GLEANINGS — July 21, A.D. 2013                                                                                                               "Seven Guidelines for Witness Under Oppression"

A small Delaware town, founded shortly after the civil war as a "permanent Christian camp," forbids a church from holding a worship service on its beach. Right here in Middletown, two home school Moms are asked to leave a public library. All over our nation, accounts are proliferating as ill informed officials trample our religious rights, invoking "separation of church and state" as their grounds for doing so.
If it happens to you, this is what you can do: 
1. PRAY and be prepared and equipped according to Ephesians 6:11-18 and 1 Peter 1:13; 3:15.
2. With respect and gentleness, ask your opponent to listen to "your side of the story."
3. Be familiar with the actual wording of the First Amendment of U.S. Constitution, and have it ready to share with the your opponent. Here it is –
"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 pertinent portion of the first amendment is called the non-establishment clause)
4. Ask your opponent where the phrase "separation of church and state" appears in the first amendment or elsewhere in the U.S. Constitution. (It does not!)
5. Ask him (in a rhetorical, cordial way) if he believes that your peaceful, public activity is equivalent to the U.S. Congress making a law pertaining to religion. Affirm with boldness that per the first amendment, your rights include the unhindered exercise of religion.
6. Also affirm that you believe in the concept of separation of church and state, rightly understood.
7. Ask him if you can share what "separation of church and state" really means. If the answer is yes, below is the gist of what you can offer. (If the answer is no, be strongly motivated to take further action! Appeal again to Heaven, then to the next level of human authority! Stand up, stand up for Jesus!)
America's 18th century founders, familiar with state backed churches, did not want the new federal government to support or favor any one Christian denomination over another. This is what is meant by "respecting an establishment of religion." No institutional church was to be specially sanctioned by the government, or to have authority to coerce by force.
At the same time the idea of civil government removing all references to God, Christ, or anything dealing with religion from all things touching the state would have been abhorrent to the founders, and was never intended by them. Hence they prohibited with equal fervor any hindrance to the free exercise of religion. People from any Christian denomination (church) were to be free to practice their religion in this new nation, conceived in liberty. In fact, it was the prevalence of Christian charity at the time which empowered the minority (adherents of non-Christian belief systems) to enjoy similar liberty!
The founders did not want to remove the God of the Bible and Biblical ethics from the fabric of  America's culture and civil government. No, they recognized them as the very foundation of our nation! 
Will you please recognize that what I am doing is not related to the U.S. Congress, nor is it  an effort to establish my church as part of our civil government? I respectfully request that you honor my God given and constitutionally protected right to practice my religion at  full liberty, unhindered. Thank you.