Last time we began with a statement by the late Rev. D. James Kennedy, wherein he claimed that: “If we know our history, we know that America was a nation founded upon Christ and His Word.” But was it truly founded upon God’s Word, or have we all been deceived over the centuries into believing what the anti-God scoffers claim to be fact—that men who were “mostly Deists” originally founded America as a “secular nation”? It is my personal contention that these “secularism uber alles” people are totally incorrect. I’ve been offering, as a strong rebuttal, a small book I got from D. James Kennedy Ministries years ago, titled: Ten Truths About America’s Christian Heritage, written by Sam Kastensmidt (published in 2008 by DJK Ministries).
In Part 1 of this series I covered the author’s first three proofs that our troubled nation was originally founded based on Scriptural teachings—not as a “theocracy” or even as some sort of totally Christian nation (which has never existed), but a nation founded by mostly God-fearing people who based their founding principles on what they understood to be God’s Holy Word from Scripture, and thereby codified certain rights into our 1787 Constitution that they rightly believed to have come ONLY from our Creator God, and NOT from any government. So let’s continue looking at author Kastensmidt’s “Ten Truths About America’s Christian Heritage”, as I paraphrase his words with mine.
TRUTH #4: OUR CONSTITUTION WAS MADE ONLY FOR A MORAL AND RELIGIOUS PEOPLE.
I’ve always marveled at the wisdom and simple eloquence iterated by our 6th U.S. President, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), who wrote the following simple but earth-shaking words:
“That kingdom of the just, which had floated in the virtuous visions of John Adams, while he was toiling for his country’s independence,- that kingdom of our Father in Heaven, for which his son taught us to approach him in daily prayer,-has it yet come; and if not, have our advances towards it been as pure, as virtuous, as self-denying, as were those of our fathers in the days of their trial of adversity?...THE HIGHEST, THE TRANSCENDENT GLORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WAS THIS—IT CONNECTED, IN ONE INDISSOLUBLE BOND, THE PRINCIPLES OF CIVIL GOVERNMENT WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF CHRISTIANITY.” (Emphasis mine—whl).
John Quincy Adams, Letter To An Autograph Collector, April 27, 1837.
Thirty-nine years earlier, J.Q. Adams’ father, John Adams (1734-1826) wrote the words that expressed the basic beliefs of the majority of our Founders, when he said:
“Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
John Adams, “To The Officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts”, October 11, 1798.
Adams’ words were true and should have served as a warning to his posterity—US—for they were also a verbal dagger ready to be plunged into the heart of constitutional freedom by unscrupulous and malicious politicians with agendas of personal riches and power over their fellow citizens, a species that has been plentiful throughout our history---and more so in today’s disintegrating political climate characterized by perfidy and treachery and increasingly overt Marxism.
As author Kastensmidt so aptly observed:
“The Founders understood that Christian morality was essential for both the preservation of liberty and the stability of law. They knew that if Americans ever abandoned the Biblical standards of morality, there could be no fixed boundaries to maintain either liberty or law. Consequently, there would be no end to the possibilities of national evil. They saw that the future of the nation was dependent upon the vitality of religion and the exercise of Biblical morality.” (Pp. 33-34
One does not have to be especially politically astute in our time to observe the truth of our Founders’ principles. It is obvious we are living in a society and in a time in history where the “vitality of religion and the exercise of Biblical morality” have both been severely eroded—purposely purged from our national identity by evil people with collectivist agendas.
One of the greatest of our Founders, Patrick Henry (1736-1799), knew well the propensity of men to lust over the control of other men, when he reminded his contemporaries, and US: “Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains”. That was surely true in Henry’s time. As our current history is amply proving, it is STILL true in our time. Mr. Kastensmidt very cogently observed:
“Our Founders knew that widespread religious conviction could not coexist alongside rampant immorality, and any attempts to satisfy both would lead to political chaos. They sought to promote the merits of religion in an attempt to suppress immorality. Today, secularists and atheists are seeking to do just the opposite. But government cannot be neutral in this matter. It must choose to encourage either immorality or religious conviction. If the former is unleashed, the latter will invariably be suppressed.”
Once upon a time in America, government was at least “neutral” toward religion and religious people. That is no longer the case in the U.S. in the year 2024. Today our increasingly Marxist/collectivist government is openly HOSTILE to religion and to religious expression outside the walls of our churches (and soon enough, even WITHIN those walls). Sad to say, this has happened because “Christians” have permitted it to happen. WE are guilty of being disobedient children. We are guilty of being TIMID when we should be BOLD!
TRUTH #5: OUR REPUBLIC RESTS UPON ONE BOOK, THE BIBLE.
What most Americans are totally unaware of is that our Christian Bible is the original source of many of our founding documents. Even President Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), an uncouth man of “questionable” character, observed in reference to God’s Word: “That book, Sir, is the Rock upon which our republic rests”. And much later, President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933) stated:
“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.”
Evan as far back as 1982, Newsweek Magazine, not a bastion of conservative or religious thought, in its article titled: How the Bible Made America, reluctantly observed that “historians are discovering that the Bible, perhaps even more than the Constitution, is our founding document.”
Author Kastensmidt wrote (p, 42) that:
“Political philosophers Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman set out to investigate the sources of our nation’s founding era political literature. After reviewing an estimated 15,000 written documents from the period between 1760 and 1805, professors Lutz and Hyneman determined that the Bible was, by far, the most cited source, comprising some 34% of all quotations. In fact, the Bible was cited four times as often as the next most commonly referenced source.”
Of course, the ACLU (Anti-Christian Liberties Union) has long claimed as “authoritative” its contentions that America’s founding documents never mention biblical law or doctrines, but the study, above, by Lutz and Hyneman put the LIE to the ACLU’s propaganda. Actually, as they discovered, the Biblical book of Deuteronomy, which contains much of the laws given to Moses by God on Mt. Sinai, “…is cited more than John Locke or anyone else”, according to Professor Lutz.
I’ve always agreed with the late Rev. D. James Kennedy who observed, in one of his sermons years ago, that “The Constitution is largely the product of Christian men with a Biblical worldview”. I believe he was right. And (medical) Doctor James McHenry (1753-1816), a signer of our U.S. Constitution from Maryland, had such a high regard for God’s Holy Word that he wrote:
“The Holy Scriptures…can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.”
James McHenry/Bernard Steiner: “One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society in Maryland”: Maryland Bible Society, 1921, p. 14.
And the inestimable James Madison (1751-1836), long considered to be the “Father of our U.S. Constitution”, wisely incorporated a “’separation of powers’ dividing the government into three separate branches—an idea that mirrored the three functions of governance ascribed to the Lord in Isaiah 33:22: ‘For the Lord is our judge <judicial>, the Lord is our lawgiver <legislative>, the Lord is our king <executive>’.”
Charles W. Pickering, ‘Supreme Chaos: The Politics of Judicial Confirmation & The Culture War’: 2005, p. 50.
TRUTH #6: EVERY STATE CONSTITUTION ACKNOWLEDGES GOD.
I assume that all of us know the words in the First Amendment to our Constitution, which among other rights, declare that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Unfortunately, collectivists and liberals and atheists with “agendas” have convinced our citizenry, over the past century or so, that this amendment was written to assure that “religion” does not “interfere” with government and try to impose its “morality” on various levels of said government. On the contrary, we all should know by now that these words were codified into our 1791 Bill of Rights in order to protect religious denominations and religious people from the predations of the “religion despisers” who have always lurked (but more so in the last 150 years) in the halls of our state and federal governments. In other words, that portion of our First Amendment was added to protect the people from government, NOT to protect the government from the people!. It was to assure “freedom OF religion”, not “freedom FROM religion”.
We all should know that our wise Founders rejected the idea of a “national church”, such as has always existed in Great Britain. However, they did leave open the option of individual U.S. states to establish state government approved denominations, and over U.S. history some states did just that, and added this to their state constitutions (although currently NO state constitutions contain this provision, to my knowledge).
“Joseph Story (1779-1845), appointed in 1831…to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, wrote that it was the duty of government ‘to foster and encourage’ the nation’s religious beliefs. In his “Commentaries on the Constitution of the U.S.”, Justice Story explained, ‘The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the state governments, to be acted upon according to their justice and the state constitutions.’”
Joseph Story, ‘Commentaries on the Constitution of the U.S.; Boston, 1833, reprinted 1879; Vol. 111, p. 731.
Our individual U.S. states have always had a concern for religious freedom in their constitutions. In a sermon titled, “Church and State” that he preached many years ago, Rev. D. James Kennedy said that “Through all fifty state constitutions, without exception, there runs… (an) appeal and reference to God who is the Creator of our liberties and the preserver of our freedoms.” Furthermore, back in 1864, a historian named Benjamin Morris wrote:
“An examination of the present Constitutions of the various states, now existing, will show that the Christian religion and its institutions are recognized as the religion of the Government and the nation.”
Benjamin Morris, “Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the U.S.”, Philadelphia, 1864; p. 237.
No amount of “revisionist history” promulgated by the ACLU, by Citizens United for the Separation of Church and State, and by the despisers of Judeo-Christian civilization and morality since the earliest days of our Republic, can eradicate all of the provable evidence in the constitutions of our states that our Founders, and the legislators who drew up those state constitutions, without question encouraged religious convictions among their people. Even though they all may not have been born-again “Christians” (then as now), they did concede that Christianity was the prevailing religious sentiment of the nation, and of their individual states.
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Next Time: Part 3
