In Praise of Muhammad Ali on "Memorial Day"

“I was in prison and you came to Me.”
Matthew 25:36

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In 1892 the Supreme Court of the United States unambiguously declared that America was “a Christian nation.” That decision was thrown out on its ear a few decades later as the 20th century saw the United States become a “secular” nation.

The 1892 case, Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, involved a church which hired a pastor from Great Britain, but was told by an officious immigration bureaucrat that the hiring violated a federal law which, the Court pointed out, was actually designed to prohibit importation of boatloads of Chinese to work on U.S. railroads.

The 20th century case involved a Canadian who wanted to teach at the Yale Divinity School, clearly parallel to the Holy Trinity case. But the Canadian was a Christian who followed the example of the Apostles, who said “We must obey God rather than man.” The Canadian respondent, Douglas Clyde Macintosh, refused to promise to bear arms on behalf of the U.S. government if he thought the war was unjust. The Supreme Court ruled that Macintosh could not become a naturalized American citizen because his allegiance to God transcended the allegiance he was willing to give to the U.S. government. The Court said he must render ”unqualified allegiance” to the government.

“Unqualified” means you cannot say, “Sure, I’ll obey government laws . . . unless they require me to disobey God.”

Any government that puts its own laws ahead of God’s Law is a government that thinks it  is  God.

Cassius Clay converted to Islam and as Muhammad Ali said he would not fight in a “Christian war.” Until the United States Supreme Court unanimously overturned the decision, Ali lost his right to work and faced 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. ($70,979.64 in 2014 dollars)

The Vietnam War was not a “Christian war.” No war in the history of the United States can justly be called a “Christian War.”

Not even “the good war,” World War II. Although he promised to keep us out of foreign wars, Roosevelt, led by Communists in the White House, took the United States into war in order to defeat the forces of anti-communism. In Eastern Europe and the Far East, atheistic communists were the clear winners of World War II and the beneficiaries of the foreign policy of the atheistic (“secular”) United States.

Since I was born (post-WWII), the government of the United States has killed, crippled, or made homeless tens of millions of innocent non-combatant civilians. But why blame “the government?” The killing and destruction of trillions of dollars of property was committed largely by church-going “Christians.”

No. Any Christian who willingly kills or dies for an atheistic government should be excommunicated. Better to be in prison with “the least of these” than to kill “the least of these” in an unChristian war. Better to be in prison for 5 years than leave your wife a permanent widow and your children fatherless. The fact that churches don’t excommunicate soldiers explains why most Christians lack the discernment and knowledge of the facts to make the right decision. Church-goers are not taught to put God ahead of government, and peace ahead of the military-industrial complex.

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In a letter to François Jean de Beauvoir, Marquis de Chastellux, April/May, 1788, George Washington wrote:

for the sake of humanity it is devoutly to be wished, that the manly employment of agriculture and the humanizing benefits of commerce, would supersede the waste of war and the rage of conquest; that the swords might be turned into plough-shares, the spears into pruning hooks, and, as the Scripture expresses it, “the nations learn war no more.” 

 ”The Father of his Country” was not 100% consistent with the teachings of Scripture. But he would be appalled at what his country has become. We must not only “learn war no more,” we must study peace.

Source: http://kevinforcongress.blogspot.com/2014/05/in-praise-of-muhammad-ali-on-memorial.html