- Cecile McGuire
- 6 days ago
Gentle Conquest
Charles Carrin Ministries Newsletter August, 2026
THE AMERICAN DREAM: NEVER HAVE SO FEW STOLEN SO MUCH FROM SO MANY
Greetings to all of you! Charles continues to thrive in South Florida. This month has been an exciting one for him! He spoke and ministered to a group of men (and a few wives) at a three-day conference in Titusville, Florida, hosted by Tim Taylor. Tim is the son of Jack Taylor, Dad's close Word-Spirit-Power Team minister friend, who is now with the Lord. I have been told by Tim that the conference was "Great!"
This month's article issues a clarion call to all of us to stand up for our religious liberties. Dad shares multiple examples of how our Founding Fathers depended on God's Power and Grace, and how they exhorted all of us to protect those freedoms for which they risked everything. May you be encouraged and inspired as you read this!
Thank you so much for your continued prayers and support for Dad! You are invited to write him at carrinmin@aol.com
Many Blessings!
Cecile C. McGuire
THE AMERICAN DREAM:
“NEVER HAVE SO FEW STOLEN SO MUCH FROM
SO MANY” Charles Carrin
Without the approval of Congress or public opinion, a few unauthorized individuals have blatantly altered the spiritual foundation of our nation’s legal system and erased much of the knowledge of our religious heritage.
A few years ago a pastor and his wife visited Washington, D.C. Among other sites, they toured the United States Supreme Court. Standing inside, they gazed up at the magnificent marble sculpture of Moses holding the Ten Commandments. There is no mistaking the significance of this massive work by Jewish artist-sculptor Adolph A. Weinman. The pastor knew the sculpture’s history. As he and his wife stood admiring it, they were startled by the guide’s explanation. She said that between the figures depicting the Majesty of the Law and the Power of Government stands a tablet with ten Roman numerals—five down the left side and five down the right—and that this tablet represents the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights.
The pastor was shocked. The Ten Commandments had been replaced by “amendments.” When confronted, the guide knew nothing of Moses, the Law of God, or the carving’s original meaning. She was merely repeating what she had been told to say.
That substitution was not made by Congress or by the democratic choice of the American people. It was imposed by a small minority whose names remain hidden and whose faces go unrecognized. The voice of the people had been silently replaced by an unidentified few. Mentally make a quick trip to Russia and the replacement of government by a small mob—the same pattern had appeared in America.
In contrast, James Madison, a chief contributor to the Constitution, explained the document’s relationship to God: “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, but upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.” In 1892 the United States Supreme Court declared, “Our laws and institutions must necessarily be based upon the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind.” Today that attitude has changed. A few private individuals have taken it upon themselves to “correct” the Supreme Court and Madison.
This kind of political overreach is not new. In parts of the old Soviet Union, less than 5 percent of the population were card-carrying Communists, yet they forced total control over the remaining 95 percent. In the United States, roughly 5 percent of the population identify as atheist. Yet that minority has aggressively pressed to strip the nation of much of its religious expression and national heritage. The ACLU has been a leader in that effort.
Instead of banning references to God in government, the writers of both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution urgently encouraged the people to call upon Divine Providence. The Constitutional Convention was failing until Benjamin Franklin rose and urged the delegates to pray. Every president since has sought the nation’s prayers. That was the concept imbued in both historic documents, and it was the attitude the Founding Fathers expected of future generations. To deny that obvious truth is to resort to fraud and deceit. Yet a determined minority continues to do exactly that.
Our Founding Fathers did not leave us without guidance about the place of civil and religious matters in American life. They clearly expressed their position in the Declaration of Independence: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” When the U.S. Supreme Court building was constructed with Moses and the Ten Commandments given the most prominent position, it was with the full blessing of Congress.
John Quincy Adams explained, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He went on to say that the highest glory of the American Revolution was that it connected, “in one indissoluble bond, the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.” Of the Declaration of Independence he declared that it “laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” Note the expression “indissoluble bond.” Where does the activist minority find support for its position? Not from the Constitution or its authors. It comes from a willingness to ignore the will of the majority. How is that tactic different from the tactic of Communism’s small controlling minority? There is no essential difference. Were the men alive today who fought British tyranny, they would oppose today’s assault on the nation’s moral foundation with equal resolve. When Patrick Henry declared that America was founded on the gospel of Jesus Christ, he was not booed down by politicians; he was applauded by statesmen.
Consider public education. America’s schools once held the highest academic standing in the world—until atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair succeeded in removing prayer from public schools. Since that time, American educational performance has fallen sharply. Whether the effect of prayer on students was spiritual or psychological is not the issue. The benefit was real, and the nation paid a high price to satisfy a small minority.
Michael Newdow, an atheist, filed suit in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to remove the words “under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and sought to remove our national motto, “In God We Trust,” from U.S. currency. Replacing American coins and bills would cost the national treasury billions of dollars. Newdow shows little concern for that cost or for the convictions of the large majority. Our National Anthem contains the words “In God is our trust.” The beloved hymn “America” says, “God shed His grace on thee.” Also at risk are “God Bless America” and “Our fathers’ God, to Thee, Author of liberty…” A determined minority tells the majority they can no longer sing these in public. With too little resistance, displays of the Ten Commandments and other references to God have been forbidden in courts, classrooms, and government property across the land. Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, Hancock, and other early American statesmen would have reacted strongly against this erosion of our moral foundation.
Political freedom and spiritual strength are inseparable. This nation depends on both. When the foundation of godly truth is removed from public life, the nation is placed in peril.
That same pressure has also been directed at the Church. It is only a matter of time, some warn, before churches and religious organizations face the loss of tax-exempt status—an outcome that could force many congregations, especially those holding valuable urban property, into severe financial distress. You have been forewarned. This is the trajectory some activists pursue.
The deeper failure was not in the Constitution the framers composed. It lay in their inability to anticipate that centuries later others would search the document’s silences and claim those silences as its true intent. For example, because the Constitution does not expressly forbid same-sex marriage, some argue that its silence grants a constitutional right to it. Another common deception involves the phrase “separation of church and state.” Those words do not appear in the Constitution. They come from a personal letter Thomas Jefferson wrote to a Baptist association in Danbury, Connecticut, assuring them that the state would not threaten the safety and well-being of the church. The state would remain separate from the church’s internal operations.
Did Jefferson imply that all references to God must be removed from American government and public life? Absolutely not. That was never the consideration. Jefferson stood with others whose signatures on the Declaration of Independence told King George that, with “firm reliance,” they depended on the “protection of divine Providence.” The cornerstone of American government was laid in patriotic blood and in devotion to the Almighty. Today, in opposition to the clear posture of the Constitution’s authors, activists forbid displaying the Ten Commandments in classrooms and courts. The intent, in effect, is to push America toward a thoroughly secular public square. As one illustration of judicial overreach, the Ninth Circuit—the same court that heard Newdow’s case—has at times ruled in ways that elevate judges’ authority over parents in sensitive matters of what young schoolchildren are taught about sex and related subjects.
Why, then, are American churches and believers so often spiritually and politically powerless before opponents who are numerically far inferior?
Before offering an answer, consider an illustration from history. During Colonial America’s Great Awakening (beginning around 1740), Jonathan Edwards’s ministry was opposed by Charles Chauncy, a prominent Boston pastor who encouraged congregations to resist Edwards and the revival sweeping the colonies. Even though tens of thousands were converted and brought into deep relationship with Jesus Christ, Chauncy insisted that the unusual manifestations accompanying the ministries of Edwards, George Whitefield, John Wesley, and others were not the work of the Holy Spirit. To him they were meaningless emotion.
The manifestations Chauncy saw were shocking: people fell under the power of God, vibrated for hours, or lay as if dead. The sight was alarming. But in denying the work of the Holy Spirit, Chauncy helped shove much of New England into a pit of unbelief. Spiritual lights went out across the land; ultimately hundreds of historic churches drifted into Unitarianism. Denial of the miraculous became the public norm. Overnight, congregations were overwhelmed by agnosticism and ridicule of the supernatural. Without the Holy Spirit’s guidance, Christian bodies that had once been fortresses of evangelical truth were swept into subtle unbelief.
With more pastors than judges and more churches than courts, God-believers—almost as if hypnotized into inertia—have too often watched the nation’s moral identity be stripped away. Never in political and church history have “so few stolen so much from so many.” Today’s activists function like the “little foxes that spoil the vines” (Song of Solomon 2:15). What can one person do? First, become fully acquainted with the Holy Spirit. He is the source of wisdom and power. Accept Him as He is. Do not try to recast Him into a purely denominational image. If His manifestations challenge you, accept the challenge rather than fight them. Your own spiritual vitality—and in a real sense the nation’s—depends on it. If you are a pastor preaching a watered-down gospel, stop. America needs spiritual power. Do not become another Charles Chauncy. Be filled with the Holy Spirit as Jesus provided, and be among those to whom the Lord could say, as He did to Gideon, “Go in this might of yours” (and help save the land). It is unthinkable that a large believing majority should be defeated by a small, determined minority.
That reality forces us to acknowledge the unbelief and Scripture-denial present in much of today’s Church. In the same pattern as Chauncy and later New England congregations, many modern Christians have been taught to reject the Holy Spirit’s miraculous manifestations. A huge number have little concept of His visible works. Like the devout Jews on the Day of Pentecost who were “confused… amazed… perplexed” (Acts 2), some accuse those who experience such manifestations of being “full of new wine.” Because of this, many miss a genuine encounter with God.
Where there is limited relationship, there is limited power. Where there is limited power, there is limited resistance. Where there is limited resistance, there is maximized failure. The enemy wins.
To miss any potential of the Holy Spirit is a loss of critical proportions. It affects every area of life, and the modern Church has missed much. Just as New England Christians who had once been scripturally strong later found themselves defenseless before unbelief, many current Christians find themselves weakened before politically deceptive and faith-destroying powers. In every such case the victim becomes easy prey to inferior opponents. The difference between the American Church now and the Church of 1776 is that believers then were more spiritually united in their fight. Not so today. Much of the modern church has, in effect, switched sides.
A century ago Charles Spurgeon shouted his warning about the Church’s denial of the Holy Spirit: “Death and condemnation to a church that is not yearning after the Spirit, crying and groaning until the Spirit has wrought mightily in her midst. He is here! He has never gone back since He descended at Pentecost… Brethren, if we do not have the Spirit of God, it were better to shut the churches, nail up the doors, put on a black cross and say, ‘God have mercy on us!’ If you ministers have not the Spirit of God, you better not preach, and you people had better stay at home. I think I speak not too strongly when I say that a church without the Spirit of God is rather a curse than a blessing. This is solemn truth: The Holy Spirit or nothing—and worse than nothing!”
The day Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, the American flag flying above the U.S. naval base had a second flag beneath it: a simple white banner bearing the Cross of Christ. In full view, and with the approval of government authority from Hawaii to the White House, the Cross shared the same pole with Old Glory. No one dared challenge it. By long precedent it is the only flag allowed a position of special honor in relation to the Stars and Stripes. From the 1776 birth of this nation onward, the Cross has identified, defended, and fortified the moral fabric and heritage of the country—protecting believer and unbeliever alike.
Moses and the Ten Commandments inject integrity, unity, character, ethics, principle, and moral fortitude into American life. Our domestic foundation rests upon that understructure. Without it, we fall. In that fall the nation would surrender its greatness to inferior political forces, and America would become only a memorable page in history. If the activist minority succeeds fully in its attack on the nation’s religious heritage, everyone—including that minority—will lose. To counteract that loss, our duty as Christians is to “mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor,” that this nation, so conceived and so dedicated, may long endure.
Whether or not America continues to provide a safe public haven for Christian expression, the good news for believers remains: “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself” (Philippians 3:20–21). Hallelujah!
So…
“Cheer up, ye saints, fresh courage take; The clouds ye so much dread Are big with mercy and shall break In blessings on your head.”