OPINION:
Americans United for Separation of Church and State sent Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders a request to remove a chalked design containing the Christian cross from the entryway to the executive mansion and Sanders wrote back a powerful message that basically said, in essence, get bent.
Now if only the nation’s other millions of Christians would do the same, perhaps America wouldn’t be facing such perilous cultural and political times right now. Resist the devil and the devil will flee.
Tell the devil’s minions “no” — as Sanders did — and the devil’s minions will flee.
The backstory is this: The governor posted a Facebook photo of a colorful chalk design that her children drew on the cement at one of the entrances to the mansion.
“New artwork to welcome people into the governor’s mansion,” Sanders wrote on social media, along with a photo of her children standing by the artwork, CBN reported. “So proud of how hard the kids worked and how well their masterpiece turned out!”
It was basically a pattern of geometric shapes of various colors, framing a large white Christian cross.
Someone complained.
Or, at least, AU said someone complained.
“We have received a complaint regarding a large depiction of a Latin cross at an entrance to the Arkansas governor’s mansion,” AU wrote in a letter to Sanders. “As a government building, the governor’s mansion exists to welcome guests regardless of faith or belief. … [Promoting] one religion over others through a religious display at an entrance to the mansion sends the impermissible message that those who do not share the favored faith are unwelcome and will be treated differently.”
No. It doesn’t.
But that’s the line AU likes to sell because it oh so often works.
It didn’t this time.
“We therefore ask that you remove the display and refrain from placing similar displays in public areas of the mansion in the future,” AU wrote.
And Sanders’ reply?
“Dear @americansunited,” she wrote on Twitter, “I have received your letter and my answer is no. I will not erase the beautiful cross my kids drew in chalk on the driveway of the governor’s mansion or remove my post on social media, and I will not now or ever hide that I am a Christian.”
Bam.
That’s what America needs more of, and pronto.
If Christians — those who know that the foundation of God-given rests on God — were more bold with their faith in recent years, there would be no open socialists, bleating about socialist entitlements and crying for socialist giveaways, with such success in Congress. There would be no yapping younger generations demanding tax-paid college; tax-paid health care; tax-paid universal basic incomes. There would be no left-leaners in the media and politics whining about the need to open borders, and then use tax dollars to pay for all the illegals who flow through those open borders. There would be no advancing evil LGBTQ agenda that insisted boys could be girls simply by announcing a decision to be a girl; there would be no transgender destruction of women’s sports, or women, for that matter. There would be no naked men riding bicycles in front of little children at pride parades on public streets.
The “God” part of “God-given” would make all that immorally impossible, because the godly in America would insist on the ungodly staying in the dark corners, with the cockroaches, away from little, impressionable children.
But what’s happened in America is those who supposedly know best about God, the Judeo-Christian community, have gone silent, have gone asleep, have gone gentle into the good night, and ceded the public stage to the immoral, the ungodly, the wicked, the outright evil.
Thus, we get drag queens dancing in half-dressed states before young girls and boys.
Thus, we have soft and not-so-soft porn materials being stuffed among the offerings on public school library shelves, for all the third grade world to read — even as the Bible is prohibited. Even as Kirk Cameron, a nationally known Bible storyteller, is banned and barred and bucked from the very libraries that open doors wide to queer queens and their butt-shaking men-dressed-as-prostitutes fake women.
It’s a strange, evil world.
And it’s one that requires Christians to stand strong and shine their lights — or else face more onslaughts from the evil forces.
Enter AU and its feigned outrage about a picture of a Christian cross.
Nobody’s keeping anybody from entering the governor’s mansion. Yet AU wants to pretend as if feeling offense is one and the same as physical assault.
America was founded on Christian ideals and Judeo-Christian teachings and biblical principles and Bible-based truths and morals.
AU wants that history forgotten. So, too, all the secularists and atheists — and Democrats, who are really nothing more than communists and socialists and collectivists and Marxists and fascists. They want America’s Christian history forgotten because it gets in the way of their power grabs.
If American citizens know their rights come from God, they know that government is only there to protect those rights — and that means government is subservient to the people. Democrats hate that.
Atheists hate God — and therefore, hate the idea of God-given rights, because keeping God-given rights intact demands that God stay at the forefront of society.
As God goes, as secularists and atheism advance, America becomes less and less free.
The Democratic Party may be the big winner in that scenario. But American citizens — freedom-loving American citizens — are the big losers.
Sanders’ stand for the cross is more than religious. It’s American. It’s a stand for liberty for all — yes, even for the atheists and secularists and evil forces within the Democratic Party. They have a right to exist and live free, to the same extent as those of godly natures and characters. But they don’t have a right to abuse their freedoms by tearing down others’ freedoms.
A picture of a cross is hardly a prohibition on entry to a building, or an assault on an individual, or a government-imposed mandate of worship.
And if you’re an atheist, a Christian cross, personally, means nothing. So why fight it?
The answer is simple: Because “they are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them, due to their hardness of heart.” That’s from Ephesians.
That’s why they fight.
They’re ignorant and they’re dark-hearted, and they can’t stand to have truths on display.
In other words: Christians in America have no excuse not to fight them. Sanders shows how. To start, just say no.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.
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