The Bible or the Axe: A Presentation by Pastor William Levi
Camp Constitution was honored to sponsor recent speaking engagements in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire for Pastor William Levi, founder of Operation Nehemiah Missions https://www.operationsnehemiah.org/ and the author of The Bible or the Axe https://www.amazon.com/Bible-Axe-Dramatic-Escape-Persecution/dp/080241138X
His presentation tells the extraordinary story of how he and his family of ten siblings fled Sudan during its first Civil War in the early to mid-1960s, his life in a refugee camp in Uganda and returning to a war ravished Sudan to rebuild. As a teenager, his grandfather, a Christian minister, showed him a Bible and an axe, and he asked young Willian to choose one. While he was tempted to choose the axe, he picked the Bible. He explained that while he supports self-defense and the right to bear arms, he believes that the Bible is the best weapon because the battle is spiritual. His Christian faith led to his arrest, imprisonment, and torture. His Muslim captors offered him his freedom if he would renounce Christianity and become a Muslim. His refusal led to more torture. He eventually escaped and made is way to Egypt where he found employment as a manager of a farm. While visiting Cairo, he met an American missionary wearing a T-shirt that read “Jesus Is Lord.” The missionary helped him to Turkey where he befriended a French Catholic priest who got him to France. He eventually made his way to the U.S. and lived with the missionary’s family in Milton, MA
Wanting to get his immigration status in order, he boarded an Amtrak train bound for Washington DC but got off in Newark, N.J. He found employment in New Jersey, got his Green card, and attended college graduating with a degree in electrical engineering. He explained that he was living the “American Dream” but God called him to create a ministry to help his fellow Christians in Sudan. He founded Operation Nehemiah Missions. The goal of the ministry is to rebuild the family, promote self-sufficiency, and most important, making disciples of Jesus Christ His ministry runs a 1,000-acre farm growing fruits, vegetables and grain, solar water pumps, a radio station, and a school with an enrollment of 500 students.
He became a proud US citizen and voted for the first time in the 2016 election. He explained that the recently created nation of the South Sudan has been under the malevolent influence of the United Nations with its anti-family and anti-freedom agenda, and warned that while he loves Muslin people, Islam is not a religion of peace. At the Community Church of Alton, he gave a copy of his book to the youngest attendee Dan Pack where he was challenged to write a book report on it and give an oral presentation.
Pastor Levi resides in Lanesboro, MA. He is married and the father of eight children. A special thanks to Pastor Sam Holo of The Community Church of Alton, and Pastor Bob Andrews of the First Parish Church of Lebanon, Maine.
A link to a similar presentation he gave at Camp Constitution’s annual family camp:
This Week Marks My Six Anniversary as Full Time Director of Camp Constitution
It was six years ago this week when I received a call from Rev. Steve Craft, my “Brother from Another Mother,” Camp Constitution’s chaplain, instructor and speaker. He urged me not to take a full-time job that I had been offered but instead told me to trust God and become Camp Constitution’s full-time director. With the full support of my family, I heeded his sage advice. And God has exceedingly blessed me and Camp Constitution.
It has been incredible six years, and I am confident that God will bless me with many more productive years as the director of Camp Constitution. I wish to thank all of you-too numerous to list here- that make my position and Camp Constitution’s mission to “Honor the Past….Teaching the Present…Preparing the Future.” May God Bless you.
Save the U.S. Constitution: Stop an Article V Convention
Since 2013, out of state lobbyist, on both sides of the political spectrum, have spent much time and money attempting to get New Hampshire to pass resolutions applying for an Article V Convention. Thankfully, they have been unsuccessful. However, they are back with two resolutions HCR 1 and HCR 4.
What is an Article V Convention?
Article V of the U.S Constitution lists the two ways to amend the Constitution. The first way is where 2/3rds of the U.S. House and Senate pass proposed amendments, and then these proposed amendments go to the states for ratification where 3/4ths of the states must ratify them by state legislators or by state ratifying conventions. Congress decides which mode of ratification to use. The other way, which we have wisely never used, is where 2/3rds of the states apply for a national convention for the purpose of “proposing amendments,” delegates to the convention propose amendments and then these proposed amendments will go to the states for ratification.
Here are a few reasons against an Article V Convention:
1, There are currently no rules or laws guiding an Article V Convention. There have been some “wayward delegate” bills introduced in some states, but they are unenforceable and unconstitutional. It is the job of Congress, under the “necessary and proper” clause of the U.S. Constitution, to make laws guiding a convention. Over the years, numerous bills to govern an Article V Convention have been proposed by Congress but never passed.
2, We have no idea who the delegates will be. Will the majority be made up of conservative constitutionalists who love the U.S. Constitution or “progressives” who tend to hate the U.S. Constitution and see it as an anachronistic racist relic? Will delegates include members of Congress who Article V supporters rightfully see as part of the problem?
3, We have no idea how delegate will be chosen. Will they be elected by the people, appointed by state legislatures or by governors? If they are to be elected, will out of state money be used to influence the outcome? Will we have to suffer another season of mind-numbing attack ads?
4, A convention cannot be limited to a single issue or topic. State legislators have no Constitutional power to limit a convention.
5, Wil the votes of the delegates be one state, one vote as Article V supporters content, or will it be based on electoral votes. I do not know and neither do supporters of an Article V Convention. If votes are based on electoral votes, New Hampshire will have four votes, California 55, and New York 29.
6, Bad amendments can not only pass a convention but can be ratified by 3/4th of the states. The 16th Amendment giving us an income tax and 17th Amendment that radically changed the state-federal balance of power were passed by the 3/4ths of the states. Mike Farris of Convention of States, who recently testified before a New Hampshire committee, is calling for structural change of the Constitution, including a 50-member Supreme Court-something he failed to tell committee members. Professor Larry Lessig, a colleague of Convention of States founder Mark Meckler, called for a rewrite of the U.S. Constitution. I actually videotaped an interview with him and Wolf PAC founder Cenk Uygur where he hoped for a “runaway convention.”
- All of the proposed balanced budget amendments, promoted by “conservative” supporters of an Article V Convention, have two escape clauses: war and a national emergency. This will incentivize permanent national emergencies and make them constitutional.
8, A term limits amendment proposed by “conservative” Article V supporters may “get the bums out” after 12 years, but will also limit good members of Congress. It will also give us a permanent “lame duck” Congress.
Article V Convention supporters incorrectly content that the Founders gave us the convention method to rein in an abusive federal government. The Founders gave us the convention method if Congress was unwilling to correct defects in the Constitution. Our problem is not a defective U.S. Constitution but defective elected officials and voters many of whom support an abusive federal government.
Without realizing it, Mark Meckler, founder of Convention of States, made an excellent argument against an Article V. In a statement made to an entity called Living Room Conversations, https://livingroomconversations.org/about-us/team/ where he is listed, along with Van Jones, as a “champion,” he said: “I have come to realize that the largest divide in this country is not between the citizens of one party or another but between the citizens and the Ruling Elite in Washington, D.C and the state capitols.” In my opinion, he is playing into the hands of the elites he claims to be against.
(Meckler with Joanne Blades of Living Roo
Living Conversations and the Soros funded
MoveOn)
Readers who would like more information on the subject are welcomed to contact me at campconstitution1@gmail.com
U.S. Russian Collusion Exposed
Elements in the United States have been colluding with Russia since at least 1917. That collusion was exposed by a number of courageous Americans over the years, but their voices were censored by the Corporate Media known today as Fake News. Indeed, the American Left. Past and present, and whose members are found both major political parties, had a long-term love affair with the Russian communists which ended when its “lovers quarrel” with Putin. Walter Duranty of the “New York Times” was perhaps the most egregious of the bunch writing stories praising Stalin while witnessing forced famine and genocide. The late Professor Anthony Sutton of the Hoover Institute wrote numerous books on the subject including Wall St and the Bolshevik Revolution and National Suicide: Military Aid To The Soviet Union.
( Professor Anthony Sutton)
In 1954, a U.S. House of Representatives’ committee known as the Reese Committee investigated some of the United State’s largest foundations. Norman Dodd who served at the committee’s chief investigator, discovered that it was the job of Ford Foundation to promote a merging of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. This short video is a portion of a full interview conducted by author and journalist Ed Griffin prior to My Dodd’s death:
The Left, in its attempt to destroy Donald Trump, created the fake Steele Dossier but the real evidence of Russian collusion has been around for decades.
The Weekly Sam: Revolution Via Education by Sam Blumenfeld
In this video, Sam Blumenfeld discusses his book Revolution Via Education. This event took place April 9, 2011 at a book signing session in Concord, NH.
Sam makes the case that the so-called progressive educators are using government schools to destroy the minds of ourt nation’s children.
Sam passed away in June of 205 but his rich legacy lives on and some of that legacy is available at the Sam Blumenfeld Archives-a free on-line resource. Please visit the site, sign-up and share: https://campconstitution.net/sam-blumenfeld-archive/
A Racist Statue in Boston?
The Theodore Parker Church in the West Roxbury section of Boston has a larger-than-life size statue of its namesake, Unitarian minister Theodore Parker, an ardent Abolitionist, and a member of the Secret Six. There is a relief or panel on the left side of the statue that depicts a white woman breast feeding a baby, and a black child reaching up to the woman. I noticed this panel some years ago when living in the neighborhood, and while thinking it weird, didn’t think the artist had any racist motives and I still don’t. However, over the past few years, the Left is on a secular crusade to expunge our history. During the riots that followed the death of George Floyd, ” “mainly peaceful protestors” led by Black Lives Matter and Antifa, not only ripped down and/or vandalized Confederate statues but statues of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Fredrick Douglas. They even vandalized the statue honoring the Massachusetts’ 54th Regiment-an all-black Civil War regiment.
In December of 2020, The City of Boston removed a statue of Abraham Lincoln that has been there since 1879 because some “social justice warrior ” found it offensive. A petition was circulated by a Boston teenager who claimed that he walked by the statue on a daily basis and felt it offensive. It gained sympathetic media attention, and on cue, the members of the Boston Art Commission, with zero input from the residents of Boston, voted, in true Soviet politburo style, unanimously to remove the statue. I called and E-mailed members of the commission asking that the statue be donated to Camp Constitution where it will be placed in our soon to be opened Orwellian Memory Hole Museum. They never replied to me.
So, if we apply the same standards that the Boston Arts employs, shouldn’t the good progressives at the Theodore Parker church who proudly fly the Black Lies Matter banner remove the “racist” panel?
Camp Constitution Offers Judge Charnelle Bjelkengren, a Free Tuition to Its 15th Annual Family Camp to Avoid Further Embarrassment
On January 25, during her confirmation hearing in front of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, Charnelle Bjelkengren was asked by Senator John Kennedy if she knew what Article V of the U.S. Constitution does. She said that it didn’t come to mind. He then asked her about Article 2. She had no idea. Joe Biden nominated Ms. Bjelkengren for United States district judge of the United States District Court for Eastern District of Washington. She received her law degree from Gonzaga University School of Law. She served as an assistant attorney general for the Washington State Attorney General’s office. Since 2019 she has served as a judge on the Spokane County Superior Court. It is not surprising to discover that a law school graduate has little to no idea of the U.S. Constitution especially one nominated by the likes of Joe Biden.
We at Camp Constitution believe that if Ms. Bjjelkengren attended our week-long family camp. she would have been able to tell Senator Kennedy that Article V of the U.S. Constitution concerns the two methods of amending the U.S. Constitution, and that Article 2 concerns the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government. We have a civic, moral and patriotic duty to extend an invitation to Judge Bjelkenger to attend our week-long family camp that runs from Sunday July 16 to Friday July 21 and held at the Singing Hills Christian Camp in Plainfield, NH. https://campconstitution.net/camp-registration/ Our line-up of instructors includes Pastor David Whitney of the Institute on the Constitution https://theamericanview.com/ , Mrs. Catherine White of the Constitution Decoded http://www.constitutiondecoded.com/index.html and Mr. Norman Tregenza, a former New Hampshire state rep. and crew member on The U.S.S. Constitution. We hope to hear from her.
Freedom Project Academy and the Real Martin Luther King: An Interview with Dr. Duke Pesta
We recently had the opportunity to interview our friend Dr, Duke Pesta of Freedom Project Academy https://fpeusa.org/ on “The Camp Constitution Report which originates on Catching Fire News: https://catchingfire.news/ We discussed Duke’s fully accredited K-12 classic on-line academy, and the real Martin Luther King.
Dr. Duke Pesta received his M.A. in Renaissance literature from John Carroll University and his Ph.D. in Shakespeare and Renaissance literature from Purdue University. He has taught at major research institutions and small liberal arts colleges, on a wide variety of subjects at the graduate and undergraduate level, including courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance literature, the Bible, Russian literature, Christian Apologetics, and C.S. Lewis. His book, The Renaissance and the Postmodern: A Study in Comparative Critical Values, was published by Routledge in 2016.
Dr. Pesta is an engaging and animated speaker, whose experiences as an educational reformer, university professor, high school teacher, and the administrator of an online home school curriculum uniquely qualify him to address the current state of education in our country. He speaks at home school conventions and educational conferences across the nation on topics including the necessity of homeschooling, the decline of morality and critical thinking in the public schools, and the myriad ways that colleges and universities indoctrinate students.
He is currently in demand on the speaking circuit as one of America’s foremost authorities on the dangers of Common Core, having delivered over 500 hundred talks in 46 states. He has also testified about Common Core before a number of state legislatures, and participated in more than 3000 radio, television, and Skype interviews about Common Core and contemporary education, including international interviews, from Canada to China, and from Mexico to the U.K.
He has been active in educational reform and was instrumental in developing and implementing an elective Bible course that is currently available for public high school students in Texas.
He is currently a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and the academic director of FreedomProject Education.
A link to an audio version of the interview: https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/shurtleffhal/episodes/2023-01-24T09_57_31-08_00
The U.S. Constitution and the Vice President
John Adams, the nation’s first vice-president, said of the office: “I am vice president. In this I am nothing but I may be everything” and it is “the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived.” Our nation’s second Vice President, Thomas Jefferson said “The second office of this government is honorable and easy; the first but a splendid misery.” John Nance Garner, Franklin Roosevelt’s first Vice President said that being Vice President “was the worse thing that ever happened to me.’ In 1848, New Hampshire’s Daniel Webster was offered the nomination for Vice President by the Whig party. He replied, “I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.” I think that the most profound and humorous comment about the office belongs to Thomas Marshall, who served as Vice President under Woodrow Wilson. He said that being Vice President is comparable to “a man in a cataleptic fit; he cannot speak; he cannot move; he suffers no pain; he is perfectly conscious of all that goes on but has no part in it.”
Vice President John Nance Garner
The first mention of the office of Vice President in the U.S. Constitution is found in Article 1, Section 3, Paragraph 4: “The Vice President of the United States shall be President of the Senate but have no vote unless they be equally divided.” In Article II, Section 1, Paragraph 3, we read that “The President of the Senate shall in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates (Electoral votes) and the votes shall then be counted. Prior to the 12th Amendment, a Vice President was elected by having the second highest number of electoral votes for President. With the adoption of the 12th Amendment in 1804, electoral voters had to cast a distinct ballot for Vice President. In Article 2, Section 1, Paragraph Six, ”we read “In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the same shall devolve on the Vice President…”
There have been 49 vice presidents in our nation’s history. Eight have assumed the presidency after the death of a President: John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Chester A. Arthur, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Harry Truman, and Lyndon Johnson. Six were elected president after serving as Vice President: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, and Joe Biden. Two resigned-John Calhoun and Spiro Agnew. Seven died in office: George Clinton and Elbridge Gerry (where the word Gerrymander comes from) both who served under James Madison, William King, under Franklin Pierce, who was the only Vice President to take his oath of office in a foreign country-Cuba and died shortly thereafter. Henry Wilson, born in Farmington, NH, and has a stretch of Rt 11 named in his honor, served under U.S. Grant. Garret Hobart who served under William McKinley and James Sherman who served under William Taft.
There was no constitutional provision to replace a Vice President until the 25th Amendment which was ratified in 1967. In Section Two of the 25th, we read: “Whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress. Gerald Ford was nominated by Richard Nixon to replace Spiro Agnew who resigned in disgrace. Ford has the distinction to be the only man who served as unelected Vice President and President.
Vice Presidents, while only having two constitutional duties, serve as advisors to the President, travel around the United State and the world on behalf of the president and the United States. Some have served with dignity while other have been unmitigated disasters. Our current Vice President’s job appears to be traveling around the world, and the United States embarrassing and humiliating the people of the United States while promoting division and hatred among its citizens.
Announcing Camp Constitution Ladies’ Third Annual “Spring Fling” Weekend Retreat May 5 to May 7
Camp Constitution Ladies’ Third Annual “Spring Fling” returns to the Singing Hills Christian Camp and Retreat Center Plainfield, NH https://www.singinghills.net/ Friday May 5th to Sunday May 7th.
(Mrs. Edith Craft at last year’s Spring Fling)
Guest speakers are Mrs. Julie Wilkinson and NH State Rep Valerie McDonnell. Julie played the role of the abortion nurse in the movie “UnPlanned” and Valerie is the youngest elected official in the United States. Activities include arts and crafts, Bible studies, optional marksmanship training, and an evening campfire. The cost for the weekend which includes two nights of lodging, five meals and materials will be $225. per person. We will give a $25. discount to those who register by the end of February. Payments can be made via our PayPal account accessed from our website’s homepage https://www.campconstitution.net or by check payable to Camp Constitution and mailed to Hal Shurtleff: 146 Powder Mill Rd. Alton, NH 03809. To get an application, bring list, or have any questions, please E-mail or call Hal at campconstitution1@gmail.com Tel (857) 498-1309
(Camp Constitution Ladies Retreat 2022)
Julie Wilkinson, age 64 married 35 years to Bill, parents of three married daughters and grandparents to four. Graduated as an R.N. in 1981. Raised in an intact but quite liberal home. In 1983 after breaking up with a boyfriend, moved to Boulder, CO where a nursing school classmate and friend lived. Accepted a position as abortion assistant at a late term abortion clinic, run by Warren Hern MD. Left after about 2 years there. Experienced a heart change by the grace of God, and partly due to employment in an NICU in Denver. Married in 1987 and moved to Cheyenne. Did not share with friends my dark secret of working in the abortion industry for many years. Moved to Oklahoma in 1996. Eventually made contact with a woman who had herself managed an abortion clinic but left the business and went on to create outreach for abortion clinic workers. Her name is Abby Johnson. I gained courage to share my sad story, in the hope it might help women rethink their plans to end their children’s lives. Today I try to share my story with anyone that is interested. Had a small role in the movie “UNPLANNED” (which was filmed in Oklahoma). It is Abby Johnson’s story of redemption.
My prayer is that my story may convince others that ending innocent children’s lives is never the answer.
Valerie McDonnell is the youngest elected official in the United States after winning her election to the New Hampshire House of House of Representatives “The American Legion Oratorical Contest on The Constitution 1st Place Winner New Hampshire State Champion 2021 and 2022” She graduated from Salem (NH) High School and is attending Southern NH University
