|
America is a Christian country that contracted with God at its very conception to follow the laws of God, and to love Him, fully expecting that in return the Father would bless, and prosper, and love us.
The new colonies in America were birthed and prospered with contracts with God. The people of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent colony of America, began their foothold in the New World by erecting a Christian Cross and holding a prayer meeting as soon as they landed on April 27, 1607. And when they convened their first governmental assembly they proclaimed that men’s affairs do not prosper if prayer is neglected.
When the Pilgrims came over in 1620 they contracted with God in an expressed written contract, the Mayflower Compact, to undertake for the glory of God and the advancement of Christian faith to establish a colony. Daniel Webster the great 19th Century orator proclaimed these pilgrims of Plymouth Rock were brought here for their veneration for Christian religion, and journeyed by its light, and labored by its hope.
The Connecticut Colony’s Constitution, the first written in the Colonies, called for the government to be established according to God to maintain the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. Rhode Island’s charter declared that colony’s people submitted their lives and estates unto our Lord Jesus Christ and to the perfect and absolute laws of Jesus given in His Holy Word.
This certainty in the minds of the colonists that their blessings and prosperity flowed from their contract with God was never more clearly stated than in America’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence. In it the people declared their purpose was to conform America’s affairs to the will of the Maker. The document acknowledged that America needed God’s approval to be a nation and relied on God’s protection to exist.
The notion that this country was founded as a secular nation with a separation between church and state is not true. Nothing could be farther from the truth. A poll taken at the time of the American Revolution tells us that we were 98.4 percent Protestant. The foremost expert on the history of American education, Ellwood P. Cubberly, explained that at that time, almost every school in every village, town and city was operated by the community church, and all children learned to read in Christian materials in the classroom for the purpose of learning the will of God for their lives. The false claim that President Thomas Jefferson declared a wall of separation that kept God out of the schools is contradicted by the fact that as President he was invited to chair the first Washington, D.C. public school district, and in that role, Jefferson personally supplied Bibles and Hymnals for the students.
General George Washington, as Commander in Chief of America’s first military ordained that it be a Christian Army when he ordered that its members must be Christian soldiers and required attendance at Divine services. One observer stated that George Washington rallied his troops in the field by admonishing them to fear God and practice Christian virtues.
The Bill of Rights included the first ten amendments to the Constitution, was enacted as a promised supplement to the original Constitution, and it came about two years later. At that time, half the states had state constitutions that expressly required their state’s promotion of Christianity. For example, Delaware’s Constitution declared that a candidate for public office must swear that they were a Christian, professing faith in “God the Father and in Jesus Christ His only Son.”
James Madison, the Fourth President and the Father of the Constitution is often misrepresented as having demanded a First Amendment Freedom of Religion Establishment Clause that forbade the mingling of church and state. That claim is also false. The actual Congressional record of the debate concerning that issue records Madison assuring Christian legislators that he understood the Establishment Clause to mean nothing more than that Congress shall not establish a national religion and enforce legal observance of it by law. (The Annals of Congress, Joseph Gales, 1 Stat 50, 1789, p. 758.)
Finally, in the first hundred years of America’s history under the U.S. Constitution, our courts regularly affirmed that the United States is a Christian nation. For example, the New York Supreme Court, a very esteemed body in our early history, upheld the jail sentence and the hefty fine of a man for the crime of blaspheming Jesus Christ in the famous People v. Ruggles Decision of 1811. The Chief Justice explained that the U.S. Constitution did not allow for the endorsement of “imposter” religions such as Buddhism or Islam because Christianity is our unofficial faith. In 1845 the United States Supreme Court, in the case of Vidal v. Girard Executors, declared that the Bible could be read and taught in a public school in Philadelphia because America is a Christian country. And the U.S Supreme Court also held as late as the 1891 that a foreign pastor’s right to work in the United States may not be subject to immigration law because this is a Christian nation (Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States).
The United States Supreme Court, in a shocking reversal of its former role of defender of Christian values, is now the cutting edge of the dagger that plunges at the heart of a Christian America. It began in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education where the Supreme Court claimed for the first time the notion that the Constitution prohibits public schools from promoting any religion. In 1962 it outlawed prayer in public school in the case Engle v. Vitale, and in 1963 the Supreme Justices banned the Bible from public schools.
However the most telling decision of the modern anti-Christian courts came not from the Supreme Court directly but by a lower court decision that the U.S. Supreme Court let stand in 1992. To the crowd that challenges anyone to name one case, any case, where the courts have attacked Christianity directly rather than simply excluding all religions from schools, I answer, Roberts v. Madigan, 921 F.3d 1047 (10th Cir. 1990). In that ruling, the Court of Appeals held that a public school teacher, Ken Roberts, violated the Constitution when he added two books about Christianity to a bookcase containing 239 books including books about Buddha, Native American religion, and Greek gods. What the court’s decision meant was that Buddhism, Native American religion and Greek gods are politically correct and can remain in public school but books about Christianity violate the Constitution. That is blatant discrimination against Christianity sanctioned by our highest court.
I remember when a requirement of graduation from the sixth grade in California in 1966 meant that we had to pass a civics examination that tested students on their knowledge of the federal government. I recall having to learn the names of each of the Secretaries in the President’s Cabinet and the names of each member of the U.S. Supreme Court. We’ve come so far since those days, and many would say we have been led down the wrong path.
I believe that part of good citizenship today is to know and tell others about our true American history. And for a person of conscience that means standing up and boldly proclaiming that our America is a Christian Nation, and no amount of propaganda can make the truth not true. As one American says, They can run but they cannot hide from their record.
I urge all Americans to learn the truth about your history, determine in your own minds who lies to you about your true national character, which politicians align themselves with those who would rob you of your heritage and attack your beliefs, and then you vote accordingly. Only in this way will we draw our Christian America back toward the rock foundation on which we began – our contract with God.
|
