Many have asked for the transcript of my speech today. What was said is as follows:
Stand Up for Religious Freedom Rally Speech
Given by Rev. James R. Harden, M.Div
6.8.12
What I am about to say here has been largely lost in the noisy forgetfulness of American politics. Truths born of religion that those in power need the masses to forget. But we are here to remember those truths and recognize our need to recall what has been deemed unpractical by who stand to lose power because of the freedom they engender.
A new religious fanaticism has been born and it is American State government.
-Obamacare compels all Americans to purchase health care
-Obamacare forces all health care plans to pay for sterilization, contraception, and abortion
-Obamacare permits only limited opt out parameters for religious institutions
-Obamacare defines what qualifies as a religious institution
-Obamacare presumes to determine what is applicable religious belief for individuals setting up the State as the final authority in all matters of society both religious and civil.
-Obamacare, if ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, will signal a fundamental shift in the philosophy of American Government from that of government by the consent of the governed to State over the individual.
G.K. Chesterton said, “Government has become ungovernable; that is, it cannot leave off governing. Law has become lawless; that is it cannot see where laws should stop. The chief feature of our time is the meekness of the mob and the madness of government.”
However, this rally is not about abortion or contraception or even government. This rally is about the future of modern western civilization. What we choose to do here in our time will determine whether a free democratic nation will revive or diminish into a democratic despotism.
Religion is the term used to define ultimate authority. Traditionally religion is the term we use to define those fundamental ideas that provide people with ultimate purpose. Those ideas force the human soul out of its habits of pleasure seeking to think of a higher purpose outside of himself, aspiring to a higher being whose nature and laws apply to all mankind–equally. These notions of God and how then one should act in light of Him create a context for self-discipline, voluntary self-denial and even sacrifice for a greater good not owing to an all powerful human being, or set of human beings called a legislature, not even owing to an all powerful notion of “the majority.”
What has happened in America is that the traditional notion of spiritual religion has been tacitly rejected by government, education, and medicine and replaced with a material one, a religion of the State. This new religion has priests they call scientists and a prophet they call the will of the people. The false notion of the separation of the sacred Church and secular State can only serve to create an official Church of State. This process of creating a religion out of a scientific materialism is buoyed by modern democracy’s singular devotion to that final radical equality of every man’s morality. For when all men are their own moral authority virtue dies and everyone simply does what is ‘right in his own eyes.’ An exponential increase in lawless then occurs to which government responds with more laws and ever tightening control; all to the hearty applause of an apathetic, comfort seeking people who in the end experience only an orderly and peaceful brand of slavery.
Only a common and higher belief regarding the nature and purpose of mankind made in the very image of God can afford us a set of moral imperatives driving the virtuous behavior and actions of men and society. It is only that commonly held religious belief in God that creates those necessary and invisible protections afforded every person, for which all men are responsible to secure for each other; life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Centralized government is not only ill-equipped to secure those things but finds its survival requires their severe limitation.
What Obamacare represents is a centralized government attempting to secure for itself power and ownership over all peoples. Obamacare represents a usurpation of the role of God under the guise of a father-like benefactor for all the State’s children. Obamacare and the HHS mandates represent the last act of a sovereign people yielding to administrative despotism.
We have every reason to believe that the Supreme Court will rule it unconstitutional. But be warned we have only a little more time. Lest you be tempted to think the issue is partisan let me assure you the Republicans have not a better plan only a slower one on the road to an American servile State controlled by either rich conservatives or insane progressives.
What is needed is a return to the Christianity of our forefathers lest we mirror the tactics of Mao Tse Tung. What is required is a reawakening of the old religion of our great, great, grandparents lest we cease our struggle with Stalinism. What is absolutely essential is a revival of faith born at the foot of the cross of Jesus Christ the emancipator; a renewal of life informed by the Word of truth who alone can set us free from the sin which so easily entangles us. Set free to pursue our true destinies.
Without this reorientation to a vigorous theology our anthropology can be nothing higher than a pleasure seeking, pain reducing, animalistic utility. Without this return to true religion healers become killers, legislators become tyrants, educators become purveyors of sexual perversions, churches become cults of personality, women become men, men become predators, marriage is redefined, whole classes of people are dehumanized, and children become agents of parental self-actualization. Meanwhile the whole nation is kept in perpetual childhood by an omnipotent and omnipresent State preventing the birth of the future hindering, restraining, and stultifying all industry, all innovation. And family, where the core values of religious belief are nourished to secure a free and stable society, is sacrificed on the altar of the secular State.
So let us be clear, true religion requires the following basic beliefs:
1 All of humanity has fallen into the darkness of sin,
2 Without Divine intervention we tend only toward greater inhumanity.
3 Jesus Christ is that divine intervention becoming sin on our behalf nailing it to the cross of wrath of God’s judgment
4 Jesus rose from the dead having defeated sin and death opening the door of eternal life to those of faith
5 Those who acknowledge their sin and turn from their wickedness making Christ their King can become the very righteousness of God and live truly free, freely protecting others from every sort of tyranny.
Believers in Jesus Christ alone understand freedom and free society submitting first to God and not government while he who is faithless is fated to its chains. Believers alone are the ones who will always seek to secure the protection and dignity of all people from conception to natural death especially the most vulnerable of society. For it is the true Christian who uniquely understands moral bankruptcy, vulnerability, voicelessness, powerlessness, and weakness to which many classes of humans are subjected under this gentle barbarism. For a true Christian recognized his lack of standing and rights as a sinner before a just and holy God. This God also is the One who sent His Son pouring out his riches and rights on our behalf thereby empowering us to do the same for others. Only the Christian and Christian society can make the weak strong and the poor rich by democratizing the royalty of Deity to the soul of any man who would accept it.
Let us recall Chesterton’s words, “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.” So be courageous, Christian, and defy the young tyrannies giving up our lives that we might find them, taking up our cross, dying to ourselves and overcoming this dewy despotism through faith in the one true God. As Jesus says in Mark 8:35 “For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it.”