Since The State covered my judicial candidate survey last week, I’ve been called everything from “f-ing moron” to “white trash piece of s***.” I’ve had my education and intelligence insulted, all for daring to ask candidates if they complied with Article VI, Section 2 of the South Carolina Constitution, which states:
“No person who denies the existence of the Supreme Being shall hold any office under this Constitution.”
I really don’t take myself too seriously, so these insults do not bother me in the slightest. What does bother me is that asking a judicial candidate if they believe in the “Supreme Being” is taboo.
There used to be a saying: “For God and Country.” The two were named together, with “God” in the rightful place of prominence before “Country.” America in all her economic and technological glory has flourished precisely because of a Judeo-Christian concept of limited, delegated, authority, in contrast to “the Divine Right of Kings” which was the conventional wisdom back in the 1700s. Sadly, God is today unmentionable.
Here’s why these provisions were in our Constitution to begin with. First, an oath of office was not a mere formality, but rather a public acknowledgement of the source of the power of one’s office and by extension the limitations thereof. Furthermore, it invoked the judgement of God on oneself if the oath is broken. Clearly, an oath “under God” is meaningless if one does not believe in God.
Secularists, and even the courts, attack any mention of God in relation to government and suggest that mixing religion and government is a recipe for radical Islamic states such as ISIS, which practice Sharia Law that is misogynistic, cruel and violent. They suppose that “separation of Church and State” is what will protect our society and allow it to move forward unfettered by “superstitious notions.”
Ironically, the philosophical ground beneath their very feet is the same ground out of which rose the most tyrannical and bloody dictators the world has seen. When there is no God, then there is no absolute law. When there is no absolute law, all law becomes arbitrary. When all law becomes arbitrary, then only the strongest, cruelest, and most heavy-handed people obtain power. Rather than moving society forward, it moves us back to the dark ages.
Why do you suppose the scientific and technological revolutions happened after millennia of relative backwardness? It was people who believed in a “Supreme Being”--namely, a creator that created an orderly world describable in mathematical terms, and that “created all men equal” with no one having an inherent right to rule--who laid the foundations of both modern science and modern democracy. It did not happen in the far east. It was not the Africans, nor the Incans, nor the Egyptians that set foot on the moon, developed the internal combustion engine, or cured diseases. The results should speak for themselves.
Even the deist Thomas Jefferson, the one who first penned the words “separation of Church and State,” believed in the existence of the “Supreme Being.” Yes, deists believed in God, they just had a different take on what God’s relationship to the universe looked like.
Do not think yourself more enlightened and open-minded by refusing to tolerate the very ideas that made America great. Do not be fooled by those who carry distinguished titles and many letters behind their names but teach a rewritten or incomplete account of history. Question your assumptions. Seek the truth. God will see that you find it, if you seek it honestly.