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Comment USA

Tony Bennett

Date posted: 26 Aug 2026

When I attended state schools in Derby from the mid-1950s to the late-1960s, every school day began with an act of Christian worship which included a hymn, a Bible reading, and prayers always concluding with the Lord’s Prayer. All this was a requirement of the 1944 Education Act. I gather things are somewhat different today. Most British schools don’t feel comfortable any more “doing God”, let alone Jesus.

That’s the reverse of what’s happened in the USA. It’s all very different over there where such things are decided not by legislation but by the Constitution as interpreted by the US Supreme Court. Let’s start with the Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion.” From the 1960s through to 2000, the Supreme Court interpreted that prohibition on a nationally-prescribed religion to declare unconstitutional a host of Christian practices in public (i.e. state-run) schools.

Tony Bennett

Date posted: 2 Jul 2026

Charles Colson was a senior member of President Nixon’s White House Staff who was sentenced to prison for his role in the Watergate cover-up. But having come to saving faith in Christ, he tells in his autobiography of what he witnessed when he would bring visitors to meet Nixon.

Colson would gather guests in a room near the Oval Office, where they would talk about what they were going to tell the President when they were face to face with him. ‘But it was always the same,’ Colson writes. ‘In the reception room they would rehearse their angry lines.’ But once they were in the Oval Office, ‘it was as if they’d suddenly sniffed some intoxicating fragrance. For invariably, the lions of the waiting room became the meek lambs of the Oval Office. And none were more cowardly than the religious leaders.’