I love the
United States of America. Every summer,
our family enjoys celebrating the 4th of July with decorations,
fireworks, food, and PBS’ A Capital
Fourth. I enjoy patriotic music
almost as much as Christmas music, adding two new CD’s to my patriotic collection
this year: American Jubilee by the
Cincinnati Pops and For God and Country
by Dolly Parton.
Last summer
my family toured our beloved capital, Washington, D.C. We proudly toured the monuments, museums, and
hallowed landmarks. We witnessed one reality
chiseled on stone - the majority of our
Founding Fathers had deep respect for the God of the Bible. Though revisionists work meticulously to
rewrite our history, the American experiment was one rooted in a Christian
worldview.
John Quincy
Adams said that the Declaration of Independence “laid the cornerstone of human
government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” In his speech delivered on July 4th,
1837, President Adams claimed that “the birthday of the nation is indissolubly
linked with the birthday of the Savior.”
John Adams,
our second President, said, “The highest glory of the American Revolution was
this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government
with the principles of Christianity.”
These
Fathers did not want a state-sponsored religion because they did not want the
state to interfere with the religion of the people. Instead, they expected and wanted the
religion of the people to influence the state.
These Founders would not recognize the obsession in America today to
“separate church and state.”
How
different are the two Adams Presidents’ words from the outcry we hear today to
keep Christianity, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments from the public
square. In the National Archives
building in D.C., upon entering you gaze upon the Declaration of Independence
and the U.S. Constitution. Look at the
floor and notice the Ten Commandments
depicted. These Mount Sinai laws appear
numerous places in the Supreme Court building, engraved on the huge oak doors
entering the chambers. Moses is the
chief lawgiver engraved on top of the building above the steps out front.
Benjamin
Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, believed that the
only way to preserve the new nation was to train the next generation in
Christian teaching:
We profess to be republicans [not
governed by a king], and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and
perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal
education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the
Bible. For this Divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among
mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute
the soul of republicanism.
George
Washington, addressing the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in 1789 shared
that national morality could not prevail without religious principle. To try and remove the religious influence is
to “shake the foundation of the fabric” of our country.
Chief
Justice John Jay, first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Vice-President
of the American Bible Society, understood this reality. He wrote, Providence
has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well
as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer
Christians for their rulers.
Many years
later, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, shares in his book A Nation Like No Other, “The Founders’
distinctively Christian faith is well documented, as is their conviction that
government must be infused with Christian principles.”
Today, we
see America tearing apart at the seams.
We have ignored her recipe for success.
We unashamedly need God in America again.
John Adams
had it right: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the
government of any other.”
Picture used from Pixabay.com
Picture used from Pixabay.com
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