Rallying Cry of the Revolution?
Today this article of mine ran on www.HeadlinePrayer.org:
Lord, thank You for how You delivered us from an oppressive monarch and set us on a path with You as our Sovereign.
On the stage of the Museum of the Bible during Rededicate America, as Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon, I bellowed a motto of the War for Independence: “No king but King Jesus!”
I posted the phrase on social media, and a friend from high school called its veracity into question, so I did a little digging.
There's one thing my friend wrote that I didn't address in the article: "We were founded -clearly - on the principle of separation of Church and State." I didn't address that comment in the article for two reasons:
1. I was 500 words over my target length when I submitted the article, mostly due to the quotes of our founders I included.
2. Most of our intercessors have been hearing where the phrase "separation of Church and State" came from for decades.
In case you haven't heard, it didn't come from our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, or our Bill of Rights. It's found in a letter our third President, Thomas Jefferson, wrote to the Baptists of Danbury, CT, who were concerned that the newly formed federal government would dictate how their church was run. He responded:
I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
President Jefferson was assuring them that the First Amendment was protecting them from the government running the church, not that there could be no influence of the Church on the State or no expression of faith from those in government.
President Jefferson closes with this: "I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem."
He wrote that on January 1, in the Year of Our Lord Christ (as he was want to put in official Presidential documents) 1802. Two days later, he got on his horse and rode to church in the Capitol.
You can read both letters by clicking here.
Neither Joyce nor I could be on today's Headline Prayer Live, but I'm including it here, because our colleagues and friends dug into the article with fervor!
To get email alerts when Joyce and I are on Headline Prayer Live, sign up at www.RichDrama.com/blog/post/Prayer.
We were recently blessed to re-watch Washington’s Armor, in which I did dialect coaching for nine accents, played the voices of two French soldiers
(at 27:53), and played a cook singing to his pigs (in Part 2, which may remain unfinished). While cleaning up www.RichDrama.com/blog/post/WashingtonsArmor, I was delighted to happen upon this behind the scenes look at filming that:
