First Words

"Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard." Acts 4:19-20

Via TJC

The First Amendment lists five freedoms. 

In our Bill of Rights, religion comes first: Before speech. Before the press. Before assembly. Before petition. That ordering was deliberate. The founders believed that if a man's conscience was not free before God, no other liberty could stand: 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Most people can quote the phrase "separation of church and state." Almost nobody knows where it came from, or what it actually meant.

A Preacher and a Politician

In 1788, a Baptist minister named John Leland was prepared to run against James Madison for Virginia's ratifying convention. Leland had the Baptist vote, and Baptists in Virginia had reason to fight. They were being jailed and beaten under the state-established Anglican church for the crime of preaching without a license.

Leland opposed the Constitution because it contained no Bill of Rights. Madison, facing defeat, met with Leland privately. Tradition places that meeting under an oak tree in Orange County. Madison promised: if elected, he would champion a Bill of Rights that protected religious liberty. Leland withdrew and delivered his voters. Madison won.

True to his word, Madison drafted the First Amendment. His original language was even stronger than what survived: "The full and equal rights of conscience shall not be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed."

The first freedom in America was demanded by a preacher.

The Wall You Were Never Told About

When Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptists in 1802 about a "wall of separation between church and state," he borrowed the metaphor from Roger Williams, the pastor who founded Rhode Island. Williams' original point was precise: the wall protects the "garden of the church" from the "wilderness of the world."

The wall keeps government out of the church. That was the design. Peter and John understood this long before Jefferson or Williams. When the authorities told them to stop speaking about Jesus, they answered plainly: "We cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard" (Acts 4:20). The right of conscience before God predates every constitution ever written.

Battle Order

• Read the First Amendment this week. All five freedoms. Notice which one comes first, and ask yourself why.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

• Use the freedom that was bought for you. Speak about God at the table, at work, in the open. The men who wrote the amendment bled for that right. Exercise it.

• Be Leland. When the Christ is absent from a Christ filled culture, be the man who puts Him back.

Father, thank You for the men who bled so that we could worship freely. Forgive us for treating that freedom as something to hide. Give us the boldness of Peter, the conviction of Leland, and the courage to speak what we have seen and heard. In Jesus' name. Amen.