AMERICA: UNDER GOD

 

 

 

Phyllis Spivey
September 28, 2005
NewsWithViews.com

"Unconstitutional!" declared federal judge Lawrence Karlton in Sacramento on September 14. Outlawing recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in three northern California school districts because it references God, Karlton said a previous Court of Appeals decision made him do it. We wonder: Did the judge look embarrassed? Ashamed? Guilty, perhaps? Or did he bang his gavel in smug defiance? Press reports don’t say.

Conversely, atheist attorney Michael Newdow was described by opposing counsel as enjoying himself. No doubt. It was Newdow’s second try, the first occurring in 2002 and reaching the U.S. Supreme Court before being tossed on a technicality. In January, he sued unsuccessfully to prevent prayers at President’s Bush’s inauguration.

Never mind that every president since George Washington has called upon God in inaugural addresses, including those who helped frame the Constitution. In fact, they recognized Jesus Christ in the Constitution when they proclaimed that glorious document ratified in "the year of our Lord". Indeed, America’s Christian influences began with the earliest settlers.

From Puritan ranks came the Pilgrims who passengered the Mayflower and produced the first government charter drafted solely in America. The "Mayflower Compact" declared: "Having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith . . . [we]combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for . . . furtherance of the end foresaid."

Treating political involvement as a sacred duty, Puritans and other Christians faithfully ensured that charters, state constitutions and, later, the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution embodied Christian ideals. In 1630, the "Fundamental orders of Connecticut" – the first constitution written in the United States and also the direct antecedent of our current federal Constitution – declared the colonists desire to: ". . . maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess . . . which, according to the truth of the said Gospel, is now practiced amongst us."

When in 1643 the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth, and New Haven formed the New England Confederation, that document announced: "All came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ."

Instead of shrinking from political involvement, the Christians who settled America boldly pursued control of governmental mechanisms to put the stamp of Christ on them. Anxious to prevent abuse of power and looking ahead to future generations, they also dedicated themselves to assuring the development of a literate populace capable of maintaining civil government’s ties to Scriptural values.

Thus, Connecticut’s 1690 literacy law was not uncommon when it declared: "This [legislature] observing that . . . there are many persons unable to read the English tongue and thereby incapable to read the holy Word of God or the good laws of this colony . . . it is ordered that all parents and masters shall cause their respective children and servants, as they are capable, to be taught to read distinctly the English tongue."

The literacy rate in the colonies reached nearly 100%, with the average citizen having been reared in the Scriptures. Also meant to glorify God, universities were established with the highest of Biblical standards, as evidenced in the 1636 rules of Harvard, which paralleled those of Princeton, Yale, Dartmouth, Kings College (later changed to Columbia), Rutgers, and the College of William & Mary. "Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17.3) and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning . . ."

That these (then) strongly Christian institutions educated many of this nation’s Founders, that the dominant world view of the Founders in general was decidedly Christian, and that the Ten Commandments formed the pillars upon which Constitutional civil law rested, explains much about the goodness of America and why it became the freest, most prosperous nation in the history of the world.

Nor was it unusual for early state constitutions to require public office holders to declare their faith in Jesus Christ. The state of Delaware, for example, mandated: "Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust . . . shall . . . makes and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: I, _______, profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration."

Even the motto of the Revolutionary War – "No king but King Jesus" – was indicative of the belief that faith and public policy were inseparable. Indeed, the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were based on the principal that mankind enjoys natural rights derived from God, making them inalienable, as opposed to favors bestowed by human governments. And despite the claims of modern revisionists that Thomas Jefferson sought to disconnect religion from the state, Jefferson repeatedly involved the principle of natural rights when explaining the First Amendment.

True, Jefferson once referred to the "wall of separation between Church and State" in a letter to Baptists, but a reading of that entire letter, as well as numerous other statements by Jefferson and other Founding Fathers, verify the First Amendment was meant to prohibit government interference with the free exercise of religion and prevent the establishment of a national religion.

In fact, it was the limitations placed on government, combined with the religious nature of the people, that made America work. In little more than a century – with less than six percent of the world’s population – America became the richest industrial nation on earth, originating more than half the world’s total production and enjoying the highest standard of living in the world.

Courts throughout the land repeatedly acknowledged America’s Christian traditions until 1947 when, without historical precedent, the U.S. Supreme Court put America on the wrong side of a contrived wall called separation of church and state. Although that wall has been buttressed by many more faulty court decisions in the past 60 years, an informed citizenry might still knock it down. Demanding acknowledgment of America’s Christian heritage in public and private schools would be a good place to start.

© 2005 Phyllis Spivey - All Rights Reserved