Subject: "Year of Our Lord"
From: KEVIN4VFT
To: Separation of Church & State
Date: 6/12/00
In article <20000612002706.11557.00000916@ng-cc1.aol.com>, edarr1776@aol.com
(EDarr1776) writes:
>England was late in accepting the Gregorian calendar -- less than 40 years
>prior. Acceptance was not universal in the English-speaking
world. It was
>necessary to indicate which calendar one used in order to establish the
date.
>
>"In the year of our Lord" is the secular phrase that tells us the
calendar in
>use is the Gregorian, and not the Julian.
"Year of our Lord" is SECULAR??????
Ed, do us all the favor of citing ONE historian who believes this!!!!!!!
"Year of our Lord" was never used to indicate which calendar was
being used. My Oxford English Dictionary has examples of "year of our
lord"
going back to 1389, 1463, 1548, 1579, 1596, 1604, and 1625, all of them
plainly religious, signifying the obvious: "the year of Christ's
incarnation."
Daniel Dreisbach, writing in the Baylor Law Review (48:927), notes:
The framers resisted the temptation often encountered by architects of new orders and indeed, the course adopted in the French revolutionary constitution, which was to institute a wholly new calendar dated not from the birth of Christ but from the revolutionary moment. The new French calendar commenced with the "autumnal equinox, the day after their republic was proclaimed."[note omitted] The French, of course, went much further in stripping the public calendar of religious holy day; the Christian Sabbath, for example, was abolished and replaced by a festival every tenth day.[n.o.]The constitutional mention of the lordship of Jesus Christ . . . was ascribed great significance by selected nineteenth-century commentators. In this slight but solemn reference, [Jaspar] Adams . . . concluded, "the people of the United States professed themselves to be a Christian nation."[n.o] Elaborating on this point, Adams argued that the word "our" preceding "Lord" "refers back to the commencing words of the Constitution; to wit, 'We the people of the United States.'"
[I]f the Constitution was deliberately secular or hostile to traditional religion, the reference to Jesus Christ could have been avoided. [The Framers] could have just as easily omitted the reference to Christ in the dating clause. It cannot be denied, therefore, that the date denotes that Christ was, perhaps subconsciously, a reference point for the architects of an ambitious new order. [note 183: In response to those who dismiss the assertion that this clause is a "persuasive argument for the Constitution's Christian character," one commentator has asked what would the "discerning scholar" say "if the clause had read: 'Done . . . in the year of Baal (or Astarte, or Buddha, or Reason, or any other false god) . . .'?" Such language, no doubt, would provoke a "commentary on the nature and implications of the religious-philosophy signified by the clause."]
>
>It's a pretty weak argument when the Constitution is so clear in its
>endorsement and enforcement of religious freedom, to claim that the phrase
>telling the date of the document negates the clear intentions of three
>preceding sections.
The "clear intention" of the preceding sections was NOT to
secularize the nation and relieve the government of its duties to God.
Therefore "the year of our Lord" as a statement of Christian
allegiance
is not at all out of place.
Kevin C.
http://members.aol.com/TestOath/HolyTrinity.htm
---------------------------------------------
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
The framers resisted the temptation often encountered by architects of new orders and indeed, the course adopted in the French revolutionary constitution, which was to institute a wholly new calendar dated not from the birth of Christ but from the revolutionary moment. The new French calendar commenced with the "autumnal equinox, the day after their republic was proclaimed."[note omitted] The French, of course, went much further in stripping the public calendar of religious holy day; the Christian Sabbath, for example, was abolished and replaced by a festival every tenth day.[n.o.]
The constitutional mention of the lordship of Jesus Christ . . . was ascribed great significance by selected nineteenth-century commentators. In this slight but solemn reference, [Jaspar] Adams . . . concluded, "the people of the United States professed themselves to be a Christian nation."[n.o] Elaborating on this point, Adams argued that the word "our" preceding "Lord" "refers back to the commencing words of the Constitution; to wit, 'We the people of the United States.'"
[I]f the Constitution was deliberately secular or hostile to traditional religion, the reference to Jesus Christ could have been avoided. [The Framers] could have just as easily omitted the reference to Christ in the dating clause. It cannot be denied, therefore, that the date denotes that Christ was, perhaps subconsciously, a reference point for the architects of an ambitious new order. [note 183: In response to those who dismiss the assertion that this clause is a "persuasive argument for the Constitution's Christian character," one commentator has asked what would the "discerning scholar" say "if the clause had read: 'Done . . . in the year of Baal (or Astarte, or Buddha, or Reason, or any other false god) . . .'?" Such language, no doubt, would provoke a "commentary on the nature and implications of the religious-philosophy signified by the clause."]
"The proclamations and other state papers of the Continental Congress
are so filled with Biblical phrases as to resemble Old Testament
ecclesiastical documents. They unabashedly exhibit a belief in
Protestant Christianity."
Edward F. Humphrey, Nationalism and Religion in America, 1774-1789,
at 407 (1924), cited in Dreisbach, at 929n5.
[T]he framers and ratifiers of the Constitution and the First Amendment
were well aware that Christianity was recognized in many state
constitutions and manifested in the practices, usages, and customs
of all American civil governments of the revolutionary era. Many
states had exclusive religious establishments or settlements, and
it was generally conceded that the federal government could not
displace those arrangements. The First Amendment [Jasper] Adams
argued, left "the entire subject [of religion] in the same situation
in which it found it; and such was precisely the most suitable course."*
Insofar as American civil governments, both state and national,
acknowledged "the duties of the Christian faith," and embraced
Christian precepts, "[i]t is the duty of Congress . . . to permit the
Christian religion to remain in the same state in which it was, at
the time when the Constitution was adopted." Adams concluded
that if the American people "professed themselves to be a Christian
nation" prior to the adoption of the Constitution and the Constitution
then subsequently left "the entire subject in the same situation
in which it found it," then the federal Constitution preserved America
as a Christian commonwealth and national legislation "ought to be
consistent with [Christian] principles and usages."
Adams stretched the argument to its limit. There is, however, little
dispute that the framers saw the preservation of state jurisdiction
over religious matters among the most important, if not the
most important purposes of the First Amendment. The framers were
reluctant to raise a subject in the federal Constitution that was
adamantly and jealously reserved by the states.
Dreisbach, at 960
* Jasper Adams, The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United
States, 1833 page cites omitted.
In order to secure ratification of the Constitution, the Framers had to
guarantee to the states that the powers of the states to legislate on the
issue of religion were not going to be infringed by the federal
government.
To secure the support of Christian-but-Baptist State A, they had to
guarantee
that Christian-but-Episcopalian State B would not turn the power of the
federal
government against the religious practices of Baptist State A. As a
result, the federal constitution was scrupulously neutral and devoid
of power to legislate on denominational distinctives.
Every single person who signed the Constitution believed that the very
institution of government itself was a "divine
ordinance," and must be
"under God."
But mode of worship and distinctives of creed were left
outside the scope of the federal government.
Far more debate took place over the number and term of Senators
vs. Representatives, and other subjects which impinged on states'
rights than on religion. The general direction of the Convention was
to take the federal government out of the arena of ecclesiastical
party politics. There was no hint of any desire on the part of
the delegates to take the federal government out from under the
requirements of Godly morality and generic Christian faith.
Certainly there was no movement at all to take the states
out from "under
God," which proponents of the "separation
of church and state" seek to do.
An apocryphal story is told that after the Philadelphia Convention
adjourned, a pious citizen [note omitted], who lamented that
the
Constitution failed to mention God or the Christian religion,
inquired
of Alexander Hamilton the reason for this unfortunate omission.
"I
declare," Hamilton responded, "we forgot it."[note
omitted] After his
inauguration, George Washington offered a more considered
explanation for the Constitution's apparent silence regarding God
and
Christianity. In a reply to a Presbytery that had expressed
misgivings
on this matter, Washington wrote the following:
[A]nd, here, I am persuaded, you will permit me
to observe that the
path of true piety is so plain as to require but
little political direction.
To this consideration we ought to ascribe the
absence of any
regulation, respecting religion, from the Magna-Charta
of our country.
To the guidance of the ministers of the gospel
this important object is,
perhaps, more properly committed -- It will be
your care to instruct
the ignorant, and to reclaim the devious--and, in
the progress of morality
and science [knowledge], to which our
government will give every
furtherance, we may confidently expect the
advancement of true
religion,
and the completion of our happiness. [Letter from
Geo.Washington to
the Presbyterian Ministers of Massachusetts and
New Hampshire,
(Nov. 2, 1789), reprinted in 4 The Papers of Washington
(Dorothy Twohig,
ed.) at 274; see also 1 Stokes, Church and State in the U.S.
(1950) at 248.]
In any case, it would be a mistake to automatically conclude that
the omission of
God or a religious designation from the Constitution was an
expression of
indifference toward religion, much less a deliberate repudiation of
Christianity.
Dreisbach, at 955-56.
Justice Joseph Story, in the most authoritative statement of the principles
of the Constitution in its day:
"We are not to attribute this prohibition of a national
religious
establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and
especially to
Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence, than the
framers of
the Constitution...Probably at the time of the adoption of the
Constitution,
and of the first amendment to it. ...the general if not the
universal
sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive
encouragement
from the state so far as was not incompatible with the private
rights
of conscience and the freedom of religious worship. An
attempt to level all
religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in
utter
indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not
universal
indignation. . .The real object of the amendment was not to
countenance,
much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity,
by
prostrating Christianity; but exclude all rivalry among Christian
sects, and
to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should
give to
a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national
government."
(Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States,
2:593-95)
The greatest threat to this Christian nation has always been the ecclesiastical
hierarchies. Had they not been so covetous of power, there would have been
more unanimity about the Christian nature of the nation. Had the hierarchies
not been so vigilant to remove the teachings of rival denominations from
public schools, and more diligent to purify the garden-variety Christianity
which had always been taught in public schools, the schools would not
be so secular today.
But it is clear that there was NO ATTEMPT to secularize the country
through the Constitution. Had there been such an attempt, the
Constitution would not have been ratified. There is NO EVIDENCE
of an attempt by the Framers to use the federal constitution to
purge Christianity from all the states. The states would not have
allowed it. Demands for evidence that the federal constitution
created a Christian nation are complete non sequiturs. The
United States already were Christian. The Constitution plainly
and inescapably did nothing to alter that.
Kevin C.
http://members.aol.com/TestOath/HolyTrinity.htm
---------------------------------------------
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7
Subject: Re: The Year of our Opinion
From: KEVIN4VFT
To: Separation of Church & State
Date: 7/7/00
In article <20000707184851.10849.00000998@ng-fs1.aol.com>, brentlysr2000@aol.com
(BrentlySR2000) writes:
>For example, the only reference to Christianity you could cite in the
>constitution is a dating method! I questioned this acclamation.
You believe
>the date to be an intentional reference to the governmental theology of the
>nation (gosh, ain't that a streach), I believe it is a dating method.
>Which is more plausible?
Given the fact that all other atheistic nations in the Western World
created since 1750 have deliberately and self-consciously the
phrase "year of our Lord," even though it is "merely" a
standard
dating device, and
Given the fact that at about the same time the Constitution was
written the French Revolution not only omitted that phrase but
even attempted to scrap the Biblical concept of a 7-day week, and
Given the fact that there are more explicit references to Christ
in all our other organic law, written by men who all believed that
America was a Christian nation, and
Given the fact that if the modern myth of "separation of church
and state" were consistently and logically applied, the phrase
"Year of our Lord" (which plainly endorses Christianity) would
not appear (because it offends atheists), therefore
I think it's more plausible that that the inclusion of "Year of our
Lord" in the Constitution indicates that the Founding Fathers
had no intention of following the atheistic path of the French
Revolution, and had no intention of stripping away all public
acknowledgment of God and the Christian religion.
That is, after all, what this debate is all about.
One side says the government cannot favor "belief over unbelief,"
and "religion over irreligion." The other side says the
gov't can.
One side says the Constitution declares that the government
cannot post a copy of the Ten Commandments in a school.
The other side says the government can.
One side says the government cannot mention Christ in a way that
makes unbelievers feel "left out" or like "second
class
citizens." The other side says the government can.
This reference to Christ in the Constitution shows that the
government can.
I am not relying on the phrase "year of our Lord" in an attempt to
prove that the Framers of the Constitution intended to INAUGURATE
a Christian nation. That had already been accomplished. America
was ALREADY a Christian nation. What "year of our Lord" shows
is that the Framers did not intend to TERMINATE America's Christian
status. They did not intend to erect a wall of separation between
Christianity and the government This interpretation of the Constitution
was universally held by every person who signed the Constitution
and by every United States Supreme Court Justice until 1931.
Kevin C.
http://members.aol.com/TestOath/HolyTrinity.htm
---------------------------------------------
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares
and sit under their Vine & Fig Tree.
Micah 4:1-7