Last time we explored some possibilities as to whether or not our troubled country, the U.S.A., was originally established as a Christian-oriented nation by people who were mostly Christians. One thing is certain when delving into our history: The Constitutional Republic known as the United States of America was deliberately NOT established as a “Theocracy” and in fact, our Founders were aghast at the notion of such a form of government (as I would have been). Nor was it founded as a “Democracy”, which our Founders, in their wisdom, recognized as one of the WORST forms of government. Many of our modern-day politicians, feeble-brained Dumbocrats and RINOS that they are, seem to always forget this fact (or ignore it ON PURPOSE)! I trust that you, my readers, know the vital differences between a “republic” and a “democracy”, and WHY we should keep it that way! (For a thorough explanation of that subject, log on to timesexaminer.com—LOCAL COLUMNISTS, and then on my name, for a list of my archived articles, an then on the title: “This is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Let’s keep it that way!”, published on March 25, 2019
For many years, in fact many decades, Americans have been deluged with both subtle and deliberate LIES regarding the founding of the U.S. Most of these lies center around the “DISINFORMATION” that our Founders were “irreligious” or were, at best, mostly all “deists” with no personal relationship with the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob through His Son, our LORD Jesus the Messiah. The Christian Heritage deniers love to quote from President John Adams who, when writing of the peace treaty with the Barbary Muslim pirates in the early 1800’s, was supposed to have denied that the U.S. was a “Christian nation”, which must have pleased those pagan Muslims.
While John Adams was ostensibly an “Episcopalian”, he was probably one of the few real deists among our Founders. Of course, there is extensive historical background to that Barbary treaty, which was entered into with North African Muslims of the time, and Adam’s statement may in fact have been spurious, and possibly incorporated later into Adam’s writings by his secretary, who was said to have been anti-Christian! In any case, his countrymen, both in the law and in the political realm, would have belied his statement, because by far the majority of them WERE Christians, either in fact or at least nominally on the surface, and were not “secularists” in their daily lives or in their beliefs. Nor was the U.S. government!
Mark D. Hall, writing for The Heritage Foundation in 2011, put it this way by posing the question: “Did America have a Christian Founding?” He answers that question of whether or not religion influenced our founding with the following two statements: “’Of course not’, and ‘absolutely’, both of which distort the Founders’ views. (H)e discusses three major areas of agreement with respect to the religious liberty and church/state relations at the time of the Founding:
- Religious liberty is a right and must be protected;
- The national government should not create an established church, and states should have them only if they encourage and assist Christianity;
- Religion belongs in the public square. (And by inference, in ALL levels of government--WHL.)
In short, while America did not have a Christian Founding in the sense of creating a theocratic (form of government), its Founding was deeply shaped by Christian moral truths. More important, it created a regime that was hospitable to Christians, (and) also to practitioners of other religions.”
I recommend you go on line and read Mark Hall’s report from the Heritage Foundation, as named above. It’s an excellent analysis of this question which has long vexed Americans. Most of us have probably never heard of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 1892 which ruled that: “…The U.S. was a ‘Christian Nation’—a nation whose culture and institutions have been shaped by the teachings of Christianity.” In other words, 127 years ago the top court in our land ruled that the U.S. WAS a “Christian nation”. How did it become so in the intervening 272 years since the Christian Pilgrims established the first true Christian-centered colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620?
Haven’t we been told for most of our lives that America was founded as a “secular” nation, not a “Christian” one, and that our government, its Founders, its leaders, and its liberties were not based on God’s Word but on “Man’s Precepts”? Have the ‘Secularists’ been telling our grandparents, our parents, us, and our children the TRUTH or have they been lying to us for their own reasons and to further their own anti-Christian agendas? Was the L.A. Times correct when it wrote several years ago: “America’s unchristian beginnings…. The Founders were ‘deists’ who rejected the divinity of Jesus”. Or the Miami Sun Herald, which claimed, “(the) Authors of the Declaration (of Independence) were ‘enemies’ of Christ”. Obviously, someone is spreading “fake news”, but just who are the “fakers” is the question. I think I know. I think you do, also.
For decades we’ve been assured by the serpent tongues of the secularists and the left wing socialist progressives that are infesting and contaminating our nation that most of our Founding Fathers were “deists” who believed, generally, that once God “created the Heavens and the Earth” he abandoned mankind, and left us to our own devices and our own fate. Ben Franklin, Ethan Allen, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams MAY have been “Deists”, properly defined; Thomas Paine, NOT a signer of any of our Founding documents, surely WAS a “Deist”, or perhaps was a God-denier--his beliefs grew more radical as he aged, and when he later went to France (and was arrested by the French government and almost sent to the guillotine) he became an anti-Christian Jacobin radical, STRONGLY influenced by the anti-Christian, anti-monarchical, anti-family, anti-heritage group known as The Illuminati, which had spread from Germany into France (and even into the young U.S.A. before 1800).
I believe that Jefferson might have become a real Christian, especially later in life when some of his views changed, but others disagree. (He, too, was “intrigued” by the sinister anti-Gods called The Illuminati, as was Benjamin Franklin. Both of these Founding Fathers spent many years in pre-French Revolution and post-French Revolution Europe (Franklin off and on from the 1750’s through the early 1790’s, and Jefferson in France in the mid-to-late 1780’s, periods when anti-French Monarchy and anti-Christian forces were becoming well established, and both men for certain were influenced by their association with Illuminati/Jacobin “clubs” or lodges in France that were later established in the young United States by French revolutionary immigrants who brought their Illuminati-inspired radical French Revolultionary beliefs with them.)
Of the 56 brave men who signed the Declaration of Independence, 29 of them held Seminary or what we today would call “Bible College” degrees. That hardly seems to be grounds for listing them as “atheists or deists”. All of the signers belonged to established religious denominations. Which, of course, didn’t assure that they were “true” Christians, for only God knows what is really in a person’s heart regarding belief in Him.
Interestingly, the Treaty of Paris (1783) which officially ended the Revolutionary War between Great Britain and her former American colonies, began with the words: “IN THE NAME OF THE MOST HOLY AND UNDIVIDED TRINITY”. That was hardly a “secular” statement, nor were John Adams’ words: “The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity.” Indeed they were!
(Next time in Part 3—AFTER Christmas-- we’ll delve into how God’s Word has influenced our nation since its earliest days).