Faith of Our Fathers

Everything about this first paragraph is wrong. The purpose of America was to advance the Christian faith. Christian conservatives are increasingly hostile to government power, and are working to take State power out of the hands of those who use it to advance the religion of Secular Humanism. Many have learned that the power of the Sword is deadly, and cannot be used to any good purpose. But even those who would use the State to deter anti-Christian actions such as abortion and homosexuality are not prohibited by the Constitution from doing so.

There is not a single conservative Christian alive today who does not believe in the separation of ecclesiastical and political powers. Peron must create a straw man to advance his secularist agenda.

The Founders were not "open, blatant secularists," as Peron claims. Virtually no one was. There was intense Christian cultural pressure. Even Franklin urged Tom Paine not to publish his Age of Reason. Secularists were still in the closet.

Not a single person who signed the Constitution believed he was engaged in a revolt against theological power. Every single one of them believed God had legitimate power over the mind and body of man, and that a free and prosperous society depended upon universal acknowledgement of God's rightful Sovereignty.

Peron does not understand the difference between "church" and "God."

The Founders -- a majority anyway -- believed that no ecclesiastical denomination had the right to use the State to coerce assent to its own ecclesiastical sovereignty. Every single one of them believed that America had a theological duty to be a nation "under God."

The American People were clearly far more religious in 1789 than they are today. More people listened to sermons in 1789 than people watch TV today. Only about 3% of Americans who are members of churches today would qualify for church membership in 1789. Most people in 1789 attended church even though they could not qualify to be voting members.

By today's ACLU-dominated standards, nothing anyone did in the early days of America would qualify as "entirely secular." Everyone was tainted by Christianity. Sir Walter Raleigh was a Falwelite compared to Jim Peron and the ACLU.

Humanism and Christianity are in conflict, but not humanitarianism and Christianity. A "strict religious objective" is usually an ecclesiastical objective. Georgia was a Christian colony. Its 1777 Constitution provided in Article VI:

The representatives shall be chosen out of the residents in each county . . . and they shall be of the Protestant religion.
(Gaustad, 162)

Can you imagine the electoral forces that would have to be mobilized to put this plank in the present-day Georgia Constitution? But this "Moral Majority" was omnipresent in colonial America. It is not the case that a majority of Americans now oppose such constitutional provisions. Planks like this were removed not because the majority of Americans became Secular Humanists, but the religion of secularism was imposed by the judiciary, and this did not happen until 1961.

This point alone -- the existence of these constitutional provisions limiting political office to Christians, and the fact that they were not abolished until 1961 by judicial activists in the federal judiciary -- shows that Jim Peron's thesis is wildly mistaken.

Pennsylvania was clearly a Christian colony. Penn was a Falwellite (in the eyes of the ACLU). Christian Reconstructionists like Gary North have nothing against a good cigar and the best rum.

Penn was a Christian, and his "Frame of Government" for Pennsylvania clearly favored Christianity and made unbelievers feel like second-class citizens

Roger Williams was a fanatic Christian who made witchcraft a capital crime. Leo Pfeffer, who argued the secularist position in the Torcaso case above, admits that:

Rhode Island had adopted the pattern prevailing among the other colonies and had enacted a law that limited citizenship and eligibility for public office to Protestants.
L. Pfeffer, Church, State, and Freedom, 252 (1967)

From the vantage point of New England ecclesiocracy, Rhode Island was an apostasy. From the secularist standpoint of the ACLU, Roger Williams was a theophany of Jerry Falwell.

This account omits the fact that virtually all American universities were explicitly Christian in their Founding. It is true that there was a decline in faith, but this account omits the fact that there was a subsequent revival called "the Second Great Awakening." (As war usually does, the Revolution resulted in both monetary and spiritual debasement.) Beecher's daughter, Harriet Beecher Stowe, stirred millions to oppose slavery with her book Uncle Tom. Noah Webster was converted during this revival and wrote his dictionary and other influential school textbooks. Jefferson's attempt at a secular university was a failure, and the Board eventually hired the university's first clergyman: the Rev. William McGuffey.

Rev. Green may have pessimistically overstated the apostasy, as clergy sometimes do. Had the ACLU been around then, they would have complained not only that so many Congressmen did "attend prayers," but that prayers were offered in Congress at all.

The Founders' philosophy of rights was not secular, but Christian. It was everywhere balanced with the Christian philosophy of duty. A secular theory of rights leads to a socialist system of "entitlements."

The phrase "wall of separation" does not appear in the Constitution. Nor does it appear in the First Amendment. No one who had a hand in drafting or ratifying the First Amendment believed that it compelled America to stop being a nation "under God."

The first time Jefferson's "wall" metaphor was used by the U.S. Supreme Court occurred in a case in which it affirmed that America was a Christian nation. Jefferson said the state can't tell people how to believe, but can tell them how to act. Jefferson operated in a Christian milieu, and drafted laws which made sodomy punishable by castration. Christian criminal codes made America the most prosperous and free nation on earth.

A government which is not limited by Christian principles in the actions which it can criminalize is destined to become a fascist dictatorship.

Jackson and Jefferson were both in the minority. All the other presidents agreed that the Constitution did not permit such national prayers.

I consider myself every bit as fanatic as Gary North. The State Bar of California considers me every bit as fanatic as Gary North. Gary North published one of my articles which criticized Jerry Falwell for not being as fanatic a right-winger as he should be. But Gary North is arguably wrong on whether the Constitution mandates a separation. Can "scary" Gary be wrong? Have you seen his y2k web site?

The clergy were not happy with the Constitution, because they wanted their particular denominations to be legally preferred over the others. America was definitely losing its willingness to be pulled at the bit by clergy. But America was still religious.

Timothy Dwight was not the Jerry Falwell of his day. He was the Gary North of his day. He criticized the Falwells of his day, not the ACLU of his day (nothing even remotely resembling the ACLU existed at the time the Constitution was ratified.

The clergy felt that if ecclesiastical organizations weren't propped up by the Constitution, they would fall, and all religion with it. They were wrong. Ecclesiocracy has probably been the greatest impediment to the spread of true religion.

Anybody who claims divine inspiration for the Constitution is a wacko. Anybody who denies the influence of Christianity upon the birth of America is equally wacko. John Adams agreed with both of these propositions. To say that the Constitution was not the product of miraculous or mystical inspiration is not to say that it bans religion. Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813:

The general principles, on which the Fathers achieved independence, were the only Principles in which that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite....And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all these Sects were United: . . . Now I will avow, that I then believe, and now believe, that those general Principles of Christianity, are as eternal and immutable, as the Existence and Attributes of God; and that those Principles of Liberty, are as unalterable as human Nature and our terrestrial, mundane System.
Lester J. Capon, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters 2 vols. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1959), 2:339-40

Read more here.

These words do not appear in all copies of the Treaty, and in any case do not mean what secularists say they mean. Study the facts.

As I'm not familiar with the case, a citation would be nice. How the Court could say this is unclear, unless the court was referring to a specific denomination of Christianity. Ohio was admitted to the Union under the terms of the Northwest Ordinance of 1787. The 1802 Ohio Constitution used language from that ordinance and required religion to be taught in its schools. So some religion was part of the laws of that state. An argument that it was not Christianity would require great effort.

Jefferson's eccentric views on religion did not represent the views of the men who signed the Declaration or the Constitution. The Congress which ratified the Declaration also amended it to make it more theistic.

Nevertheless, Jefferson did not try to diminish the political power of religion, only the political power of the clergy. There was a world of difference in Jefferson's mind. Jefferson was a theist. He believed the prosperity of America depended on the practice of true religion. Although based loosely on the teachings of Christ, his religion was not orthodox Christianity. But he clearly did not believe government could be free from the demands of religion. See Gaustad's book, Sworn on the Altar.

The clergy is often my opponent. This does not make me an atheist. The clergy who opposed Jefferson were often stooges for Federalists.

Paul Johnson exaggerates. Jefferson wrote to John Adams: "An atheist � I can never be." (Bergh 15:425. [1823] cited in The Real Thomas Jefferson, p.602.)

Jefferson did not agree with every jot and tittle of the gospel according to Senator Giles. Read more here.

Oliver Ellsworth was a Christian slightly to the right of Jerry Falwell.

Secular Humanists are going to have to get used to the idea that Christians can be Christians although attached to no ecclesiastical denomination, or even without adherence to their sacramental doctrines. The "Promise Keepers" movement fills stadiums, not churches. Participating in episcopalian sacraments, part Roman and part Jewish, is not a requisite for Christian faith.

Get the facts about George Washington.

The Calvinist Gary North has in the past entertained some remarkably Episcopalian/Roman Catholic views on sacraments. His father in law, R.J. Rushdoony, patriarch of the Christian Reconstruction movement, has very different views on the importance of sacraments. The author of this rebuttal, a fanatic Theocrat, is also a preterist, and does not believe in sacraments at all.

Madison changed his views late in life. At the time the Constitution was being framed, when he had his greatest influence, Madison voted in favor of Congressional Chaplains and denounced legislation which did not advance Christianity.

Madison equated laws which imposed the dictates of clergy as slavery, but not pure Christianity.

It is the documents that determine the religious character of the nation, not the secretly-held theological beliefs of a few Founders. And it is a myth of modern liberalism that the Federal Constitution determines the religious character of the Union, rather than those of the several States.

When Ethan Allen fought in the War for Independence, he fought as a Christian in a Christian army.

Most people who read Thomas Paine's Age of Reason disagreed with it.

Get the facts about Thomas Paine's Age of Reason.

There was no conflict in the minds of most Christians of that day between reason and religion. There was a conflict betwen reason and priestcraft. Many Christians were opponents of priestcraft for very reasonable reasons. To claim that someone who opposed transubstantiation also favored giving the federal judiciary the power to remove the Ten Commandments from municipal schools is the height of sloppy scholarship. But that is the point of the ACLU. Is it Peron's point as well? Does he believe Janet Reno has the power to enforce politically correct liberal religion on localities?

Asking the Federalists for the opinion regarding the religious beliefs of their opponents is like claiming that Algore is a born-again right-winger because of his recent suggestion that the feds should work with religious social service providers.

This is a political war, and does not conclusively reflect on whether America was demographically or legally "a Christian nation."

Here is a response to The Godless Constitution

We've already learned about Roger Williams.

The "Religious Right" back then does not parallel the generally non-denominational Religious Right of today. Newsweek magazine identified the Chalcedon Foundation as the "think tank" of the Religious Right, and that Foundation is a libertarian one, which champions Free Market economics. It is truly a pity that Peron seeks to divide libertarians rather than unite them.

Many modern libertarians would be surprised that the American Founders were so open in their total dedication to a government sponsored postal system.

It is not surprising that when it came to socialist communications systems, there was also confusion about religion. Observance of Sunday is written into the Constitution itself, and Sunday observances have been codified into law since Europeans got off the boats.

Calvinist Gary North believed that Y2k would be the end of Western Civilization, and especially of the Federal Government. He wished. He was also a bit reactionary on the issue of the Constitution.

The Founders continually spoke of the duties men and their governments had to God. Their Constitution did not mandate government-imposed secularism. It would not have been ratified if it did.

The Declaration of Independence does NOT say that government is NOT instituted by God. The Declaration is clearly a theistic document.

The idea that John Locke was an "enemy of revealed religion" is so preposterous that it would cause gales of laughter in any one who was not already saddened by Columbine High and other disasters of modern relativism and secularism. Find out the facts.

The Founders clearly linked Christianity with morality and the preservation of social order. Get the facts.

Peron has cited above a pamphleteer who used a Roman name who was clearly a Falwellite. There were Biblical examples used, and these were used by the Founders who are said to be the most atheistic.

It was truly a tragic mistake for the Founders not to mention Jesus Christ. Had they foreseen the ACLU and schools stripped of religion, they would have changed the Constitution.

From a legal perspective, however, the omission of Christ's name from the Constitution did not give the federal judiciary the amend state constitutions where they touched on religion, or power to remove the Ten Commandments from municipal schools. That such egregious constitutional errors could be made is testimony to the ignorance of the Founders' original intent.

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Select Bibliography

Bronner, Edwin B. William Penn's "Holy Experiment": The Founding of Pennsylvania 1681-1701. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1962

Gaustad, Edwin S., Faith of Our Fathers, Harper & Row, 1987.

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Faith of Our Fathers:

The Fanaticism of America's Founding Fathers

The Christmas Conspiracy

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Vine & Fig Tree

Paradigm Shift

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