Title: 13
Author: Joe Griffin
Last saved by: PaulD
Company: GDC

The Church of the Living God

		09-10-22.FBC08-194 /

The Same Religious Persecution that Led to the English Flight to America Is Currently Present in America: Carson’s “Oppression in England”; Islamic Ascendancy in American Schools: Limbaugh’s “Persecution”

Let’s illustrate.  Let’s review what motivated our forebears to leave England and come to the vast wilderness of North America:
Not all the English colonies in America were settled because of oppression, but that was the dominant reason for most of them.  Thus, it is appropriate to examine some of the ways that the English were oppressed around the time of the early settlements.  It should be noted that oppression has not been that uncommon in the course of history.  (p. 43)
It should be noted, too, that people do not always, or even usually, resist oppression.  In fact, if they have become used to it over a long period of time they may not even think of it as oppression.  It is just the way things are, and most do not spend time imagining them as different.  The sense of oppression is usually awakened by changes, and leads to action when there are opportunities for doing something about it.  Both of these conditions existed in 17th century England.  One thing that was happening was that Puritans and religious dissenters were becoming an increasingly important element.  As persecution of these mounted, so did the resistance and the determination to do something about it.  The possibility of settling in America afforded one of the opportunities for doing something about it.  (pp. 43-44)
Three different kinds of oppression were particularly troublesome for many of the English.  They were political, religious, and economic. All the oppression was by government, of course, and was in a sense political.  (p. 44)
The early Stuarts worked to make the courts serve them as they wished.  Chief Justice (Sir Edward) Coke was dismissed by the king for refusing to allow the king to dictate his decisions.  Charles I dismissed Chief Justice Crew for refusing to admit the legality of forced loans.  He managed to intimidate them so completely during the time that he ruled without Parliament that the courts had become instruments of the despotic will of the king.  (p. 45)
The religious oppression of Stuart England is best known to Americans, however, because it was this that drove Pilgrims, Puritans, Baptists, Quakers, and Catholics to migrate in considerable numbers to the New World.
The Church of England was established by law for all who lived in England.  It meant that everyone “had to attend services in his parish church every Sunday, and was liable to legal penalties if he did not.  Books were strictly censored, and the censorship was in the hands of the Bishops.  Education was an ecclesiastical [church] monopoly.  No person might teach in a school or private family unless licensed by his Bishop.”

Christopher Hill, The Century of Revolution [New York: W. W. Norton, 1961], 75-76.

Anyone who differed from the established church was apt to get into trouble.  Dissenters from it, both Protestant and Catholic, were persecuted.  (p. 46)

Clarence B. Carson, “The English and America: Oppression in England,” in A Basic History of the United States: The Colonial Experience, 1607-1774,” (Wadley: Ala.: American Textbook Committee, 1983), 43-46.

36.	 Note the paragraph by Carson, “The religious oppression of Stuart England is best known to Americans, however, because it was this that drove Pilgrims, Puritans, Baptists, Quakers, and Catholics to migrate in considerable numbers to the New World.”
37.	What Carson refers to as “religious” oppression is best stated for our application as oppression of Christianity.”
38.	The first English settlement in America was at Jamestown, Virginia in 1607.  It took four-hundred years, but we are now right back where we started: religious oppression is on the rise and since in the Church Age history is interpreted through historical trends then we are able to predict that it can only get worse.
39.	Presently, Christian oppression comes from both the state and from religion.  These two have formed a cosmic alliance in which the NEA and Islam now collaborate in violating numerous Supreme Court decisions regarding the separation of church and state.  David Limbaugh provides chilling evidence, predictably, from the State of California:
The National Council of Social Studies’ “Curriculum Guidelines for Multicultural Education”—for the consumption and guidance of social studies teachers throughout America—are rife with admonitions to promote multiculturalism and de-emphasize our distinctly American culture, which, the guidelines emphasize, has no more value than any other culture.
Guideline 19 shows how the NCSS pushes these other cultures.  “Schools should provide opportunities to participate in the aesthetic experiences of various ethnic and cultural groups…  The immersion of students in multiethnic experiences is an effective means of developing understanding of both self and others.”  (p. 75)
The multicultural flavor of these guidelines is taking hold in many of our public schools around the nation.  The Washington Times Weekly reported that an examination of seven widely used world history textbooks revealed that public school classrooms “sanitize the problems of Islam” in comparison to their treatment of Western civilization. (pp. 75-76)
The study was conducted by the American Textbook Council which speculated that the special treatment of Islam might be the result of lobbying by the Council on Islamic Education.  The report said the books make no effort to hide the warts and blemishes in Western history, such as slavery, the delay of women’s suffrage, and others.  But, it said, “subjects such as jihad and the advocacy of violence among militant Islamists to attain worldly ends, the imposition of [Shariah] law, the record of Muslim enslavement, and the brutal subjection of women are glossed over.”
One such textbook, Across the Centuries, was accompanied by “Islam simulation materials” in California schools, where the state legislature mandated three weeks of Islam studies for seventh grade students as part of a statewide curriculum.  This textbook, like so many others, presents a biased view in favor of Islam and against Christianity.  Conspicuously omitted from the book is any mention of the history of Islamic conquest—the Moors’ invasion, the Battle of Tours, and the execution of Jews in Quarayza.
NOTE: Quarayza: A Jewish tribe living at the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the vicinity of Medina.  They met Muhammad’s claim to be a prophet of the God of Abraham with opposition and ridicule, and they intrigued with his enemies both in Mecca and Medina.  In time, therefore, the main groups of the Jews were driven out, and one clan, the Quarayza, was destroyed by putting the men to death and enslaving the women and children.

John Alden Williams, “Islam, History of,” The New Encyclopaedia Britannica: Macropaedia (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1979), 9:928.

In the case of the Massacre of the Banu Quarayza care was taken to see that some of the heads were struck off by their former allies, in order that the latter might be unable at any time to bring a demand for vengeance.  (Also see: Philip Schaff, History of the Christian Church: Mediaeval Christianity [Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1910], 4:165-66.)

David Samuel Margoliouth, “Mahomet,” in The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 13th ed. (New York: The Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1911, 1926), 17:408.

With the book’s simulation materials, students weren’t just required to learn about the religion; they were forced to pretend they were Muslims, praying in the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and to chant “praise to Allah, Lord of Creation.”  They were required to take Muslim names, simulate their own jihad through a dice game, and plan a pilgrimage to Mecca.
At Byron/Excelsior Public School, a middle school in the Oakland area—where students, incidentally, rank very poorly in English comprehension—students were taught to write Islamic sayings in the Arabic language.  Teachers further encouraged students to dress in Muslim garb and to use Muslim phrases such as “Allah Akbar,” meaning “God is great.”  They even had to memorize Islamic prayers, fulfill the Five Pillars of the faith, and engage in lunchtime fasts during Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, all of which counted toward their grade in the class.  Teachers told students that during this course in Islam “you and your classmates will become Muslims.”  (p. 76)

David Limbaugh, Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War against Christianity, (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2003), 75–76.

40.	Over the course of almost 400 years, the American experience has been transformed from one founded by those who wanted to create an environment in which any and all could freely exercise their belief in the Bible over to one that exclusively ostracizes Christianity in favor of religions, include one that is anti-Semitic, anti-Christian, and, according to its tenets, anti-American.
41.	This has been made possible by the advent of a watered-down Christianity with its many practitioners who teach a fraudulent brand of theology in much the same way that the Pharisees and scribes taught a fraudulent brand of Judaism in the first century.
42.	Whereas true Judaism was rendered anachronistic by Christianity, Islam never had credibility.  It is an invention of an illiterate sixth-century Bedouin with the elaborate name of Abu al-Qasim Muhammad ibn ʽAbd Allah ibn ʽAbd al-Muttalib ibn Hashim—Muhammad for short.
43.	While on the subject of Islam and Muhammad this is a great opportunity to relate to you an excerpt that I’ve had on my to-do list for some while waiting for the right place to insert it.  The source is Philip Schaff’s article on Mohammedanism in his History of the Christian Church.

© 2009 by Joe Griffin Media Ministries.  All rights reserved.	www.joegriffin.org