These were the words of our new president recently in Turkey. Obama made a similar statement in an email response to CBN’s David Brody in 2007: “Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian nation.” Whatever we once were?
Patrick Henry, the “give me liberty or give me death guy” said, “It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ.”
Or how about John Jay, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court and one of the three men responsible for our Constitution? “Providence has given to our people the choice for their rulers and it the duty as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.” Oops! Another right-winger.
Also, I think James Madison had something to do with that old pesky Constitution that keeps getting in the way of the liberal agenda. He stated, “We have staked the future of all of our political institutions…upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
Of course, Madison did not want them hung in the courthouses or schools because someone might stop, read, obey them and not steal or kill because of them. That would be unconstitutional.
Then there was John Quincy Adams on July 4th, 1837, addressing an Independence Day crowd, “Why is it that next to the birthday of the Savior of the World, your most joyous and most venerated festival returns on this day?”
“Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission upon earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity?” Weren’t all these men atheists and Deists?
In a 10-year university of Houston study of the Founders and 15,000 quotes, they identified 3,154 quotes made by the Founders and had identified the sources of those quotes. They discovered that 34% of Founders’ quotes come directly out of the Bible and 94% were either directly or indirectly from the Bible.
From 1690 to 1900, the New England Primer was the first and most-used textbook in America. It used Bible verses to assist students is memorizing the alphabet. There were even questions about the Ten Commandments in the back of the book. Shocking indeed!
What about that “separation of church and state” to which the ACLU and the liberals allude? It would be much more effective if it were actually in some founding document.
It was in a letter from Jefferson’s to the Danbury Baptist Association on Jan. 1, 1802, because they were worried that the Congregational Church was going to be established as a national denomination. When in context, it shows that the founder wanted to use Christian principles without establishing a national denomination.
However, if you repeat something enough, like hope and change, many will eventually believe it.
In the Church of the Holy Trinity Vs. United States in 1892, the Supreme Court ruled, “ Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and must embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible for it to be otherwise. In this sense, to this extent, our civilizations and our institutions are emphatically Christian.”
In that ruling, they quoted 87 precedents including quotes from the founding fathers. 70 years later in the 1962 ruling to ban prayer in schools, the Supreme Court cited 0 precedents.
Although the ruling lacked historical or legal precedents, liberal and progressive judges only need precedents when it promotes their activist agendas.
The following year, they banned school Bible reading. They stated that “If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be and….had been psychologically harmful to the child.”
I’m glad we took that New Testament out of public schools. Look how much it has traumatized those children in Christian schools!
In a March 27, 1854, House Judiciary Committee Report, it stated, “In this age, there is no substitute for Christianity…. That was the religion of the Founders of the Republic and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.” According to a 2007 Pew Poll, 78% say it still is.
On the campaign trail, Obama stated, “Folks haven’t been reading their Bible.” Apparently, some folks haven’t been reading their history book either.
Popularity: 11% [?]
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I really have to hand it to you on this one Dennis, this has to be my favorite piece that you've written. I wrote an essay in high school once on this topic and I remain convinced that anyone who genuinely believes that our founding fathers were deists or agnostics has either drastically misinterpreted history or failed to read their complete original works.
Dennis, Keep up the good fight, which I join you in.
The Gospel of JC was to colonize a foreign land and marginate their natives? That's the religion in what you believe? That seems just an argument to excuse your own faults. As a former believer, I learnt to respect all religions, but not to tolerate that kind of endemic hypocrisy. I understand that you consider necessary to adoctrine your children according to your faith, but, isn't now the time to open our minds and stop guiding our lives from values, instead of texts?
Maybe it would be better for everyone to learn how to be humans rather than faith "soldiers" (and excuse if I generalise)
Is there anyone among us who have done something not so good in the name of something better? I will be the first to admit that Christians, like those of any religion, consistently fail the test of their own religion. But failing tests that no one can pass is like asking one, no, everyone to get a score of 18 on any par 72 golf course playing golf. While perfection might be the goal, it's the struggle, the determination, the desire and the values used on that path to perfection that makes all the difference. The Bible has withstood the test of time on values into our time, in an overwhelming number of ways, the state of the US is all to similar to those great nations of the past who have also gone by the wayside. This article points out that this country became great not for what it failed to do, but for the values this country was built on and the many decisions that were right! We will continue to make bad decisions as recent history over the last 9 years has shown us, but a country based on great values can overcome that, not by changing the values, but by sticking to them.
I stumbled across this piece today and I love it! I plan to share it with many of my friends. There may be lots of people in this country who are not Christian or do not have Christian values but there are a whole lot more who ARE and DO. That's how I would like my country to be described.
I'm proud of our country's heritage of Christian values. Id like to recommend a few good books on the subject:
America's Providential History – by Mark a Bililes & Stephen K McDowell
Original Intent – by David Barton
Renewing the Soul of America – by Charles Crismier
Well done!
When the US Supreme (idiot) Court overturned campaign finance laws which will allow corporations and foreign governments to essentially buy US elections, I decided it’s time for me to give up on voting, except at my local level. I’m done. What’s the point now?
Actually, its probably a good thing that they did 'overturn' those campaign finance laws, although it should be noted they really didn't overturn them they only took some really stupid parts of them out. In fact, Obama going off against the decision in his State of the Union Address just showed how ignorant he was of the decision's true effect.
What the supreme court did was to take away the media's control over election's in the month before an election. Corporations could already run advertisements for candidates up until then, but at that point all coverage became the domain of the MSM, which even when 'fair coverage time' rules are employed still manages to bias one candidate. For instance, all positive coverage for one and all negative coverage for the other stilll amounts to 'a fair distribution of time', right? This is the only major thing to change.
Furthermore, corporations still can't directly donate money to candidates, contrary to what so many people are running their heads off about. The supreme court was quite clear that direct contributions were still out. Individual contributions are in though, meaning that its no longer an issue for a lot of individuals from the same corporation or citizen's group to donate to the same candidate, a policy ostensibly put in place to prevent employers from coercing employees to donate to particular candidates, but which heavily restricted the rights of individuals who did want to donate.
Both of these changes help and hurt both sides of the aisle, so even if we were to see more involvement and spending from civic associations, corporations and labor unions, it stands to reason it will balance reasonably well.