Was America A Christian Nation? You May Be Surprised
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ November 12, 2005
Several years ago, Jim Rudd, Editor of Internet Webpage www.covenantnews.com, wrote an essay entitled Roe v Wade vs. The Marriage Covenant in which he pointed to the futility of the churches attempt to enforce God's legal standards when they have been overridden by the State. He described how God's order for the marriage covenant had been overturned by Roe v Wade that vests headship in the woman by allowing her to control progeny.
"According to the State, if the mother chooses to kill her child by abortion, the father has no right and no legal remedy to save the life of his child. If he tries to stop his wife, either by force, or by threat of force, the police can arrest him and the courts can throw him in prison."
Jim Rudd's writing provides a clear example of the legal implications outlined in this essay.
Peter Marshall, David Barton, D.J. Kennedy and others have all publicly contended that the Founders of our nation were Christians and that they created a Christian Nation. Secularists declare this is not the case and the debate goes on.
Both David Barton and Peter Marshall have written about our Christian heritage in interesting and informative books and D. James Kennedy is an incisive author and pastor. I have read, heard, and enjoyed all three.
When our venerable ancestors gathered in the late Eighteenth Century to craft a constitutionally controlled Federal Government, their quest was inhibited by the vested interests of the sovereign states they planed to meld. Historian H. W. Brands speaks of two major errors caused by their pragmatic* efforts at culmination. First, they did not specify the issue of sovereignty. Second, they did not confront slavery.
These unfortunate omissions allowed the means to justify the end and a belligerent American spirit to vent into a bloody Civil War that consumed over half a million of the nations young men and installed an imposter as sovereign.
"As political philosophy derives its sanction from ethics, and ethics from the truth of religion, it is only by returning to the eternal source of truth that we can hope for any social organization which will not, to its ultimate destruction, ignore some essential aspect of reality." Elliot then concluded, "The term 'democracy,' as I have said again and again, does not contain enough positive content to stand alone against the forces you dislike - it can easily be transformed by them. If you will not have God (and He is a jealous God), you should pay your respects to Hitler and Stalin."
The inimitable Patrick Henry recognized problems with the new Constitution early and was reluctant to allow Virginia to ratify. Included in his concerns were that abuse of the Federal power to tax would become tyrannical. He was concerned that the power to bind the nation with treaties put liberty in jeopardy and the power to regulate militias would rob the states of their ability to defend themselves. He contended that the delegates had been convened to amend the Articles of Confederation and that producing a Constitution was overstepping their bounds. Some of his concerns were later addressed in the Bill of Rights. Liberty was Patrick Henry's primary objective and as time has gone on most of his fears have proven to be prescient.
Much blame has accrued to Lincoln for his cruel use of Federal power to preserve the Union. He was in fact a Federalist and a tyrant beatified by assassination. His imposition of Federal power over the South accelerated the national fall into despotism. He was not, however, the first Federalist; George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and John Adams fought to secure Federal power and Adams packed the Supreme Court with Federalist judges. The American Leviathan grew rapidly.
Some liberty lovers contend the less specific Articles of Confederation might have resulted in a longer preservation of freedom. Whether or not this is true would have depended on the governments of the individual states. Mitigating in favor of the Articles was the fact that most of the individual states required Christian oaths.
It is true that God's Laws can as easily be breached as the mandates of the Constitution. Their superiority lies in the blessings God promises to those who obey, in the intrinsic Godly wisdom they represent, and in their immutability. The pernicious nature of all humans, their varying perspectives and opinions render righteous consensus nugatory and God's Laws the sublime alternative.
All of them; the Constitutional framers, the Civil Warmongers, H. W. Brand, D. James Kennedy, David Barton, Peter Marshall and many others failed in their efforts to determine the proper sovereign. They all strived for humanistic government and failed to seat God and His Legal standards in the kingly chair.
Since the varied opinions of men are often evil, those who impose man-made-law must ultimately resort to tyranny. This is a maxim the Founders failed to apprehend and the American people either have forgotten or do not understand, otherwise the overarching Laws of God would never have been ignored and we might still be guided by their preeminent mandates.
Benjamin Franklin alluded to the tenuous nature of the founding documents when he said they had created "a Constitutional Republic, if you can keep it".
Over the years, there have been several attempts by Christians to insert an allegiance to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob into the Founding documents. In the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, the National Reform Association contending that the Civil War was a divine punishment for failing to address the issue of sovereignty failed at such an effort.
Separation of church and state has been widely interpreted as the absence of governmental allegiance to any particular God. This unfortunate interpretation has resulted in government becoming a humanistic endeavor devoid of overarching moral authority. Failure to incorporate our Christian God as the sovereign has allowed secular government to ignore the protestations of America's citizens and continue to drag the nation into chaos and tyranny.
Our leaders dispense with immutable Law and make man the arbiter of right and wrong; pit one segment of society against another; get rid of the death penalty; criminalize the trivial; fill the nation with tempting pornography and arrest those that participate; condone blatant dishonesty in public places; teach children that they evolved from slime and are no better than animals; remove the anchor of accurate history; fill the nation with gullible immigrants; allow the ignorant and naive the right to vote; control the dissemination of news; render elections nugatory by cementing the destiny of the Nation regardless of party; detach what our leaders say from what they do; allow AIDS to become rampant; promote moral degeneracy; break up the family; create a generation of worker slaves; send our youth to be slaughtered in contrived and unnecessary wars; pilfer money from one segment of society and like Robin Hood give it to another; deliberately impede the educational system; conspire to erode wealth; saturate society with addicting drugs and rob freedom in vain defense; aggrandize, overpay, and over authorize inferior bureaucrats; grab the guns and leave the public defenseless; extend incremental totalitarianism over corporations and individuals; allow an oligarchy to erode our national sovereignty; vest control of the nations press in a handful of co-conspirators; fan the flames of racial strife...... and soon they may announce that riots will necessitate marshal law, captivating and enslaving the people.
As Jim Rudd so eloquently inferred, law forms the religious base of society. No nation can be a Christian nation without vesting sovereignty in the One True God and obeying His ordinances.
America was never a Christian nation. It is and always has been a pagan nation inhabited by a naïve and theologically blind Christian population of which for many years I was a member.
*Pragmatism has several definitions I use the word to mean: "a method or tendency in philosophy...which determines the meaning and truth of all concepts by their practical consequences."