Live from Music Row Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed the official guest and host of The Tennessee Star Report, Grant Henry, for another addition of Grant’s Rants calling for the balanced union of both church and state.
Grant Henry: Hey, It’s time for Grant’s Rant here. I’m going to get some response from Andy here in just a second. But yesterday we all saw that Governor Lee came out and signed a proclamation for the day of prayer, humility, and fasting, saying, I’ve signed a proclamation to dedicate tomorrow, that was yesterday October 11 as a voluntary day of prayer and fasting and humility.
This order in particular said we recognize God’s sovereignty and the need for God’s Grace over our state and nation. We seek forgiveness for our many transgressions so that our hearts and minds may be renewed. Scripture tells us that the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord and the Lord gives us wisdom freely to those who ask for it.
Now, if you’re one of these people that are wondering right now what in the world is going on? First of all, this is not a new tradition. I don’t think anybody thought of it as a new tradition by way of the state or the nation. But let me go back a little bit to the philosophical underpinnings of what formed this nation. Here’s the rant for today.
This country was founded upon a balance of church and state. A balance whereby government remain limited and faith communities took care of the humanities. Small government influence coupled with institutions of faith cultivating good human beings.
Limited government, one because of self-governance. Do you understand the equation? Let me be radical here for a second and say that we need to destroy the influence that government has over our lives today.
We need to undo what the other side has done to our country and our government. Government has tentacles in places where they should not exist. And once the government is out of the game of controlling each piece of your life, those faith communities can get back into influencing culture again.
We’ve given up too much responsibility. Churches and faith communities need to get involved in the political process to restore the proper balance between it and the state.
And if you don’t want to take my word for it, as far as this original equation is concerned, that proper balance between church and state, one taking care of limited government, the other taking care of the humanities, listen to John Adams.
In 1798, John Adams wrote a letter to the Massachusetts Militia where he said the following, our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is holy inadequate to the government of any other.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. Now, one of the reasons why John Adams said, this is because our federal government was meant to be so limited in its ability to influence and affect your daily life that something somewhere had to constrain the fleshly desires of men.
The line between virtue and vice has been hazy for far longer than just the past few years. And you see, our founders knew that the only way to coerce civil society was either at the end of a gun barrel or through adherence to a set of morals, values, and principles that were rooted in an objective source beyond ourselves.
These commonly accepted sets of guiding principles were meant to be disseminated into society through a multitude of churches, organized religions, and individual faiths. In other words, one could make the argument that the political influence of the church forms the very foundation upon which our entire system of a limited constitutional Republic sits.
The oldest such Constitution in the world and a form of government that virtually every other developed nation has since replicated to some extent. There’s Grant’s Rants for today, Andy.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
