Scott Hogenson: The Left’s Back Door Attack on the Constitution

Authoritarians despise the U.S. Constitution because it is an impediment to their goals. It is routinely decried by the American Left as a scrap of paper written by a bunch of dead white guys that is no longer relevant. Ergo, it must be eliminated.

But scuttling the Constitution is a pretty heavy political lift. Most Americans reflexively believe the Constitution is a good thing and would be wary of those arguing to get rid of it. So to achieve this goal, the American Left has taken a different approach. 

America was founded as a Judeo-Christian nation and the Constitution relies on many principles first articulated during the Reformation. Freedom of speech, religion, conscience, self-preservation and other key aspects of our Constitution spring from the writings of Martin Luther, John Calvin and other Reformation leaders.

But the biblical underpinnings of the Constitution are not simply fundamental to our founding. They are fundamental to our continued national existence. John Adams understood this when he wrote to the Massachusetts militia in October, 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” 

The smarter totalitarians among us have carefully studied the American founding and have discovered a back-door means of negating the Constitution. They’re doing so by persuading Americans to be immoral, amoral and irreligious. 

It’s working. When Bill Clinton was first elected president, the Gallup survey found that 70% of Americans were members of a church or synagogue. By 2021, that figure dropped to 47%. That’s a startling decline in the number of people who engage in corporate worship.

There are myriad ways in which people are dissuaded from practicing their faith and the biggest target is Christianity. A group of Christians was recently denied service at a Richmond, Virginia restaurant for the crime of believing in the Bible. 

A few hours north of Richmond in Fairfax County, Virginia, schools want to indoctrinate children with the false idea that biological sex is “assigned” at birth. It’s a more subtle means of undermining the biblical truth that God created man in his own image, “male and female he created them.”

These are just a few current examples of a trend that has grown in recent years. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops records no less than 172 episodes of arson, vandalism and other violent acts against their churches since May, 2020. 

What we’re seeing here is a Totalitarian Two-Step. If the American Left can’t dump the Constitution because they don’t like it, they will intimidate Americans into surrendering their faith. When we become a nation that is no longer moral or religious, the Constitution becomes inadequate, as Adams warned. 

It’s an insidious strategy for fundamentally changing the United States and it’s succeeding. It succeeds because our culture is increasingly infused with various forms of anti-Christianity. We are bombarded by it in cinema, the news media, music, education, even public policy and law.

Lorie Smith, a website designer in Colorado, is fighting a state law that demands she surrender her Christian belief that marriage is an institution involving one man and one woman. She is forced to argue before the U.S. Supreme Court for the right to believe and practice that which Barack Obama believed 14 short years ago. 

All this is happening because to undermine Christianity is to undermine the Constitution. It paves the way for a totalitarian America that reflects elements of the evil, authoritarian civic constructs that litter history and it must be resisted. 

This can be achieved through the courts, like Smith is doing. It can be fought through civic engagement, like parents in Fairfax County are doing. It can be challenged through public denunciation, like the Richmond Christian group has done. 

None of this is easy and the American Left is diligent in violently marginalizing those with whom they disagree. But Christians can find the inspiration to resist in scripture. 

Two thousand years ago, Jesus Christ knew this would happen and he minced no words in saying so. The Gospel of John records Jesus telling his disciples, “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.” 

The notion of being the object of hatred may not be entirely inspirational but the result of being true to the faith is. The Epistle to the Hebrews tells us that, “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not yet seen.” 

This message to the Hebrews parallels that of the founders who crafted a Constitution to assure the citizens of a new nation that we may have the conviction of things hoped for, things not yet seen in our country. 

That’s why the Constitution is more relevant today than ever. It is our only assurance that America may continue forming a more perfect union. 

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