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Posted: November 07, 2008
1:00 am Eastern

By James Cantrell
© 2008

Joseph Farah's "'One Nation Under God, Indivisible ...'?" is perhaps the most important essay to have appeared during this past election period. The reason is simple: Farah discards the notion that these United States form a union so sacred that it can never be broken by secession.

The creed of that faith in a sacredly indivisible union – a union that like Don Henley's Hotel California allows you to check out but to never leave – is the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by self-proclaimed Christian socialist Francis Bellamy, cousin of utopian socialist writer Edward Bellamy. Francis Bellamy's Christian socialism was so defining that losing his Baptist pulpit after preaching sermons about Jesus as socialist altered his course not a jot. His unwavering purpose in life was to promote his Pledge as the vehicle by which America's public schools would both promote socialism from sea to shining sea and indoctrinate the coming generations in reflexive devotion to the federal government both Bellamys saw as the eventual guarantor of American socialism.

Bellamy's socialist pontification of an indivisible union is not Sacred Writ, but its recitation by millions of impressionable school children has worked wonders. America has countless churchgoers and dozens of denominations cheerfully tolerating, and promoting, virtually all heresies while being utterly intolerant of the possibility of political secession.

Is opposition to political secession a biblical mandate, or even the path most obviously in accordance with biblical patterns? The Apostle Paul instructs that "whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning. …" The Old Testament, the apostle emphasizes, is a goldmine of learning for Christians, and it does offer clear examples regarding secession.

Before proceeding with a look at relevant Old Testament passages, I think it necessary to address the issue of Christian unity. The calls by Christ and His apostles for unity do not equal demands that Christians are to strive to live under one political rule, which would lead inexorably to Christians demanding one-world government. Those Scriptural injunctions regarding unity are about the Christian church, not the political order of the first century or any thereafter. To twist Scriptures that concern Christian unity to make them seem to support the concept of an indivisible government is to sacralize the profane, which guarantees further profanation of the sacred.

The father of the faithful is Abraham. He was called out of Levantine fertility-cult culture, which featured both child sacrifice and public sex rituals as religious rites. In effect, Abraham became the father of the faithful through his secession from the perverted political culture and order of his ancestry, and God instructed him to leave the vicinity, which guaranteed that the rulers could not attempt to force him to accept any aspect of the culture. Abraham will literally father a new nation, a new socio-political order defined by rejection of Semitic fertility cults, which are replaced with worship of the one true God. Abraham is the one-man ruler of a new nation that will descend from his loins.

As Abraham was childless at this point, his nation originally was composed of his servants and his nephew Lot and his servants. Once in Canaan, the herdsmen of Abraham and Lot begin squabbling over pasture and water for their flocks. Abraham acts as father of the faithful by arranging a separation between the two, with Lot allowed to pick which lands he will frequent as a free ranger. Abraham, then, allows Lot to secede from under his rule and become his own governor. Abraham does not declare that because God called him, Lot should submit to his will in all things and sacrifice his livestock for the good of Abraham's herds. Abraham does not demand that Lot remain directly under his rule. Father Abraham acts to prevent violence between the households of men who should be the closest of allies, and Lot's secession is the outcome, with Lot then personally accountable for any moral failings that come from his decision to pitch his tent toward Sodom.

Abraham's life, then, highlights secession as being valid, even required, in two ways: to reject and escape from the rule of the perverted and to prevent violence between men who should be the closest of allies due to familial ties, even if that secession means one party chooses to live in Sodom.

Maybe so, devotees of the faith in America as a sacredly indivisible union will retort, but that was when Abraham was childless, which made such secession easy, even natural. Once the children of Israel had become the large nation promised by God, located in a specific land with cities, plowed fields and a standing army, secession would have torn up far too much to be allowed. Plus, they will conclude, God ordained the nation of Israel, and what God ordained is too sacred to be divided.

But secession is exactly what comes to the kingdom of Israel, with God ordering the king in Jerusalem not to oppose it.

When Solomon, who had apostacized in his old age, dies, leaders of most of the tribes – those north of Jerusalem – send a delegation to Rehoboam, Solomon's son and heir, asking that the grievous tax burdens be lifted. Rejecting the advice of the council of elders who had served Solomon, Rehoboam seeks counsel from his peers, who encourage him to flaunt his anointed status and his right to rule. Rehobaom's hubris guarantees secession, with 10 of the 12 tribes refusing to accept his tyrannical rule. Rehoboam plans to wage war to force the tribes of Israel to submit to him and to Judah, but God instructs the prophet Shemaiah to order Rehoboam not to fight to force Israel to return to his rule.

As Jeroboam, king of the new Israel, quickly establishes false worship replete with fertility-cult golden calves and non-Levite priests, you would think that God would want his secession stamped out. The reason that is not the case, I submit, is found in the story of Abraham and Lot. The cost of preventing the secession is too great to bear: It would require kin slaughtering kin, which, considering the nature of sin in man, would mean that the victors would be tainted morally, which would guarantee that the fruits of their victory would be rotten, perhaps even poisonous.

If neither the house of Abraham nor the ancient kingdom of Israel were too sacred to experience secession, is it not hubris, or worse, to declare these United States indivisible?

There is no biblical reason to oppose secession, and there are valid biblical reasons to endorse it. As Farah notes, there now are two radically different Americas, and with Barack Hussein Obama having promised to endorse the Freedom of Choice Act if elected president, the divide between the two Americas will only grow and fester.
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When injustice becomes law....Rebellion becomes duty