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Our Christian Heritage
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 Romans 2:6Yes, be thankful, brother for a just God. |
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Just realized It sure does not fit here as far as I can understand. Hopefully dmeastro can explain something Or delete it. Captain of Declaration of Independence club. |
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dmaestro 23-Jun-18, 13:23 |
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dmeastro . . . This post brings up a number of other issues. Which this club welcomes and encourages. One which caught my attention comes from your statement "But we also have a separation of church and state heritage and no state religion." In other posts here I have addressed this issue. Especially because the INTENT by the framers of our Constitution, and more to the POINT, the man that used "separation of church and state" did not INTEND for it to be interpreted in the manner it is used today. The way, you sir, are apparently using it. Historically, this separation clause, as we now refer to it has traditionally meant that government would not meddle with religion/ that is church business. Are you familiar with a link previously provided which I have used to document this? www.redstate.com My assertion regarding the historical interpretation of this separation clause can also be documented. But perhaps you are knowledgeable of legal precedents which have changed the interpretive intent of the separation clause? Of this I know nothing. Enlighten we Christians who are ignorant of this change, please? |
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dmeastro . . . FRC, Which Tony Perkins is the current leader of, surely can NOT be "blamed" (or judged - as you here are slyly doing) for the tragedy your link sensationalized. Tony Perkins stance on homosexuality, and what the Bible teaches concerning the "gay life style", is carefully and compassionately outlined at the link I provide here. It is very unfortunate some mis-guided people turned Biblical truths about how God views homosexuality (it is not condoned or winked at, incidentally) to justified violence. www.frc.org Regardless, such abominable behavior is NOT what America's Christian heritage should be associated with or remembered for. |
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A Reminder of Why America is so Blessed The fact that this aspect of America's Independence is not celebrated more openly makes me weep. Not for the fact that our history has been buried and no longer is taught, but the fact that this censorship has given rise to ideologies which are in complete opposition to that religious influence. Which has resulted in a Secular and Humanistic society. What a paradox! That reversal of ideologies is now waging fervent war for supremacy. Let me share notes of truth about America's religious influence which has been forgotten. “Faith and the American Founding: Illustrating Religion's Influence” “How long are we going to keep this experiment, this America? We are "testing whether this nation can long endure," Lincoln said at Gettysburg. We're still testing. Is America a meteor that blazed across the heavens and is now exhausted? Or rather is our present moral fog a transient time of trial, those hours cold and dark before the ramparts' new gleaming? Are we near our end or at a beginning? In answer to these questions, I want to tell six brief stories to illustrate the religious principles of the American founding. For a hundred years scholars have stressed the principles that come from the Enlightenment and from John Locke in particular. But there are also first principles that come to us from Judaism and Christianity, especially from Judaism. Indeed, it is important to recognize that most of what our Founders talked about (when they talked politically) came from the Jewish Testament, not the Christian. The Protestant Christians who led the way in establishing the principles of this country were uncommonly attached to the Jewish Testament. Scholars often mistakenly refer to the god of the Founders as a deist god. But the Founders talked about God in terms that are radically Jewish: Creator, Lawgiver, Governor, Judge, and Providence. These were the names they most commonly used for Him, notably in the Declaration of Independence. For the most part, these are not names that could have come from the Greeks or Romans, but only from the Jewish Testament. Perhaps the Founders avoided Christian language because they didn't want to divide one another, since different colonies were founded under different Christian inspirations. In any case, all found common language in the language of the Jewish Testament. It is important for citizens today whose main inspiration is the Enlightenment and Reason to grasp the religious elements in the founding, which have been understated for a hundred years. For these principles are important to many fellow citizens, and they are probably indispensable to the moral health of the Republic, as Washington taught us in his Farewell Address:"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." Reason and faith are the two wings by which the American eagle took flight. If I stress the second wing, the Jewish especially, it is because scholars have paid too much attention to Jefferson in these matters and ignored the other one hundred top Founders. For instance, we've ignored John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton, "the most influential professor in the history of America," who taught one President (Madison stayed an extra year at Princeton to study with him), a Vice President, three Supreme Court justices including the chief justice, 12 members of the Continental Congress, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 14 members of the State Conventions (that ratified the Constitution). During the revolution, many of his pupils were in positions of command in the American forces. We've ignored Dr. Benjamin Rush of Pennsylvania, John Wilson of Pennsylvania, and a host of others. I want to quote from some of the Founders to give you a taste of the religious energy behind the founding. Jefferson's Sanction: Here is my first little story, an anecdote recorded by a minister of the time: President Jefferson was on his way to church on a Sunday morning with his large red prayer book under his arm when a friend querying him after their mutual good morning said which way are you walking Mr. Jefferson. To which he replied to Church Sir. You going to church Mr. J. You do not believe a word in it. Sir said Mr. J. No nation has ever yet existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has ever been given to man and I as chief Magistrate of this nation am bound to give it the sanction of my example.Good morning Sir. Note what Jefferson is saying. He didn't say he believed in the Christian God; he evaded that point. But Jefferson did agree with what all his colleagues in the founding thought, that a people cannot maintain liberty without religion. Here is John Adams in 1776: I sometimes tremble to think that although we are engaged in the best cause that ever employed the human heart, yet the prospect of success is doubtful, not for want of power or of wisdom but of virtue. The founding generation had no munitions factory this side of the ocean, and yet they were facing the most powerful army and the largest navy in the world. Besides, their unity was fragile. The people of Virginia did not like the people of Massachusetts. The people of Massachusetts did not think highly of the people of Georgia. Reflecting on this point, President Witherspoon, who had just arrived from Scotland in 1768 and was not at first in favor of it, gave a famous sermon in April 1776 supporting independence two months before July 4. His text was read in all 500 Presbyterian churches in the colonies and widely reproduced. Witherspoon argued that although hostilities had been going on for two years, the king still did not understand that he could easily have divided the colonies and ended the hostilities. That the king didn't do so showed that he was not close enough to know how to govern the Americans. If they were to stick together with people they didn't particularly like, the Americans needed virtues of tolerance, civic spirit, and a love of the common good. Further, because the new nation couldn't compete in armed power, the colonists depended on high moral qualities in their leaders and on devotion in the people. In order to win, for instance, Washington had to avoid frontal combat, and to rely on the moral endurance of his countrymen year after year. To this end, Washington issued an order that any soldier who used profane language would be drummed out of the army. He impressed upon his men that they were fighting for a cause that demanded a special moral appeal, and he wanted no citizen to be shocked by the language and behavior of his troops. The men must show day-by-day that they fought under a special moral covenant. Now think of our predicament today. How many people in America today understand the four key words that once formed a great mosaic over the American Republic? TRUTH, we "hold these truths"; LIBERTY,"conceived in liberty";LAW"liberty under law"; and JUDGE"appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions." On the face of things, our Founders were committing treason. In the eyes of the world, they were seditious. They appealed to an objective world, and beyond the eyes of an objective world, they appealed to the Supreme Judge for the rectitude of their intentions. That great mosaic, which used to form the beautiful, colorful apse over the American Republic, in this nonjudgmental age has fallen to the dust. It is disassembled in a thousand pieces. Fewer every year remember how it used to look. CONGRESS IN PRAYER The Parliament had nothing to do with their relationship to the king, they thought. Yet, as these delegates were gathering, news arrived that the king's troops were shelling Charlestown and Boston, and rumors flew that the city was being sacked, and robbery and murder were being committed. Those rumors turned out not to be true, but that's the news they heard. Thus, as they gathered, the delegates were confronted with impending war. Their first act as a Continental Congress was to request a session of prayer. AN ACT OF PROVIDENCE On the night before the battle of Long Island, the Americans received intelligence that the British were attacking the next morning, and Washington was trapped with his whole army. Washington saw that there was only one way out -- by boat. During the night, the Americans gathered as many boats as they could. There weren't enough. Morning came, and more than half the army was still on shore. A huge fog rolled in and covered them till noon. They escaped, and when the British closed the trap, there was no one there. The Americans interpreted that fog as an act of Providence. THE AUTHOR OF LIBERTY When Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence, he mentioned God twice. Before the Congress would sign it, members insisted on two more references to God. Thus, the four names already mentioned: the AUTHOR of nature and nature's laws; the CREATOR who endowed in us our rights; theJUDGE to whom we appeal in witness that our motives spring not out of seditiousness, but from a dear love of liberty, and a deep sense of our own proper dignity; and a trust in DIVINE PROVIDENCE. I've mentioned that though some historians say they were deists, the early Americans who believed that the lifting of the fog on Long Island was an act of God, were not deists. Their god was not a "watchmaker God," who winds the universe up and lets it go. Their god was a God who cares about contingent affairs, loves particular nations, is interested in particular peoples and particular circumstances. Their god was the God of Judaism, the God of Providence. Not a swallow falls in the field but this God knows of it. His action is in the details. THE LOGIC OF FAITH The Third Article of the Constitution of Massachusetts: As the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality, and as these cannot be generally diffused through a community but by the institution of the public worship of God and of public instructions in piety, religion, and morality: Therefore, To promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require, and the legislature shall, from time to time, authorize and require, the several towns, parishes, precincts, and other bodies-politic or religious societies to make suitable provision, at their own expense, for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality in all cases where such provision shall not be made voluntarily. When this article was attacked as an infringement on religious liberty, John Adams replied, in effect, "Not at all, you don't have to believe it. But if you want the good order that comes from instruction in religion, particularly the Jewish and Christian religion, then you have to pay for it." That's not the way we think today, I hastily add, but this is the sort of logic our Founders used. Let us walk through the three crucial steps of this logic, one by one. So there are three principles in this fundamental logic:NO REPUBLIC WITHOUT LIBERTY;NO LIBERTY WITHOUT VIRTUE; NO VIRTUE WITHOUT RELIGION. Now, doesn't that sound old-fashioned? In these days, doesn't it sound hardly tenable? Yet our Founders were right. Is not our present circumstance dangerous to the Republic?” [1]See "Letter to Peter Carr," August 19, 1785, in Thomas Jefferson's Writings, ed. Merrill D. Peterson (New York: The Library of America, 1984), pp. 814-815 There is more at the link below. www.heritage.org |
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