Time & Perspective Quote by Jay Alan Sekulow

The line plays like a history lesson, but it is really a power claim. By calling early public schools "ministries of the church", Sekulow isn’t just reminiscing about colonial America; he’s trying to make a contested origin story do legal and moral work in the present. If schools began as church-adjacent, the argument goes, then modern secular education is not neutrality but theft - something taken that must be restored.

The phrase "return them to the Lord" is the rhetorical masterstroke. It sidesteps the messy constitutional mechanics (Establishment Clause jurisprudence, pluralism, coercion, funding) and recasts the debate as spiritual homecoming. "Return" implies rightful ownership; "the Lord" implies a single, culturally dominant God, not the patchwork of faiths actually sitting in today’s classrooms. The subtext is that secularism is not a framework for shared civic life, but a hostile ideology that displaced Christianity.

Context matters: Sekulow is a lawyer and a longtime culture-war operator, fluent in turning religious identity into legal strategy. This isn’t a sermon meant to persuade the unconverted; it’s a rallying cry meant to mobilize allies, soften the edges of church-state separation, and redefine "religious freedom" as public religious authority. It invites listeners to see policy fights over prayer, curriculum, and vouchers not as debates about governance, but as a moral emergency with a clear villain and a pre-approved remedy.