Banning the Mention of God in Public Life
More and more, God is being shunted aside and banned in the public arena—particularly from schools.
In November 2012, a six-year-old girl was told by her North Carolina school that, during a Veteran's Day program, she could not say the word God in reading a poem that honored her two grandfathers. "He prayed to God for peace, he prayed to God for strength," the poem stated (Todd Starnes, God Less America, 2014, pp. 128-129).
School officials in southern Florida "banned a fifth grader from reading the Bible during 'free reading' time" (Breitbart.com, "FL Teacher Banned Bible From 'Free Reading' Time in Classroom," May 5, 2014).
Meanwhile, officials at other schools are on the alert to make sure that Gideons International does not succeed in—horror of horrors!—passing out free Bibles to students at school.
An e-mail memo from the assistant principal of a New Jersey middle school stated: "It has been brought to the administration's attention that Gideons may be near our campus to distribute literature to our students . . . Please make sure they DO NOT step foot onto our campus at anytime. There will be added police and security presence at dismissal" (quoted by Starnes, p. 116, emphasis added). Apparently some school administrators think distributing Bibles is the big danger in America's public schools today—to the point that police must be called in to prevent it!
In 2012, national Democratic Party leaders removed references to God from their party's platform at their national convention. But this wasn't popular with everyone, and as it was shown on primetime TV nationwide, a move was made to put God back in—at which point many on the convention floor shockingly booed. Yes, booed God—or at least the prospect of God having anything to do with decisions in governing the nation! How far this country has fallen from the days of the Founding Fathers.
Nationally syndicated radio host Steve Deace comments: "This 'New Left' is not mere liberals. They are flat-out Leftists . . . They are Social Reconstructionists, whose goal is to empower government to replace our Judeo-Christian ideals of liberty and morality with what amounts to Cultural Marxism . . . That's why their ultimate goal is silencing the church . . . For the church says that God alone is God, and government is not.
"Not to mention with God out of the way, so are your God-given rights, which makes you a de facto ward of the state and not a free person. As [noted author G.K.] Chesterton once said [paraphrased], 'Whenever the government removes the god, the government then becomes the god'" ("The Left Officially Declares War on God," Townhall.com, July 13, 2014).
An Article from:
Good News Magazine: November - December 2014
Course Content
Tom Robinson
Tom is an elder in the United Church of God who works from his home near St. Louis, Missouri as managing editor and senior writer for Beyond Today magazine, church study guides and the UCG Bible Commentary. He is a visiting instructor at Ambassador Bible College. And he serves as chairman of the church's Prophecy Advisory Committee and a member of the Fundamental Beliefs Amendment Committee.
Tom began attending God's Church at the age of 16 in 1985 and was baptized a year later. He attended Ambassador College in both Texas and California and served for a year as a history teacher at the college's overseas project in Sri Lanka. He graduated from the Texas campus in 1992 with a Bachelor of Arts in theology along with minors in English and mass communications. Since 1994, he has been employed as an editor and writer for church publications and has served in local congregations through regular preaching of sermons.
Tom was ordained to the ministry in 2012 and attends the Columbia-Fulton, Missouri congregation with his wife Donna and their two teen children.
