The God of the Bible proclaims in the Ten Commandments that “you shall have no other gods before Me.”
In our time, a secular faith has arisen that is just as jealous. Replacing fealty to God with fealty to government, it imposes an atheist faith on all public institutions, enforced mainly by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys and liberal courts.
Just the threat of invoking liberal lawyers’ wrath is enough to send people packing.
A case in point: When a local charity teamed up with a middle school in San Marcos, California, to raise money to feed orphans in Africa, they didn’t expect to take any heat.
But the ACLU caught wind of the project and blew it to kingdom come. In a threatening letter Nov. 20, the ACLU warned the school to stop aiding the group or face legal trouble.
It’s all because the charity is infected secondhand with the virus known as Christianity.
Friends and Family Community Connection San Diego, the local group, was partnering with an Illinois-based openly Christian organization, Kids Around the World, to raise $3,500 to provide 14,000 meals for children in Tanzania.
Last week, the ACLU got its way, as the local charity severed the tie with Kids Around the World and “they asked [the school] to find a different organization” to receive the funds, Anna Lucia Roybal, the San Marcos District spokeswoman, told me in a phone interview. “It was an unfortunate situation, but we have to make sure we’re in compliance with the law.”
In the Nov. 20 letter, David Loy, director of the ACLU’s San Diego/Imperial Counties chapter, gave the school a pat on the head for its “public spirit,” then threw the punch, citing the state’s No Aid Clause, which bars public institutions, including schools, from sullying themselves with anything smacking of religion.
The clause is in Section 5 of Article 16 of California’s Constitution:
“Neither the Legislature, nor any county, city and county, township, school district, or other municipal corporation, shall ever make an appropriation, or pay from any public fund whatever, or grant anything to or in aid of any religious sect, church, creed, or sectarian purpose, or help to support or sustain any school, college, university, hospital, or other institution controlled by any religious creed, church, or sectarian denomination whatever.”
Think about this: A public school’s parents and pupils assisting orphans in Africa, simply because the group distributing the aid is Christian, is deemed illegal.
The funds come from donations, not public coffers. And the organization collecting it, Friends and Family, explains on its website that, “We appreciate the rich diversity of our community and do not require participation in religious activities. Much of our volunteer base comes from different faith communities, and many participants have no religious affiliation.”
So the school’s mere association with anything remotely Christian — even one step removed — is what offends the ACLU.
This smacks of religious cleansing, such as when a chapter of Mother Teresa’s ministry years ago was told that it could partner with New York City on projects for the poor only if it took down any religious symbols, such as crucifixes.
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