"The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: that it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
- John Quincy Adams
The signers intended the Declaration of Independence to officiate the separation between America and Great Britain. However, they based the Declaration, which has served as a foundation for the beginning of the American nation, upon a greater foundational belief that God, or as written in the Declaration, a “Creator,” was the source for men’s irrevocable rights.
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, also believed, "God, who gave us life gave us liberty.”
Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration, also believed, "God, who gave us life gave us liberty.”
Two of the Continental Congress’ first actions were to hire military chaplains and to purchase 20,000 Bibles to remedy a national shortage.
Although America was already a free nation during the presidency of George Washington, as the first president of the United States, he suggested that only religion could uphold its morality. During his farewell address he said, "And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."
The first settlers in America, the Pilgrims, clearly stated the purpose for their voyage even before stepping off the Mayflower; “...undertaken for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith...”
The U.S. Supreme Court also identified America as a Christian nation in 1892 after 10 years of examining hundreds of documents on the foundation of the country. The justices came to the unanimous conclusion that the documents undeniably "add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a religious people, a Christian nation."
After the constitution had been ratified, John Adams, the second president of the United States, summed the document up this way. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
The late Ronald Reagan, 40th President of the United States, held the conviction that God cannot and should not be moved from the social and governmental construct of America. He said, "Without God there is no virtue because there is no prompting of the conscience....without God there is a coarsening of the society; without God democracy will not and cannot long endure....If we ever forget that we are one Nation under God, then we will be a Nation gone under."
People who want to remove all mention of a God from schools, public buildings, government, and society in general, use the First Amendment to the Constitution as their rallying point. But if you read that amendment carefully, you will note that the words "separation of church and state" do not appear. The amendment simply prohibits "an establishment of religion." That means there should be no nationally mandated or tax supported church. The amendment promises the federal government will not start a national church, like England has the Church of England.
We have to answer to God for our national life, because it was God who gave us our national life. It was God who was often called upon by our leaders and credited with our victory in America’s War for Independence, and not just "good fortune" or "luck" that allowed thirteen colonies to defeat the greatest military power in the world at that time.
We have to answer to God for our national life, because it was God who gave us our national life. It was God who was often called upon by our leaders and credited with our victory in America’s War for Independence, and not just "good fortune" or "luck" that allowed thirteen colonies to defeat the greatest military power in the world at that time.
Be Patriotic,
Bishop Ian
