Separation of Church and State. Part 2

Epilogue – The Collateral Damage of This False Notion

Five thousand signatures! That is how many signatures Referendum 101 (R-101) fell short last year (summer of 2023) of reaching the minimum requirement of 162,000. The referendum organizers hoped to gather closer to 200,000 to allow for a margin of error but failed to reach the minimum number in the six weeks to collect them. And so, R-101 was left on the cutting floor of good intentions.

I guess you are wondering what R-101 was about. Well, I am glad you asked.

I live in Northeastern Washington State and pastor a small church at the north end of Spokane County. In early 2023, our Democrat-controlled legislature passed, and then our liberal Democrat Governor signed into law SB 5599 with the title, “An act relating to supporting youth and young adults seeking protected health care.”

This new law gave authority to any person to take a minor, claiming said child has run away from their parents who do not support (i.e., “affirm”) their child’s desire to obtain “gender-affirming healthcare.” If anyone’s child believes they are in the wrong body and want to “transition,” but their parents are convinced the problem is not in their body but in their mind, the State declares the parents to be a threat to the child, and all parental rights are lost.

What follows is sheltering the child in a facility hidden from their parents and offering whatever services the confused minor desires. The State, according to this law, declares the parents as the most dangerous people in the child’s life, so they will never know where their child is being kept and have lost any say in what happens.

“But wait, there’s more!” Children can be brought (trafficked) across state lines from other states that do not have a similar law. This provision is a green light to human traffickers as it provides a cover story for the trafficker to exploit, as well as others who want to promote and normalize LGBTQ+ behavior through confused and vulnerable children. In essence, this law makes the State guilty of aiding and abetting this most evil of all industries – the buying and selling of children.

The same scenario applies to a minor girl who wants an abortion. When parents believe that life is sacred and begins at conception, they will want to protect the innocent life growing in their daughter’s womb as they assist their daughter through the complicated process as only a family can. But, remember, according to SB 5599, the parents are a danger to the child if they do not “affirm” the choice of their minor child. And so, these minor girls can “run away” to any person who can get them into the system and away from their parents. And what about the unborn human children? They are sacrificed to the god of this world.

Had R-101 received enough signatures, the people of this State could have voted on this issue, and there is good reason to believe we would have voted to repeal SB 5599. Only God knows how many children’s bodies, innocence, and future family lives would have been preserved and protected from this damaging ideology based on a lie – a lie from hell itself – if only we had the chance to bury this evil edict at the ballot box.

A year later, SB 5599 became the law of the land in Washington State, with similar laws in other states, including but not limited to Maine and California.

Hopefully, you are appalled by laws like this, but you may wonder how the “Separation of Church and State” topic applies. Let me make this absolutely clear: the presence of this horrendous law on the books and the danger it presents to families and children is due to nothing other than collateral damage of the Church’s false understanding, interpretation, and application of this controversial phrase today. If you have not read Part 1, you can do so through this link.

Remember that the signature-gathering effort fell short by 5,000 signatures to qualify, although they hoped for a buffer of about 35-40,000 signatures. In Spokane County, where my congregation gathers, the population is over half a million, with hundreds of Churches in Spokane alone. Furthermore, there are multiple churches with an attendance that exceeds 1,000.

Here is the sad reality - I know of fifteen large churches in the greater Spokane city area, with anywhere from 800 to over 2,500 in attendance, each of whom refused to allow the signature forms in their buildings or to mention the dangerous elements of SB 5599 from their pulpits. Most of these Christians had no idea that a battle was raging for the souls and bodies of their children. At least, not until it was too late. Shameful!

One does not need to be a math professor to realize that these fifteen churches could have easily provided the missing 5,000 signatures – and this is just in one out of 39 counties statewide. Many other churches of all sizes took the same sad posture and would not allow discussion of SB 5599 or have the R-101 sheets present in their buildings. If they did so, we could have collected at least 200,000 signatures. [In the year since the failure of R-101, a group called “Let’s Go Washington” was formed and has strategically gathered well over 400,000 signatures for each of seven newer initiatives, proving that R-101 did not have to fail last summer.]  

In part one, I wrote that Jefferson’s words, “a wall of Separation of Church and State,” meant that the government could not control or infringe upon the free exercise of the religion of the Danbury Baptists. This “wall” was essential to the colonists, who were all too familiar with the corruption inherent in a Church controlled by the State (or a King). It had nothing to do with discussing political issues from the pulpit.

The devil’s most effective assault on the role of the Church in society and politics came through one of the most corrupt politicians of his day, Linden B. Johnson. Johnson was running for re-election to the Senate, and he noticed that his opponent had significant support from non-profit organizations. So he created what we know as the “Johnson Amendment,” which he had included in a larger bill in the 1950s prohibiting non-profits from endorsing and supporting a candidate or risk losing their tax-exempt status.

Johnson did not care about tax-exempt non-profits – he just wanted to sabotage his opponent’s campaign. The collateral damage of the Johnson Amendment was the clamping down on the freedom of the Church and Pastors in endorsing candidates and addressing contemporary political issues or laws became collateral damage. At least, that is how Christians interpreted it. With the average Church in America under 200 in Sunday attendance, one can understand that with the limited finances associated with a moderate-sized congregation, losing tax-exempt status would be very damaging.

However, the truth is that the limitations of the Johnson Amendment did not extend any further than prohibiting a non-profit (like a Church) from endorsing one candidate over another. There never was, nor is there now, a legal prohibition against the Church or Pastors addressing the political issues and controversies of the day. But you would never know that if you talked to the average Pastor or local Christian today.

The phrase “we cannot get political” is said with such a conviction that one might think it was the 11^th Commandment, which God etched on the back of the second stone tablet Moses brought down from the mountain. Moreover, there is this false concept that addressing political issues from a biblical perspective in any church gathering is tantamount to abandoning the Gospel!

A long time ago, I learned how to walk and chew gum at the same time. I also learned that I can love God and my American heritage simultaneously. My love for God supersedes my national patriotism but does not negate it.

As a pastor for over forty years, I, too, have felt the pressure to keep quiet and have seen the intimidating, furled brows of angry congregants who do not want to hear what they consider political issues from the pulpit. Over the years, I have watched them walk out of the service, and some leave the Church altogether because I addressed a current issue flooding the news channels and facing everyone in their daily lives.

These people want to be shielded from the “bad news” out there, almost as if not addressing these would keep them from being affected by the reprehensible works of power-hungry godless leftists who write bills like SB 5599. It did not shield them. It never will.

I write this with no apology or hesitation: The most significant risk facing the most vulnerable among us, our children, is not drag queen story hours, the sexualized curriculum today, Hollywood, or socialist politicians, but it is the pastors, boards, and church denominations who have lost their will and abandoned their calling to be the “Light of Truth to the World” and the “Purity-preserving Salt of the Earth.”

I know the Bible (i.e., God) has something to say about all areas of life. Therefore, as a Pastor, I must “rightly divide the Word of God” and let the Truth of God shine upon those issues affecting people daily. Martin Luther said this:

“If I profess with loudest voice and clearest exposition every portion of the truth of God except that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ however boldly I may be professing Christ. Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace if he flinches at that point.” [Original source unknown].

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German Pastor who stood up to Hilter’s evil regime, is credited with saying, “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil. God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”* When State agencies can secretly harbor a “runaway” child because they reject their parent’s traditional values about sex, gender, and life, it is nothing less than evil – a degree of evil tinged with the scent of burning sulfur from the pit of hell.

The devil and his human associates have successfully intimidated into silence and then indoctrinated a significant portion of Jesus’ Church over the years to “behave nicely” and keep their religious beliefs out of the public square. But Jesus said, “If they hate you, remember they hated me first,” and:

“Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you, and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matt. 5:11-12)

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for God’s people to stay silent while we sit in our comfortable climate-controlled sanctuaries. Darkness can only exist when light is absent – or better stated, the light drives out darkness and never vice versa. The collateral damage of a silent Church to individuals, families, communities, and society is lived out before us day after day.

We cannot continue to do the same thing (as we see the continued deterioration in society) and think we will get a different result. Someone called that the definition of insanity.  

*[This quote is found in Eric Metaxa’s book “Letter to the American Church” and his much more extensive work, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Spy.” I highly recommend the reader purchase these books and any related study guides found at: www.ericmetaxas.com]

[The original article was published in August 2023 in the (South) Stevens County Times, “Pastors Perspective” Column, but I have significantly edited from my original – Tim White.]