not.
He's a coward. Let me show you this quote from William Bradford. He was the governor of the Plymouth colony. He came over to Mayflower. He's talking about the courage that it took to come over to America. And he said, and surely it could not be thought, but the very hearing of these things could not but move the very bowels of men to grate within them and make the weak quake and tremble.
He says even hearing about how difficult this journey was going to be made people afraid. And then he went over all the excuses that people made not to come to America, that it was too expensive. It was going to cost too much once we got here. So many people failed before us. Other colonies didn't make it. He said when the Pilgrims went to Holland, that was hard.
And that wasn't that far away. Imagine how hard it's going to be. to the new world. So what did we do? He said, it was answered that all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courage. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate.
The difficulties were many, but not invincible for though there are many of them likely yet they were not certain. Amazing. He said, yeah, it's going to be hard, but we're going to be courageous. He went on to say, we're going to plan the best we can, but why are we going to survive? We're going to survive because it's what he said. Their condition was not ordinary.
Their ends were good and honorable. They're calling lawful and urgent. And therefore they might expect the blessing of God in their proceeding. Yay. Though they should lose their lives in this action, yet might they have comfort in the same and their endeavors be would be honorable. So it's sort of like Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, their real names, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah.
As they said, even if we die. We still love God. And that's what the pilgrims are saying. Even if we die, it doesn't matter. Our effort is noble and worthwhile and honorable and righteous. Our cause is righteous.
What cause? What cause, Neil? The cause to preserve a pure church and live faithfully under Christ. The reason for crossing the ocean and starting a colony, which eventually became the United States, was for the glory of God. To worship God according to the Bible. You know, most of the men who are on the Mayflower, weren't pilgrims, they were sailors that were here to help us get us over here.
And when we got here, there was some animosity, the whole journey, but there was animosity between the pilgrims and the sailors. The sailors were ready to take over, maybe even kill the pilgrims. So William Bradford was able to come up with what today we know as the Mayflower Compact. It starts off with, in the name of God, amen, is the opening line. But then it says, we, whose names are underwritten, having undertaken for the glory of God an advancement of the Christian faith, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation. It's right there, Neil.
It's right there. The pilgrims having undertaken this mission for the glory of God, not Allah, not Buddha, not for the glory of money, but for the glory of God. I will always defend our Christian founding from the pagans and from the useful idiots and the cowards. Let's end here and tell the story of the faithless spies. Moses sent spies to scout Canaan. This is in Numbers 13.
And the spies came back to Moses and Aaron and told them everything. Numbers 13, 27, we came to the land to which you sent us. It flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. However, the people who dwell in the land are strong and the cities are fortified and very large. And besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there. These are giants.
They went on to say that we're like grasshoppers compared to these people. And the people who heard this, the Israelites, they wept. They wept. And then everyone complained and grumbled against Moses. This is when they said, Oh, if only we just stayed and died in Egypt. You know what Moses said?
Moses said, if the Lord delights in us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us. A land that flows with milk and honey. Only do not rebel against the Lord and do not fear the people of the Lord. for they are bred to us, bred for us. Their protection is removed from them and the Lord is with us. Do not fear them.
God can do anything. Why are so many elites? Why are so many intellectuals? Why are they afraid of our founding? Why are they ashamed of him? We are not.
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