"Do you know what is wrong with your country?"

This pointed question was reportedly asked of then U.S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance by my dear, late friend, Dr. Charles Malik, former President of the United Nations General Assembly. The Secretary responded that he did not. "I'll tell you what is wrong," said Dr. Malik. "You have taken Jesus Christ out of your universities."

The same is no doubt true of all of America's schools. Fisher Ames, the actual writer of the final version of the First Amendment, later wrote that the Bible must be kept as the number one textbook. He said that the Bible was the source of morality and behavior in America. Biblical principles permeated public life.

Benjamin Rush, another Founding Father, signer of the Declaration of Independence and who served in the administrations of three presidents (Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams), wrote that if the Bible is ever removed from the schools, we would suffer from an explosion of crime! Spoken two centuries ago, Rush was amazingly prophetic. In our day, God, the Bible and prayer have been replaced in our schools with handguns, drugs and condoms. The results have been disastrous.

Our country began a paradigm social shift in 1947 with the infamous U.S. Supreme Court ruling about "the separation of church and state." Since then the nation has been experiencing a frightening trend in social breakdown. We are engulfed in a tidal wave of immorality and violence. Surely, evil has been with us since the Garden of Eden. But evil's statistics in the United States were relatively flat until God, the Bible and prayer were removed in the schools. The year 1962 was when the statistics began a sharp trend upward.

Why 1962? That was the year that the Supreme Court made another historic, infamous decision, violating two centuries of legal precedent and tradition, and delivered, with Engel v. Vitale, a decision that removed prayer from our schools.

The prayer that caused the great controversy was a simple, nonsectarian, 22-word prayer. Take a look at it and consider what this nation has lost since its words were declared illegal and banned: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on thee and we beg thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers and our country."

America desperately needs an answer to that missing prayer.

Commit yourselves completely to these words of mine . . . Teach them to your children (Deuteronomy 11:18-19, NLT).

"Through the years in our nation the First Amendment has constructed a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

 A strong statement that has caused many arguments and court cases in America pertaining to
a clear separation of church and state.

This announcement from our Supreme Court in 1947 in a case Everson v. Board of Education was the first occasion on which the Court declared there to be a separation of church and state in the First Amendment.

Following that ruling some 62 years ago, the Court began to unravel the fabric of American society by reversing a long-standing national tradition.

Using that 1947 ruling, look at what has happened in America since then.

A verbal prayer offered in a school is unconstitutional, even if it is both voluntary and denominationally neutral. Engel v. Vitale, 1962

Freedom of speech and press is guaranteed to students unless the topic is religious, at which time such speech becomes unconstitutional. Collins v. Chandler Unified School District, 1981

If a student prays over his lunch, it is unconstitutional for him to pray aloud. Reed v. van Hoven, 1965

It is unconstitutional for a kindergarten class to recite: "God is great, God is good, let us thank Him for our food." Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985

It is unconstitutional for a Board of Education to use or refer to the word "God" in any of its official writings. State of Ohio v. Whisner, 1976

And the list goes on through the years. Have the judges on our courts not read the First Amendment and the intent as established by our Founding Fathers?