Perfect John Adams quote showing that Religion has a place in government (Vanity)

[AVNevis]

I was doing reasearch this evening for a debate tournament I am participating in a couple of weeks when I came upon this quote:

"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -John Adams

It seems to me this just nails the aclu argument about separation of church and state. Here we have a founding father stating that the constitution does not work if the people are not moral and religious. It seems to me we should be using this quote much more often in debates with liberals.

[NoCmpromiz]

Liberals don't like John Adams.

Umm... Liberals don't like the Founding Fathers (with the possible exception of Jefferson quoted out of context.)

(A text without context is usually pretext...)

[scars]

You are soooo right. The second amendment is the ultimate "check and balance".

[22cal]

You are entirely misinformed about the Founders as was I. John Adams, Samuel Adams, and Patrick Henry were the rule not the exception when it comes to the Christianity of the Founders.

I would refer you to books of history on that topic using the Founders' own words. 'Original Intent' by David Barton is one.

[Swordmaker]

Also, try to understand that our founding fathers believed in deism, and may not have necessarily considered themselves to be Christian. They believed in a higher power called God, and in Natural Law, but were probably not as encumbered by denomination obsession as we are today.

I am getting a little tired of this canard. The truth is that calling "the founding fathers" Deists is flat out wrong. A small number of them may have been undefined "deists" but the vast majority of them were Christians of various denominations. In fact, only THREE of the founding fathers professed "Deism" as a faith... which was mostly undefined and most likely represented a way to avoid claiming one faith or denomination over another but to also say "I believe in God".

The record is clear:

The denominational affiliations of these men were a matter of public record. Among the {55] delegates {to the Constitutional Convention} were 28 Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 1 unknown, and only 3 deists--Williamson, Wilson, and Franklin--this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith.

Sectarianism was rampant in the period with mostly friendly rivalry until it came down to matters of doctrine... and then amity was tossed out and disputes often escalated to violence. The formation of the new nation REQUIRED that there be no established religion... or there would have BEEN NO NATION as you would not have gotten the minority denominations to agree to become episcopalians. They agreed to set aside their religious disagreements, not deny them, to form the new nation. They agreed they all believed in God... which might be called a generic "Deism."

The claim that "The Founding Fathers" were Deists is plainly untrue when it is used to imply that they were not Christians. It is, however, true when it is understood that all Christian denominations are a subset of deism, the belief in God.

[risk]

"With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles." --George Washington's farewell speech in 1796

And yet we are told every day by the TV, our public school boards, our politicians, our newspapers, and culturewar.org websites that diversity is our new Holy Grail.

Diversity is something to manage, not encourage. We can manage it well if we aren't force-fed it.

[Torie]

Diversity is something to manage, not encourage. We can manage it well if we aren't force-fed it.

Another great line. However, good management is all about the paticulars. It is not for the lazy, or the sound byte types.

[risk]

Good management would start with enforcing our current immigration laws, and establishing much smaller third world limits.

[Swordmaker]

Bunches of good info (documented) that among other things debunks the oft mentioned platitude that the founding fathers were only deists and has been posted here...

Check out my post 44 for some of those specifics.

[risk]

While I don't agree with or question, or wonder about, some of the points in you post...

II think I'm missing an opportunity.

[scars]

Smaller third world limits? Please expain.

[PowerPro]

Some more quotes along this line:

"It is impossible to govern rightly without God and the Bible."

--- George Washington


"Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of people that these liberties are the gift of God?"

--- Thomas Jefferson


"With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right."

---Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, March 4, 1865


"We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government: upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

--- James Madison


"We must realize that no weapon in the arsenals of the world is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women."

--- Ronald Reagan


"I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth -- that God governs the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire cannot rise without His aid? We have been assured in the sacred writings that, 'except the Lord build the house they labor in vain that build it.'"

--- Benjamin Franklin, at the Constitutional Convention, June 28, 1787


"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

---Samuel Adams


"We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom all men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and from the rising to the setting of the sun, let His Kingdom come."

--- Samuel Adams, as he signed the Declaration of Independence


"Our Fathers were brought up by their veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles within the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions -- civil, political, or literary."

--- Daniel Webster


"To the distinguished character of a Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of a Christian."

--- George Washington


"A patriot without religions is as great a paradox as an honest man without the fear of God...The scriptures tell us 'righteousness exalts a nation.'"

--- Abigail Adams


"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."

--- John Quincy Adams


"Here is my Creed. I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That He ought to be worshipped...As to Jesus of Nazareth...I think the System of Morals and his Religion, as he left them to us, is the best the World ever saw, or is likely to see."

---Benjamin Franklin


"No power over the freedom of religion...[is] delegated to the United States by the Constitution."

---Thomas Jefferson


"Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof."

---Leviticus 25:10, inscribed on the Liberty Bell


"We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."

---Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation


"Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

---George Washington, in his farewell address


"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."

---Benjamin Franklin


"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

---Patrick Henry, Speech in the Virginia Convention, March, 1775


"The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time."

---Thomas Jefferson


"Indeed, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

---Thomas Jefferson


"Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens."

---Daniel Webster


"Thank God! I--I also--am an American!"

---Daniel Webster


"God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it."

---Daniel Webster

[so_real]

this at a time when church membership entailed a sworn public confession of biblical faith

I wonder what heights we, as a nation, have denied ourselves by not maintaining such tradition.

[B4Ranch]

I do not support any religion that is not Christianity based. I'm not a bible thumper or even what you could call well educated in the different religions of the world.

Our Founders, the majority of them believed in Christ, wrote all the paperwork for our foundation believing in Christ. They did a fantastic job of it too! Only in the past 50 years have we seen an organized effort to defeat our system of government, which included banning prayer from schools which I think was wrong.

Politicians, today, are afraid to start or end a speech with a short prayer. That shows me that we are in serious trouble. Diversity is a systematic intentional divider of our population, not a politically correct adhesive.

By dividing us into small groups the larger organized well funded ones are able to break us apart in every area from morality to patriotism.

[scars]

I stink so badly at typing...expain=explain

[Robert_Paulson2]

Adams, a Unitarian, flatly denied the doctrine of eternal damnation. In a letter to Thomas Jefferson, he wrote:

"I almost shudder at the thought of alluding to the most fatal example of the abuses of grief which the history of mankind has preserved -- the Cross. Consider what calamities that engine of grief has produced!"

In his letter to Samuel Miller, 8 July 1820, Adams admitted his unbelief of Protestant Calvinism: "I must acknowledge that I cannot class myself under that denomination."
JOHN ADAMS

In his, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" [1787-1788], John Adams wrote:

"The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.

". . . Thirteen governments [of the original states] thus founded on the natural authority of the people alone, without a pretence of miracle or mystery, and which are destined to spread over the northern part of that whole quarter of the globe, are a great point gained in favor of the rights of mankind."

[Robert_Paulson2]

Benjamin Franklin

Although Franklin received religious training, his nature forced him to rebel against the irrational tenets of his parents Christianity. His Autobiography revels his skepticism, "My parents had given me betimes religions impressions, and I received from my infancy a pious education in the principles of Calvinism. But scarcely was I arrived at fifteen years of age, when, after having doubted in turn of different tenets, according as I found them combated in the different books that I read, I began to doubt of Revelation itself.

". . . Some books against Deism fell into my hands. . . It happened that they wrought an effect on my quite contrary to what was intended by them; for the arguments of the Deists, which were quoted to be refuted, appeared to me much stronger than the refutations; in short, I soon became a through Deist."

In an essay on "Toleration," Franklin wrote:

"If we look back into history for the character of the present sects in Christianity, we shall find few that have not in their turns been persecutors, and complainers of persecution. The primitive Christians thought persecution extremely wrong in the Pagans, but practiced it on one another. The first Protestants of the Church of England blamed persecution in the Romish church, but practiced it upon the Puritans. These found it wrong in the Bishops, but fell into the same practice themselves both here [England] and in New England."

Dr. Priestley, an intimate friend of Franklin, wrote of him:

"It is much to be lamented that a man of Franklin's general good character and great influence should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as much as he did to make others unbelievers" (Priestley's Autobiography)

[Robert_Paulson2]

Thomas Paine

This freethinker and author of several books, influenced more early Americans than any other writer. Although he held Deist beliefs, he wrote in his famous The Age of Reason:

"I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my church. "

"Of all the systems of religion that ever were invented, there is no more derogatory to the Almighty, more unedifiying to man, more repugnant to reason, and more contradictory to itself than this thing called Christianity. "

[risk]

In principle I agree with you. In this decade, I could support a law that reflected what you say in terms of our immigration. In practice, the government has no right to ask what existing citizens believe. We can ask any damn thing we like of immigrants, though. That's especially true after 19 of them (some illegal) decided that landing aircraft wasn't very interesting. Maybe the terrorists wanted us to opt for more isolation. Suits me fine, but we'll manage that our own way. There's no reason why we have to invite people here to teach them about democracy!

[B4Ranch]

"Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty."
Ronald Reagan

"There's a clear cause and effect here that is as neat and predictable as a law of physics: As government expands, liberty contracts."
Ronald Reagan

"Today, we utter no prayer more fervently than the ancient prayer for peace on Earth. Yet history has shown that peace will not come, nor will our freedom be preserved, by good will alone."
Ronald Reagan

[AVNevis]

Thanks for all the quotes. Although many of these don't relate to my current topic, the topic changes every few months. I'll bookmark this thread for later use.