Imagine an America where Christian lawyers, priests, business leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens experience the Melchizedek fire and spirit baptism of Jesus and Mary Magdalene

    In April 2001, the second year in what would be a five-year stretch of being homeless, a familiar voice told me in my sleep, “You are an ordained Melchizedek exorcist priest going back into a prison where you once lived to help other people still living there.” 

    I saw myself in a facility of some kind, with men and women around my age dressed casually and milling around. Off to the right, I saw a way out of there and knew I would not use it until I was told to use it. I woke up, wondering what that was about?

    The next night, I was told by the same voice in my sleep,” You cannot do this work correctly if you are trying to get anything back from the people you are trying to help.” 

    As time passed, I came to understand the prison was Christianity, as it was practiced, which was very different from what Jesus in the Gospels was about. 

    According to Christianity, salvation through Jesus is believing he is the son of God, and he died on the cross for our sins, and he was resurrected from the dead and ascended to heaven to sit on the right hand of God. 

    Yet Jesus in the Gospels said such things as: many are called, but few are chosen; the road to life is difficult and the gate narrow and few enter therein; the work is great and the laborers are few; turn the other cheek; pray for and do good to your enemies; first take the beam out of your own eye; judge not and God will not judge you; it is more blessed to give than to receive; if someone asks for your shirt, give him/her also your coat; love your neighbor as yourself; take no thought for tomorrow, for each day has enough troubles of its own; you cannot worship God and mammon.

    I had many adventures since those two messages came through in April 2001, and I wrote a lot about that at blogs and in books, and I’m still in that prison, and I’m still being made to look at the beams in my own eyes by something a lot bigger and smarter than me.

    Let me back up and start over.

    

    My grandparents on both sides were Southern Baptists. They attended Southside Baptist Church in Five Points South, in Birmingham, Alabama. My grandfathers were deacons in that church. My parents attended that church when they were children. 

    I maybe recall being at that church a time or two in my childhood, but otherwise I do not recall going to church, or my parents attending church, until Mountain Brook Baptist Church was built a few blocks from my our home on Montevallo Road in Mountain Brook slightly south of Birmingham. Mountain Brook was a upscale white community.

    Every Sunday morning before Sunday School class, which I really enjoyed, my father took me me on a drive into the undeveloped southern part of Mountain Brook. We talked about things, and when he drove us back to the church, he attended Sunday school and I attended Sunday school. As we drove home from the church, he asked me what we had talked about in Sunday School, and I told him. 

    I recall attending two or three church services at Mountain Brook Baptist Church, which I hated, especially the long monotonous sermons. 

    When I was 12, my mother, who never attended church, discovered a small Episcopal church in and old farm house in the Crestline Village part of Mountain Brook, which had been started by a young pastor named Lee Graham. 

    After a while, my mother told my father, if he didn’t get more involved in church, she would take her children to St. Luke’s in Crestline. 

    My father and I continued our Sunday morning ritual, and my mother made me go to St. Luke’s with her on Sunday mornings and sit with her through the church service, which I hated.

    My mother caught bloody hell from her parents, my father’s parents, and their minister at Southside Baptist Church, and the minister at Mountain Brook Baptist Church. But she was resolute.

    My mother had me, my younger brother and our younger sister christened at St. Luke’s, attended by my father and his and my mother’s parents.

    One Sunday evening dinner, my father asked me what the church sermon at St. Luke’s that morning was about? I had no answer, because I was off somewhere in my mind fishing and hunting during the entire  church service. 

    My father gave my mother the look, and my mother gave me a look that would kill, and she enrolled me in confirmation class at St. Luke’s.

    Confirmation classes were led by the young associate pastor, Ben Smith. He was nice, I liked him, but I hated being penned in the confirmation class for two hours every Saturday afternoon. I hated elementary school and felt I was sent to prison five days a week. Saturday was my one day off during the school year.

    At nights, my mother drilled me in what I needed to learn in the Bible and the Episcopal Catechism to pass the class. I hated being drilled with stuff that didn’t interest me in the least and was ruining my Saturdays. 

    After the required number of confirmation classes, the Episcopal Bishop of Alabama came to St. Luke’s to confirm the members of my class. I sat in a pew in the church nave with my mother and father and their parents.

    The bishop spoke for a while to the people sitting in the pews, and after some Episcopal rituals were recited or read by the members of the the congregation, and some Christian songs, were sung by the choir and people in the audience, the time came for my class to go to the communion rail to receive our first communion.

    The bishop passed us one at a time and gave us the wafer representing the body of Christ. He passed us again one at time and gave us the silver chalice containing the communion wine, the blood of Christ. 

    When I took a sip and swallowed the wine, my first ever alcoholic drink, it went down my throat wrong and I felt like I was choking to death. It took every ounce of my will to be still and say nothing.

     After the bishop gave everyone in my class the wine, I stood up from the communion rail and willed myself to walk back to the pew and pull out the kneeling bench on which I kneeled with my eyes closed, pretending to pray, until I felt like I wasn’t going to die after all.

    

    It wasn’t long before my mother starting trying to persuade me to become an acolyte, who would walk down the aisle before church carrying a cross on a long pole before the service began, and then light the candles on the altar, and after the service ended would snuff out the candles and carry the cross on the pole out of the church, followed by the paster and associate pastor. 

    There was no way I was going to do that, but my mother kept trying. 

    One day after a church service, she tried to get the new curate John Fletcher to talk me into being an acolyte, and when he saw me blanch, as if I had been bidden by a scorpion, he told my mother that it didn’t seem I wanted to do it and he was going to let me be. The look of distress on her face caused me to feel awful, but no way I was going to be an acolyte.

    I actually liked John Fletcher’s sermons, because they were short and made sense. But I wanted to do other things on Sundays than attend church, such as fishing, hunting and playing golf, and in college that’s what I moved toward doing, and it really distressed my mother. I felt guilty, but I really didn’t want to spend time in churches. 

    Later in my life, I sometimes attended a church for a while, but it never stuck and took hold, and eventually I stopped attending church altogether.

    By then I had been stood before endless mirrors looking at me. My perspective about everything had been changed.

    I knew for fact that God by some name existed, Jesus and angels known in the Bible, and deities in other religions, and the Devil by any name, and demons, and beings from other planets existed, and I knew there was no way I could prove any of it to anyone, and I didn’t know when I was ever not in church. 

    After my father and I became estranged in the fall of 1995, principally because of what I was experiencing, which he could not possibly fathom, he started coming to me in dreams and advising me in ways any son should want to be advised, even if some of his advice didn’t sit well with me.

    Maybe I dreamed twice about my mother, after she died in early 1967, and I don’t remember what those dreams were about. 

    My father didn’t like to fish, and my mother didn’t understand why I loved to fish, but she knew that I would die if I didn’t get to fish, so she found men to take me fishing, and she took me to lakes with a sack lunch and left me there all day, and when she came back, I was happy if I had a catch or not, because I had gotten to fish. She wanted me to be a priest, but she did not understand priests catch souls for the church, while fishermen catch souls for God. She did not know the lake was the church, the fish were angels, and when they taught me how to fish, they sent me forth to fish.

    I memorialized Lee Graham in the “He was a parish priest” chapter of A FEW REMARKABLE PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, which can be read at the free internet library. What most impressed me about Lee was, when his vestrymen wanted to hire Mountain Brook police officers to stop blacks from worshipping at St. Luke's, he told them, if blacks could not come to worship, he would close St. Luke's. He also did not like preaching on tithing to the church, and he only did it once a year, when the Episcopal Diocese required that he do it. Not long after Lee stood down his Vestrymen, he announced his work was done at St. Luke’s and he left to pastor a small Episcopal church near Tallahassee, Florida. Here’s a link: https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    The New Testament Letter to the Hebrews provides some insight into Melchizedek, an order of angel, and the Melchizedek priesthood, and its ordeal training, in which Jesus is high priest. I never once heard that mentioned in a Christian church, although every Episcopal minister is ordained by that Church as a priest forever after the order Melchizedek.

    
    The Letter to the Hebrews was addressed to Jews who had accepted Christ and were going back to their old ways. The unknown author tells them that they should be teaching, they should be eating meat, but they are still drinking milk, and the author urges them not to turn away from the chastening of the Lord.

    
    Being trained by the Melchizedek Order is nothing like being baptized by water and accepting Jesus as Lord and Savior. Being trained by the Melchizedek Order is being burned alive for the rest of your life.

    But then, John the Baptist said in the Gospels that one whose sandals he was not worthy to latch would come, who would baptize in fire and in spirit. In the Gospels, Jesus didn’t baptize anyone in water. He said his baptism was in fire and he was anxious to get on with it. 

    Jesus did not mean for parents to use their children to prove they are okay. He meant for parents to live as he lived and taught others to live in the Gospels. I came to tell Christians they are saved by Jesus to the extent they live as he lived and taught in the Gospels, and in that way they incrementally deliver themselves from Evil and walk ever closer to God. 

Hebrews 12 NIV

12 Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, 2 fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. 3 Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.
4 In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. 5 And have you completely forgotten this word of encouragement that addresses you as a father addresses his son? It says,
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, 6 because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.”
7 Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children.For what children are not disciplined by their father? 8 If you are not disciplined—and everyone undergoes discipline—then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all. 9 Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of spirits and live! 10 They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share in his holiness. 11 No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.
12 Therefore, strengthen your feeble arms and weak knees.13 “Make level paths for your feet,” so that the lame may not be disabled, but rather healed.
14 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy;without holiness no one will see the Lord. 15 See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. 16 See that no one is sexually immoral, or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. 17 Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done.
18 You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; 19 to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, 20 because they could not bear what was commanded: “If even an animal touches the mountain, it must be stoned to death.” 21 The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, “I am trembling with fear.”
22 But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, 23 to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect,24 to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.
25 See to it that you do not refuse him who speaks. If they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, how much less will we, if we turn away from him who warns us from heaven? 26 At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.”[e] 27 The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
28 Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, 29 for our “God is a consuming fire.”

       In 1991, as I recall, I was put into a trance and this came from very far away:

Melchizedek

Melchizedek is an order of angel that comes to a planet in trouble to prepare it to receive the Christ

Christ does not come to a planet without Melchizedek 

Mary Magdalene was of the Order Melchizedek  

 Melchizedek Star

    I later was told Mary Magdalene wrote Hebrews anonymously, because it was known no man would read anything a woman wrote. Here’s her poem:

Rosa Mystica

Sweet Mystery

Blood of Christ

Living water

without which

there are no Rainbows

and God is dead.

    Imagine an America where Christian lawyers, priests, business leaders, politicians and ordinary citizens experience the fire and spirit Baptism of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

karma and other inconveniences in American politics and religion

    I posted the Was President Biden’s poor performance during the presidential debate a Divine Intervention?post into religiousforums.com and got quite a few responses. 

    There seemed to be no interest in the notion that President Biden’s dismal performance during the recent presidential debate might have been a Divine Intervention, which puzzled me, because I figured religious people would  give that notion at least a pause to reflect.

   Three comments and my responses.

I think you will have to provide a definition of "war criminal," and then demonstrate how Biden fits that description.

In the law his what’s is called aiding and abetting, aka, being an accomplice. Someone who helps someone else commit a crime is guilty of the crime committed, no matter what it is. Biden kept giving money and weapons and ammo to Israel after he saw Israel killing, maiming, starving and uprooting and displacing a whole loft of unarmed Gaza men, women and children  civilians. Biden is as guilty as Israel. As are the US Congress members who did the same. 

I'm a retired lawyer who clerked for a US District Judge that presided over every federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama.

Another law is the principal is liable for the acts of the principal’s agents, thus Donald Trump is guilty of what the mob he incited did in the nation’s capitol on January 6, 2021, which was an attempt to overthrow the election, thus the national government, and, since he was still the president, and he waited a while so he would watch them do his bidding and marvel over it, before he got on TV and told them to stand down and leave, he proved he was in control of the mob all along.

If you think I give Hamas and its leaders a free pass, I don’t. The October 7 raid, which was my 80th birthday, was bait, designed to provoke Israel to do what it did in Gaza, and to provoke America to give Israel whatever It needed to do what it did, in Gaza. From Hamas’s perspective, the civilians Israel and America killed in Gaza, the better.

In olden times, the penalty for such crimes was being hanged by the neck until dead. I say Biden, the members of Congress who sided with him helping Israel, the Hamas leaders, the leaders of Israel, Trump, and his January 6 mob all should be hanged by the neck until dead in a Nuremberg like proceeding. 

If you think that’s out of line, I have a very good friend who voted twice for Trump, and may w4ell vote for him this year. My friend a US Army Special Forces combat veteran. After the January 6 insurrection, he said all of the people who did it should have been shod dead. He did not say Trump should have been shot dead.

Try to imagine the karma Hamas, Israel, Biden, Congress and Amerians who backed Israel  in Gaza. Try to imagine the karma Hamas racked up starting with its October 7 raid. Try to imagine the karma Trump and his mob and people who still back them racked up on January 6.

Try to imagine a demon infiltrating every one of them, for that is what happened. 

What sort of god would do such a thing?

Do you mean demonic? 

 

Karma is not part of western religion, although Jesus did say in the Gospels, as you sow, so shall you reap, which is how karma, plus or minus, works. America has gotten itself into a predicament it cannot fix, and there is plenty of lame to go around. There are reports in the Bible of people being stuck dead by something not of this world. How about the Red Sea being parted, to allow Moses and his followers to escape the Pharaoh's army, and then the sea returned and drowned the army. How about before that, the Angel of Death taking every first born male in Egypt after the Pharaoh declined Moses’s plea for the Pharaoh to let him and his people leave Egypt? 

Myth? Fact? 

I have ongoing dealings with angels and demons, and they do not operate anything like human beings operate. They can do things human beings cannot begin to imagine, and so I knew from that that anything is possible. I have no crystal ball, and I have no clue what will happen in the next 5 minutes, nor does any other human being. 

Biden was affected by an angel during the debate, because America doss not need a president who is a war crimes criminal in the White House. Whether the Democrats will ditch Biden for someone sees, who can say? America does not need Trump in the White House, either. The same or a similar demon that got into Hitler and his top people and more of the German population, is doing something similar in Trump and the MAGAs and the Republicans who have abandoned their Party for expediency.

What will happen? I don’t know.

A lawyer who believes in angels and demons? Color me skeptical.

From when I was a child, because of my family being Southern Baptists and my mother switched to the Episcopal sect and took her children with her, I believed God, angels and demons exists. In my 45th year, something happened that proved to me God by some name and angels bosom name exist, I could never prove it to anyone else, much less in a court of taw. After that, I was having direct experiences pretty much everyday. Mostly, it was subtle but not ordinary physical sensations, I came to recognize, and dreams that cleary were choreographed, and some visions, and some direct communications in plain English when i was asleep, and telepathically when I was so-called awake, and lots of prodding, nagging, spanking, rebuking, carrying me, redirecting me,, etc, and being stood before endless mirrors looking at me, still in progress. A few years after the good guys showed up, I started meeting the bad guys, the demonic section, inchoate, in me, in other people, and that was a whole lot of fun, and it’s still going on today. Again, I can’t prove any of it, and if I thought I could, I would be nuts. But I will say, if you lived in my skin for a little while, you would not need any persuading :-)

Will you please just answer my question?

I did answer your question. You are free to be skeptical and have a great deal of company.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Was President Biden’s poor performance during the presidential debate a Divine Intervention?

    I closely followed CNN’s coverage of President Joe Biden’s performance during the recent debate against Donald Trump. I heard CNN show hosts say what they think. I heard CNN guests say what they think. I heard President Biden give his take on it, including he had a cold, he felt bad, he had jet lag from his trip to Europe, he was exhausted, he wasn’t on top of his game, he didn’t fully understand how the microphones worked. And, at 81, he has the stamina for 4 more years in the White House. A CNN host said Biden had rested up for several days at Camp David before the debate. Biden told a CNN host that he would not take a cognitive test and release the results, because he takes a cognitive test every day at his job, as president. Biden said he does not believe that since the debate, he is behind in the polls, which show he is behind.

    As in the debate, I had to strain to hear what Biden said on CNN. I did not have to strain to hear what the CNN hosts or other guests said about Biden, who looked and sounded to me like he needed oxygen, as he did  during the debate. I didn’t see anything different from when he was at the debate and when he was on CNN after the debate, other than he didn’t have a 20 second lapse of memory on CNN, but he was only on CNN for a few moments.

    81, I wonder if I have the stamina to get me to next week? But I”m not the president, and I’m not on the November ballot. I”m a mystic, and because of that, I see things very differently. 

    Consider this text from a childhood friend yesterday, who calls Donald Trump the Orange Turd, and consider my response and where it went from there.

Him

So, as I understand it, Prez Biden can now declare the OT a traitor, declare him guilty of a sedition and order a military firing squad to execute him and be immune from such an an action. Once this is done Prez Biden will no longer need to run for a second term to save the country from the OT and his Klan, so he will drop out, and we can have likely the most interesting presidential race for the next 4 months the country has seen. Seems simple to me.

Me

From news reports I read, SCOTUs 6-3 majority INVITED Biden to order Trump executed :-), but I doubt US Military, FBI, Secret Service would do it. But maybe the CIA? I think Biden should drop out. Will he?

Him

He ran because he thought he was the only one who could be OT, but the debate made it look like he is the only won who can’t! 

Me

Consider America doesn’t need and God doesn’t want a Gaza massive war crimes criminal in the White House, and Biden’s debate performance was a Divine Intervention.

    In ABC News tonight, after I wrote the above: 

Biden dismisses concerns about fitness, would drop out if 'Lord Almighty' told him

President Joe Biden, in an exclusive interview with ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos, acknowledged last week's debate was a "bad episode" but pushed back strongly against broader questions about his age and mental fitness.

Stephanopoulos, over the course of 22 minutes, pressed Biden repeatedly not only on his debate performance against Donald Trump but also on reports that his lapses have become increasingly common these past few months -- and on what he would be willing to do to reassure the American people.

"Are you the same man today that you were when you took office three-and-a-half years ago?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"In terms of successes, yes," Biden responded. "I also was the guy who put together a peace plan for the Middle East that may be comin' to fruition. I was also the guy that expanded NATO. I was also the guy that grew the economy. All the individual things that were done were ideas I had or I fulfilled. I moved on."

MORE: 'Exhausted,' 'bad epsiode': Biden doubles down on debate explanations in ABC News exclusive

"Do you dispute that there have been more lapses, especially in the last several months?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"Can I run the 100 in 10 flat? No. But I'm still in good shape," Biden said.

Stephanopoulos followed up, asking, "Are you more frail?"

"No," Biden said, flatly.

Biden's sit-down with ABC News is his first television interview since the June 27 debate. ABC News reached out to Trump to offer him an equivalent interview opportunity, but his team declined.

The interview is part of a push from the White House and the campaign to recalibrate after Biden's halting debate performance left some Democrats panicked about his ability to carry out a grueling reelection campaign and a second term.

Looking ahead to a possible second term, Stephanopoulos said the question on the minds of many Americans is whether Biden would be able to serve effectively. If reelected, Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.

"Do you have the mental and physical capacity to do it for another four years?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"I believe so. I wouldn't be runnin' if I didn't think I did," Biden said. "Look, I'm runnin' again because I think I understand best what has to be done to take this nation to a completely new new level. We're on our way. We're on our way. And, look. The decision recently made by the Supreme Court on immunity, you know, the next President of the United States, it's not just about whether he or she knows what they're doin'.

"It's-- it's-- it's not-- not about a con-- a conglomerate of people making decisions," Biden continued. "It's about the character of the president. The character of the president's gonna determine whether or not this Constitution is employed the right way."

MORE: Biden won't commit to independent cognitive test when asked in ABC News interview

Stephanopoulos then pressed him, asking if in on a personal level, Biden was being honest with himself about his mental and physical ability to lead for four more years.

"Yes, I am, because, George, the last thing I want to do is not be able to meet that," Biden said. "I think, as some of senior economists and senior foreign policy specialists say, if I stop now, I go down in history as a pretty successful president. No one thought I could get done what we got done."

Biden declined to agree to have an independent medical evaluation that included cognitive tests and share the results with the public.

Biden also repeatedly brushed off recent poll numbers that show him behind Trump both in the general election and in specific swing states, as well as concerns voiced by some Democrats that staying in the race is not in the interest of the party or the country.

"If you can be convinced that you cannot defeat Donald Trump, will you stand down?" Stephanopoulos asked.

"It depends on -- on if the Lord Almighty comes down and tells me that, I might do that," Biden said.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

The Founding Fathers did not want the Nation’s government to be run by religion

 

    Today is the 248th anniversary of the signing of Colonial America’s Declaration of Independence, which begins:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America  

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    Then follows a l-o-n-g list of the Colonists’ grievances against the King of England, which I do not include here. 

    Then comes the the declaration of independence:

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. 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.

    Then come the signatures of the men who signed the document.

    I highlighted in bold the 4 references to a Deity from which the signers of the Declaration of Independence drew their authority. 

    There is no mention of Christianity in the Declaration of Independence, whose principal author, Thomas Jefferson, was a Deist. 

    Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were Free Masons. 

    The 4 references to Deity do not resemble Christian names for God.

    Amendment 1, US Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. 

    The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of how governments in Europe and the British Isles had become one with the Church and had persecuted, imprisoned and killed “heretics”. The Founding Fathers did not want that to happen in America. Thus, Amendment 1’s, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.

    After the Revolutionary War, the “Give me liberty, or give me death” signer of the Declaration of Independence, Patrick Henry, became the Governor of Virginia. He tried to get the Virginia Legislature to pass a law that effectively would make Christianity the state religion of Virgina. Thomas Jefferson and another signer of the Declaration of Independence, James Madison, who would become known as the Father of the Constitution and America’s 4th president, led the charge to defeat Patrick Henry's law.

    Later, Jefferson cut out of his own Bible passages from the New Testament about things Jesus said, which Jefferson liked, and he made them into his own bible, which became known as The Jefferson Bible. The passages Jefferson liked were about living life differently, much easier to say than do.   

    Amendment 14, Section 1, US Constitution, made the Constitution and Amendments 1-10, known as the Bill of Rights, applicable to the States:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

    Every anti-abortionist I have known was a religious-right Christian. In the law is the doctrine, res ipsa loquitur, the thing speaks for itself.

    Recently, Louisiana’s state legislature passed a law requiring The Ten Commandments to be displayed in Louisiana’s public schools. The Ten Commandments are part of the Jewish Scriptures and are in the Old Testament of Christendom’s Bible. How the 6 religious-right Justices on the US Supreme Court will rule on what Louisiana did is anyone’s guess.

    Once upon a time, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, a far-right Christian, had the 10 Commandments installed in the Alabama Supreme Court building in Montgomery, the state Capital. During the Civil War, Montgomery was the Capital of the Confederacy after it was moved there from Richmond, Virginia.

    From Wikipedia:

Moore attended West Point and served as a company commander in the Military Police Corpsduring the Vietnam War. After graduating from the University of Alabama Law School, he joined the Etowah County district attorney's office, serving as an assistant district attorney from 1977 to 1982. In 1992, he was appointed as a circuit judge by Governor Guy Hunt to fill a vacancy, and was elected to the position at the next term. In 2001, Moore was elected to the position of chief justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama. Moore was removed from his position in November 2003 by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary for refusing a federal court's order to remove a marble monument of the Ten Commandments that he had placed in the rotunda of the Alabama Judicial Building.

Moore sought the Republican nomination for the governorship of Alabama in 2006 and 2010, but lost in the primaries. Moore was elected again as chief justice in 2013, but he was suspended in May 2016, for defying a U.S. Supreme Court decision about same-sex marriage (Obergefell v. Hodges), and resigned in April 2017.^[4][5] On September 26, 2017, he won a primary runoff to become the Republican candidate in a special election for a U.S. Senate seat that had been vacated by Jeff Sessions.^[6]

In November 2017, during his special election campaign for U.S. Senate, several public allegations of sexual misconduct were made against Moore.^[7] Three women stated that he had sexually assaulted them when they were at the respective ages of 14, 16 and 28;^[7][8] six other women reported that Moore – then in his 30s – pursued sexual relationships with them while they were as young as 16. Moore acknowledged that he may have approached and dated teenagers while he was in his 30s, but denied sexually assaulting anyone.^[9][10] President Donald Trumpe ndorsed Moore a week before the election,^[11] after which some Republicans withdrew their opposition to Moore. Democrat Doug Jones won the election, becoming the first Democrat since 1992 to win a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama.^[12]

Moore's political views have been characterized as far-right and Christian nationalist.^[13] He has attracted national media attention and controversy over his views on race, homosexuality, transgender people, and Islam, his belief that Christianity should order public policy,^[14][15] and his past ties to neo-Confederate and white-nationalist groups.^{[16][17][18][19][20]} Moore was a leading voice in the "birther" movement, which promoted the false claim that president Barack Obama was not born in the United States.^[21][22] He founded the Foundation for Moral Law, a non-profit legal organization from which he collected more than $1 million over five years. On its tax filings, the organization indicated a much lesser amount of pay to Moore.^[23]

    Clinton McGee was my criminal law professor at the University of Alabama School of law. After graduating from that law school, McGee joined the US Army and was sent to Germany to defend Nazis during the Nuremberg Trials.He was so good at defending Nazis that he was shifted to prosecuting them and they didn’t get off. 

    Some years after I graduated from the University of Alabama School of Law, Roy Moore enrolled there. Professor McGee nick-named Moore, “Fruitcake”. 

    During my last semester in law school, my infant son died of sudden infant death syndrome, I was disheveled, unable to think clearly. Professor MeGee told me the law clerk of a US District Judge in Birmingham had quit in the middle of his term with the judge, and I might wish to contact that judge about being his law clerk. 

    I wrote the judge a letter. He replied, inviting me to come see him. I drove from Tuscaloosa to Birmingham and we met in his chambers and mostly we talked about ourselves and hunting and fishing. He offered me the job. I memorialized him in the first chapter of A Few Remarkable Alabama People I Have Known, “He used to drink moonshine.”

    Judge W. Clarence W. Allgood also cussed and did not attend church, and was the most Godly man I ever knew. His graveside service at  Elmwood Cemetery in Birmingham was attended my more people than I ever saw at a graveside service.

    A Few Remarkable People I Have Known is a free read at the internet library, archive.org, which is run by American colleges. Here’s a link to the free read.

    https://archive.org/details/a-few-remarkable-alabama-people-i-have-known_202210

    It also can be read at this link: 

https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com