US SUPREME COURT CONTINUES CHIPPING AWAY AT SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE

LATEST DECISION ON GOVERNMENT AID TO PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

Supreme Court sides with religious institutions in a major church-state decision

The Supreme Court ended its term Monday with a major First Amendment decision, ruling that efforts at separating church and state go too far when they deny religious institutions access to government grants meant for a secular purpose.

In siding with a Missouri church that had been denied money to resurface its playground, the court ruled 7-2 that excluding churches from state programs for which other charitable groups are eligible is a violation of the Constitution’s protection of the free exercise of religion.

“The consequence is, in all likelihood, a few extra scraped knees,” wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. “But the exclusion of Trinity Lutheran from a public benefit for which it is otherwise qualified, solely because it is a church, is odious to our Constitution all the same, and cannot stand.”

Trinity Lutheran Church in Columbia, Mo., brought the case because it was excluded from a state program that reimburses the cost of rubberizing the surface of playgrounds. The church scored high in the grant process, but Missouri’s state constitution, like those in about three dozen states, forbade government from spending public money on “any church, sect, or denomination of religion.” . . .

The court’s ruling in Trinity Lutheran v. Comer was a narrow one, but experts said it is sure to bring more challenges from religious groups in other areas.

“School choice is on a great footing, a better footing today than it was yesterday,” said Michael Bindas, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, which advocates for private-school voucher programs. “The court’s reasoning sends a strong signal that just as the court would not tolerate the exclusion of a church from a playground resurfacing program, it will not tolerate the exclusion of a child from a school-choice program solely because they want to use a scholarship at a religious school.”

Others disputed that summary. But groups supportive of the separation of church and state were disappointed by the ruling, and it drew a long and passionate dissent from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Sotomayor signaled the importance she places on the decision by reading part of her dissent from the bench.

The ruling “weakens this country’s longstanding commitment to a separation of church and state beneficial to both,” Sotomayor wrote. She added, “If this separation means anything, it means that the government cannot, or at the very least need not, tax its citizens and turn that money over to houses of worship. The Court today blinds itself to the outcome this history requires and leads us instead to a place where separation of church and state is a constitutional slogan, not a constitutional commitment.”(Underscored emphasis added.)

The constitutional grounds for the State of Missouri's denial of the church’s application for a cash grant to subsidize the cost of resurfacing its playground with recycled scrap-tire material was stated in an ACLU article prior to the Supreme Court ruling:

The State of Missouri Was Right to Say No Church Playground Renovations on the Taxpayers' Dime

In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Pauley, the Supreme Court will consider whether the state of Missouri violated the U.S. Constitution when it denied the church’s application for a cash grant to subsidize the cost of resurfacing its playground with recycled scrap-tire material. While, at first blush, this may appear to be a simple dispute about payments for playground improvements, it implicates one of our most essential, enduring constitutional commitments: the ban on direct government funding of houses of worship.

The lower court in this case properly rejected what it described as the church’s “unprecedented” claims, which would force state taxpayers to underwrite improvements to church property. Indeed, the state acted well within its authority, pursuant to a longstanding provision in the Missouri Constitution, to exclude the church from its limited, discretionary grant program. Like more than three-fourths of the states across the country, Missouri includes in its constitution heightened protections against government-funded religion. These provisions promote important anti-establishment aims and provide critical church-state protections. As Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s majority opinion in Locke v. Davey made clear over a decade ago, states undoubtedly can enforce their no-aid provisions to withhold government dollars from religious institutions or activities, without running afoul of the federal Constitution.

Yet even without its no-aid provision, Missouri had no choice here, because the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment forbids the direct payment of taxpayer funds to churches and other houses of worship. The court of appeals seemed to think otherwise, suggesting in passing that the state could have opted to give the church a competitive grant for playground resurfacing without violating the federal Constitution. But a closer look at history and precedent leads to only one conclusion: Missouri’s decision to exclude Trinity Lutheran Church from the grant program was not only permissible, but required by the Establishment Clause.

The use of government money to aid churches gravely concerned the framers of the Constitution and, in large part, animated passage of the Establishment Clause. The Framers recognized that forcing taxpayers to provide direct financial assistance to houses of worship violates religious liberty and jeopardizes the freedom to decide which faith, if any, to practice and support. In his famous “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison, the principal architect of the First Amendment, warned that compelling taxpayers to pay even “three pence” to support clergy and churches would trample the rights of conscience by coercing religious devotion.

The nonestablishment principle helps fulfill the nation’s promise of religious liberty. It guards against compulsory support for religion. It also respects the increasing diversity of faith and belief in the U.S., allowing religious exercise to flourish without the corrupting influence of government and the power of the state’s sizable purse. The framers were keenly aware that taxpayer support for religious institutions can lead to religious divisiveness, pitting faith against faith, sect against sect, as they compete for shares of the government’s largesse. At the same time, state-funded religion invites government meddling and entanglement in matters of faith.

It is hardly surprising, then, that many devout religious adherents have ardently supported disestablishment for centuries. As the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty recently explained to the court, disestablishment in the United States “marked an essential step toward the protection of individual religious liberty” and “ensured that churches would not be funded through the coercive power of the state, but through the voluntary offerings of adherents, thus providing a constraint on government and a measure of religious liberty for individuals — to fund or refuse to fund religious institutions — that had long been denied.”

Against this historical backdrop, the Supreme Court has consistently recognized that providing direct government aid to religious institutions, even as part of a general funding program, raises profound Establishment Clause concerns. To be sure, the court has, in some cases, upheld state aid to certain non-church religiously affiliated institutions, such as private schools and universities. Those circumstances, however, have been strictly limited, and the court has always assured that the aid would not be used for religious activities or later diverted to religious purposes. As the court has explained, there are “special Establishment Clause dangers where the government makes direct money payments to sectarian institutions,” because this form of state aid “falls precariously close to the original object of the Establishment Clause’s prohibition.” With that in mind, the Supreme Court has never sanctioned direct cash support to a house of worship — and with good reason. . .

In the judgment of the Court, Chief Justice John Roberts attempted to camouflage the violation of the Constitution with a specious disclaimer. However, the decision of the Supreme Court is seen for what it is: a chipping away at the wall of separation between Church and State:

States must support some church programs, high court rules

However the narrowly framed decision declined to say how far states can go to support school choice programs like vouchers.

The Supreme Court chipped away Monday at the traditional wall separating church and state, ruling 7-2 that states cannot exclude religious institutions from state programs that have a purely secular intent — in this case, making playgrounds safer.

However, the court framed its decision narrowly in Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia vs. Comer, declining to say how far states could go to fund the school choice programs being pushed by President Donald Trump as part of his sweeping school choice agenda. . .

Still, religious rights and voucher proponents, including Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, celebrated the ruling as an incremental win, while most groups opposed to taxpayer funding of religious groups denounced it.

Roberts took pains to underscore the narrowness of the decision in a footnote, saying “this case involves express discrimination based on religious identity with respect to playground resurfacing. We do not address religious uses of funding or other forms of discrimination.”

Significantly, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas objected to the footnote, arguing it made the ruling unnecessarily vague.

"I worry that some might mistakenly read it to suggest that only 'playground resurfacing' cases, or only those with some association with children’s safety or health, or perhaps some other social good we find sufficiently worthy, are governed by the legal rules recounted in and faithfully applied by the Court’s opinion," Gorsuch wrote.(Underscored emphasis added.)

PROGRESSION OF SUPPORT FOR GOVERNMENT AID TO PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS

The process of chipping away at the wall separating Church and State has been in progress over a period of years, and particularly since the year 2000:

A Hole In The Wall (A year 2000 decision and a dramatic turning point)

Deeply Divided Supreme Court Allows More Tax Aid To Parochial Schools

By just glancing at the title page, defenders of church-state separation knew they were in trouble June 28 when the Supreme Court handed down a major ruling on parochial school aid: The decision was authored by Justice Clarence Thomas.

Thomas is a relentless advocate for public funding of religious enterprises. And true to form, the opinion he wrote that day knocked a gaping hole in the wall of separation between church and state, holding in a Louisiana lawsuit that the government may provide computers and other resources to religious schools.

In the ruling, Thomas outlined his belief that government has sweeping authority to grant public funds to religion a policy that, if ever adopted by a court majority, would surely lead to a high court blessing of school vouchers. The only reason his view is not law today is that Thomas was able to muster only three of his colleagues to endorse it. Joining Thomas in backing this radical approach were Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony M. Kennedy.

Two others, Sandra Day O'Connor and Stephen Breyer, concurred with Thomas' result, but refused to accept his reasoning. Thus, while a six-justice bloc voted to uphold the parochial school aid under consideration, the decision apparently does not fling the door open wide to vouchers and other forms of more direct government assistance to parochial schools. There's no denying, however, that the Mitchell v. Helms decision may have propped the door open a crack.

At issue in the case was a federal program known as Chapter 2 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. Now renamed Title VI, the program gives federal funds to public schools for purchasing computers, textbooks and other educational materials. But there's a catch: Public schools must share the largess with religious and other private schools.

That requirement led to a court challenge of Chapter 2 in 1985. Launched with legal support from Americans United, the lawsuit featured plaintiffs who are parents and taxpayers in suburban New Orleans, led by Mary "Neva" Helms of Jefferson Parish.

Helms was angry because local Roman Catholic schools were awash in federal and state money at a time when her daughter's public school was wanting. A second plaintiff, Marie Schneider, an active Catholic who sent her children to both public and parochial schools, shared Helms' opposition to tax aid for religious education.

At the time the case was filed, the Supreme Court and lower federal courts were more separationist in outlook, and the prospects for victory looked good. For a variety of reasons, however, the case got bogged down in a legal quagmire, languishing in the lower federal courts for more than a decade.

During that period, Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush made a number of appointments to the Supreme Court and lower federal courts, many of whom were decidedly hostile to church-state separation. The legal landscape began to change. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

Note that plaintiff Helms was "angry because local Roman Catholic schools "were awash in federal and state money at a time when her daughter's public school was wanting;" also "a second plaintiff, Marie Schneider, [was] an active Catholic who sent her children to both public and parochial schools," and shared Helms' opposition to tax aid for religious education. Wherever the issue of State aid to parochial schools is raised it is Roman Catholic schools which are the major beneficiaries.

THE IMAGE TO THE BEAST TAKES SHAPE

Also note the last two paragraphs. Adventist Laymen's Foundation of Mississippi-Arkansas under the late Wm. H. Grotheer recognized in the 2000 election campaign the shape of the Image to the Beast being formed. At the invitation of Elder Grotheer a layman wrote and Elder Grotheer edited an essay titled "The Forming of the Image To the Beast Is It Now Accomplished?" This was published as a 2001 WWN Special Issue. It evoked a storm of protest by mail, some objecting to so-called "liberal spin." The writers could not see that the fulfillment of prophecy cannot be recognized apart from past and current events; and therefore cannot be separated from the political scene. There was even a denial by some that the Image to the Beast is prophesied to be formed in America. Pray God that such are now few; otherwise they are far, far, behind the  march of events.

This website, with the approval of Elder Grotheer, published an essay in 2004 titled "THEOCRATIC DICTATORSHIP," in which the following (inter alia) was quoted from an essay titled The Despoiling of America, by Katherine Yurica, under the section heading "The First Prince of the Theocratic States of America":

It happened quietly, with barely a mention in the media. Only the Washington Post dutifully reported it.[1] And only Kevin Phillips saw its significance in his new book, American Dynasty.[2] On December 24, 2001, Pat Robertson resigned his position as President of the Christian Coalition.

Behind the scenes religious conservatives were abuzz with excitement. They believed Robertson had stepped down to allow the ascendance of the President of the United States of America to take his rightful place as the head of the true American Holy Christian Church.

Robertson’s act was symbolic, but it carried a secret and solemn revelation to the faithful. It was the signal that the Bush administration was a government under God that was led by an anointed President who would be the first regent in a dynasty of regents awaiting the return of Jesus to earth. The President would now be the minister through whom God would execute His will in the nation. George W. Bush accepted his scepter and his sword with humility, grace and a sense of exultation.

As Antonin Scalia, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court explained a few months later, the Bible teaches and Christians believe “… that government …derives its moral authority from God. Government is the ‘minister of God’ with powers to ‘revenge,’ to ‘execute wrath,’ including even wrath by the sword…”

In the same essay, under the section heading "How Dominionism Was Spread," Yurica stated as follows:

The years 1982-1986 marked the period Pat Robertson and radio and televangelists urgently broadcast appeals that rallied Christian followers to accept a new political religion that would turn millions of Christians into an army of political operatives. It was the period when the militant church raised itself from centuries of sleep and once again eyed power.

At the time, most Americans were completely unaware of the militant agenda being preached on a daily basis across the breadth and width of America. Although it was called “Christianity” it can barely be recognized as Christian. It in fact was and is a wolf parading in sheep’s clothing: It was and is a political scheme to take over the government of the United States and then turn that government into an aggressor nation that will forcibly establish the United States as the ruling empire of the twenty-first century. It is subversive, seditious, secretive, and dangerous.

Dominionism is a natural if unintended extension of Social Darwinism and is frequently called “Christian Reconstructionism.” Its doctrines are shocking to ordinary Christian believers and to most Americans. Journalist Frederick Clarkson, who has written extensively on the subject, warned in 1994 that Dominionism “seeks to replace democracy with a theocratic elite that would govern by imposing their interpretation of ‘Biblical Law.’” He described the ulterior motive of Dominionism is to eliminate “…labor unions, civil rights laws, and public schools.” Clarkson then describes the creation of new classes of citizens:

“Women would be generally relegated to hearth and home. Insufficiently Christian men would be denied citizenship, perhaps executed. So severe is this theocracy that it would extend capital punishment [to] blasphemy, heresy, adultery, and homosexuality.”

Today, Dominionists hide their agenda and have resorted to stealth; one investigator who has engaged in internet exchanges with people who identify themselves as religious conservatives said, “They cut and run if I mention the word ‘Dominionism.’” Joan Bokaer, the Director of Theocracy Watch, a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University wrote, “In March 1986, I was on a speaking tour in Iowa and received a copy of the following memo [Pat] Robertson had distributed to the Iowa Republican County Caucus titled, “How to Participate in a Political Party.” It read:

“Rule the world for God.

“Give the impression that you are there to work for the party, not push an ideology.

“Hide your strength.

“Don’t flaunt your Christianity.

“Christians need to take leadership positions. Party officers control political parties and so it is very important that mature Christians have a majority of leadership positions whenever possible, God willing.”

Dominionists have gained extensive control of the Republican Party and the apparatus of government throughout the United States; they continue to operate secretly. Their agenda to undermine all government social programs that assist the poor, the sick, and the elderly is ingeniously disguised under false labels that confuse voters. Nevertheless, as we shall see, Dominionism maintains the necessity of laissez-faire economics, requiring that people “look to God and not to government for help.”

It is estimated that thirty-five million Americans who call themselves Christian, adhere to Dominionism in the United States, but most of these people appear to be ignorant of the heretical nature of their beliefs and the seditious nature of their political goals. So successfully have the televangelists and churches inculcated the idea of the existence of an outside “enemy,” which is attacking Christianity, that millions of people have perceived themselves rightfully overthrowing an imaginary evil anti-Christian conspiratorial secular society.

When one examines the progress of its agenda, one sees that Dominionism has met its time table: the complete takeover of the American government was predicted to occur by 2004.[14] Unless the American people reject the GOP’s control of the government, Americans may find themselves living in a theocracy that has already spelled out its intentions to change every aspect of American life including its cultural life, its Constitution and its laws. (Underscored emphasis added.)

The knowledge of the plot described above and how it is being implemented is essential to an understanding of what is now happening in relation to the constitutional separation of Church and State in the United States of America. The "wall" is crumbling, and the process is far advanced in many ways, including State aid to parochial schools:

THE QUIETLY CRUMBLING WALL OF SEPARATION (A 2011 article.)

In his recent RD piece, law professor Bruce Ledewitz does a good job telling the story of the trend toward diminished protections for the free exercise of religion over the past couple of decades of federal jurisprudence. But it’s not the whole story.

He is correct in asserting that the courts have—due in large part to Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion for the majority in 1990’s Employment Division v. Smith decision—increasingly come to treat the free exercise of religion as just another right, due no more heightened level of protection from government encroachment than any other civil right.

But there are two clauses that protect religious liberty in the First Amendment: the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. During the same period in which the courts have lowered the bar for protecting the free-exercise principle, they’ve also cut back significantly on protections for the flipside of the coin, the anti-establishment principle.

The combined trends, say many advocates, endanger the lofty constitutional pedestal on which religious liberty has rested. And, if they go unchecked, Americans may one day be forced to re-learn the difficult lessons from centuries of European history that inspired the nation’s founders to protect the “First Freedom” (literally, the first 16 words of the First Amendment) by creating a clear—and unique, at that time, in the annals of human history—institutional separation between religion and the state.

“Unfortunately, the clauses have been watered down to suggest religion needs only to be treated the same as other interests,” said Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty Executive Director Brent Walker, in a written statement for my recent Associated Baptist Press story on the topic. “In fact, often religion should be treated differently—to ensure free exercise by lifting governmentally imposed burdens and prevent establishments by prohibiting government sponsorship of religion. Religion is special and is treated specially by the First Amendment. We must recognize its uniqueness if religious liberty in this country is to be vital over the next decade.”

There was broad agreement across the ideological spectrum (from the ACLU to the Southern Baptist Convention) in the religious-liberty community that Smith spelled trouble for the Free Exercise Clause. As a result, coalitions of odd bedfellows have tried, with mixed success, in the years since 1990 to remedy the decision’s most pernicious effects via legislation (such as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act).

But, when it comes to the Establishment Clause side of the trend, consensus breaks down. That’s because the Smith decision is probably the only church-state opinion Scalia ever penned that religious conservatives don’t like. Yet the trend toward a religion-is-just-another-interest view of the law can work in the (short-term) favor of many conservative religious leaders and advocacy groups.

ROME WORKING IN DISGUISE

The following article provides further insight into the religio-political forces driving the crumbling of the wall of separation between Church and State in America, although the author does not look with disfavor on the process ("the revived cooperation between church and state may be an inevitable and perhaps even healthy result of treating religion as just another aspect of identity politics in a multicultural age"):

Is Nothing Secular? (A year 2000 article.)

Whatever else it achieves, the presidential campaign of 2000 will be remembered as the time in American politics when the wall separating church and state began to collapse. George W. Bush set the tone by raising the likelihood of his candidacy after a prayer breakfast and later declaring that his favorite political philosopher was ''Christ, because he changed my heart.'' Not to be outdone, Al Gore boasted that he decided important questions using the religious shorthand ''W.W.J.D.'' -- for a saying,'' he explained, ''that's popular now in my faith, 'What would Jesus do?' ''

Bush and Gore have enthusiastically endorsed a provision of the 1996 welfare-reform bill called charitable choice, which allows faith-based organizations to administer welfare programs with public funds, as long as there are secular alternatives. And then there is the explosive issue of publicly financed vouchers for parochial and secular private schools, which all of the Republican candidates have embraced. Although Gore opposes vouchers, his Democratic opponent, Bill Bradley, provisionally supports them.

It's not just the candidates who are eroding the wall between religion and public life; the courts, by and large, are giving their blessing. At the end of December, a federal district judge in Cleveland struck down a voucher program passed by the Ohio Legislature, and many observers expect the issue to be reviewed eventually by the Supreme Court. If and when the justices finally agree to resolve the constitutionality of vouchers, they will do so against a backdrop of decisions that have been chipping away at the wall between church and state over the past decade. Four justices are poised to uphold vouchers, four justices seem determined to strike them down and the justice with the swing vote -- Sandra Day O'Connor -- has, as usual, refused to reveal her hand.

The real possibility that the court could uphold a vouchers program -- and may also decide later this year that the Constitution protects, rather than prohibits, student-led prayer at high-school sports events -- has put defenders of strict separation between church and state in an apocalyptic mood. ''Vouchers has the potential to be a watershed issue,'' says Steven R. Shapiro, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, maintains that ''we're just one or two votes away on the Supreme Court from a radical redefinition of what church-state separation means.'' The next president, through the justices he appoints if openings arise, will decide just how much of a wall is left standing.

One thing is clear: the era of strict separation is over. For a surprisingly brief period, from the early 1970's to the late 1980's, strict separationism commanded the support of a majority of Supreme Court justices. During the separationist era, even after-school prayer disappeared from public schools, as did crèches from City Hall Christmas displays unless they were accompanied by plastic animals. Religious conservatives complained that the courts had banished religion from American
public life and were enforcing a rigidly secular ideology that prohibited the faithful from expressing their beliefs except behind closed doors. But thanks to a paradigm shift in the courts that religious conservatives have been slow to acknowledge, traditional defenders of church-state separation are increasingly on the defensive, legally and politically.

The Supreme Court is on the verge of replacing the principle of strict separation with a very different constitutional principle that demands equal treatment for religion. And far from threatening public life, or for that matter religious liberty, the revived cooperation between church and state may be an inevitable and perhaps even healthy result of treating religion as just another aspect of identity politics in a multicultural age.

How the wall went up and why it came down is in large measure the story of the relationship between Protestants and Catholics in America. It is no coincidence that the candidates who have seemed to be running for preacher rather than president -- from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush and Al Gore -- have been from the South. (Carter and Gore are Baptists; Bush is a Methodist.) For the most important political factor in the rise and fall of church-state separationism is the realignment of Southern Protestants, who used to oppose state aid to religious education but now support it. For most of this century, Southern Democrats from conservative and evangelical churches with a strong tradition of walling themselves off from the state feared the effects of government aid to parochial schools. But by the 1980's and 90's, white Southerners were Republican rather than Democratic, and in the wake of Supreme Court decisions banning school prayer and legalizing abortion, they felt more alarmed by what they perceived as creeping secularism than by the threat that public funds might lead to the growth of the Catholic Church. ''The historic conflict was Protestant-Catholic, and although evangelicals were the last to get the word, that conflict is pretty much dead,'' says Douglas Laycock of the University of Texas Law School. ''The alignment today is the religiously intense against the secular, and with respect to that fight, evangelicals and conservative Catholics are now on the same side.''

The reversal of Southern Protestants on the question of state aid to religion is part of a broader religious realignment involving the rise and fall of anti-Catholicism. From the mid-19th to the mid-20th century, the effort to keep public funds out of ''sectarian'' schools was largely driven by Protestant suspicion of Rome. . . (Underscored emphasis added.)

The answer to the question "is nothing secular" is "no" according to Rome. This was the dictum Pope John-Paul as recorded by Malachi Martin:

No human activity escapes the religious dimension, he said; but especially important are the activities that constitute the sociopolitical life of men and women wherever they reside. Indeed, the note that dominated and animated that encyclical document was John Paul's insistence that the hard, intractable problems of the world—hunger, violation of human dignity and human rights, war and violence, economic oppression, political persecution—any and all of these can be solved only by acceptance and implementation of the message of Christ's revelation announced by the papacy and the Roman Catholic Church. (Underscored and italicized emphasis added.)

Rome's "New Evangelization" specifically targets the secular State. Do a search in THE NEW EVANGELIZATION FOR THE TRANSMISSION OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH and note how many times the term "secularization" appears. Rome asserts that: "The influence of secularization in daily life makes it increasingly difficult to affirm the existence of truth, which, realistically speaking, eliminates the question of God from a person's examination of self." It is open to question that this phenomenon of modern life is primarily attributable to secularization, especially since her concept of "truth" is a corruption of the true gospel, and much of the immorality in the contemporary culture is the result of the near extinction of true Protestantism. In any event, it is critically important to note that Rome's solution is the imposition of her teachings.

A number of influential Roman Catholic organizations in America exist to promote an increased role of religion in public policy and turn back the influence of secularism.

Katherine Yurica focused attention on the dominionist plot to take over the government of America. She recognized that the Republican party had been taken over by Theocrats, but she did not direct attention to the convergence of interests between the Dominionists and the Roman Catholic Church. This website has sought to alert Christian students of the prophetic Word to the insidious manipulation of "Protestant" Dominionists by the Roman Catholic Church, which created a "Christian Right" coalition through a progression of religio-political movements.

In Chapter 24 of Facts of Faith, by Christian Edwardson, titled The United States in Prophecy under the section heading A Sad Change the author wrote:

We wish we could close the picture here, and leave its unmarred beauty lingering in our minds; but, sad to say, there is another chapter to it that must be read. The prophet continues: "He spake as a dragon." Rev. 13:11. A nation speaks through its laws. This prophetic statement, therefore, reveals that a great change in policy is to come over our beloved country. The "dragon" is a symbol of pagan Rome, that persecuted the early Christians during the first three centuries. (Rev. 12:1-5, 11.) And a similar persecution will be inaugurated against the "remnant" church, for we read: "The dragon was wroth with the woman [church], and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Rev. 12:17. And he has "great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time." Verse 12. Here we see what is meant by speaking "as a dragon," and we also see upon whom this persecution will come; namely, upon commandment-keepers.

This prophecy also reveals what influence will be brought to bear upon our lawmakers and people to produce this sad change. We have already seen that "the first beast" of Rev. 13:1-10 represents the Papacy, and by reading the eleventh and twelfth verses we see that the effort of the lamblike beast will be to cause "the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed." That is: The whole trend is Romeward, therefore it must be Rome that is working in disguise to bring about such a trend. And now as to the facts in the case. [The author continues with quotations from Roman Catholic sources.] (Italicized and underscored emphasis added.)

God has not left us without a clear road map of prophecy. It cannot continue without end into the future. There comes a time of present fulfillment. The warnings should be obvious that now is the time of fulfillment of Rev. 13:14b-15a. This analysis does not presume to be able to identify the "miracles;" but the Image to the Beast and its making "by the consent of the voting electorate is too well-defined to be ignored. How soon will fulfillment of the rest of Rev. 13 be completed? The admonition of Jesus is to "Watch" (Luke 21:36.)