“America’s Christian Heritage Sunday” Thanksgiving Sunday November 23, 2008

“Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people.”
Proverbs 14:34

November 18, 2008 - Dear Pastors, Church Leaders & Friends of Traditional Values:

I write to ask that you join me in celebrating Thanksgiving Sunday as “America’s Christian Heritage Sunday,” on November 23, 2008.We have just come off the heels of a crucial and historic election. Your commitment to defending the unborn, our religious liberty and expression, the traditional family and traditional marriage is appreciated.

We give all thanks and the victory to our precious Lord for the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Thank God that California voters voted to re-establish His created order for one man and one woman joined in marriage. And we also give Him thanks that the people of Florida and Arizona did the same.

We must now be vigilant in prayer as those who wish to pervert God’s holy union of traditional marriage have filed legal challenges to California’s new marriage amendment.

With the election now behind us, time continues to fly. In less than 2 months we will be on the verge of starting yet another year and with the New Year a new President will soon be sworn in. And what better way to draw toward the end of the year than with a very important Christian holiday—Thanksgiving!

Unfortunately, America’s Christian heritage is under attack and it is well established that America is in a moral decline. Many in America have opted for “feel good” politics and have placed their faith in government with the false hope that man can provide for them. That is what took place this last election.

FORWARD TO YOUR PASTOR

In an attempt to assist you in “rebuilding the wall,” I am providing some ideas hoping you can designate Thanksgiving Sunday, November 23rd as “American Heritage Sunday.”

Here are some ideas to help celebrate “America’s Christian Heritage Sunday”:

On November 23rd, include in your church bulletin an insert or message about declaring Thanksgiving Sunday “America’s Christian Heritage Sunday.” We have provided one for you. Please encourage your congregation to read them at their family Thanksgiving dinner.
Plan a special event that would accent the purpose of the day.
For pastors, deliver a message or sermon on America's Christian founding to reinforce the commemoration of the day. This would also be powerful as many other of our fellow pastors would be speaking with one voice, one message, on the same day.
Conduct a prayer meeting one day during the week to pray for our nation’s current moral condition, that it may be restored to Godliness, just as the Pilgrims did on the day they touched ground here in this great country.
Contact your local mayor asking them and the city council to pass a resolution in honor of the week for your town.

By the simple actions of proclaiming the week of Thanksgiving for Christ in celebration of God’s blessings to this country and by prayer we can send a powerful spiritual wave across this great land of ours. Remember, our war is not with flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities of darkness. But thank God with Him no one can be against us!

We must remind ourselves of our Christian history, lest we be guided by the secular doctrine of the day. And we must also celebrate our Christian heritage to serve as salt and light to those around us.

Since 1992, the week of Thanksgiving has been declared “America’s Christian Heritage Week,” by Congress, several Governors, hundreds of mayors and city councils and clergy. This year is no different. However, I am asking you to set aside Thanksgiving Sunday to celebrate our nation’s Christian heritage.

Society today (and unfortunately many of our fellow clergymen) is fooled by the myth that Christianity had no part in the founding of America and therefore the role of religion should be restricted to merely the four walls of the church. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Those early English settlers, the Pilgrims, left the land of a tyrant King George to escape the religious persecution of his monarchy. The power of Christianity was a threat to the King, but never too weak for a people to escape persecution and bless a land later to become America.

In their deliberations in forming this great country of ours, our founding fathers never forsook Christ or the role of Christianity in their duties, and in fact, they used it as their basis for America’s founding.

The Pilgrims were given a charter to build a colony at Cape Henry, Virginia. However, they were blown off course by 500 miles north and ended up at Plymouth Bay, Massachusetts. It was there that they wrote, what can be recognized as America’s first Constitution, the Mayflower Compact.

In its opening paragraph these four key phrases were penned by them in solid proclamation…

“Praise be to God!”

“We’re on these shores to give glory to God.”

“Furthermore to spread the glorious Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“We now, the undersigned, declare that we are the body politic, “the church.’”

During the Constitutional Convention’s deliberations those founding fathers used 3,154 quotes, 34% of which were directly from the Bible. For instance:

Isaiah 33:22 was used to justify our three branches of government
Jeremiah 17:9 was used to support the separation of powers
Ezra 7:24 was used to exempt churches from taxes—such exemption exists to today.

It was Benjamin Franklin who got the Convention to open its meeting with prayer. At the Convention in 1787 he said:

“I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in the Assembly every morning.”

In 1781, it was Thomas Jefferson, the one many falsely claim urged the separation of the Church from the state, who proclaimed:

“God who gave us life, gave us liberty. And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God?”

All of the state constitutions written by our founding fathers called for godly men to occupy the offices of the land. The Pennsylvania State Constitution, written by Benjamin Rush, declares:

“Each member of the legislature . . . shall make and subscribe the following declaration:‘I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the Universe, the rewarder of good and punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.”

Similarly, the Delaware State Constitution, home to Vice President-elect Joe Biden, reads:

“Every person appointed to public office shall say, ‘I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His Holy Son and in the Holy Ghost. One God blessed for evermore . . .’”

By their words and their actions, our founders intended for America to be a nation reflective of Christianity. They understood the proclamation in the book of Acts that, “In Him we live and move and have our being.” For it is not merely our actions on Sundays in the walls of our churches that define our faith, but the manner in which we live our lives, and with it the manner in which we choose to regulate ourselves and the standards we set through government.

Make no mistake about it—America does have a deep Christian heritage! But America is facing a crisis—a moral crisis that is more severe than the economic crisis we face. And we can see evidence of moral decay all around us.

It was in 1878 that the Supreme Court ruled in Reynolds v. United States that it was permissible to maintain Christian values, principles and practices in official policy. But secular humanists in 1962 got control of the Court, distorted the words of Thomas Jefferson, and began to strip this country of its Christian bedrock by ruling school prayer unconstitutional through their perverted doctrine of “separation of church and state.” And there has been a moral decline ever since.

We used to be able to count on our culture to protect our children from sexual exploitation. But today we see forced teachings in schools promoting the homosexual lifestyle as normal. And we see groups like the North American Man/Boy Love Association prey upon our children as young as 8 for sexual encounters.

We saw in Littleton, Colorado, 12 high school students and a teacher gunned down in cold blood by teenagers in trench coats who laughed as they committed their mayhem.

Over the past few years, the news has been filled with accounts of unspeakable crimes by children against other children. Here are just a few:

Two young boys, ages 11 and 13, in April 1998 unleashed a hail of gunfire on schoolmates in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Four girls and a teacher were murdered.

Four teens in Dallas, Texas, claiming to be vampires, in March 1998, burned down a church and went on a drug-crazed rampage, vandalizing dozens of cars and homes, burning down an office and spray-painting racial slurs.

A 16-year-old boy in Pearl, Mississippi in October 1997 murdered his mother and shot nine of his schoolmates, killing two of them.

A teenage girl in November 1996, delivered a child in a motel in Delaware. She and her boyfriend put the baby in a plastic bag, suffocated it and then tossed it in a dumpster.

Another teenage girl in New Jersey, in June 1997, gave birth to a baby at her prom in a bathroom stall. She threw the baby in the trash and went back to the dance floor.

More unborn children have fallen victim to abortion than all the deaths of our nation’s wars combined. Each day 4,000 are slaughtered all in the name of “a woman’s right to choose.”

This is a picture of a culture in moral chaos. Where did we go wrong? America went wrong when it began to stray away from the very thing that founded it—God, and the powerful effects of Christianity.

Liberal judges have not only banned prayer from our schools, they have made it illegal to post the Ten Commandments. Judges strike down laws protecting children from the most hard-core pornography on the Internet. Children are being suspended from school for saying grace over their lunch. Today, it is harder to escape from a car lease agreement than to get a divorce. The federal government spends billions of dollars promoting “safe sex” ideology in our schools and handing out birth control devices to children without any parental knowledge. They even remove young girls from schools to get secret abortions without a parent even knowing.

Meanwhile, Christian speech is just about the only form of speech banned in America today. Congress has even considered legislation that would classify a pastor’s sermon against the sin of homosexuality as a “hate crime.”

We have even witnessed just 5 years ago the United State Supreme Court rule that consensual sodomy is a protected right of privacy. In 2005 a federal judge ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional because it contains the phrase “Under God” in it. There was even an attempt to have all schools in those states that are under the Federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to stop saying the pledge after this ruling was handed down.

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

Further, the California Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that marriages solely between one man and one woman were unconstitutional. The court agreed with a prior judge that, “It appears that no rational purpose exists for limiting marriage in this state to opposite-sex partners.”

How ironic that our nation would ban the very principles of its foundation! George Washington said it best:

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principles.”

Despite all the efforts of those on the left to chip away at our Christian heritage, we have very effective tools they can’t take away, and they are prayer and proclamation.

On November 23rd, I urge you to join me, and countless others nationwide, in celebrating our nation’s Christian founding.

I pray that you, your family, and church have a blessed Thanksgiving week and holiday. God, indeed, has blessed this land and all of us who call Him Father.

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon

For God and Country,

Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Rev. Louis P. Sheldon
Chairman & Founder

FORWARD TO YOUR PASTOR

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