Posted on 04/17/2005 10:27:53 AM PDT by CHARLITE
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Yes, people need to understand the law (Constitution) but also why it is and what is it based on. Too many people take the statement "founding principles" and only relate it directly to the formality of the Constitution when in fact it has quite a history!
What is troubling and quite frankly a bit baffling to me is why all the uproar? I mean exactly who is trying to establish a theocracy that violates the original intent of separation? Why so much attention on trying to prove that this nation was not born of Christian morality? Does the mere mention of God in the public now violate the constitution? Our Constitution was in fact based in Natural Law, which is Christian in origin. you can't get around that fact no matter how hard you try even if you find quotes to the contrary. After all if our Leaders are not held accountable to higher authority then what do you have.....?
This sounds self-contradictory to me. Would this be for the same reason that God is also very important to the ACLU, and today's secularists and avowed atheists?
Here's some more good stuff I found from Lindsey's Archives conerning our country's rich Christian heritage. [Most of which is NOT in the textbooks today]!!
http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/articles.asp?HCLA=Back&HCL=1811
Was George Washington a Christian? Consider these words from his
personal prayer book: “Oh, eternal and everlasting God, direct my thoughts, words and work. Wash away my sins in the immaculate blood of the Lamb and purge my heart by thy Holy Spirit. Daily, frame me more and more in the likeness of thy son, Jesus Christ, that living in thy fear, and dying in thy favor, I may in thy appointed time obtain the resurrection of the justified unto eternal life. Bless, O Lord, the whole race of mankind and let the world be filled with the knowledge of thee and thy son, Jesus Christ.”
Consider these words by John Adams, our second president, who also served as chairman of the American Bible Society. In an address to military leaders he said, “We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, was the sixth U.S. President. He was also the chairman of the American Bible Society, which he considered his highest and most important role.
On July 4, 1821, President Adams 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.”
Calvin Coolidge, our 30th President of the United States reaffirmed this truth when he wrote, “The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country.”
In 1782, the United States Congress voted this resolution: “The Congress of the United States recommends and approves the Holy Bible for use in all schools.”
William Holmes McGuffey is the author of the McGuffey Reader, which was used for over 100 years in our public schools with over 125 million copies sold until it was stopped in 1963.
President Lincoln called him the “Schoolmaster of the Nation.” Listen to these words of Mr. McGuffey:
“The Christian religion is the religion of our country. From it are derived our notions on the character of God, on the great moral Governor of the universe. On its doctrines are founded the peculiarities of our free institutions. From no source has the author drawn more conspicuously than from the sacred Scriptures. From all these extracts from the Bible I make no apology.”
*****Of the first 108 universities founded in America, 106 were distinctly Christian, including the first, Harvard University, chartered in 1636. In the original Harvard Student Handbook, rule number 1 was that students seeking entrance must know Latin and Greek so that they could study the Scriptures: “Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ, which is eternal life, (John 17:3); and therefore to lay Jesus Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom, let every one seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Proverbs 2:3).”
For over 100 years, more than 50% of all Harvard graduates were pastors!*****
It is clear from history that the Bible and the Christian faith were foundational to our educational and judicial system.
The Supreme Court ruled in a limited way to affirm a wall of separation between church and State in the public classroom. In the coming years, this led to removing prayer from public schools in 1962. Here is the prayer that was banished: "Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence on Thee. We beg Thy blessings upon us and our parents and our teachers and our country. Amen."
In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled that Bible reading was outlawed as unconstitutional in the public school system. The court offered this justification: “If portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could and have been psychologically harmful to children.”
Bible reading was now unconstitutional, though the Bible was quoted 94 percent of the time by those who wrote our Constitution and shaped our Nation and its system of education and justice and government.
In 1965, the Courts denied as unconstitutional the right of a student in the public school cafeteria to bow his head and pray audibly for his food.
In 1980, Stone vs. Graham outlawed the Ten Commandments in our public schools. The Supreme Court said this: “If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments were to have any effect at all, it would be to induce school children to read them. And if they read them, meditated upon them, and perhaps venerated and obeyed them, this is not a permissible objective.”
Is it not a permissible objective to allow our children to follow the moral principles of the Ten Commandments?
James Madison, the primary author of the Constitution of the United States, said this: “We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
Most of what you read in this article has been erased from our textbooks.
Revisionists have rewritten history to remove the truth about our country's Christian roots.
Hal Lindsey
I tell one of the most profound statements I have heard that really hit home was when I heard Ann Graham say and I'm paraphrasing, "we have ask God to leave our schools, our squares and our public life and he being the gentleman that he is has "obliged".
edit to correct above link:
http://www.hallindseyoracle.com/articles.asp?HLCA=Next&HLC=1744
I tell one of the most profound statements I have heard that really hit home was when I heard Ann Graham say and I'm paraphrasing, "we have ask God to leave our schools, our squares and our public life and he being the gentleman that he is has "obliged".
How true.
Thanks for the clarification. I must admit that even with my rather elaborate education, Deism must have slipped through the floorboards of my lecture chambers.
Char :)
It's not a well known religion. No prayers, except for thank you, and none of the pomp and ceremony the other faiths practice.
No.. we are not a Christian nation.
We are a nation that has a lot of openly Christian people.
Our fact that our Constitution was based upon Christian values no more makes a Christian nation than does you sleeping in a hen house make you a hen.
The only Christian nation is the church.
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