Had America Once been a Christian Nation?

 

 

Although America had not formally been designated a “Christian nation,” quotations from the Founding Fathers and others certainly regarded it as such:

John Quincy Adams: The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: that it connected in one indissoluble bond civil government with the principles of Christianity.

 

Noah Webster: The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.

 

James Madison: We have staked the future of government not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions on the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves according to the ten commandments of God. I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: "that God governs in the affairs of man." And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?...We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in the political building no better than the builders of Babel; we shall be divided by our little, partial local interests; our projects will be confounded; and we ourselves shall become a reproach and a byword down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing government by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war or conquest.

 

Benjamin Franklin: I therefore beg leave to move that, henceforth, prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven and its blessing on our deliberation be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business.

 

George Washington, Inaugural Address No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand which conducts the affairs of men more than the people of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.

 

George Washington’s “Farewell Address:”  Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. . . . Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

 

John Adams: Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. So great is my veneration of the Bible that the earlier my children begin to read it, the more confident will be my hope that they will prove useful citizens of their country and respectful members of society.

 

Abraham Lincoln: The Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man . . . But for it we could not know right from wrong.

 

Abraham Lincoln: It is the duty of nations, as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God and to recognize the sublime truth announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.

 

Andrew Jackson: The Bible is the rock on which our Republic rests.

 

Although a number of the above men were not Christian, they all affirmed the need for the Bible and Christianity to underpin the American enterprise. In addition to their testimony is the fact that that most of the State constitutions went a lot further in their affirmations of the Christian faith:

 

Delaware Constitution: Everyone serving in public office must affirm this statement: "I do profess faith in God the Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forever more, and I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.

 

Pennsylvania Constitution: And each member [of the legislature], before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz: "I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration.

 

Massachusetts Constitution: All persons elected to office must make the following declaration: "I do declare that I believe the Christian religion, and have firm persuasion of its truth."

 

Other States had similar requirements. The U.S. Supreme Court also consistently affirmed the centrality of the Christian faith:

 

John Jay, first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court: Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty of as well as the privilege and interest of a Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for its rulers.

 

Supreme Court, 1796: “By our form of government the Christian Religion is the established Religion, and all sects and denominations of Christians are set on the same equal footing.”  

 

U.S. Supreme Court, 1811, “Whatever strikes at the root of Christianity tends manifestly to the dissolution of civil government.”) All quotes above: https://www.epm.org/resources/2009/Dec/30/america-intended-be-secular-state-or-christian-nat/ )

 

If these quotations sound unbelievable, it is because American history has largely been rewritten. It’s called “deconstructionism.”

 

What had been the fruits of America’s Christianity? Alexis de Tocqueville, French statesman, historian, and social philosopher wrote “Democracy in America” (1835). It has been described as "the most comprehensive and penetrating analysis of the relationship between character and society in America that has ever been written." According to Tocqueville, freedom and morality both found their American incarnation in Christianity:

 

“Religion in America ... must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it.”

 

Tocqueville had been well acquainted with the demands for freedom and equality that had arisen from his own French revolution, albeit grounded in the hatred and murder of the clergy. This revolution had confidently sought to push aside anything that stood in its way.  However, with the advantage of decades of hindsight, this had become something that the French wanted to avoid at all costs. Tocqueville, therefore, wrote:

 

“The safeguard of morality is religion, and morality is the best security of law and the surest pledge of freedom.”

 

He therefore appreciated the moral constraints that he found so ubiquitously associated with democracy in the USA:

 

“I do not question that the great austerity of manners that is observable in the United States arises, in the first instance, from religious faith...its influence over the mind of woman is supreme, and women are the protectors of morals. There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is more respected than in America or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated...”

 

Continually, he found that the fruitful expression of democracy was inseparable from its underlying Christian roots:

 

“In the United States the influence of religion is not confined to the manners, but it extends to the intelligence of the people.... Christianity, therefore, reigns without obstacle, by universal consent; the consequence is, as I have before observed, that every principle of the moral world is fixed and determinate.”

 

“I sought for the key to the greatness and genius of America in her harbors...in her fertile fields and boundless forests; in her rich mines and vast world commerce; in her public school system and institutions of learning. I sought for it in her democratic Congress and in her matchless Constitution. Not until I went into the churches of America and heard her pulpits flame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

 

As America has ceased to be good, so too has its families, relationships, it’s children, its health, mental and physical, its economic status; it’s education, and its unity, and concern for community, criminality, and a host of other declining measures.

 

What’s the answer? According to Tocqueville, it would most-likely be found in the return to the principles that had once made America great.

 

 

 

 

 

Talking with the Elite

 

 

In 1965 I began to attend university at UC Berkeley. In my second year, I shared an old house with two upper classmen who both esteemed themselves to be exemplars of the best that philosophy had to offer. Now such arrogance would be a turn-off to me, but then I felt privileged to be living with such “great” philosophers even as I observed them doing morally troubling things.

 

However, I was quick to believe that everything I had previously learned was even more corrupt, the product of a fascist state. I was asked to address a class at the high school from which I had graduated. I told these students that everything that they were learned was wrong, and surprisingly no one corrected me.

 

How had we become so primed to believe the new narrative? Why did I? During my last year at Berkeley, my roommate Phil (not his real name) brought back to our apartment, a stranger he had met on campus. Charlie needed a place to “crash,” and we had a couch in our living room. If I had met Charlie today, I would have described him as a genuine nut-case. He talked about “dropping acid” and dancing with the energy waves emitted by trees. Once while dancing with a tree in someone’s back yard, he was arrested.

 

For the week that Charlie stayed with us. He did all the talking, and Phil and I didn’t mind since we regarded him as cool, even “evolved.” Phil even asked me one evening who Charlie reminded me of. I couldn’t think of anyone. So Phil offered, “Doesn’t he remind you of Jesus?” It didn’t seem to matter that Charlie talked about his desire to kill cops. After all, they were the supporters of this oppressive society, right! However, that was cool in our way of thinking. We both smoked weed and therefore regarded cops as an evil threat. They stood as proof that this was a cruel and oppressive society maintained by thugs. But why didn’t we see that we were thug-sympathizers and potential thugs ourselves!

 

Years later I was able to put two and two together and realized that our house-guest was Charlie Manson, thug par-excellence! How had we been taken in by him? How had the radical profs at the university been able to mold us according to their worldview?

 

The university community provided a highly compelling environment, at least once you learned who to avoid the narrow-minded frat-rats who were too interested in drinking, sports, and girls to bother with questioning their lives. Despite priding ourselves that we were members of the awake elite, we were insecure and quite vulnerable to wondering whether we have what it takes to realize our dreams. So we rejected our materialistic dreams as part of the self-destructive rat-race, which everyone was requiring us to run. Instead, we became convinced that it was weed that would enable us to transcend the “maya” so that we could see what life was all about. We were the idealistic and “awake.”

Early on, I joined the West Oakland Project that enlisted Berkeley students to become teachers’ assistants in slum schools, but I was always troubled by the fact that it was all about me and what I could get out of the experience instead of the students. But if it was about me, why was I maintaining this charade, especially if there wasn’t any transcendent and objective moral truths? If I was to live in a genuine manner, I should quit the Project and live for my own pleasures, and this was what I that unsuccessfully to do.

 

Shouldn’t my experience have enabled me to talk persuasively to university students? It didn’t seem to. Even though they seem determined to live according to their ideals, these ideals are without the foundation of an unchanging right and wrong, just and unjust—a pie in the sky—and perhaps they might even realize this.

 

I engaged two young ladies carrying  “No Justice, No Peace” placards. I asked them, “Is there something intrinsically real about the concept of justice or is it merely a concept we invented to give our lives meaning?” Would they capitalize on this opportunity to convert an old-soul into a follower?  Instead, they walked on. Did they realize that they had no adequate answer or did they realize that their idealism was merely an act of desperation to live meaningfully in a meaningless world? In any event, they had also taken a bite out of postmodernism where there existed no common moral or spiritual truth. Instead, each had to find his own “truth.” If it worked for you, then it was your truth, but how could this be a matter of truth? I would ask NYU students, “Is it wrong to torture babies?” However, they were unable to answer. Why? Their heart was telling them one thing while their university-trained minds told a different story. After a couple years of this, I found that no one wanted to talk.