The Secret to America's Strength. (Role of Religion in the Founding Fathers' Constitutional Formula)

Note from Bump in the night: I know this article is a bit long. However, I will warn you, you won't be able to put it down. I encourage everyone to print this out and USE it. If you are a religious person to any degree, then this is a MUST READ for you.

The Secret to America's Strength by W. Cleon Skousen (14 pages) This speech was given in 1981. Although it was recorded at the time and subsequently distributed on cassette tape, there was no exact record of the day it was given. The packet that is referred to in the speech was published in May of 1981.

The Founders thought that it was the foundation of political science. As a matter of fact, John Adams said, "Politics is the divine science of government for happy living in society." Isn't that great? It's a "divine" science. In order to catch the point of view of the Founders, and so that you can understand the very serious aberration that has occurred in Supreme Court decisions in dealing with this subject, we're going to go through it very quickly, topic by topic, so that you'll feel comfortable with the text of this little speech.

The Founding Fathers universally, without exception, emphasized that there is what our speaker last night called "a metaphysical foundation to a great civilization." That is a PhD term for spirituality. Did you notice how careful he was? And he has to be at the university where he teaches so he can teach the fundamentals that he is using there. If you were watching carefully, that was the best use of double meaning words that I have ever seen assembled in one talk. It was a magnificent and artistic display of survival on the university level, teaching what we believe without it becoming quite so controversial. If you talk about religion in school, or spirituality, you're in trouble. But if it's "metaphysics", then "Oh, that's all right." Isn't that amazing? It's all right if it's metaphysics.

Well, the Founding Fathers said (and they didn't use the word metaphysics), "There is a spiritual foundation on which this nation and this Constitution is built." George Washington said, "If future generations do not preserve the spiritual foundation, the structure will fall!" That's a prophecy. We want to talk about that because there is great confusion in the minds of a lot of people, including the majority of the Supreme Court on this subject.

The same year that the Founding Fathers wrote and passed the Constitution in Congress, 1787, they passed the North West Ordinances in which they talked about schools. They said, "Religion, morality, and knowledge -- being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind -- schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

They want schools to do three things. They want them to teach religion, morality and knowledge. Well, the second you start talking about preaching religion in school, the number one question is: whose religion? Right?

The Founding Father's reply is fascinating. They said, "Everybody's religion." They wanted the universal principals of everybody's religion taught. It took me two years to find that. They thought any dim-wit would know that! So they didn't describe it, they didn't define it, they didn't spell out what the universal religion was. They called it the American religion, the universal religion, the common religion of all mankind.

It took me two years before I found it first in Franklin, then in Jefferson, then in Madison, and then I began finding it all over the place. But anyway, they wanted the teaching of religion to be restricted to fundamentals. As Jefferson said, "No religious reading, instruction, or excuse shall be prescribed or practiced inconsistent with the tenets of any religious sect or denominations."

That's pretty tough to be able to teach ideology that no church objects to. So, I really searched until I found out what they were. Franklin said, "Here is my creed (he wrote this just a short time before he died). I believe in one God, the Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable service we render to him is in doing good to his other children. That the soul of man is immortal, and will be treated with justice in another life, respecting his conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental points in all sound religion (suggesting that there might be some others that aren't so sound. But if they're sound, they'll have at least these five things.)"

You'll notice that he's made five points. Number one, the recognition and worship of a Creator who made all things. Number two, that the Creator has revealed a moral code of behavior for happy living which distinguishes right from wrong. Number three, that the Creator holds mankind responsible for the way they treat each other. Number four, that all mankind live beyond this life. Number five, that in the next life, mankind are judged for their conduct in this life. Isn't that interesting?

When I was a boy in the schools of Canada, I was taught those five things. Today, it's unlawful to teach that in a government or public school. In America, the United States, the same restrictions generally apply. Although some teachers in their wisdom share these concepts with children, usually it is not done.

I remember sitting there in the school in Raymond, Alberta, Canada. Right across the aisle was my second-grade sweetheart, or maybe I should say my sweetheart in second grade, so I wouldn't be misunderstood. In between was my best friend, Gray Kirkham. When she was talking to her seat-mate, he reached over and took a big red apple out of her desk, and put it in his desk, grinning like a Cheshire cat. I remember Miss Monroe said, "Gray Kirkham, I saw you take that apple." Boy, he put that back so fast and his face was red as an apple.

She said, "Class, listen to me. I just did Gray Kirkham a great favor. I can understand why he would want that red apple, but actually it was Marie's, it was not his. You see, if he had gone and put it in the bib of his overalls, and gone out at recess and eaten it, he would have eaten a stolen apple. You see, after he went back to Heavenly Father he would be asked about the stolen apple. And Marie would find about it. She would be wondering all that time what happened to her apple. She would find out, and you see how embarrassed Gray Kirkham would be?

"But, you see, he's put it back now, so everything is all right. Now class, I just want you to remember: you're never alone. When you do good, it's being observed. When you do bad, it's also being observed. Will you all remember that?"

I want to tell you, that made a tremendous impression on my second grade brain, or my brain in the second grade -- let's keep that straight! My parents wouldn't have objected to that being taught to me in school, they would have loved it.

It's very important to understand how the Founders felt about those five principles we've just enunciated. Listen to this. Samuel Adams said, "These basic beliefs, which constitute the religion of America, is the religion of all mankind." See what they do? See why I was so frustrated? The religion of all mankind, the religion of America -- they were driving me crazy trying to find out what they were talking about. In due time I found it. John Adams called these tenets, "The general principles on which the American civilization has been founded." Thomas Jefferson called these basic principles, "The basic principles in which God has united us all."

Now let me ask you a question and you consider those five things. Do Catholics believe all five of those things? What about Baptists? What about Assembly of God? What about Presbyterians? Lutherans? LDS? Let me ask you a real one now. What about Mohammedans? Do they believe those five things? What about Hindus? Any Hindus? Well, I can speak for them -- I checked it out. You bet, they believe those five things. What about Buddhists? Yes, in their search for light they follow the same pattern.

You see what the Founders meant? Those are the things on which we can unite. They were so dedicated to the preservation, the teaching and the promulgation of those principles, that they wanted to encourage the churches of America to proclaim them with a vitality that would make it an integral part of our civilization and our culture.

In 1831, a young judge came from France to study our prisons. In France they had a lot of people in prisons. We didn't have so many people in prisons in America. So he wanted to know why. So he came over to study them.

He got over here and he looked around and he was amazed. He said to some of the people, "Where's your government?"

So he gave up the study of prisons and started studying the whole system, the freedom system. He was here for nearly two years, and he went back to France and wrote his great classic, Democracy in America, probably one of the finest in-depth analyses of the greatness of America that has ever been written, either before or since.

Listen to what he says, "On my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention. The longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this state of things. Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions." That's what you heard in the North West Ordinance, that good government and the welfare of society depends upon teaching religion, morality and knowledge. That's what he's saying, "It's the first of their political institutions."

"I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens, or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society."

He says that European philosophers were wrong. "The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained in a very simple manner that gradual decay of religious zeal must necessarily fail, the more general liberty is established and knowledge diffused." In other words, they were saying that as science expands, religion, which is really a myth, will disappear.

He said, "Unfortunately, the facts by no means accord with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and debasement. While in America, one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world, the people fulfill with fervor all the outward duties of religion."

These are books that we should be reading again, that reestablish the confidence in the fundamentalism that is contained in the first free people of modern times. Those are things to be revived and perpetuated. He said there is a new kind of Christianity developing in America. Isn't that interesting?

He said that in America freedom and religion were combined, they were unified, they had to go together. He said, "In France, where we have a national religion, everywhere that religion is strong, freedom is suppressed. But it's just the opposite in America."

He said there are many, many churches, but there isn't any pressure from the churches to take a political position. He said, "the sects (meaning different denominations that exist in the United States) are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator. But they agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity, in its own peculiar manner. But all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God. All the sects of the United States are compromised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same. There is no country in the world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America."

It was astonishing to de Tocqueville that liberty and religion could be combined in such a balanced structure of harmony and good order. He wrote, "The revolutionists of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not permit them to violate wantonly the laws that oppose their designs. Thus while the law permits the American to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving and forbids them to commit what is rash or unjust."

That is what Cecil B. DeMille meant when he said, "There is only liberty under law." You cannot have liberty without law.

Then he describes the role of religion in the schools. He says, "In New England, every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge. He is taught moreover the doctrines of the evidence of his religion, the history of his country, and the leading features of the Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all of these things, and the person wholly ignorant of them is sort of a phenomenon."

Then he says he was amazed how much was coming across the pulpits of America that stabilized the culture, and the political establishment of the people. He said, "This lead me to examine more attentively then I had hitherto done the state in which the American clergy occupy in political society. I learned with surprise that they fill no public appointments. I did not see one of them in the administration. And they are not even represented in the legislative assemblies."

You see, that was quite different. In England and France, you have the traditional national churches occupying some of the highest offices in the land to protect their own interests and impose certain ideals that were theirs on the people.

"How different this is from Europe," he says. "The unbelievers in Europe attack the Christians as their political opponents, rather than as their religious adversaries. They hate the Christian religion as the opinion of a political party, much more than as an error in belief. And they reject the clergy, less because they are the representatives of the deity, than because they are the allies of government (which of course was unpopular). In America, the clergy remain politically separated from the government, but nevertheless provide a moral stability among the people which permits the government to prosper."

In other words, there is separation of church and state, but not separation of religion and state. That's the difference.

Then he goes on to say, "I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers. It was not there in her fertile fields and boundless prairies. It was not there in her rich mines and her vast world commerce. It was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America, and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great!"

We ought to have that engraved over the schools where drugs are rampant, and prophylactics are sometimes distributed for a violation of the most basic morality that mankind has ever known.

The Founders began a campaign to equalize all of the religions in America, and that was not easy. In fact it was very difficult. Some of the Founders themselves were a little confused, like in Orwell's book in which it said in 1984 there would be universal equality, only some would be more equal than others. That's the way we tend to be.

Patrick Henry, in Virginia, thinking that he could stabilize religion by having a tax appropriated so that each person could designate where the tax would go to provide a minister and a school in a Christian community. He thought that would be great, because there weren't enough good schools, and there weren't enough churches being supported and sustained, and he thought that would guarantee their stabilization.

Immediately Madison jumped on him, and said, "Don't do that! Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity in exclusion to all other religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians in exclusion to all the other sects? The bill violates the equality which ought to be the basis of every law."

Isn't that great wisdom? You see in their anxiety to do good, they almost invoked a very serious evil. To give you some idea of the Founders' problem, notice that some of the states had adopted an official church: Connecticut, the Congregational Church, Delaware, the Christian faith, Maryland, the Christian faith. You couldn't occupy a position of government if you were Jewish, for example.

Massachusetts was the Congregational Church. They didn't get away from that until 1828. They were the last state to do away with a state church. In New Hampshire you had to belong to the Protestant faith. If you were a Catholic, you couldn't serve. In New Jersey you had to belong to the Protestant faith. In South Carolina you had to belong to the Protestant faith.

The Founders had a problem. So they decided that that had to be worked out locally, that in no way should the federal government get involved in getting that thing straightened out. So they said in the First Amendment, "that the Congress shall pass no law affecting religion or preventing the free exercise thereof." No law. They're not to have anything to do with it.

Each state has got to work that out, it's so delicate and so difficult. Because, they said, if the Founders undertook to establish a certain principle, there would be civil strife. Some of the states would secede, so that has to be worked out carefully and quietly among those states until everybody has an equal opportunity.

So now you have the story, and you've found the Founder's point of view. Down at the bottom of that quote you have these words: "Thus the whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state government. It is to be acted upon according to their own sense of justice and state constitution." In other words, the federal government has absolutely nothing to do with it. In his writings Madison said, "There is not a shadow of right in the general government (meaning the federal government) to intermeddle with religion."

Now we come to the very significant thing, which in 1964, I think it was, the Supreme Court should have read this statement that we're now going to read. Here is the statement by Jefferson: "Special provision has been made by one of the amendments to the Constitution which expressly declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Thereby guarding in the same sentence, and under the same words, the freedom of religion, of speech, and of press, insomuch that whatever violates either throws down the sanctuary which covers the others, and that libels falsehoods and defamations equally with hereby and false religions are withheld from the cognizance of the federal tribunals."

Not only can the Congress not pass any law, the subject cannot be brought up in the federal courts. Isn't that interesting? That's the Founders point of view.

So we get a famous statement quoted widely today from Jefferson which says that when he was governor of Virginia he declared a day of fasting. When he was President they asked him to declare a day of fasting and thanksgiving, and he said, "I can't. I have no authority. There must always be a wall of separation between church and state (meaning between the federal government)." When he said "state" in that statement, he was talking about the federal government.

He said, "I know. I did it because the states have the authority to do it. But now I'm President of the United States. I have no authority." It's in that historical context that he said a separation between church and state.

What they wanted to do was to have the states immediately undertake an equality of religion. When Jefferson introduced a resolution to disestablish the Church of England in Virginia as a state church, he did not do it to set up a wall between state and church, but simply, as he explained it, for the purpose of "taking away the privilege and prominence of one religious sect over another, and thereby establishing equal rights among all."

To show you how Jefferson felt about it, the town which is nearest his home in Monticello is called Charlottesville. Our speaker last night was from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. Here is what Jefferson said was happening in his day in Charlottesville, "In our village of Charlottesville, there is a good degree of religion, with a small space only of fanaticism. We have four sects, but without either church or meeting house. The court house is the common temple; one Sunday in the month to each. Here Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodists and Baptists meet together, join in hymning their Maker, listen with attention and devotion to each other's preachers, and all mix in society with perfect harmony."

In the court house! A public building! Isn't that scandalous? There are only four churches in the community, and of course, only four weeks in a month, so they would have had to make other arraignments if there were more churches. But what he is talking about is equality: they got them all together, they all got to do it in a public building. It was so exciting.

Jefferson proposes an accommodation for religious instruction in the state school. "Can the liberties be thought secure when we have removed, by eliminating religious instruction, their only firm basis: a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gifts of God, that they are not to be violated, but with his wrath?" You see a lot of people do not know what the word inalienable means. The Founders used inalienable or unalienable (depending if you went to Williams and Mary or Harvard, but they both mean the same thing).

What is an inalienable right? There isn't one American in 10,000, including lawyers, that can tell you when a right is inalienable. The Supreme Court has already ruled that is not real, that it's a myth. "There aren't any inalienable rights. If it isn't in the statues, you don't have it." -- Oliver Wendell Holmes. I was shocked to find that between 1902 and 1932 he had injected into our legal system the fact that there is no such thing as natural rights.

If you go back and ask the Founders what is a natural right, they say all the rights that came to you from God, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. In the book The Five Thousand Year Leap, I listed 25 or 30 more that people hadn't stopped to think about. You have a lot of inalienable, natural rights. What makes it inalienable and natural? It's any right that came to you at the time of birth, given to you by God, that cannot be violated without coming under the judgement and wrath of God.

Did you hear what he said here? He said how can we teach children these natural rights that some of them are inalienable and that these rights are not to be violated, but with his wrath. That's a natural right, that's John Locke talking. We don't study John Locke anymore. We don't know what a natural right is, we don't even argue it in our courts anymore. It's a vacant place in our culture: our inalienable rights. We just give lip service to it. You are not allowed to argue inalienable rights in the courts of the United States today.

To encourage religious studies by calling students of different faiths, Jefferson proposed the following: he suggested that the responsibility for teaching "the proof of the being of a God, the Creator, Preserver and Supreme Ruler of the Universe and the Author of all the relations of morality and of the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the province of the professor of ethics." How do you like that? What university is doing that today?

Is there evidence that there is a God? John Locke, in his essay on human understanding said, "Anyone who doesn't know that there is a divine creator is irrational, and hasn't talked to his brain lately. Because the human brain will not accept the proposition that everything we see about us fell into place accidentally."

You just talk to your brain, as you've heard us do in our classes, and say, "Brain, with all the freezing and melting, exploding, expanding, contracting, and all the forces of nature, given eons of time, would it produce a watch, brain?"

"Because obviously this is the product of intelligent design and high-precision engineering."

Brain, you're right. What about the human eye? Anyone of hundred of factors missing, and you're blind and it won't work. Just one missing and it won't work. What about that ear? What about the digestive system? Pouring down all that junk food, you know, and the right amount of acid comes in, and boils around, and pretty soon you get energy out of it. It amazing. Every once in a while you need an Alka-Seltzer, but most of the time you do pretty good. Isn't it a good thing that the esophagus goes down into the stomach, and not into your lungs? Have you noticed what happens if some it goes to your lungs?

All right. The Founders said that anyone that hasn't talked to his brain lately and thinks there is no divine creator and designer for all of this, is not rational! We've got to teach that in our schools, and he says the professor in charge of that should be the professor of ethics. Isn't this something to be taught? We're talking about schools doing this.

The university faculty will also teach "the developments of these moral obligations of those in which all sects agree. Together with the knowledge of the languages Hebrew, Greek and Latin, a basis will be formed common to all the sects." How do you like that?

Number three, encourage "different religious sections to establish each for itself a professorship of their own tenets on the confines (or the campus) of the university." How do you like that? They want the campus to be opened up for any church to come and build seminaries "on the campus or near it so that their students may attend the lectures there and have the free use of our library and every other accommodation we can give them, preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other." Do you see that spirit? Equality but separation.

Number four, Jefferson also was in favor of "enabling students of the university to attend religious exercises with the professor of their particular sect, either in the rooms of the buildings (still to be erected, by the way) by each denomination on campus or in the lecturing room of such professor." Oh my goodness, this is horrible! We've got the professor actually holding religious exercises in his assigned classroom. Isn't this scandalous?

Number five, Jefferson felt that the student should be urged to participate in regular religious exercises, but do so without conflicting with the established schedule of the university. Said he, "Should the religious sect of the state, or any of them according to the invitation held out to them, establish within or adjacent to the precincts of the university schools for the instruction in the religion of their sect, the students of the university will be free and expected to attend religious worship at the establishment of their respective sects in time to meet their school in the university at its stated hour." Today what do we call that? Release time. You've got it in Jefferson.

You know, I got so thrilled when I read these men, because I went all through political science and law school without having to read any of this. I passed the bar the first time around not because I knew any of this, but because I knew Supreme Court cases, etc. When I started studying this, I started like a Kindergarten student.

I read Polybius, I read Cicero. I read Montesquieu. I started to read in John Locke. I read Hobbes, and I read a few other people. I couldn't believe my eyes. I got into 125 volumes of the Founding Father's original writing, and found the answer to every major problem facing America today. I want to tell you, that put fire in my bones.

By 1971 I couldn't stand it any longer, and we started holding little classes. My students would all come in with crooked arms the first few times! I would urge them to come in on Saturday, because we were separate from the campus entirely. But who else would come?

I would say, "How would you like to study the Constitution in the tradition of the Founding Fathers?"

But in due time those students told their parents, and it wasn't long before I had wonderful people sitting there in those classes that thrilled me. One of the biggest thrills was when I looked in one of those classes at the Beesley building (in down town Salt Lake City) one day, and I saw Hartman Rector, coming as a result of one of his sons being in a class. That was so thrilling to see wonderful friends for whom I have the greatest respect, coming to hear the Founding Fathers' story.

Well, I'm almost through now. I've enumerated the things that Jefferson had said in those previous passages, and Jefferson sees great advantages in following these guidelines. By leaving it exclusively to the states to work out the equal encouragement of all religions, but at the same time give no direct subsidy, Jefferson felt the goals of the Founders would be achieved. He felt there was a need to fill the chasm of religious ignorance which constituted a liability to society, and at the same time leave inviolate the Constitutional freedom of religion and the most unalienable and sacred of all human rights.

Jefferson, like other leaders among the Founders, seemed anxious to not only encourage all religious faiths on a basis of equality, but also to have them develop the spirit of toleration for each other. In referring to the university campus with its immediate environs where all faiths would be invited to provide faculties, Jefferson wrote, "by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religions a religion of peace, reason and morality."

I've gone through quickly what the courts did to change all of this around. In the beginning, you see, the attitude was that all of the Bill of Rights were specifically designed to be against the federal courts. They didn't have any application to the states.

When it said that there was to be no law passed restricting the press, the Founders knew that you have to have some restrictions on press. If somebody uses the press to tell lies about someone and destroy their character, there needs to be a remedy. But it must be the state, it must not be the federal government. There must be no laws of libel on the federal level.

They knew that you couldn't exercise the freedom of speech by going into a crowded theater and shouting "Fire!" and then after several children were trampled to death saying, "Well I didn't mean it! It's April Fool's Day, you see." See, they wouldn't allow that to be excused. We'd have an element of homicide involved there. In other words, there are some restrictions on speech. But the states have got to work it out.

There are some restrictions on religion. You cannot use religion to commit a crime. But the states must handle that, down close to the people, where if there are abuses the people will be able to correct it, that's all they're saying. That's what he meant by a wall separating church and state, meaning a wall separating the federal government from having anything to do with religion. That was what the letter said, that's what he was arguing.

Now we have a different situation. In 1925, in a notorious case where the influence of Oliver Wendell Holmes and others was beginning to have its impact, and this is so sad. Some of my heroes melt away, they wilted away under the scrutiny of close examination. One was Woodrow Wilson. I found his master's degree was against the Constitution. He wanted to abandon it in favor of a very low order of Constitutional government. He was my hero in high school days until I really got acquainted with him.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, one of my law professors practically worshipped him, but here was a man doing everything he could to destroy the idea of God-given rights. So, in 1925, in the famous Gitlow case, the Supreme Court ruled that in that case, the application of the 14th amendment was to apply to all of the states, and they began gobbling up all kinds of jurisdiction in direct violation of everything for which the federal judicial system had previously stood.

So the federal government began intervening in the affairs of the people. In 1948, the Supreme Court prohibited teaching of religion in the schools. In 1952, the Supreme Court approved release time for religious education, so that was a gain. Then gradually, the Supreme Court has developed a cultural vacuum by declaring itself neutral on the subject.

Unfortunately, it didn't remain neutral. What it actually did was to legalize the teaching of anti-religion, while trying to prevent the teaching of religion. So secular humanism, ruled by the Supreme Court to be a religion, has been finally prohibited from being taught in the schools. They finally recognized it. So if you get secular humanism, identified as such, being taught in your schools, we have several attorneys, who if you get into trouble after protesting, will take that school to court and have it ruled out of line and out of order. That's the latest ruling on the Supreme Court. There is the question, of course always, of proof, but if they are teaching the religion of humanism, antagonistic to deism and theism, they are subject to the courts.

In 1962, the Supreme Court outlawed prescribed prayers in schools, and that was a strange case because it didn't actually outlaw prayer, what it did was to say that a prayer could not be written by the state legislature and imposed on the schools. That's all it decided. I debated with the Attorney General of Massachusetts, who later became one of their senators, that didn't apply to Massachusetts, and he admitted I was right in principle, but wrong in practice. He said it's time we used any excuse we can find to get prayers out of the schools. Anyway, in 1962 the Supreme Court outlawed prescribed prayers.

In 1963, the Supreme Court outlawed the Lord's Prayer and Bible reading in public schools. And it's gotten tighter and tighter until now teaching morality or religion in any form is not allowed. There has even been some question about the possibility of outlawing Christmas programs, but the Supreme Court has now held that that's part of the culture. Isn't that an interesting rationalization? Because that was an established part of the culture, it cannot be eliminated.

So there is a need for some direct action. Daniel Webster described the Founders' traditional goal, he said, "Unborn ages and vision of glory crowd upon my soul, the realization of all which, however, is in the hands and good pleasure of almighty God. But under his divine blessing it will be dependent on the character and virtues of ourselves and of our posterity. If we and they shall live always in the fear of God, and shall respect his commandments, we may have the highest hope of the future fortunes of our country. It will have no decline and fall. It will go on prospering.

"But if we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality and recklessly destroy the political Constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden the catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. Should that catastrophe happen, let it have no history. Let the horrible narrative never be written. Unfortunately, unless the present generation of American leadership returns to fundamental values, that history is being written right now."

Now that's our challenge. So, when you put this little book where it won't get lost or gather dust because we've gone through it now, and every once in a while read those great statements of the Founders, and when somebody tells you the Founding Fathers wanted to separate the church from the states and the schools, you say, "Would you like to hear what Thomas Jefferson said our schools ought to be doing? Like having religion taught right in the classroom by the professor to any members of any particular faith? Like having all the churches invited on campus or nearby to come and study religion?"

Then if people say, "But why? What's the advantage of having them study religion?"

You should immediately have the answer: "The Founders said that religion and morality were the foundation of all good government and of our society if it is to survive."

I know that if we all combine and do our part, with God's help, we're going to win. That's our challenge. To win. Thank you.

My favorite quotes out of this:

Jefferson wrote, "by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religions a religion of peace, reason and morality."

""BRAAD is HERE and supports Christian Values""

What are those.....OH! you mean the stuff the entire news media banned last Christmas(like Christmas itself)

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