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Political Polytheism
The Myth of Pluralism
ISBN
0-930464-32-X
Year of Publication
1989
PDF Filesize in Bytes
8,372,239
Price of Paper Format
$22.50
Long Description
Who Is Lord Over The United States?
A Christian citizen knows the answer: Jesus Christ. But if this really is
the true answer, grounded firmly on the Bible, then why is it that so few
Christians are willing to proclaim this fact publicly, and why is it that
no Christian political candidate dare mention it?
There is a reason: the theology of political pluralism, the dominant public
theology in our day.
Political pluralism is not simply a political philosophy: it is a theology.
it is American's civil religion. This theology teaches that there must never
be a nation that identifies itself with any religion. Well, not quite. The
nation of Israel is grudgingly allowed to do so, as are the Islamic nations.
But no nation is ever supposed to identify itself as Christian. "A Christian
nation is self-contradictory!"
So we are told. But who tells us? Secular humanists who are dedicated to wiping
out all political opposition. Also, Christian teachers who teach in tax-supported
schools. Also, professors in Christian colleges who attended either state
universities or secular humanist private universities, which are the only
accredited universities in the United States that grant the Ph.D. degree.
Also, the U.S. Constitution.
This is the problem. God-fearing Christian Americans have been told that the
Constitution teaches the absolute separation of Church and State. They have
been told correctly. But what they have not been told is precisely where it
says this. It does not say this in the First amendment. The First amendment
says only that Congress shall make no law regarding religion or the free exercise
thereof. So, where does the Constitution prohibit a Christian America? In
a section that has been ignored by scholars for so long that it is virtually
never discussed-the key provision that transformed American into a secular
humanist nation. But it took 173 years to do this: from 1788 until 1961.
Political Polytheism discusses this crucial provision in detail-the first
Christian book to do so in over two centuries.
But if Christ is Lord over the United States, yet the citizens of the United
States either publicly deny this or are afraid to affirm it publicly, and
if the elected politicians and appointed officers of the nation are legally
prohibited from pursuing the implications of this fact, then what does this
mean for the nation? It means that God intends to bring American under judgment.
Why? Because this nation was originally founded as a Christian nation, covenanted
with God, and then it broke the covenant. The results are predictable:
And it shall be, if thou do at all forget the LORD thy God, and walk after
other gods, and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day
that ye shall surely perish, As the nations which the LORD destroyeth before
your face, so shall ye perish; because ye would not be obedient unto the voice
of the LORD your God.
(Deuteronomy 8:19-20)
This book presents a new vision of politics and a new vision of America, a
vision of self-consciously tied to the Bible. It challenges the political
myth of humanism: many laws, many gods.
Inside Flap
In 1787, every nation on earth was openly religious. Rulers and citizens around
the world affirmed the existence of a particular god, and they called upon
their god publicly to defend the nation, bless it, and bring his will to pass
in history. Even in those religions that affirm no god, such as Buddhism,
the people affirmed their faith in a particular religion. Nations were explicitly
religious.
There was only one exception to this rule in all the earth, one isolated political
experiment that had affirmed the possibility-even the moral necessity-of avoiding
all public references to religion in its covenantal charter. Its founder believed
that no city, not state, and no nation should ever publicly affirm the existence
of any particular god or religion. This was the first public experiment in
secular humanism. In 1787, it had been in operation for a century and a half.
That experiment was called Rhode Island.
Three and a half centuries after its founding, Rhode Island's vision of political
order has conquered the Western world.
Forty miles north of Providence, Rhode Island, another experiment was in progress
in 1640. In Boston dwelled the Puritans, the most self-consciously biblical
people in history. They had turned to the Bible in search of moral and political
order. Their Body of Liberties (1641) served as their political charter, and
that charter was biblical to the core, even citing specific Bible verses to
justify its laws.
It was against the Puritans' vision of a New Israel in the New England wilderness
that the citizens of Rhode Island rebelled, and in doing so, they led the
world, step by step, into a politically conspiracy against God.
Governor John Winthrop in 1630 had hoped that Massachusetts would serve the
whole world as a city on a hill, a bright beacon of biblical Christianity
that would persuade men to construct a biblical civil order in their lands.
But is was not Winthrop's beacon that illuminated the future; it was Roger
Williams' beacon, a blinding light that promised autonomy from God for humanist
political man.
That light has blinded Winthrop's Christian heirs. The thought that a nation
can and should be explicitly, publicly Christian is unacceptable to men and
women who openly affirm the need for Christian families, Christian schools,
and Christian everything else.
"There is no neutrality," they proclaim, until someone mentions
civil government. Then they back off. Here, apparently, there has to be neutrality.
Somewhere. Somehow.
Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union takes another small town into
court for putting up a manger scene at Christmas on public property. Meanwhile,
another high school coach is threatened with dismissal for praying with his
team before a game. Meanwhile, evolution is taught as a fact in just about
every public school biology textbook.
Neutrality, you understand. Just good, old fashioned neutrality.
Believe that, and you'll believe anything.
Boston vs. Providence, Winthrop vs. Williams: in this classic confrontation
we can see the beginning of a war that has lasted for three and a half centuries,
a war not just for American civilization but for world civilization. For the
most part, American Christians have applauded Williams. Also for the most
part, they are in political and cultural bondage.
In Political Polytheism Dr. Gary North sets forth a challenge to the reigning
political philosophy of our day, a philosophy which says that God's people
must remain politically silent, that neutrality is a valid religion, and that
the King of history must confine Himself to the home, the church, and the
funeral parlor. Everything else belongs to autonomous man, this religion asserts.
Not so, say Dr. North. Everything belongs to the God of the Bible, and the
only way that mankind can build a free society and maintain it is to honor
this principle in every area of life.
Political Polytheism pulls no punches. It takes on all comers: humanists,
Christian philosophers, and historians. Especially historians. Dr. North,
himself a trained historian, shows how a conspiracy of silence has joined
with another conspiracy-first, to capture the government, and then to rewrite
American history.
Political Polytheism challenges the myth of neutrality, they myth of political
pluralism, and the myth of the Constitutional Convention. There has never
been a book like it. The book is designed to launch the hottest political
debate since 1787. It asks the most controversial political question that
can be asked today: If there is no such thing as neutrality, then whose law
should rule supreme, God's or man's? For two centuries, American Christians
have refused even to ask the question, let alone answer it.
Catalog Description
No political order can be religiously neutral, and the modern political order
in the United States and other Western nations, called "pluralism,"
is in reality polytheism. As in the ancient world, polytheists are offended
at those who claim that there is only one God, and this is why orthodox Christianity
is increasingly under assault in the United States and throughout the Western
world. In this book, Gary North brings his many years of theological and historical
research to bear on the question of how this polytheistic state of affairs
came about, and what must be done about it. In a powerful argument, sure to
be controversial, North points a finger at the framers of the Constitution
of the United States, who self-consciously broke with 1000 + years of Western
heritage by not referring to the Trinity and to Christ as King. This was the
hole in the dike, North contends, through which modern secularism has poured.
No one concerned about the state of the American nations can afford to ignore
this book.