How the liberal media twists 'church and state' to hide what it truly fears

The legacy media wants you to believe a lie.

For months, the corporate media has claimed the Trump administration is blurring the lines between government and the Christian faith. Framing the actions as eroding the "separation of church and state" — a phrase, of course, that appears nowhere in the Constitution — the media wants you to believe that President Donald Trump is violating the First Amendment.

'It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.'

The latest example of media fearmongering is just two weeks old.

On May 21, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a (voluntary, brief) Christian prayer service at the Pentagon. Like clockwork, media outlets like the New York Times and CNN rushed to suggest the event was unconstitutional and, in the case of MSNBC, "so problematic."

But that couldn't be further from the truth.

The First Amendment contains two legal precedents related to religion and government: the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause. The Founding Fathers dictated that the federal government shall neither establish a national religion nor prohibit the free exercise of religion.

It's really that simple. And clearly, Hegseth violated neither.

"The media is not outraged because they are neutral observers who genuinely believe we rode roughshod over the Constitution — we did not. I assure you, Congress did not establish a national religion during those 26 minutes of a voluntary prayer service," Brooks Potteiger, a Tennessee pastor who spoke at the Pentagon service, told Blaze Media.

Perhaps, then, the media isn't actually worried about constitutional law. On the contrary: It uses fearmongering about "church and state" as a smokescreen to hide its true offense, Potteiger said.

"Their outrage stems from something deeper: The offense of the gospel itself," he told Blaze Media. "And they expect their indignation to stick because they assume the average American is ignorant of her own history."

It's true.

The corporate media must believe the average American is ignorant about the origins of our great country because it clearly thinks its fearmongering will resonate. But the truth is that many of the Founding Fathers were deeply religious, and their concerns about government and religion are not what the media and progressives claim today.

Read some of the Founding Fathers in their own words:

• George Washington: "It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor."
• Samuel Adams: "May every citizen in the army and in the country have a proper sense of the Deity upon his mind, and an impression of that declaration recorded in the Bible, 'Him that honoreth me I will honor.'"
• John Witherspoon: "God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may, in the issue, tend to the support and establishment of both."

"Make no mistake, this was not some vague or generic deity in the minds of the founders. It was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is what’s true of our history," Potteiger said.

Regarding the "separation of church and state," Potteiger told Blaze News why the media's trite accusation "betrays a misunderstanding of the historical context."

"The phrase was not drawn from the Constitution but from a letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to the Danbury Baptist Association," he explained. "It referred to a prohibition against the federal government establishing a national church, in response to the Church of England, not a ban on public officials exercising or expressing religious faith."

That's why, Potteiger explained, he will make no apologies for attending or speaking at Hegseth's Pentagon service.

"I stand firmly behind the service," he told Blaze Media. "I’m proud of the secretary of defense for initiating it, and I’m comforted knowing that the service members were encouraged in the gospel and that heaven heard our prayers — for we came in the name of Jesus Christ."

For his part, Hegseth refuses to cave to the media outrage.

"Appealing to heaven, to God, is a long-standing tradition in our military," he said last week. "We appeal to God. I appeal to Jesus Christ for [His] protection. We’re going to speak that, and we’re going to be open and willing to talk about that at the Pentagon. If they want to criticize that, they’re on the wrong side of a very important issue."

Amen.