Chapel speaker, attorney tells students persecution awaits in U.S. legal realm

by Tammi Reed Ledbetter, News Editor                                                Vol. XIX, No. 9, Nov/Dec 2006

Attorney Shelby Sharpe watched as dozens stood in a Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary chapel audience, responding to his question of how many were training for ministry in a country where Christians are criminally and civilly prosecuted.

“I take it that the rest of you have no intention of ministering in the United States, because we’re only decades away from this happening.” Encouraging his audience to look at the trends in American culture, he cited legal cases in which:

—using Scripture is prosecuted as a hate crime,

—churches are sued for revoking a minister’s ordination, and

—the government decides the curricula for theological schools.

Findings of George Barna and the Nehemiah Institute, after polling teenagers, reveal the nation is only a decade or two away from a complete loss of a Christian consensus, Sharpe warned. “When the World War II generation is gone and the generation coming right behind it ... the Christian influence is hugely lacking. You will quickly have a country that doesn’t even hardly know about God,” he said, forecasting the future U.S. as a pagan nation that Christians should regard as a foreign mission field.

Such dire predictions will come true if Christians continue to give away the foundation on which the United States was established, Sharpe said. “If you’re going to be in ministry in 10 or 20 years, you will see this. It does not necessarily have to happen. As we conceded it and gave it away, we can with God’s help take it back,” he argued.

While commending Southern Baptists for effectiveness in evangelism, Sharpe said there remains an indictment for all Christians who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture when they fail to carry out the balance of Christ’s command to be salt to the earth. “If you look at our culture as it exists today, where is the salt?”

After reading the Great Commission in Matthew 28:16-20, Sharpe turned to Matthew 4:4 to note Jesus’ response when he was tempted to turn stones into bread after 40 days of fasting. He said, “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God.” Observing that the word “man is used in a generic sense in reference to all people, Sharpe said the instruction is not limited to believers. “We are to have this culture live in obedience to every command of God,” he stated.

Answering skeptics who charge that the Supreme Court finds such behavior unlawful, Sharpe remarked, “So what? When did they get above God?”

Using early sources from American history to describe the founding of an intentionally Christian nation, Sharpe reminded that the first colonial grant was given to Sir Walter Raleigh in order to deliver the Christian faith to people who lived in darkness. That reference was cited in a Supreme Court opinion in 1892, describing a continent founded on a commitment to spreading the gospel through laws and charters written to advance the kingdom of God and convert the heathen.

“Here was an intellectually honest Supreme Court of the United States that looked at our history and determined this is a Christian nation.” In contrast to such clear statements, Sharpe said, “We have people today who say this has never been a Christian nation.”

Even in the actions of the first Congress, Sharpe found evidence of their desire to encourage Christian teaching in the authorization of funds to publish Bibles. “That’s the same Congress that passed the First Amendment on religious freedom. Did they violate it?”

Sharpe pointed to the assessment of America as a Christian nation found in Alexis de Tocqueville’s 1835 book, Democracy in America. “He spent nine months here and went back to France . . . and described a culture based on the Word of God. That’s what he saw.” While most political science majors once read the book, the French author’s writing grew out of favor in the 1960s, Sharpe said. “Here’s a man who looked at the culture. Were all the people here Christians? No, but the culture was based on God’s Word.”

Sharpe told of a long period that stretched from the Colonial Era to 1900 when the training given lawyers and clergymen was identical. He quoted from Sir William Blackstone’s law commentary published in 1765 that served as a text for American lawyers in the first half of the nation’s history.

In the fourth volume Blackstone referred to a supreme being having formed the universe to create matter out of nothing. “He was no evolutionist,” Sharpe interjected. “‘Man must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being,’” he read in quoting from the law book. Furthermore, he quoted, “‘No human law should be suffered to contradict these.’”

“You can’t get any clearer as to what law is,” Sharpe insisted. “If any human law anywhere in this globe is contrary to God’s Word, it is invalid, unenforceable and you’re to disobey it. That’s what lawyers were taught for over 100 years.”

When influential Harvard Law School dean Roscoe Pounds proposed moving away from regarding the law as God-given, Sharpe said the shift to a new legal science was considered more open-minded. Though President William Howard Taft remarked that such advocates were out to destroy the Constitution, Sharpe blamed much of the evangelical community for ignoring the law professor’s call for the state to take the place of Jehovah.

There are consequences when God’s Word is ignored, Sharpe stated, noting changes he had seen in the courtroom and legislature.

In 1966 while serving as a briefing attorney for the chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court, Sharpe studied a challenge to charitable immunity that prevented lawsuits against churches on the basis of an individual member’s actions.

“In 1966 the Supreme Court said we recognize this is a common law doctrine, but the next time it comes before the court we will look at it afresh.” Only a few years later the doctrine was erased, he said, adding that churches and religious bodies are open to suit.

Some 20 years later Sharpe attended an American Bar Association seminar on tort and religion aimed at lawyers interested in what was described as “the explosive, new edge of law.” With topics addressing the expanded use of tort law against religion, ideological weapons, and restraint on religious abuses, Sharpe said “brainwashing” was described as forcible indoctrination to induce someone to give up basic political, societal or religious beliefs and attitudes and to accept contrasting, regimented ideas. Thus, he said, conversion fit the definition of brainwashing.

Ninety percent of his law practice involves defending churches and religious institutions against lawsuits. Currently, he is defending Moody Church of Chicago against a million-dollar lawsuit for having revoked a man’s ordination. “This is nothing more than an ecclesiastical opinion that someone is qualified for ministry. It’s not a degree, not a property right, not an employment issue.” While the trial court threw the case out, the court of appeals sent it back for trial, he explained, a decision he is challenging.

As general counsel for the Southern Baptists of Texas Convention, he said the state convention occasionally “gets tossed in on a lawsuit, but the Lord’s been gracious and [such lawsuits] get tossed out each time.”

Still, he said, “The courthouse is now wide open to come at Christians. The law is no longer measured by Christianity. Religious conduct and teaching are not protected.” Instead, he said, anything that threatens the peace of citizens is suspect. “Even scriptures are considered hate crimes by legislation.”

In a case still to be decided in Texas, the government is arguing its right to set requirements for a theological degree in a case involving Tyndale Seminary, Southern Bible Institute, and Hispanic Bible Institute. The issue there is, does the state have the right to set requirements for a theological degree?

Tyndale Seminary gave some diplomas that said somebody met some requirements to receive a certificate in these various theological subjects, he said, but later a $60,000 fine was levied at Tyndale.

“That law, which exists in many states, sets the requirements for people who sit on the board of trustees, in administration, qualifications for faculty and even controls one fourth of the curriculum.”

Sharpe, in taking a deposition, asked the education commissioner if a man having only a certificate from a Bible college and a bachelor’s degree could teach in a seminary. The answer was an emphatic “no.” By such standards, Sharpe contended, the renowned evangelist Billy Graham would be disqualified from teaching evangelism, Sharpe said.

“He doesn’t have a Ph.D. so you wouldn’t want Billy on the faculty of this august faculty,” he jested. “We argued that case a year ago January and it still hasn’t come down. Your president filed a friend of court brief in support and said the state has no right to tell a seminary who is going to be on the board, the faculty and what the curriculum is going to be,” he added, referring to Southwestern President Paige Patterson.

“We have a responsibility to teach the culture to live in accordance with every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God,” Sharpe reminded, encouraging students to remember all of their marching orders. Instead of fearing the loss of their 501c3 or taxable church contributions as a result of preaching prophetically, Sharpe said, “So what? That’s buying your peace and if you think you can sell that argument to Jesus when you appear before him, good luck. You think he’ll buy it? I don’t think so.”

Sharpe said ministers starting out are poised at one of the most important times in Christian history in the United States to impact this culture if they’ll carry out the whole counsel of God — not part of it. Don’t concern yourself with the temporal consequences of it. Do it in a loving manner. Be wise and harmless but always be obedient. You can be obedient without being obnoxious — without being a bad testimony to the Lord.”

Sharpe added, “When the Lord cleaned out the temple with a whip, you know, that’s pretty strong. There are occasions when you have to kick some folks out of some places where they don’t need to be. You do it forcefully,” he said, without being unchristlike. Sharpe said some thought it was unchristlike when Jesus removed people from the temple. “No, he was acting very Christlike.”

While Christians will not usher in the millennial kingdom, Sharpe warned, “Jesus is not going to be happy campers with us if we have used as an excuse that we were just waiting on him to come back.” Instead, Christians must be challenged to live for God and base their lives and decisions on him despite temporal loss.

“Jesus lost all three of his earthly trials, but three days later after he was buried he took care of that,” Sharpe said.

He noted that those who convicted Jesus had another court appearance pending. “Guess who gets the last one on that?”

After reviewing the facts regarding a cultural shift with consequences in the courtroom and legislature, Sharpe said it is clear that the U.S. is headed toward a time when Christianity is civilly and criminally prosecuted. With that future in view, he urged seminarians to leave committed to encouraging others by teaching the Word of God and applying it to every area of life.

“[Y]ou be the salt. You be good salt being rubbed in. Exhort your people to obey God’s Word regardless of where they are. God will honor it and the kingdom will be advanced.”

[Reprinted from The Southern Baptist Texan, Sep. 19, 2006.]