Bullet Points – 9/28/07

Thanks for the compliment and link!! Awesome!!

I read the “dogmatism” thing, and nearly threw up afterwards.

Has any of you read C.S. Lewis or Francis Schaffer’s works?

The only redeeming factor to your generation’s apparent lily-livered Christianity is that you are all so nice. I mean, you guys are REALLY NICE. You know I have been banned at Calvinist websites, not for impoliteness or anything, but just for mentioning The Hypothetical Question. Not explaining iot mind you, just mentioning it because educated Calvinists know who Duns Scotus actually is.

But you fellas listened to me through thick and thin, through my psychotic ranting and through what must appear to you as some pretty weird theology. Yet you were patient and kind. That’s a rare quality, in my experience.

Anyway, despite the fact that you seem to have a voracious curiosity, I see a problem with epistemological conviction. I spent more than 10-15 years of my life on that subject alone to build a foundation on which truth can take root. I guess I’m just questioning whether this generation even has the top soil that any kind of real truth can flower in. Not from that blog I read, or McGrath’s, or any of a thousand others I see daily.

Christianity will be in big trouble until it does solve that problem. Just look at the scandal in the Catholic Church and you’ll see that the tidal wave of narcisscism and secularist passivity is not far behind you. In fact, it has completely destroyed Catholoicism, the historical Christian denominatioon, and now the cancer has spread to the Episcopalians, the Methodists, the Luthren’s, the Presbyterians….

What? You think you are immune down there in lower church Christianity? You think your Saddleback theologies are going to save you when the day of decision comes?

No.

You have to have worked years before the time to get that kind of wherewithal to overcome evil.

Anyway, you are all so very nice, I wish truth was more positive. But that’s the rub isn;t it? In the Bible, nobody’s message, none of the prophets were preaching messages that sounded wonderful all the time. In fact, God made them do some pretty strange things to actually get people to reject the message of the prophet, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they may not hear. He had them curse, he had them lay naked, he had them marry prostitutes, he had them kill hundreds of people at a time.

Did they repent (get it)?

Truth is always a stumbling block, ALWAYS.

Later dudes.

I think I have a more productive suggestion to illustrate the point I have been trying but failing to make, Nathan.

Instead of listening to boobs like me and McGrath argue, I suggest that you watch the documentary on TV right now on PBS, Ken Burns’ “The War.”

While you are watching it, pretend the anti-God crowd are the Nazis.

When the Christian world begins to act like the Great Generation in it’s defeat of Nazism, I will be a happy man.

The seventh installment of Burn’s “The War” was excellent, but they all are. It is by far one of the best productions ever shown on American television.

There was a panel afterward of the producers and some theologian, and they were discussing the ethics of the problem of war, it was thought provoking.

One of the heroes of the film, E.B. Sledge, said in the film that after the war he thrust himself into the pursuit of science in order to keep himself from going mad. I thought that was interesting.

Another interesting comment was from one of the soldiers wives in mobile, Alabama who said that not one of their generation could not be convinced that the atomic bomb was not a godsend. I thought that was interesting too.

Well, I think I’m about spent here, Nathan, but I wanted to make one final observation.

Since postulating PC to you, the major objection to the theory seemed to be (always is) the idea that it fails to recognize reality. In other words how can I be so obtuse (you didn’t say that of course, again you are so polite) to presuppose a system of belief that denies observable reality?

Well, I think that is really an interesting thought coming from people who profess to base their entire belief system on something completely unobservable and in complete denial of reality, the doctrine of the Resurrection.

Bultmann of course, did not believe in the resurrection. Nor did he believe in the efficacy of the Cross, that it actually saves men from their sins.

But Bultmann did believe in something interesting. The problem of the Cross. You see, the Cross itself is a stumbling block. It is a stumbling block to those who do not believe, and it is also a greater stumbling block to believers, but they don’t know that because men like myself who have tried to convey that message have failed throughout history.

But I’m rambling again, aren’t I?

Better stick to listening to your “friends” like McGrath. Perhaps he can explain the problem of the Cross to you as a disciple of Bultmann, the atheist Christian theologian.

But I’m the real dichotomous one, right?

Happy trails to you, until we meet again.

While you are watching it, pretend the anti-God crowd are the Nazis.

Hey, I resent that…

Since postulating PC to you, the major objection to the theory seemed to be (always is) the idea that it fails to recognize reality. In other words how can I be so obtuse (you didn’t say that of course, again you are so polite) to presuppose a system of belief that denies observable reality?

Well, I think that is really an interesting thought coming from people who profess to base their entire belief system on something completely unobservable and in complete denial of reality, the doctrine of the Resurrection.

But (and I know that wasn’t adressed to me, I’m responding to it anyway) I, unlike most here, do not profess any such thing. Your position may be logically superior to creationists’ and theistic evolutionists’, which requires cherry-picking which parts of reality to accept and which to reject, but how is it superior to mine, which does not rely on a rejection of reality at all? Do you in fact reconcile your philosophy with reality, and if so, how?

Sorry for the poor choice of comparison, that really was an unfortunate choice of words, I didn;t mean it that way, I think you know that. I think what I was trying to say is that despots in the past century used the secularist construct of Darwinian evolution to wreak massive evil on the world, to the tune of hundreds of millions of murders.

Now, of course, regular secularists do not fall into the category of these evil people, instead they claim the Darwinian philosophy when it regards material viewpoints, and they then make a existential leap in their minds whn it comes to ethics and imagine that their ethical principles somehow derive not from Judeo-Christianity, but from something else, just what we are usually not told, sometimes they blather something about secular humanism.

When you say “thou shalt not murder,” Moses thought of it first.

If you perchance say “thou shalt not screw my wife,” Moses thought of it first.

etc, etc.

As for the reality comment, my only fallback position is Kuhn’s instrumentalism and rational non-realism, how many times do I have to say that that is my philosophical scientific position?

And yes, your view is superior on mateiral issues, I have stipulated that to no end here, that is the other half of my point.

I think, and again I’m being redundant to what I have already addressed here quite sufficiently I should think, that Christians should do secular science, methodological materialism, it is the only possiblke way to do rational science at this point in history.

If my creationist theory is not one that you can climb on board and support, George, at least for Christians, THERE IS NONE. LOL.

When you say “thou shalt not murder,” Moses thought of it first.

If you perchance say “thou shalt not screw my wife,” Moses thought of it first.

And someone else thought of it before him. A few hundred thousand, perhaps a few million years before him. You may continue to disregard my explanation of how a morality entirely separate from Judeo-Christian principles is not only possible but (IMO) preferable, and insist that all morality must come from these principles, but that does not make it so. We were moral creatures long before the advent of Judaism, and we have texts written well before, according to the Bible, the Earth was created which prove this.

George, really, this is beneath you.

American law and ethics, Western law and ethics, are a Judeo-Christian construct, period. Perhaps a tinge of Roman law, but by and large, it’s the Ten Commandments redux.

Please, stay on point.

You’re really quite charming when you actually use that brain of yours, big boy.

You seem sadly misinformed on American history, my friend.

OMG, if you want to follow this up, George, I would be more than happy to give you an extensive lesson on the Christian History of the Constitution of the United States, as well as an extensive history of the theology of the Founding Fathers and the American Colonies.

What do you say, pal o’ mine?

And I think you should pack a lunch.

Here’s a sampling for you, let’s start with the commission of the Liberty Bell. This is from a university textbook “Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America’s Founding Ideas.” By David Hackett Fischer, Brandeis University, Oxford University Press.

“The Assembly liked the idea. In 1750, exactly 75 percent of its members belonged to the Society of Friends. The bell was very much a Quaker project, and it symbolized their values and purposes. Isaac Norris junior also chose the words for its inscription, and wrote it in his own hand” “Proclaim liberty thro’ all the land to all its Inhabitants thereof.” Norris took his text from the Bible. The verse in Leviticus 25:10 reads, in the King James version, “And ye shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto the inhabitants thereof: it shall be a jubilee unto you; and ye shall return every man unto his possession, and ye shall return every man unto his family.”

Here was a fitting passage for the fiftieth anniversary of Pennsylvania’s Charter of Privileges. It also summarized the Quaker vision of liberty and freedom, which was different from beliefs in New England and New York. This Quaker idea began with an idea of liberty as a gift of God. Other Christians shared that belief, but Quakers understood it in a special way. They thought of it as an “inner light” that was given to all His children, not merely the “elect,” as Calvinists imagined, or to members of an established church, as Anglicans and Roman Catholics insisted. Quakers believed that this inner light dwelled within all God’s creatures. Sometimes they spoke of it as the light of liberty.”

Contrast this to the Roman and Greek ideals, which were devoid of personal liberty and instead either had no meaningful concept of liberty or concentrated it in the polis, or in the gods and fates, or in Caesar, in other words, the State.

Contrast this with any other civilization in history. Judeo-Christianity birthed the idea of liberty and freedom, and to say otherwise is an enormous statement of ignorance, or an outright lie in a vain attempt to avoid historical truth. Do the socialist offer liberty? Hardly. Do the communists (which is a stage of socialism not a variant of it) offer liberty? Please. Is the concept of liberty and freedom inherent in Darwinism? LOL.

Ok, now that we’re off to the races, I’ll digress and begin from the early Puritan period and move forward.

When you get tired of being pummeled to death, let me know.

Next post will probably be Monday, I’m going to try and go win one of those college and pro football pools this weekend.

See you, bud.

You know what I find also interesting, George, is that even if I grant you your premise that all of Judeo-Christian principles of law and ethics are found resident in other religions (which I don;t, but let’s pretend), you still have to acknolwedge that you are getting your ethics from SOME RELIGION. You are not even arguing that secular humanism produced them, you are arguing for a religious origin.

I don’t get it. So, are you saying you will accept the Judeo-Christian ethics if it can be shown they derived from the Babylonian law instead of specifically from Moses?

Really, what are you trying to say, anyway?

But, regardless of your answer, I’m going to love this string. Showing the Christian history of America is one of my favorite subjects.

Well, I reconsidered using Nathan’s Blog as a ring in which to spar with you. It’s not really my place, and I really am seeing no value in attempting to sway an athiest. Please, do not let me in any way deflect you from your path of disbelief. That would certainly be rude of me. I would love to sit here for the next several weeks and show you how our entire personal injury law, criminal law, business law, tort and civil law, are based on Mosaic Law, but what’s the point? Nobody cares anymore, not even the Christians.

Read R.J. Rushdoony, Institutes of Biblical Law; Gary North economic treatise on the Pentateuch, 5 volumes; Gary Demar’s God and Government series; The American Covenant by Marshall Foster and Mary Swanson; The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States by Rosalie Slater; and if you would like a list a a couple hundred or thousand other works on the subject, all of which I have read, please let me know.

For now let me leave you with one of my favorite qoutes:

Let Divines, and Philosophers, Statesmen and Patriots unite their endeavours to renovate the Age, by impressing the Minds of Men with the importance of educating their little boys, and girls — of inculcating in the Minds of youth the fear, and Love of the Deity, and universal Phylanthropy; and in subordination to these great principles, the Love of their Country — of instructing them in the Art of self government, without which they never can act a wise part in the Government of Societys great, or small — in short of leading them in the Study, and Practice of the exalted Virtues of the Christian system.

* Letter to John Adams (4 October 1790)

That was Samuel Adams, btw.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_Adams

Oh, and if you are intending on playing a battle of the woutations, like many YEC’s play, forget, not interested.

You could easily on this very blog, find qouted from me that would make me look like an atheist and a Darwinist. Yet no one who knows anything about me would agree that that is the case.

Substantive scholarship is what we need, not little boy playground games, which is not a poke at you at all, George, more of an observation of what I get out of my own kind.

Interesting… you throw quotations at me, then insist you are above a battle of quotes. Besides which, I fail to understand how a [i]letter to[/i] a Founding Father can be considered evidence of the prevailing winds in early American religio-political policy.

You know what I find also interesting, George, is that even if I grant you your premise that all of Judeo-Christian principles of law and ethics are found resident in other religions (which I don;t, but let’s pretend), you still have to acknolwedge that you are getting your ethics from SOME RELIGION. You are not even arguing that secular humanism produced them, you are arguing for a religious origin.

No, I am not. I stated that most of these values had likely originated tens of thousands of years ago, in all likelihood before the concept of religion was even invented. Even our primate relatives share many concepts of morality with us.

Contrast this to the Roman and Greek ideals, which were devoid of personal liberty and instead either had no meaningful concept of liberty or concentrated it in the polis, or in the gods and fates, or in Caesar, in other words, the State.

You might wish to turn to Plato’s Republic. I’m sure you have a copy, since it’s required reading for Intro Philosophy in most colleges, and as you have said so many times, you are obviously quite well versed in the subject.

The entire concept of doubting the Christian origin of America is patently stupid.

I suggest you ask for a refund from wherever you were educated.

George, unless you are 20 years old, I can scarcely imagine that you are not aware of the voluminous content arrayed against you on this argument.

But, if you insist, I suppose I’ll play along as long as I have the strength.

I equate this effort with arguing with a YEC at this point, just to let you know.

Perhaps we should begin this discussion by taking it out of the context of the theoretical and right into the light of modern controversy, which is basically what you are challenging me to do, to show it’s (the Law and the Prophets, in other words, the Word of God) relevance then, and it’s relevance now:

http://www.visionforum.com/hottopics/newsletters/newsletter.aspx?id=02-22-06

http://www.judicial.state.al.us/supreme.cfm?Member=120

Read the article, I have just copied a portion here. We shall commence with the lesson on Christian history shortly, perhaps tonight or tomorrow morning.

Welcome to VisionForum.com! (log in) | Your Account | Tracking | Cart | Help
E-Mail Newsletters

Extraordinary times require extraordinary men. George Washington was a giant of a man — uniquely crafted by the Lord and providentially raised up for a defining moment in our history. He was God’s tool to bring military victory to the cause of independence, to oversee the crafting of our Constitution, and to shape and define the meaning and nature of the American Presidency. As we progress into the twenty-first century, the future of Americans again seems uncertain. The urgency of the hour is for unflinching, stalwart men — men who boldly proclaim the law of God — to stand with might in the very gates of the land, fighting in the defining battles of our generation. Today, on the 274th anniversary of our first Commander in Chief’s birth, Vision Forum inaugurates our George Washington Man of the Year Award to recognize and honor those individuals who demonstrate, through their public courage, the stalwart spirit and mature leadership of the General himself.
Justice Tom Parker: Man of the Year

And he set judges in the land throughout all the fenced cities of Judah, city by city, And said to the judges, Take heed what ye do: for ye judge not for man, but for the LORD, who is with you in the judgment. Wherefore now let the fear of the LORD be upon you; take heed and do it: for there is no iniquity with the LORD our God, nor respect of persons, nor taking of gifts. Moreover in Jerusalem did Jehoshaphat set of the Levites, and of the priests, and of the chief of the fathers of Israel, for the judgment of the LORD, and for controversies, when they returned to Jerusalem. (2 Chronicles 19:5-8)

February 22, 2006
By Wesley Strackbein

Do you remember the last time you heard of a high-ranking elected official invoking the name of Jesus Christ in his inaugural address, explaining that the Lord is the only source of life, law, and liberty?

You have heard of innumerable judges and their rulings which appear to legitimize sin and progressively banish God from the public square; but when was the last time you read of a Supreme Court justice using Scripture in a court opinion to explain and defend the biblical roots of the common law and our constitutional system of government?

And can you think of one high-ranking judge in the entire United States, currently in office, who has risked his “[career], his fortune and his sacred honor” by standing completely alone, taking an unequivocal biblical stand in the defense of women and children?

If you have followed the rise of the Christian jurist, Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, then your answer is yes.

For demonstrating unflinching courage in the field of legal and spiritual battle; for modeling a heroic commitment to historic constitutional and Christian principles of justice; for restoring the biblical duty of the judge to defend women and children; for acting without compromise, but with remarkable charity and gentlemanly demeanor; and for restoring hope to a generation of Christians who have, for decades, lived in the shadows of judicial tyranny, Justice Tom Parker is the 2005 Vision Forum George Washington Man of the Year. In our view, he represents the very best example of visionary, righteous, Christian leadership.

Justice Tom Parker, Dottie Parker, and Justice Clarence Thomas in a private swearing-in ceremony in the chambers of U.S. Supreme Court
The swearing-in committee in the chambers of the United States Supreme Court
Justice Parker Rises to Fill a Leadership Void

A distinguishing characteristic of Justice Tom Parker is his marriage to wife Dottie. Virtually inseparable, the couple’s deep love for each other and commitment to serve the Lord as a team is widely recognized. A model southern lady and a devoted student of Scripture, Dottie is usually seen by her husband’s side, encouraging him and praying for him. It is clear to everyone that they are not just husband and wife; they are best friends. In a day of leaders with failing marriages and broken covenants, this happy marriage of twenty-three years is an encouragement to many.

Together, the Parkers have been front and center in the battle to preserve righteousness in the land and defend the American family. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Vanderbilt Law School, Justice Parker founded the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute) and Alabama Family Advocates. He served three Alabama Attorney Generals, where he handled death penalty cases, criminal appeals, and constitutional litigation. Throughout his legal career, Parker has fought to defend the unborn, to protect the rights of parents to home educate their children, and to defeat judge-ordered tax increases.

In January of 2001, Justice Parker received an appointment that forever changed his life. Judge Roy Moore, newly elected as Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, hired Tom Parker to serve as his Deputy Director of the Administrative Office of the Courts. During the Ten Commandments controversy, Parker served as Legal Adviser to Chief Justice Moore. Through the long fight to keep the Ten Commandments Monument in the judicial building and through Chief Justice Moore’s ultimate removal from office by a kangaroo court, Justice Parker stood beside his boss and was immediately fired in the fall of 2003 after Chief Justice Moore was tossed off Alabama’s high court.

Yet Tom Parker would live to fight another day. In November 2004, Parker was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court after a hotly disputed primary against Jean Brown, an incumbent Associate Justice who voted to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building and supported the removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore. Justice Brown and her supporters out-spent Tom Parker six-to-one, but still lost. Then, in the General Election, soon-to-be Justice Parker easily defeated his Democratic opponent.
Justice Parker Claims the High Ground During
Swearing-In Ceremony

Justice Parker’s victory over Justice Jean Brown set the stage for another day of drama. Once again, both Moore and Parker would stand before the high court and their fellow Alabamians for Justice Parker’s investiture. On January 14, 2005, hundreds of Alabamians packed out the Troy State University Davis Theatre for the Performing Arts in Montgomery to witness the swearing-in ceremony of Justice Tom Parker along with two other newly-elected Alabama Supreme Court Justices.

At the appointed time, Tom Parker walked toward the front of the stage to take his oath of office. Behind him, at a long table draped in black, sat the very justices who had supported the removal of Chief Justice Roy Moore and Tom Parker from office!

When he reached center-stage, Parker stood face-to-face with Roy Moore. With Dottie holding the family Bible, former Chief Justice Moore swore in Justice Tom Parker.

Following the administration of his oath, Justice Parker walked to a podium on the left side of the stage where he addressed the capacity crowd that had gathered for the ceremony. In Parker’s opening remarks as a newly-installed Supreme Court Justice, he cut straight to the heart of the raging battle over legal theory with these pointed words:

The defining question for the American people today is this: “By what standard?” By what standard shall we govern ourselves? By what standard shall our courts interpret the Constitution? Who is the ultimate voice of authority? Is it the people? Is it the judges who wear black robes? Are they truly the ultimate voice of authority? Or is there a higher source from which even the legitimacy of constitutions ultimately derive their authority, and to whom the allegiance of every policy maker and judge is due?[i]

In his answer to this probing question, Justice Parker claimed the high ground with this proclamation:

The very God of Holy Scriptures, the Creator, is the source of law, life, and liberty. It is to Him, not evolving standards or arbitrary pronouncements of judges, that the leaders of every nation owe their ultimate allegiance.[ii]

George Washington’s Education

(by Mrs. Dorothy Robbins)

It is often heard today that Washington was not a well educated man! If he wasn’t, it is amazing that he had such a large correspondence with the most educated men of his day. In fact, if one begins to read the many documents a man of his many responsibilities had to write, it is doubtful most folks could do as well as he did. They are well written grammatically and his vocabulary puts to shame that of most of today’s college students. (That includes me!)

Peter Lillback tells us that,

“…Although (Washington) never received a college education, given his disciplined and methodical temperament, he never stopped learning. Washington’s continual self-improvement by reading, experimenting, and correspondence he continued his education.” (As most of the men of our Founding period did inasmuch as they were, by and large, what we now call “home schooled.” -Ed)

“The legacy of his commitment to learning was seen in his extensive library; the many scholarships he gave to young scholars, his generous endowments of schools and universities, as well as a persistent advocacy of the formation of schools of higher education.”

“Washington, writing to clergyman Reverend John Lathrop on June 22, 1788, spoke of a common vision of both “reason and religion” recognizing that education is necessary for both. He states:”

“How pitiful, in the eye of reason and religion, is that false ambition, which desolates the world with fire and sword for the purposes of conquest and fame; when compared to the milder virtues of making our neighbors and our fellow men as happy as their frail conditions and perishable natures will permit them to be!…. In truth it appears to me that (the proposed government) will be a new phenomenon in the political and moral world; and an astonishing victory gained by enlightened reason over brutal force!”

“In his First Annual Address to Congress, January 8,1790, the president explained the importance of knowledge to the new republic.” (Simply, the American experiment would not work if the people were ignorant. -Ed)

“Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness. To the security of a free Constitution it contributes in various ways:”

Teaching the people themselves the five following things is what Washington recommended:

“to know and to value their own rights;

to discern and provide against invasions of them;

to distinguish between oppression and the necessary exercise of lawful authority;

to distinguish between burdens proceeding from a disregard to their convenience and those resulting from the inevitable exigencies of Society;

to discriminate the spirit of Liberty from that of licentiousness, cherishing the first, avoiding the last,

and uniting a speedy, but temperate, vigilance against encroachments, with an inviolable respect to the Laws.”

In other words, a well-educated citizenry is essential to maintain both the law and liberty, and for having the ability to distinguish between liberty and license. This discernment comes through education. Washington insisted that religion and morality were integral to a sound education.

Despite what you may hear from the media and public school textbooks, America was founded as a Christian nation. In 1620, long before the United States won its independence from England, the Pilgrims came to America’s shores with this mission statement,

“[W]e all came to these parts of America, with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – New England Confederation of 1643

The Assault on God and the Bible
by Gary DeMar

http://www.americanvision.org/articlearchive/01-26-06.asp

Anti-Christians are out in force. Richard Dawkins says that teaching religion to children is a form of child abuse.1 The video “The God Who Was Not There” is making the rounds on the Internet. Iraq-war combat veteran Paul Hackett, who is running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, describes religious conservatives as not “a whole lot different than Osama bin Laden and a lot of other religious nuts around the world.”2Maybe he should take a deep breath and consider how these same “religious conservatives” raised money, collected clothing, opened up their homes, and ministered to hurricane and flood victims in Jesus’ name. Some might point to Eric Rudolf as a religious zealot with a violent streak justified by his Christian principles. Rudolf prefers “Nietzsche to the Bible.”3

What about Paul Hill who killed an abortionist? Hill stated: “I believe that the Lord has used and will use what I did in a marvelous way. I’m standing for a principle. I’m willing to die for the principle. I consider it a great honor to die, possibly die, for having defended innocent human beings.”4 His methods, not his views on abortion, were almost universally condemned by Christians. He was excommunicated from the church where he was a member, and he was routinely and regularly counseled not to kill in “the name of the Lord.” In fact, I was one of those who told him that he did not have biblical grounds to assassinate abortion “doctors.”

People like Dawkins and Hackett don’t want the light of day to see deep in their philosophical closets. What’s the death count of the atheists? In Mao: The Untold Story, an 832-page book written by the (married) historians Jung and Jon Halliday, the authors tell us that the atheistic Communist dictator, “who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world’s population, was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader.”

I’ll take responsibility for Paul Hill and a dozen more misguided religious enthusiasts like him when atheists assume responsibility for the tens of millions who had their lives taken from them to build a better tomorrow. If teaching religion to minor children is considered to be child abuse by an atheist like Dawkins, then what should we call genocide in the name of Darwin? If mass murder can be justified by an appeal to the doctrine of the “survival of the fittest,” and we have a long bloody record of the results to prove that the logic of Darwin was behind it all, it seems to me that child protective agencies should remove children from atheistic parents, before they can grow up and put their godless worldview into action.

From Ethan Allen:

“Morality is therefore of more importance to us than any or all other attainments; as it is a habit of mind, which, from a retrospective consciousness of our agency in this life, we should carry with us into our succeeding state of existence, as an acquired appendage of our rational nature, and as the necessary means of our mental happiness. Virtue and vice are the only things in this world, which, with our souls, are capable of surviving death; the former is the rational and only procuring cause of all intellectual happiness, and the latter of conscious guilt and misery; and therefore, our indispensable duty and ultimate interest is, to love, cultivate and improve the one, as the means of our greatest good, and to hate and abstain from the other, as productive of our greatest evil. And in order thereto, we should so far divest ourselves of the encumbrances of this world, (which are too apt to engross our attention) as to inquire a consistent system of the knowledge of religious duty, and make it our constant endeavor in life to act conformably to it. The knowledge of the being, perfections, creation and providence of God, and of the immortality of our souls, is the foundation of religion; which has been particularly illustrated in the four first chapters of this discourse. And as the Pagan, Jewish, Christian and Mahometan countries of the world have been overwhelmed with a multiplicity of revelations diverse from each other, and which, by their respective promulgators, are said to have been immediately inspired into their souls by the spirit of God, or immediately communicated to them by the intervening agency of angels (as in the instance of the invisible Gabriel to Mahomet) and as those revelations have been received and credited, by afar the greater part of the inhabitants of the several countries of the world (on whom they have been obtruded) as supernaturally revealed by God or angels, and which, in doctrine and discipline, are in most respects repugnant to each other, it fully evinces their imposture, and authorizes us, without a lengthy course of arguing, to determine with certainty, that not one of them had their original from God; as they clash with each other, which is ground of high probability against the authenticity of each of them.”

Ok, now that we have laid some kind of quick foundation for the subject, here is the most important quotation ever mouthed by an American Founding Father:

“Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.”
Ben Franklin (submitted by a visitor)

http://www.jcpa.org/dje/articles/cov-amer.htm

JCPA LOGO

Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Daniel Elazar Papers Index

American Political Culture

Covenant and the American Founding
Daniel J. Elazar

On his way to Washington to take the oath of office as President of the United States of America, itself seemed destined for dissolution, Abraham Lincoln pointedly stopped in Philadelphia to visit Independence Hall. Standing before that historic landmark on February 21, 1861, Lincoln emphasized to his audience that he had come “to listen to those breathings rising within the consecrated walls where the Constitution of the United States, and I will add, the Declaration of Independence was originally framed.” Lincoln continued:

I have never asked anything that does not breathe from those walls. All my political warfare has been in favor of the teachings coming forth from that sacred hall. May my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if ever I prove false to those teachings.1

America’s Covenantal Vocation

Lincoln’s paraphrase of the fifth and sixth verses of Psalm 137 is one of many manifestations of his view of the American experience as being parallel to that of biblical Israel. If Americans were not the chosen people, they were at least, in his eyes, “an almost chosen people.” Every cadence and content of Lincoln’s remarks at Independence Hall and on similar occasions suggest that he shared the sense of an American vocation similar to that described by Governor John Winthrop, the foremost of the American Puritan founders.2 In his Modell of Christian Charity delivered aboard the Arabella on the Atlantic Ocean in 1630, Winthrop summarized the enterprise upon which the first Puritan emigrants from England had embarked in the New World: “We are entered into Covenant with him for this work, we have taken out a Commission….”

In January 1965, Winthrop’s statement found an echo in President Lyndon B. Johnson’s inaugural address:

They came here — the exile and the stranger, brave but frightened — to find a place where a man could be his own man. They made a covenant with this land. Conceived in justice, written in liberty, bound in union, it was meant one day to inspire the hopes of all mankind; and it binds us still. If we keep its terms, we shall flourish.

The American covenant called on us to help show the way for the liberation of man. And that is today our goal. Thus, if as a nation there is much outside our control, as a people no stranger is outside our hope.3

Almost 3,000 years after the Covenant at Sinai, the Pilgrims, who saw themselves as new Israelites embarked on a venture into their own “hideous and desolate wilderness,” introduced into North America a major stream of thought derived from the biblical idea of covenant.4 While often more latent than manifest since the days of the Puritans, and partially submerged within other streams and eddies of American thought and culture — especially secular constitutionalism — covenant ideas not only formed a significant part of the foundation of the United States, but have continued to influence American life.

Thus, from their earliest beginnings, the people and polities comprising the United States have bound themselves together through covenants to erect their New World order, deliberately following biblical precedents. The covenant concluded on the Mayflower on November 11, 1620, remains the first hallowed document of the American constitutional tradition:

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-writen, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, and Ireland king, defender of the faith, etc., haveing undertaken, for the glorie of God, and advancemente of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and countrie, a voyage to plant the first colonie in the Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly and mutualy in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves togeather into a civill body politick, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the generall good of the colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap Codd the 11. of November, in the year of the raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fiftie fourth. Ano: Dom. 1620.

A classic covenant, it explicitly created a community and the basis for its subsequent constitutional development. With more pride than accuracy, John Quincy Adams once referred to that Mayflower Compact as “perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive, original social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the only legitimate source of government.”5 In fact, there were many such covenants at the time of the settlement of British North America. His point is an important one, however. The Mayflower Compact occurred at least thirty years before the speculative philosophers imagined it. By the time that Hobbes and Locke formulated their compactual theories, there were already many compactual civil societies in the New World.

For the patriots of Samuel Adams’ “solemn league and covenant” against British oppression; for the framers of the constitutional compact of 1787; for Jefferson who referred to the young republic in his first inaugural address as a “chosen country;” for Lincoln who often characterized the American union as “a regular marriage;” for Johnson; and for millions of ordinary Americans, the concept of covenant has been reflected in real experiences from Jamestown to the present whereby individuals and families have come together to establish governing arrangements by compact.

The Puritans: Covenant Comes to the New World

The first political principles systematically enunciated in America were extensions and adaptations of the Puritans’ federal theology which saw all society as an outgrowth of the basic biblical covenants between God and His people.6 Winthrop referred to the good commonwealth as one committed to “federal liberty,” or the freedom to freely harken to the law of the covenant. The Puritans sought to place all relationships among people on a covenantal basis. Their congregations were covenant-formed partnerships of “saints” which came into existence only when potential members covenanted among each other, and survived only so long as the covenantal act remained valid (potentially but not necessarily forever).

Similarly, civil government among the Puritans was instituted by civil covenant among the residents (or potential residents) of virtually every town in most of the New England provinces.7 The Mayflower Compact (originally known as the Plymouth Combination) was the first of these covenantal acts. Subsequently, the same mode of town formation was extended to virtually every settlement created in New England and to many created in the other colonies as well. Connecticut and Rhode Island, for example, were formed by their towns covenanting (together). John Clarke and his Narragansett associates expressed the basic idea in their Plantation Agreement:

It is agreed by this Present Assembly thus Incorporate, and by this Present Act declared, that the Forme of Government Established in Providence Plantations is Democraticall; that is to say, a Government held by ye Free and Voluntarie Consent of all, or the greater Parte of the Free Inhabitants.8

As Henry Steele Commager has observed: “All through the colonial era Americans went from compact to compact — the Fundamental Laws of Connecticut of 1639, the ‘Solemn Compact’ at Portsmouth of 1638, and its successor the Charter of the Providence Plantations of 1647, the Pennsylvania Charter of Privileges of 1701 (not quite so clear a case, to be sure), and thereafter a score of compacts and agreements on one frontier after another.”9 As Richard Niebuhr observed some years ago: “one of the great common patterns that guided men in the period when American democracy was formed…was the pattern of the covenant or of federal society.”10

As Winthrop and his colleagues such as Thomas Hooker, the Mathers and other Puritan divines reveal in their works, the Puritans who settled in New England combined a fundamental conservatism with an unhesitating radicalism in a way that was to become as paradigmatic for Americans as other aspects of their approach to life. That combination was no doubt directly related to their covenantal ideology which saw humans bound to God through predestination, yet through that binding free to live according to the constitution He provided for their salvation. To implement that constitution required a revolt against the existing society, but the goals of that revolt were to restore prelapsinarian harmony to the world. The Puritans came to the New World to build a new society, but never lost sight of human weakness in trying to do so.

The synthesis did not always hold together. Those who leaned more to the radical side such as Roger Williams and Ann Dickinson almost immediately broke away. Williams established his own covenantal commonwealth of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations that was as firmly grounded in covenant in matters civil and political in order to guarantee openness in matters religious, something that the Puritans believed was impossible for the attainment of salvation.

Others allowed the conservative dimensions of Puritanism to overwhelm them; hence the Salem witch trials in which the continued Puritan emphasis on the deviltry in human souls got out of hand. But for the most part the synthesis held, spinning off different versions. Thomas Hooker, for example, moved his flock from Massachusetts to what became Connecticut to develop a more egalitarian Puritan commonwealth, but one no less faithful to combining conservative and radical dimensions. Here his supporters wrote the first full American constitution, The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which adopted the Mosaic law as the basis of Connecticut law, by reference.

Puritan federalism expressed itself socially through the concept of “federal liberty” which John Winthrop articulated in his Address to the General Court in 1645. For Winthrop and the other Puritans, federal liberty stood in contradistinction to natural liberty:

There is a two-fold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man, as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists; it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all of the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it. The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions between men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives if need be.11

In truth, others who came to America were attracted by the openness of a wild land and sought natural liberty. The tension between federal and natural liberty has been a continuing one in American society. Federal liberty — the liberty to live up to covenants consented to — is challenged again and again by those who see liberty as doing what one pleases except when it directly interferes with the liberty of the next person.

Politically, the culmination of Puritan federalism was in the New England Confederation which in the end was destroyed by the British as a threat to the empire. Organized originally by the four New England colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Connecticut for defensive purposes, it followed the style of ancient and medieval confederacies of communities in which the real locus of power and commitment remained in the constituting units, but it soon showed signs of going beyond a mere military alliance.

Although the New England Puritans remained the most eloquent articulators of the covenant idea, they were not the only ones to bring it to America. The Scotch-Irish of the mountains and piedmont from Pennsylvania to Georgia; the Dutch of New York; the Presbyterians; and to a lesser extent, the Quakers and German Sectarians of Pennsylvania and the Middle States; and the Huguenots of South Carolina were all nurtured in churches constructed on the covenant principle. The first ministers in Virginia — usually cited as the antithesis of New England — were also Puritans.12 Indeed, the tradition became so widespread that by 1776 over half of the new nation’s church congregations were based on covenant principles.

Initially, the basic covenants of town and congregation united individuals and families. Parallel to those covenants there developed the network of voluntary associations — commercial, social, church, and civic — which represent the non-governmental aspects of a society founded on the principles of free contract. From the first, networks of communities were united as colonies, then states. Ultimately, the network of states was linked in a federal union, always paralleled by a similar network of associations.

Covenants and Other Bonds

The American federal system is very much an outgrowth of both the theological and philosophic streams of thought that converged about covenant by the late seventeenth century. If covenant ideas were first brought to the New World by the Pilgrims and Puritans who settled New England, another set of covenant-related ideas entered America through the teachings of the new political science, especially those of Locke and Montesquieu. That is why federalism in the United States is more than a political device for dividing and sharing power among the state and federal governments but, rather, the form of the American polity in the eighteenth century sense of the term, that is to say, the principle that informs every aspect of the polity.13

As the form of the American polity, federalism has its roots not only in the political dimension of American society, but in the economic, social, and religious dimensions as well. As we have seen, the political and religious dimensions are closely linked. Significantly, the economic roots of American federalism also have a compactual base. They can be traced back to the early trading companies that sponsored British and Dutch settlement in North America and to the system of governance encountered by those settlers on the voyage over.14

The trading companies, each with its royal monopolies, were organized on a shareholding basis, so that both ownership and control was spread among the shareholders. In some cases, the shareholders remained in Europe and tried to hold the actual settlers within their grasp on the basis of their control of the company. Invariably, this failed for political reasons. In a few cases, the settlers or some significant portion of them were themselves shareholders and, as such, combined political and economic control. In either case, the pattern of shareholding led to a corporate structure that was at least quasi-federal in character.

In the very earliest days the line between the political and economic aspects of the charters establishing the colonies was not at all clear. As the companies lost their monopolies, charters turned more in the direction of political constitutions, pure and simple, thereby reinforcing the theopolitical covenantal dimension where it was present or providing a complementary, compactual alternative where it was not.

Even the voyage across the ocean contributed to the covenantal experience of the colonists. The governance of ships had a contractual character that at least involved federal principles to the extent that every member of a ship’s crew was in some respects a partner in the voyage. By signing the ship’s articles, a crew member was entitled to an appropriate share of the profits of the voyage while at the same time formally submitting himself to the governance of the captain and the ship’s officers. Since every ship that ventured forth on the ocean was, in effect, leaving civil society for a state of nature, every voyage had to be based upon a prior compact among all participants that would determine the political arrangements that would prevail for that voyage and the distribution of the economic benefits that would result. Two centuries later, this system resurfaced in slightly different form in the organization of the wagon trains that crossed the plains, which also left civil society for a land voyage through the state of nature, so that their members also had to compact with one another to provide for their internal governance during the long trek westward.

These religious, political, and economic elements combined to socialize Americans into a kind of federalistic individualism. That is to say, not the anarchic individualism of Latin countries, but an individualism that recognized the subtle bonds of partnership linking individuals even as they preserved their respective integrities. William James was later to write about the federal character of these subtle bonds in his prescription for a pluralistic universe.15 Indeed, American pluralism is based upon the tacit recognition of those bonds. Even though in the twentieth century the term pluralism has replaced all others in describing them, their federal character remains of utmost importance. At its best, American society becomes a web of individual and communal partnerships in which people link with one another to accomplish common purposes or to create a common environment without falling into collectivism or allowing individualism to degenerate into anarchy. These links usually manifest themselves in the web of associations which we associate with modern society but which are particularly characteristic of covenanted societies such as that of the United States.16

In a covenanted society the state itself is hardly more than an association writ large and endowed with exceptional powers but still an association with limited means and ends. Were Americans to adopt a common salutation for some farfetched reason, like “comrade” in the Soviet Union or “citizen” in the days of the French Revolution, in all likelihood the American salutation would be “pardner,” the greeting of the archetypical American folk figure, the cowboy who embodies this combination of individualism and involvement in organized society and who expresses the character of that involvement through the term “pardner.”

The Revolution and the Declaration of Independence

The Revolutionary era required a new round of covenanting as the colonies reconstituted themselves as independent civil societies. Invariably they followed the customary patterns albeit in the new secularized forms of declarations of rights of constitutions. Thus, according to the Virginia Bill of Rights (1776):

All men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by any compact deprive or divest their posterity, namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

The Vermont Declaration of Independence of 1777 holds that:

We…the inhabitants [of the New Hampshire Grants] are at present without law or government, and may be truly said to be in a state of nature; consequently, a right remains to the people of said Grants to form a government best suited to secure their property, well being and happiness.

All followed the dictum from Leviticus inscribed on the Liberty Bell, rung for the reading of the Declaration of Independence, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof,” as they understood it.

These Revolutionary era documents reflect the influence of the “new political science” which had become prominent by this time. They also reflect the increasing secularization of covenant which had begun to occur after 1690 along with the Puritan declension in Europe and America. By 1776, the word covenant had been largely, though not entirely, superseded in political affairs by the words compact and constitution. It was during this period, for example, that the Plymouth Combination became known as the Mayflower Compact.17

As the original Christian and communitarian solidarity associated with the idea of covenant (i.e., both kinship and consent) became more elusive in the face of growing populations, new generations, and rising manufacturing, the old Puritan communities tended to become more legalistic and contractual, often along the kinds of “oppressive” lines which many contemporary Americans associate with “Puritanism.” Where, for instance, a handshake might have sealed a business relationship in 1630, a written contract with “fine print” enforceable by secular courts was more likely to seal a relationship in 1730. Consequently, in a movement paralleled in the “new political science,” there tended to be a greater division of secular and religious affairs, with the formal language of covenant being more confined to private sector congregationalism and a secularized language of constitutionalism being more prominent in public sector affairs. In short, the emphasis shifted from communitarianism toward individualism — a movement capped by the disestablishment of churches in all but the most religiously covenantal states during the immediate revolutionary era. The shift was not complete, of course, and tensions between these conceptions of civil society have persisted throughout American history.

Some of these tensions are also reflected in the Declaration of Independence, the founding covenant of the American people which preceeded the Constitution of 1787. The Constitution was designed to translate the relationships called for in the Declaration into workable institutions. Whatever Jefferson’s and Congress’ indebtedness to Locke, which is a subject of much debate’ the concept and intention of the Declaration is more covenantal than compactual in the American context. As Jefferson remarked nearly fifty years later:

Neither aiming at originality of principles or sentiments nor yet copied from any particular and previous writing, it was intended to be an expression of the American Mind.18

There is little resemblance between the Declaration and the Hobbesian compact. While many of the fundamental principles and basic ideas of Hobbes with regard to human nature and natural right are present, the Declaration is prudential but not pessimistic about the possibilities of human self-government, hence it does not accept the idea of absolute king of leviathan state required by the Hobbesian compact. At the same time, the Declaration is more comprehensive than the Lockean compact and even drops the word “property,” which is so essential to Locke’s system, in favor of “the pursuit of happiness.” Since the Declaration is the statement of a people that has already emerged from the state of nature, it does not use that starting point. In that sense, it is presented as a revision of an earlier compact and appeals to the Laws of Nature and of nature’s god.19

The Declaration shares many of the characteristics of the classic biblical covenant at Sinai.20 Central to this similarity is that the Declaration established the Americans as an organized people bound by a shared moral vision as well as common interests. The sense of an American identity, which had been emerging during the previous generation, was formalized and declared to the world much like the Sinai covenant had formally created the people of Israel whose sense of shared identity and common destiny had emerged earlier but was concretized during the Exodus. Thus, the opening paragraph of the Declaration asserts that Americans are no longer transplanted Englishmen, but a separate people entitled, like all peoples, to political independence. There is, then a separation of one people from another and a flight from tyranny. The Americans, moreover, are held to be a single people made up of individuals bound in partnership in a common enterprise.

Also like the classic Sinai covenant, the Declaration is not a constitution. It does not establish a particular form of government. That is left open to subsequent constitutional action on the part of the people created by the Declaration.

Instead, the Declaration sets forth the fundamental principles that define the character of the American people, their basic purposes, and the nature of good government for such a people. Perhaps this is why Abraham Lincoln appealed so often to the Declaration during the Civil War. The Constitution had already been torn asunder by a bloody war between the states which threatened to destroy the American people as well. While constitutional matters could be dealt with in due time, there is the more fundamental promise of peoplehood contained in the Declaration of Independence. This promise has the character of being perpetual and irrevocable. As Lincoln said in several of his addresses, there can be no divorce. The American people cannot separate and go away from each other.

While the Declaration does not have the force of law in the American system, it is part of the higher law background of the United States Constitution and serves as the standard against which particular constitutions are to be judged by Americans. As such, like a classic biblical covenant, the Declaration invokes God as both a witness and guarantor. This sets it apart from a simple compact. Niebuhr’s description of this dimension as understood by early Americans seems to capture the essential thrust of the Declaration.

Covenant meant that political society was neither purely natural nor merely contractual, based on common interest. Covenant was the binding together in one body politic of persons who assumed through unlimited promise responsibility to and for each other and for the common laws, under God. It was government of the people, for the people and by the people but always under God, and it was not natural birth into natural society that made one a complete member of the people but always the moral act of taking upon oneself, through promise, the responsibilities of a citizenship that bound itself in the very act of exercising its freedom. For in the covenant conception the essence of freedom does not lie in the liberty of choice among goods, but in the ability to commit oneself for the future to a cause and in the terrible liberty of being able to become a breaker of the promise, a traitor to the cause.21

The Declaration also follows the classical covenant formulary to a great degree. First, there is a statement of who is doing the covenanting, namely, “the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress assembled,” July 4, 1776. Second, there is a prologue and historical section detailing the prior relationships of England and the American colonies. These establish the setting for the Declaration and give reasons for its creation. Third, there is a set of stipulations and obligations containing the basic agreements of the American people. These begin as a statement of self-evident truths. Fourth, there is a provision for its public proclamation to mankind, and copies were to be sent to Parliament and distributed throughout the newly independent states. While, of course, there are no provisions for depositing the Declaration in a temple, it was eventually enshrined and elevated to a hallowed position. During the nineteenth century, moreover, the Declaration was given annual public readings on the Fourth of July in many communities, events which had echoes of covenant renewal ceremonies which often are a feature of covenantal communities. Fifth, there is an invocation of a divine witness, namely, “the Supreme Judge of the world” and “Divine Providence.” Sixth, there are indirect statements of blessings and curses. The blessings for performance are national independence and individual life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. The curses for non-performance are tyranny, oppression, and even death.

From Covenant to Constitution

The establishment of the American covenant in an appropriate constitution occurred over a period of twelve years. The states were the first to write constitutions. The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780 — the oldest written constitution in the modern world and still in effect today — is as close to being an example as any.22 Drafted largely by John Adams, it weaves together the elements of covenant, compact, and constitution quite nicely, as reflected in the Preamble quoted earlier.

The body-politic is formed by a voluntary association of individuals. It is a social compact by which the whole people covenants with each citizen and each citizen with the whole people, that all shall be governed by certain laws for the common good. It is the duty of the people, therefore, in framing a Constitution of Government, to provide for an equitable mode of making laws, as well as for an impartial interpretation and a faithful execution of them, that every man may, at all times, find his security in them.

Similar statements, though usually less eloquent, appear in almost all of the fifty state constitutions.23

It should not be surprising, therefore, that the Americans established a federal system of government with sovereignty divided and shared between the states and the nationwide government. This if often treated as an anomaly or as a product of unique circumstances. Yet the governmental outcome of the Revolution could have been very different. The states could have separated as independent nations. They could have been united in whole or in sections by conquest. The Americans could have erected a monarchy. Indeed, given past experiences with the governance of large territories, these were much more likely outcomes than the actual one. Instead, the Americans, within their states, sent representatives to a convention, ostensibly to improve the Articles of Confederation, and then ended up ratifying, under pacific conditions, a wholly new constitution that employed federal principles to create the first continental republic in world history. Whereas, historically, large territories (as well as most small ones) were invariably ruled by an imperial center, the United States became governed through a system of dispersed democratic majorities coupled with nationwide representation of both individuals and constituent states.24

Although it is impossible to determine definitively the influences upon the minds of the framers of the Constitution who created the unique American federal system, the most overlooked, yet perhaps most important, source of ideas is the covenant tradition which found its first political expression in the federation of tribes of ancient Israel. One of the few political scientists to recognize this possibility was William C. Morey in the late nineteenth century. Morey saw the sources of American federalism in “the reappearance of democratic and federal institutions in the Puritan colonies.25 Although he did not mention federal theology, he regarded the federative system of New England as the model of federalism. After all, there were no extant models for the framers of the U.S. Constitution except New England. Furthermore, representatives from New England, especially Connecticut and Massachusetts, were influential in the Constitutional Convention. The principal compromise of the Convention, The Connecticut Compromise, was initiated by those delegates accustomed to the New England legislative system in which one house provided for representation of towns. This compromise lies at the heart of the federal system and makes it, in the words of James Madison, a “compound republic” partly national and partly federal (in the earlier sense of confederal). In addition, the most covenantal of the state constitutions, that of Massachusetts, was among the most influential of the state models for the framers.

Supplementing the New England regional influences were the ethnoreligious conduits of covenant ideas, especially Congregationalism and Presbyterianism, the two largest denominations in 1787. A majority of the delegates to the Convention were affiliated with covenant-based churches, while most of the delegates were no doubt familiar with the covenant idea, given their Protestantism and attention to the Bible as a source of wisdom and literary enjoyment, if not always spiritual inspiration. The English and Scottish backgrounds of many of the delegates may have also accounted for covenantal influences. The Congregationalists were certainly grounded in covenant ideas, though their propensity for localism and local control made them somewhat hesitant to leap into large-scale arrangements. The Presbyterians, however, were already moving toward full-scale federalism. As Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., noted: “More than either [the Congregationalists or Anglicans] the Presbyterians in their reliance on federalist and representative institutions anticipated the political makeup of the future United States.26 Indeed, as the first government came into office under the U.S. Constitution in 1789, the Presbyterians held their first nationwide General Assembly. In the Presbyterian system, congregations in a local area formed a presbytery; several presbyteries in a region formed a synod; and then came the General Assembly. As a result, the system of federal democracy established by the U.S. Constitution has often been referred to as Presbyterianism writ large for civil society.

Moreover, James Madison of Virginia, the principal architect of the theory of federal democracy, was a Scotch-Irish Episcopalian who had studied under and been greatly influenced by the Scottish Reverend, Donald Robertson, the prominent scholar-divine John Witherspoon at the Presbyterian-oriented College of New Jersey (now Princeton). Indeed, six of the delegates to the Constitutional Convention had studied under Witherspoon. As a strong supporter of independence and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Witherspoon’s influence was substantial enough that Horace Walpole is alleged to have complained that: “There is no use crying about it. Cousin America has run off with a Presbyterian parson, and that is the end of it.”27

The comment may be fictitious, but the sentiment is not. Institutional structures and cultural traditions which served as carriers of covenant ideas were still strong in 1787, though increasingly in secular forms. The framers, however, were engaged in a wholly secular enterprise. By 1787 the theological stream of covenant ideas and the philosophic stream of compactual ideas had become so intermingled in the concept of constitutionalism that it is difficult to separate their effects. Albeit, given that the federal system established by the framers bears a much greater similarity to the political systems proposed by the federal theologians and implemented in their church polities, than the political systems proposed by Hobbes and Locke, and given that Americans were already covenanting into civil societies well before the speculative philosophers adopted the idea, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that covenant ideas had, in the final analysis, a more decisive influence than those of the “new political science.”

Furthermore, the systems of the English philosophers could not by directly applied to America because, even in 1787, the country was simply enormous compared to tiny England. While such prominent revolutionary ideas as “natural rights” certainly belong to the Lockean tradition, they were also grounded in the covenant tradition and were further adapted to the federal framework of American constitutionalism rather than the monarchical framework of Hobbes or parliamentary framework of Locke. Thus, it is inaccurate to describe America as simply a Lockean nation.

Notes

1. Abraham Lincoln, “Reply to Mayor Alexander Henry at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania” in Collected Works (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. 4, pp. 238-239.

2. John Winthrop, “A Model of Christian Charity,” in The American Puritans: Their Prose and Poetry, Perry Miller, ed. (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1956), pp. 79-84.

3. Lyndon B. Johnson, January 20, 1965 Presidential Inaugural Address, in Howard B. Furer, ed., Lyndon B. Johnson: Chronology-Documents-Bibliographical Aids (New York: Ocean Publications, 1971), pp. 92-95.

4. Richard P. Gildrie, Salem, Massachusetts, 1626-1683: A Covenant Community (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1972), and E. Brooks Holifield, The Covenant Sealed: The Development of Puritan Sacramental Theology in Old and New England: 1570-1720 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974).

5. John Quincy Adams, The Social Compact, Exemplified in the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; with Remarks on the Theories of Divine Right of Hobbes and of Filmer, and the Counter Theories of Sidney, Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, concerning the Origin and Nature of Government, a lecture delivered before the Franklin Lyceum at Providence, R.I., November 25, 1842 (Providence: Knowles and Vose, 1842).

6. Charles Hyneman and Donald Lutz, American Political Writing During the Founding Era, 1760-1805 (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1983); Donald Lutz, Documents of Political Foundation Written by Colonial Americans (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1986); Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953).

7. Edmund S. Morgan, Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794 (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965).

8. Cf. Donald Lutz, Documents of Political Foundation.

9. Henry Steele Commager, Documents of American History (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1963).

10. H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Idea of Covenant and American Democracy,” Church History, Vol. 23 (1954): 126-135.

11. John Winthrop, History of New England, 1630-1649, ed. Sam Savage (Boston, 1853), 2: 279-282.

12. On non-New England covenants, see W. Keith Kavenagh, ed. Foundations of Colonial America (New York: Chelsea House, 1983),m especially Volume 3, Parts I and II.

13. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar, The American Constitutional Tradition (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1987).

14. Andrew McLaughlin, The Foundations of American Constitutionalism (Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith, 1972).

15. William James, A Pluralistic Universe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977). Cf. also Harry S. Levinson, “William James and the Federal Principle,” Publius, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Fall 1979): 65-86.

16. Cf. Robert MacIver, The Web of Government (New York: Macmillan, 1947), and Corinne L. Gilb, Hidden Hierarchies: The Professions and Government (New York: Harper and Row, 1966).

17. Cf. Donald Lutz, “From Covenant to Constitution in American Political Thought,” Publius, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Fall 1980): 106, and Harry M. Ward, Statism in Plymouth Colony (Port Washington, N.Y.: Kennikat Press, 1972), p. 4.

18. Saul K. Padover, Jefferson (New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1942), p. 54.

19. Cf. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1922), and Daniel J. Elazar, The American Constitutional Tradition, Ch. 4.

20. Neal Riemer, “1776 and the Tradition of Prophetic Politics,” Working Paper (Philadelphia: Center for the Study of Federalism, 1981).

21. H. Richard Niebuhr, “The Idea of Covenant and American Democracy.”

22. Ronald Peters, The Massachusetts Constitution of 1780: A Social Compact (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1974).

23. John Adams, Adams: His Political Writings, edited with an introduction by George A. Peek, Jr. (New York: Bobbs Merrill, 1954), p. 95; Willi Paul Adams, The First American Constitutions (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1973); Donald Lutz, Documents of Political Foundation Written by Colonial Americans.

24. Cf. Daniel J. Elazar, The Politics of American Federalism (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1969), Introduction.

25. William C. Morey, “The First State Constitutions,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 4, No. 2 (1893): 201-232.

26. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., The Birth of the Nation (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1968), p. 83.

27. Cf. Gary Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1978).

Elazar Papers Index / JCPA Home Page / Top of Page

http://www.covenant-reformed.org/iotc/
Home Contact
“A Study on Christianity and the Law of the Land”

Join the Institute on the Constitution through a twelve lecture series by Constitutional Law Professor John Eidsmoe of Thomas Goode Jones School of Law of Faulkner University, Alabama along with other selected materials by David Barton of Wallbuilders.

The program is intended to reconnnect Americans to the history of the American Republic and to their heritage of freedom under law. By exploring the fundamental principles of civil government upon which our Constitional Republic was founded, and by studying the original intent of the founders, we can begin to recover the lost freedoms that require knowledge and vigilance to protect and defend. Today, many Americans are surprised but delighted to learn that we were founded as a Constitutional Republic of sovereign States with a central government of purposely limited powers based on Biblical principles. The recovery and application of these principles is necessary for the reclamation of the Republic.

The course will be held on Monday evenings at 6:00 pm beginning April 9, 2007 and continue for twelve weeks. The course will be held at Christian Fellowship Church, 4100 Millersburg Rd, Evansville, IN 47725. The course is hosted by Thomas Weddle, 812-962-3704
Lectures

* A Biblical View of History, Law, and Government
* The Discovery, Settlement, and Evangelization of America
* Beliefs of the Founding Fathers
* The Founding Fathers’ Five Fold Formula
* From Independence to the Constitution
* Preamble; Article I
* Articles II and III
* Articles IV Thru VII
* The Bill of Rights: The First Amendment
* Amendments II Thru XXVII
* From Biblical Absolutes to Evolutionary Humanism
* A Victory Plan for Restoring Our Constitutional Heritage

Mr. Weddle will be sharing his experiences over thirteen years of Constitutional litigation which led, not only to an interest in American history and preserving our legal heritage, but a deeper relationship with Jesus Christ and understanding of Scripture and its application to our lives today.
Course Materials
The student manual, which a family can share, along with copies of the Founding documents and other literature for further study is $ 45.00. Manuals will be delivered on April 9th at the first class and must be ordered by March 21, 2007.

Sign Up Today

Complete this order form to register for the Institute on the Constitution. PayPal and all major credit cards are accepted.

© Copyright 2007 Thomas Weddle, All Rights Reserved
http://www.covenant-reformed.org/iotc/

http://www.mcgill.ca/reporter/35/03/elon/

“The first thing to understand is that Jewish law has been active and developing for most of Jewish history,” Elon said. “The second is that it is much more than religious law. Jewish law touches every area of human existence.”

The whole of Jewish law, or Halakha, is rooted in the Torah, which is conservatively defined as the first five books of the Bible. These fundamental laws are believed to define the correct way to live, according to God. But they have never been static.

Elon explained that during the 2,000 years of the Diaspora, when Jews were dispersed throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East, Jewish law not only survived and developed, but also unified. Scattered Jewish settlements remained autonomous within their larger city-states. When a difficult legal question arose, it was directed to the day’s foremost religious authorities. These rabbinical judges interpreted the Torah and precedent body of law to render a decision. A written collection of these court decisions, or Responsa, from the 8th to 18th centuries numbers more than 300,000. In this way, the law evolved alongside human intellect and wisdom. Elon likened the phenomenon to a great polyphonic symphony written long ago: “Every generation needs a great conductor to interpret it for a modern audience.”

With good reason. The writing of the Torah, and the codes that it spawned, preceded not only contemporary culture but also many contemporary concepts. There are no contracts, no public, no democracy. Over time the issues that rose again and again in the rabbinical courts of the Diaspora required deft interpretation. “The Responsa dealt with the same problems we face today in synthesizing Jewish and democratic values,” Elon explained. “I say ‘Ein hadash takhat hashemesh.’ There’s nothing new under the sun.”

The Mayflower Compact

1620

“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.”

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut

January 14, 1639

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth; and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed accordinbg to such Laws, Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as followeth: etc, etc

The First Thanksgiving Proclamation

June 20, 1676

“The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.”

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death

March 23, 1775
By Patrick Henry

No man thinks more highly than I do of the patriotism, as well as abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen who have just addressed the house. But different men often see the same subject in different lights; and, therefore, I hope it will not be thought disrespectful to those gentlemen if, entertaining as I do opinions of a character very opposite to theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments freely and without reserve. This is no time for ceremony. The question before the house is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery; and in proportion to the magnitude of the subject ought to be the freedom of the debate. It is only in this way that we can hope to arrive at the truth, and fulfill the great responsibility which we hold to God and our country. Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings. …..

Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace–but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms

July 6, 1775

A declaration by the representatives of the united colonies of North America, now met in Congress at Philadelphia, setting forth the causes and necessity of their taking up arms.

If it was possible for men, who exercise their reason to believe, that the divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great-Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body. But a reverance for our Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end……

The Virginia Declaration of Rights

June 12, 1776

1. That all men are by nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot, by any compact, deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.
2. That all power is vested in, and consequently derived from, the people; that magistrates are their trustees and servants, and at all times amenable to them.
3. That government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common benefit, protection, and security of the people, nation or community; of all the various modes and forms of government that is best, which is capable of producing the greatest degree of happiness and safety and is most effectually secured against the danger of maladministration; and that, whenever any government shall be found inadequate or contrary to these purposes, a majority of the community hath an indubitable, unalienable, and indefeasible right to reform, alter or abolish it, in such manner as shall be judged most conducive to the public weal.
4. That no man, or set of men, are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services; which, not being descendible, neither ought the offices of magistrate, legislator, or judge be hereditary.
5. That the legislative and executive powers of the state should be separate and distinct from the judicative; and, that the members of the two first may be restrained from oppression by feeling and participating the burthens of the people, they should, at fixed periods, be reduced to a private station, return into that body from which they were originally taken, and the vacancies be supplied by frequent, certain, and regular elections in which all, or any part of the former members, to be again eligible, or ineligible, as the laws shall direct.
6. That elections of members to serve as representatives of the people in assembly ought to be free; and that all men, having sufficient evidence of permanent common interest with, and attachment to, the community have the right of suffrage and cannot be taxed or deprived of their property for public uses without their own consent or that of their representatives so elected, nor bound by any law to which they have not, in like manner, assented, for the public good.
7. That all power of suspending laws, or the execution of laws, by any authority without consent of the representatives of the people is injurious to their rights and ought not to be exercised.
8. That in all capital or criminal prosecutions a man hath a right to demand the cause and nature of his accusation to be confronted with the accusers and witnesses, to call for evidence in his favor, and to a speedy trial by an impartial jury of his vicinage, without whose unanimous consent he cannot be found guilty, nor can he be compelled to give evidence against himself; that no man be deprived of his liberty except by the law of the land or the judgement of his peers.
9. That excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed; nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
10. That general warrants, whereby any officer or messenger may be commanded to search suspected places without evidence of a fact committed, or to seize any person or persons not named, or whose offense is not particularly described and supported by evidence, are grievous and oppressive and ought not to be granted.
11. That in controversies respecting property and in suits between man and man, the ancient trial by jury is preferable to any other and ought to be held sacred.
12. That the freedom of the press is one of the greatest bulwarks of liberty and can never be restrained but by despotic governments.
13. That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that, in all cases, the military should be under strict subordination to, and be governed by, the civil power.
14. That the people have a right to uniform government; and therefore, that no government separate from, or independent of, the government of Virginia, ought to be erected or established within the limits thereof.
15. That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.
16. That religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore, all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

Declaration of Independence

July 4, 1776

The Unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united* States of America.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness….

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

The Articles of Confederation

Nov. 15, 1777

To all to whom these Presents shall come, we the undersigned Delegates of the States affixed to our Names send greeting.

Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union between the states of New Hampshire, Massachusetts-bay Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. …

And Whereas it hath pleased the Great Governor of the World to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectively represent in Congress, to approve of, and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and perpetual Union…..

The Paris Peace Treaty of 1783

In the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.

It having pleased the Divine Providence to dispose the hearts of the most serene and most potent Prince George the Third, by the grace of God, king of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, duke of Brunswick and Lunebourg, arch- treasurer and prince elector of the Holy Roman Empire etc., and of the United States of America, to forget all past misunderstandings and differences that have unhappily interrupted the good correspondence and friendship which they mutually wish to restore, and to establish such a beneficial and satisfactory intercourse , between the two countries …..

Memorial and Remonstrance

June 20, 1785

To the Honorable the General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Virginia

A Memorial and Remonstrance

We the subscribers, citizens of the said Commonwealth, having taken into serious consideration, a Bill printed by order of the last Session of General Assembly, entitled “A Bill establishing a provision for Teachers of the Christian Religion,” and conceiving that the same if finally armed with the sanctions of a law, will be a dangerous abuse of power, are bound as faithful members of a free State to remonstrate against it, and to declare the reasons by which we are determined. We remonstrate against the said Bill, …

(It must be noted that although the remonstrance voted against the public funding of religion, there were state-established churches well into the 1830’s. – Sonny)

First Inaugural Address of
President George Washington

April 30, 1789

Fellow-Citizens of the Senate and of the House of Representatives:

Among the vicissitudes incident to life no event could have filled me with greater anxieties than that of which the notification was transmitted by your order, and received on the 14th day of the present month. On the one hand, I was summoned by my country, whose voice I can never hear but with veneration and love, from a retreat which I had chosen with the fondest predilection, and, in my flattering hopes, with an immutable decision, as the asylum of my declining years — a retreat which was rendered every day more necessary as well as more dear to me by the addition of habit to inclination, and of frequent interruptions in my health to the gradual waste committed on it by t ime. On the other hand, the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me, being sufficient to awaken in the wisest and most experienced of her citizens a distrustful scrutiny into his qualifications, could not but overwhelm with despondence one who (inheriting inferior endowments from nature and unpracticed in the duties of civil administration) ought to be peculiarly conscious of his own deficiencies. In this conflict of emotions all I dare aver is that it has been my faithful study to collect my duty from a just appreciation of every circumstance by which it might be affected. All I dare hope is that if, in executing this task, I have been too much swayed by a grateful remembrance of former instances, or by an affectionate sensibility to this transcendent pr oof of the confidence of my fellow-citizens, and have thence too little consulted my incapacity as well as disinclination for the weighty and untried cares before me, my error will be palliated by the motives which mislead me, and its consequences be judged by my country with some share of the partiality in which they originated.

Such being the impressions under which I have, in obedience to the public summons, repaired to the present station, it would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by t hemselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. In tendering this homage to the Great Author of every public and private good, I assure my self that it expresses your sentiments not less than my own, nor those of my fellow-citizens at large less than either. No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States………

naugural Address of President John Adams

Philadelphia, March 4, 1797

WHEN it was first perceived, in early times, that no middle course 1 for America remained between unlimited submission to a foreign legislature and a total independence of its claims, men of reflection were less apprehensive of danger from the formidable power of fleets and armies they must determine to resist than from those contests and dissensions which would certainly arise concerning the forms of government to be instituted over the whole and over the parts of this extensive country. Relying, however, on the purity of their intentions, the justice of their cause, and the integrity and intelligence of the people, under an overruling Providence which had so signally protected this country from the first, the representatives of this nation, then consisting of little more than half its present number, not only broke to pieces the chains which were forging and the rod of iron that was lifted up, but frankly cut asunder the ties which had bound them, and launched into an ocean of uncertainty…..

I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect.

With this great example before me, with the sense and spirit, the 13 faith and honor, the duty and interest, of the same American people pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, I entertain no doubt of its continuance in all its energy, and my mind is prepared without hesitation to lay myself under the most solemn obligations to support it to the utmost of my power.

And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the 14 Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.

Inaugural Address of President John Quincy Adams

March 4, 1825

In compliance with an usage coeval with the existence of our Federal Constitution, and sanctioned by the example of my predecessors in the career upon which I am about to enter, I appear, my fellow-citizens, in y our presence and in that of Heaven to bind myself by the solemnities of religious obligation to the faithful performance of the duties allotted to me in the station to which I have been called. ……..

To the guidance of the legislative councils, to the assistance of the executive and subordinate departments, to the friendly cooperation of the respective State governments, to the candid and liberal support of the people so far as it may be deserved by honest industry and zeal, I shall look for whatever success may attend my public service; and knowing that “except the Lord keep the city the watchman waketh but in vain,” with fervent supplications for His favor, to His overruling prov idence I commit with humble but fearless confidence my own fate and the future destinies of my country.

First Inaugural Address of President Andrew Jackson

March 4, 1829

Fellow-Citizens:

About to undertake the arduous duties that I have been appointed to perform by the choice of a free people……And a firm reliance on the goodness o f that Power whose providence mercifully protected our national infancy, and has since upheld our liberties in various vicissitudes, encourages me to offer up my ardent supplications that He will continue to make our beloved country the object of His divi ne care and gracious benediction.

The CSA Constitution
Preamble

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity–invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God–do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

The Battle Hymn of the Republic

Julia Ward Howe

Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored,
He has loosed the fateful lightening of His terrible swift sword
His truth is marching on.

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
His truth is marching on.

And by virtue of the power and for the purpose aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within said designated States and parts of States are, and henceforward shall be, free; and that the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of said persons.

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all case when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
The Emancipation Proclamation 1864

By the President of the United States of America:

A PROCLAMATION

Whereas on the 22nd day of September, A.D. 1862, a proclamation was issued by the President of the United States, containing, among other things, the following, to wit:

“That on the 1st day of January, A.D. 1863, all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free…

And I further declare and make known that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States to garrison forts, positions, stations, and other places, and to man vessels of all sorts in said service.

And upon this act, sincerely believed to be an act of justice, warranted by the Constitution upon military necessity, I invoke the considerate judgment of mankind and the gracious favor of Almighty God.

econd Inaugural Address of President Abraham Lincoln

March 4, 1865

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fit ting and proper…..

Each looked for an easier triumph, an d a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat o f other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. “Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that off enses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.” If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remov e, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we ho pe, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood d rawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Inaugural Address of Theodore Roosevelt

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1905

My fellow-citizens, no people on earth have more cause to be thankful than ours, and this is said reverently, in no spirit of boastfulness in our own strength, but with gratitude to the Giver of Good who has blessed us with the conditions which have enabled us to achieve so large a measure of well-being and of happiness….

…Having thus reviewed the questions likely to recur during my administration, and having expressed in a summary way the position which I expect to take in recommendations to Congress and in my conduct as an Executive, I invoke the considerate sympathy and support of my fellow-citizens and the aid of the Almighty God in the discharge of my responsible duties.

…Surely there must have been God’s intent in the making of this new-world Republic. Ours is an organic law which had but one ambiguity, and we saw that effaced in a baptism of sacrifice and blood, with union maintained, the Nation supreme, and its concord inspiring. We have seen the world rivet its hopeful gaze on the great truths on which the founders wrought….

Today, better than ever before, we know the aspirations of humankind, and share them. We have come to a new realization of our place in the world and a new appraisal of our Nation by the world. The unselfishness of these United States is a thing proven; our devotion to peace for ourselves and for the world is well established; our concern for preserved civilization has had its impassioned and heroic expression. There was no American failure to resist the attempted reversion of civilization; there will be no failure today or tomorrow.

The success of our popular government rests wholly upon the correct interpretation of the deliberate, intelligent, dependable popular will of America. In a deliberate questioning of a suggested change of national policy, where internationality was to supersede nationality, we turned to a referendum, to the American people. There was ample discussion, and there is a public mandate in manifest understanding.

America is ready to encourage, eager to initiate, anxious to participate in any seemly program likely to lessen the probability of war, and promote that brotherhood of mankind which must be God’s highest conception of human relationship. Because we cherish ideals of justice and peace, because we appraise international comity and helpful relationship no less highly than any people of the world, we aspire to a high place in the moral leadership of civilization, and we hold a maintained America, the proven Republic, the unshaken temple of representative democracy, to be not only an inspiration and example, but the highest agency of strengthening good will and promoting accord on both continents. ….

Service is the supreme commitment of life. I would rejoice to acclaim the era of the Golden Rule and crown it with the autocracy of service. I pledge an administration wherein all the agencies of Government are called to serve, and ever promote an understanding of Government purely as an expression of the popular will.

One cannot stand in this presence and be unmindful of the tremendous responsibility. The world upheaval has added heavily to our tasks. But with the realization comes the surge of high resolve, and there is reassurance in belief in the God-given destiny of our Republic. If I felt that there is to be sole responsibility in the Executive for the America of tomorrow I should shrink from the burden. But here are a hundred millions, with common concern and shared responsibility, answerable to God and country. The Republic summons them to their duty, and I invite co-operation.

I accept my part with single-mindedness of purpose and humility of spirit, and implore the favor and guidance of God in His Heaven. With these I am unafraid, and confidently face the future.

I have taken the solemn oath of office on that passage of Holy Writ wherein it is asked: “What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” This I plight to God and country.

irst Inaugural Address of Dwight D. Eisenhower

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 1953

My friends, before I begin the expression of those thoughts that I deem appropriate to this moment, would you permit me the privilege of uttering a little private prayer of my own. And I ask that you bow your heads:

Almighty God, as we stand here at this moment my future associates in the executive branch of government join me in beseeching that Thou will make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people in this throng, and their fellow citizens everywhere.

Give us, we pray, the power to discern clearly right from wrong, and allow all our words and actions to be governed thereby, and by the laws of this land. Especially we pray that our concern shall be for all the people regardless of station, race, or calling.

May cooperation be permitted and be the mutual aim of those who, under the concepts of our Constitution, hold to differing political faiths; so that all may work for the good of our beloved country and Thy glory. Amen. …..

Yada, yada, yada.

Yiddish; means blah, blah or depending on the source could mean something worse, you imagine.

Now that Romper Room time is over, perhaps we should turn our discussion to the actual Mosaic comparisons between our form of law and the Torah.

Tommorow. I got a poker game to go to.

oops, sorry Nathan, didn’t see your post. Okay. But the Putzaratzi will unlikely read them.

I think having to show any of this is unnecessary. DUH.

Sometimes talking with people is like being in sixth grade all over again.

A better question for him to have addressed is the influence of Enlightment philosophy on American theonomic law, and it’s later effects on American culture of antinomianism and rampant pluralism that sees equivocation between the ethics of lessor stable civilizations and Western Judeo-Christianity, as well as the equivocation of Marxist ideology and Darwinism with Judeo-Christian ethics.

It’s, again, patently stupid.

But that’s unbelief for you. Until they are pounding on the door and draggin them off to the Gulag, they will spit in Moses’ and Jesus’ face.

I’m not even going to bother. If you’re going to throw quotes at me after insisting you were above throwing quotes, I’m not even going to bother.

That’s not what I meant, George, forgive me if I was not clear. What I meant to say was that I acknowledge that there is quite a bit of material that can be gleaned from the Founding Fathers writings that can, if taken by themselves, lead one to think that these were nothing more than Deists and pluralists, enlightenment men all, and many people make that case.

Of course, all we have to deal with is what they wrote, and in looking at a cross-section of the writings of American history from the earliest colonoies up through several President’s administrations, acknowledgment of the Christian God as the providential overseer of our society by the shapers of our cultural-ethos is indisputable.

I’m laying a foundation today that simply says, “these guys were not athiests.”

Now, that said, we can begin another layer of examining the American Theology…..

maybe tomorrow.

But as a token of apology, I promise to in the future of this thread to make an end of cutting and pasting. I agree with you that you could start doing the same and we could use up Nathan’s patience in a real hurry.

Again, next to Nathan, you are one of my favorties here. Granted there are usually only the two of you, but aside from that, I do like you and think highly of your intellect.

I have this nasty method of debate, and much of it that I think is funny really isn’t, it’s just rude. I really need Electro-Shock Therapy or something, maybe that would help. I’m working on it, pal. I don’t know if I can do it, but I’m going to try.

Tomorrow or Tuesday we’ll talk a little about the foundations of Biblical Law, and how those ideals transferred to the American Constitutional system, and how they differ from other forms of government. Without the Law of Moses and Christinaity, there would be no America. And in my belief system, America is the light of the nations, so this really is an important topic, in my opinion.

My only frustration is that I usually, at this stage in my life, get somewhat aggravated (perhaps unjustly) when I have to backtrack and reteach people history, or Biblical themes, or whatever the topic may be.

My ideal situation is to deal with Christians that already agree with much of my theism, and have a working knowledge of Scripture adequate to my then adding on to their theology and making sense out of what is not making sense to them, or giving them paradigm shifts in thinking.

Because they already agree with me on some issues, the teaching is less laborious, faster, and more productive.

Again, I’m not here to convert athiests, as much as I enjoy your company and the intellectual stimulation.

Because, and don’t tell anyone this,

Your going to get another chance at it with much better information than I or anyone else here can give you.

Hasta manana, hombre

Ok, if you’re willing to be reasonable then I don’t mind discussing this with you.

First, let me state this: we are not in disagreement that a majority of the Founding Fathers were Christian, and that an overwhelming majority of the colonists were Christian.

However, even the Christian founders were just as heavily influenced by the thinking of the ancients (namely, the Greeks) as they were by Locke and the Christian philosophers of the Enlightenment.

Also, while most of the founders were Christian, a significant minority were deists. Yes, many of them have been misquoted to the effect that they were deists, who were not actually (Frankin being a notable example; he despised organized religion in all forms, and was a weakly Christian theist himself- by his own term, a deist, but what we would consider a weak theist). But there are a large number who were, by their own frequent admission, deists. Jefferson and Madison are the most notable examples. Even Washington, who was publicly religious, seems not to have been in fact: the ministers of two churches he attended both attested that Washington was not religious.

Despite what you may hear from the media and public school textbooks, America was founded as a Christian nation. In 1620, long before the United States won its independence from England, the Pilgrims came to America’s shores with this mission statement,

“[W]e all came to these parts of America, with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.” – New England Confederation of 1643

It’s interesting that you would mention the Puritans as evidence that the earliest European society in America was a theocratic one, but neglect to mention the true earliest settlement- Jamestown, which was… a business venture.

I’ll take responsibility for Paul Hill and a dozen more misguided religious enthusiasts like him when atheists assume responsibility for the tens of millions who had their lives taken from them to build a better tomorrow.

What about the millions killed by the Crusades, the Inquisition, the pogroms, etc.?
Here’s the thing: no atheist ever killed anybody in the name of atheism. In the name of nationalism, sure (Dawkins argues that nationalism is a subset of religion, and thus Mao and Stalin’s death tolls can be added to theism’s list- but I would argue that nationalism- the bad kind of nationalism, as opposed to simple patriotism- and religion are both subsets of the same general kind of bad thinking). You’d better believe people have killed in the name of their gods. But no one ever killed anyone in the name of atheism.

What the hell was the point of that Ethan Allen quote? It supports my side, not yours. Are you even reading half the things you’re posting? Because that’s about the fraction of it that’s totally irrelevant. What’s the point of quoting the Confedaracy’s constitution? To show that the slave owners used the Bible to support their position? What’s the point of quoting the Emancipation Proclamation? Both the abolitionists and the slavers used the Bible, and the abolitionists had the weaker ground there. What’s the point of quoting the inauguration statements of famous presidents? So what if they were Christian, the country is 90% Christian- what do you think that proves?

You know, I find it terribly interesting that someone supposedly so well educated on the subject has yet to reference a single scholarly work among a whole slew of irrelevant copy-pasting.

Ancient Egyptian law, dating as far back as 3000BC… Around 1760 BC under King Hammurabi, ancient Babylonian law was codified and put in stone for the public to see in the marketplace. This became known as the Codex Hammurabi. But like Egyptian law, which is pieced together by historians from records of litigation, few sources remain and much has been lost through time. The influence of these earlier laws on later civilizations was small.[2] The Torah from the Old Testament is probably the oldest body of law still relevant for modern legal systems, dating back to 1280BC. It takes the form of moral imperatives, like the Ten Commandments and the Noahide Laws, as recommendations for a good society. Ancient Athens, the small Greek city-state, was the first society based on broad inclusion of the citizenry, excluding women and the slave class. Athens had no legal science, and Ancient Greek has no word for “law” as an abstract concept.[3] Yet Ancient Greek law contained major constitutional innovations in the development of democracy.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_history

As we see from Wikipedia, codification of laws is basically resident from the time of Egyptians forward. Few of these law systems have survived in any detail down to us, which speaks volumes, namely that in many cultures, the law was not held in importance in comparison to other aspects of the culture, such as the Cult of the Dead, in Egypt’s case.

Legal system (Egypt)
The head of the legal system in ancient Egypt was officially the pharaoh….[4] …In cases of tomb robbery or assassination plots, the state took on both the role of prosecutor and judge, and could torture the accused with beatings to obtain a confession and the names of any co-conspirators. …Punishment for minor crimes involved either imposition of fines, beatings, facial mutilation, or exile, depending on the severity of the offense. Serious crimes such as murder and tomb robbery were punished by death, which could be carried out by decapitation, drowning, or by impaling the criminal on a stake. Punishment could also be extended to the criminal’s family.[4]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Egypt

The Law of the Hebrews is unique in history, however:

The salient feature of the Torah as the law of the Hebrews is its divine origins and its immutability. The Torah as law is seen as the instructions given to the chosen people by the one and only one God, Yahweh. The special relationship between the Hebrews and Yahweh is predicated on obedience; the Torah itself stands in for Yahweh. In every sense of the word, if Yahweh is the ruler of the Hebrews, then the Torah is the leader of the Hebrews. This is a remarkably new concept in the ancient world, and a concept of profound brilliance. For this concept of the Torah is the foundation of the Western notion of “rule by law,” in which the law is seen as superior to all temporal rulers, that is, that rulers are ruled by law. This notion, so common in Western culture, ultimately owes its origin to the Hebrew Torah.

http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/HEBREWS/TORAH.HTM

We could continue and debate the differences between the law of the Greeks and the Romans, but to do so is really unnecessary, they have nothing to do with how OUR Constitution was developed. Suffice it to say that in the Greek civilization, the Polis was the center of government, and the people served the Polis. In the Roman world, after the Republic, the center of government was the State, with power usually residing in the Caesars, deified power in some cases that lent itself to harsh and cruel despotism. Rome of course also provided stability and progress and common languages, all prerequisites for Christ to come “at the fullness of times,” and for the later propagation of the Gospel message.

The beginning of our lesson on American law in relation to Judeo-Christian ethics, involves several subjects that have to be understood before one can see clearly that development from Moses to Madison (the father of the Constitution):

1) The Chain of Christianity (how, from the first century forward, Christian law and Gospel permeated the world and various continents and cultures, down to today)

2) The chain of development of self-governing churches and communities, from the Pilgrims Dutch haven city of Leyden, to the Mayflower Compact, all the way to the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, and eventually the Constitutional Congress. This development is not an ancillary one; it is directly causal to how our Constitution was framed. In other words, as the Pilgrim and Puritan Christians worked out their theology of church associations and law, over time, this directly influenced how they would later construct their constitutions. This is perhaps one of the most important contributions of Christians to the framing of the Constitution, and is indisputable. An article explaining what church polity is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecclesiastical_polity

I could spend time showing this chain in detail, and because it is so important, I’m willing to do that although it’s a lot of effort. If you are not familiar with this history of the connection between church polity and civil law, and of the specific historical instances I’m speaking of, just let me know and I’ll digress and explain that. Otherwise, I’ll assume you stipulate this section.

3) God’s Pathway to Liberty – there is a specific chronology in the Scriptures that unveils the Law of Liberty, which our inheritance in Christ. This law of Christ is directly reflected in the Constitution of the United States. Understanding this progression from Bible to Benjamin Franklin encompasses understanding first what Liberty is, true Liberty, and then seeing that story of how Liberty is brought to the people of the world in the Gospel message of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. I’m not just drawing strained analogies here. What I’m saying is that the fundamental gift of Freedom and Liberty which our Constitution attempts to bestow on every American cannot be understood outside the Bible’s story of salvation. It is impossible. Why? Because in history, from the Exodus to Jesus, Liberty and Freedom were concepts that were unknown throughout the world except by the Hebrews, and the Christians. It is a pathway from internal liberty to external expression in civil government, it is self-government under God. We could go further down this line of reasoning, but I’m just trying to outline the necessary topics that have to be addressed before we can really answer this question of whether the Constitution, and America, are Judeo-Christian by their very nature. The answer is a resounding and emphatic YES, we are not only a historically Christian nation, we still are, legally, covenantally. Attempts to break that polity will break us, because it is of a whole who we are, and what our destiny is. God’s pathway to Liberty begins in Genesis when He gave the Dominion Mandate to Adam to go forth, propagate the species, and take dominion of the earth (to steward it, shepherd it, oikonomos, economize it). It continues through the establishing of the Law of Moses, which originally was meant to be a law of self-governance under God, a theocracy. But the Hebrews were wicked, and asked for a King, like the surrounding pagan nations. On down to Christ, who sets men free from their sins, and gives them Liberty by enabling them to live by the Spirit of Christ, by the Law of Liberty. On through the ages Christianity went forth and made disciples, preached that Law of Liberty, and eventually challenged the Roman Empire, challenged hierarchical religion gone astray, and found a New Land from which they could establish that self-governing nation that they envisioned, a nation that would then reach its influence across the globe and extend that same self-governing philosophy to other peoples under domination of despots and despotic philosophies.

The secular, atheistic, ultra-pluralistic America of the Left-wing communists is A FANTASY.

It is a fiction created by people who are bent on revisionism, who are committed to the overthrow of American culture by COMMUNISM. They call it Socialism, or Progressivism, but these are stages of communism, not variants of it.

This crowd of people can best be described in this verse, from the stoning of Steven,

But they cried out with a loud voice, and covered their ears and rushed at him with one impulse.

This is how they will rush to their destruction, with their fingers in their ears.

Ok, that’s it for today.

This again, is all background.

1) The Founders were not atheists and secularized Deists intent on founding a pluralist nation like the Left would define it today. We could spend days cutting and pasting their quotations about God and Government, but that should be stipulated. If not, just go visit every monument in Washington, D.C., there isn’t a one without some reference to God on them, hundreds of them, thousands of them), etc. etc.
2) The history of our nation is a view of divine providence in the founding of a nation. The founders held that word in great esteem and used it often, perhaps tomorrow I’ll tell you what Daniel Webster thought of the word. The Founders believed that God was directing them for a purpose, and articulated that purpose often, and as we see, in many cases they articulated the view that they were to found a great and powerful nation for the specific purpose of exporting the Gospel of Jesus Christ, not for the purpose of dominating other nations, but for bringing to them the same Law of Liberty that has been given to us.
3) There are chains of evidence of the history of the OT law, and the NT law, culminating in Europe in the Reformational 17th century that spawned the Migration to America, encouraged a developmental church polity and civil polity, spawning increasingly better compacts and constitutions, becoming eventually the U.S. Constitution.

Thus, by content and historical connection, the U.S. Constitution is, indisputably, a Christian construct.

Next we will outline more of these specifics, and discuss the five-fold covenant model and its connection with the Constitution, as well as the influence not just of the Mosaic Law as found in Christian tradition, but also the huge influence of Hebrew Law on Western Civilization through the Torah hallakah, and through Maimonides.

Be sure to let me know if I’m bring you guys, I already know this stuff, I don’t have to type it out just for my health, so I hope someone can get something out of it.

Sonny

“You know, I find it terribly interesting that someone supposedly so well educated on the subject has yet to reference a single scholarly work among a whole slew of irrelevant copy-pasting.”

Well, 1) I started with Fischer’s textbook on American imagery, citing the commission and forging of the Liberty Bell, with it’s attendant Levitical passage about Liberty. If you say he is not a scholar, well, whatever.

2)I referenced the founding documents directly, including several inauguration speeches and other important historical documents, hardly what anyone would call “irrelevant” cutting and pasting. But of course, since it’s devastating to your case, I understand your feelings.

3) I provided one post that showed the controversy in a modern context, just to show it’s not just an academic waste of time, it does have relevance today

4) I provided another scholarly article on covenant and America by Daniel Elazar

5)and my last post was all me, except for the wikipedia quotes and the Torah quotes.

I don’t know, seems to me like I’m doing what any reasonable person would do when arguing a position.

The following is an article from a crusade historian:
http://www.crisismagazine.com/april2002/cover.htm

He does not list numbers in this article, I have researched this topic in the past and the numbers of deaths for the 10 or so crusades are generally in the tens of thousands, not “millions.” The Albigensian Crusade was perhaps the most bloody, with 200,000 people dying, over a TWENTY year period. We killed more than that in 2 days in Japan. While this particular crusade was against heretics, schizmatics, not against outsiders, and much of it was largely political in nature.

Don’t diss the Crusades without bringing them into context. The Mongols, the Mohamettans, the Romans, et al, did far, far, more pillaging and looting than Christians ever dreamed of doing.

As for the European witch-hunts, 100,000 over 100 years.

As for American Salem Witch Trials, 16 (one-six) people hanged or burned.

Ok, now that we got that out of the way, what was that nonsense about you miraculously placing Mao and Stalin
into some category of theism, so you can blame the 100 million murders PLUS they have inflicted on mankind?

Wow! That’s really convienient! I guess we can just skip the whole discussion about dialetical materialism, and the entire history of the twentieth century as it relates to States that hold atheism as their national religion, or to States that elevate Marxist atheism and economics above their cultural national religions, such as Buddhism.

So, if you are a Crusader, you are a mass-murderer! If you are an Atheist mass-murderer, you are a Crusader! If you are a Christian, you are by association, BOTH!

Get real, man.

Oh, and the Ethan Allen thing? Um, duh, the whole discussion is in the context of theology from an early American. He contradicted the traditions, challenged their theology, but he was not an atheist. He does not affirm or deny being a Deist either. His argument is for natural theology, leading to an exercise of reason over religious ideology. Well, so did Augustine, so did Aquinas, Allen’s saying nothing new, but the fact that he’s saying it in the public discourse in the context of a national belief in God, is my point.

Okay, so far you have brought up the crusades, the witch trials, the Inquisition (oh, depending on which inquisition, Spanish or European, the numbers are 5,000 and 12,000, last I remember.), Mao and Stalin and placed them in the Vatican planning out their evil deeds, and, oh yes, the pogroms. I have no numbers on the pogroms, but hey, why not blame Hitler on Christianity too? That’ll add about 10 million more to your count.

Now, I’ve got to go. I’ve got my weekly Red Menace meeting to attend, and then after that my Nazi-skin head bowling league. Oh, and maybe after that I’ll go kill a few dozen Muslims while they are at prayer at the local mosque.

Holy………

Would you please at least make an attempt to read for comprehension? I specifically said that I, unlike Dawkins, did not think it reasonable to attribute Mao and Stalin’s death tolls to theism. I attribute them to nationalism, which shares some characteristics with theism but is not, contrary to what the New Atheists argue, a subset of it. The mere fact that Stalin and Mao were atheists does not allow one to blame atheism for their dead. If we followed that course, we could as well blame every
single war prior to the 20th century on theism, seeing as the leaders of all those nations were theists.

I have no intention of blaming the Nazis on religion, so long as you aren’t going to blame them on Darwin. Hitler was certainly not a Christian. However one should note that he had the full support of the German Catholic Church (and the tacit support of the Vatican) for much of his reign.

And here’s the thing. Atheism makes no claim to moral perfection. Christianity does. So it isn’t enough that Christians are generally about as good or bad as atheists- they’ve got to be better. And they aren’t.

Ok, let me see if I get this straight. Mao, Stalin and others like them, though the central tenet of their belief system is the autonomy of man, i.e. atheism, and though another central tenet of their belief system is that class struggle (class warfare) produces the ideal state in which the individual has no freedoms apart from that which is granted to them by that state, and though another tenet of their belief system is that salvation is acheived only in this world, it is a temporal attainment, the best one can hope for in a communist society is to rise in the Party and gain some personal comforts in this life, because this is all there is.

After the “communist society” is attained, property will be shared amongst the people (no private property), no marriage covenants, children will be raised by the State like in “1984,” (actually a bad comparison, we have plenty of real life ones, Cuba, China, Russia, Southeast Asia, etc.), and supposedly people will work to the common good of society.

Well, all this has been tried before of course, the Soviet Union failed on internal productivity, massive military spending in a a race with the West, but coupled with culture wide inefficiency those capital expenditures on weapons just went to waste as there was no gas to fuel their missiles, no parts to fix their aging air force, not this, no that.

China’s saved itself by merging it’s communism with capitalism, because their entire population was starving to death. Mao couldn’t kill enough to keep up with the problem of hunger, though he tried. Capitalism feeds the masses (some of them anyway) while also providing enormous reserves for military build-up. The Chinese think generationally. Their p50 or 100 year plan to dominate the world is tempered by the need to feed a billion and a half people. But once their military plan is complete, they’ll invade Taiwan, force a confrontation with the West, and probably ally with Russia and anyone else who is willing to covenant with communist rule, in an attempt to nuetralize the United States and make her fall back on Monroe Doctrine isolationism, or invade us outright.

In Chinese society, since the communist have ruled, millions of people have been killed, just as in the Stalinist system. So whether it’s Latin American Marxism (Cuba, et al), Russian Stalinism (Soviet-bloc or European communism, etc.), or Chinese Maoism, the results are always the same, a brutal death by the firing squad by the millions, or slow death by Gulag prison cell, or death by revolutionaries overthrowing your government, shooting the educated, the clergy, and the politicians. They then rob the resources of the prior government, and promptly set themselves up as a new robber baron class, confiscating all the wealth of the individuals, corporations, churches, schools, banks, factories, everything.

Once power is in hand, they appoint their hand picked new elite to govern the theft of the country’s resources, and make sure no other revolutionaries like them succeed in another coup, starting the whole cyclical process over again, with more killing and looting.

So, although these systems of belief (variants in name only of Marxism proper, that is dialectical materialsim or historical materialism, whatever you want to call it) kill people directly as a result of their tenets of belief, chief of which states that man is autonomous and answers to no higher power, and that man is an animal, and that the one ethic of life is to get comfort for oneself, at all costs to others.

You don’t see a connection here to atheism, my friend, and these mass murders of the Chinese and Russian socieities, not to mention Cuba, et al? Pol Pot killed 2 million. Why? Communism. Atheism supported by a Buddhism that is essentially atheism, but with shaved heads and robes, and ringing bells. The Killing Fields of Cambodia (5 million). Communism. Atheism (god-less Buddhism).

And as for this idea of “nationalism” somehow being evil, is also in direct contradiction to the Law of Moses, and to Christian doctrine, and eschatology. Nationalism in effect in Christian theology is clearly enunciated in the doctrine of the restoration of the nation of Israel (Rom.11) in the last days. But you are correct in noting that there is an evil type of nationalism, as I have noted there is an holy type of nationalism. The evil nationalism is seen in the nations arrayed against the Church and against Israel in the latter days (Revelation, etc.), and was also seen in the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. by the Romans.

I and competent scholarship take the position that it is not nationalism which drives Marxist nations, but political and economic and “quasi-religious” ideology that uses Marx’s Utopian economic fantasy world as an excuse to kill those who have power and wealth, so they might replace them in those positions of power and wealth. This is the true class struggle which they speak of, constant revolution and deprivation of lower and middle society while the rich live high on the hog. Anyone who believes it’s really about utopian ideology is a fool, I think.

As for Hitler, I am not well read on the madman’s personal beliefs, although I did read Mein Kampf years ago (I also read Marx’s Communist Manifesto, and all the modern versions, and Das Capital). I know that Hitler used Darwin’s theory of evolution as an excuse to experiment on various races, and types of people (retarded, Jew, pregnant, etc.), in a gruesome attempt to make himself feel like he was participating in the legitimate world of science, and I’m sure to feed his sick appetite for violence. I can’t speak to his theistic beliefs, I would lean towards him being a complemte and unapologetic atheist, and that he used Darwinism as a justification of sorts (along with political arguments) to annihilate the Jews and other races he sought to eliminate.

Blaming these underlying beliefs, or associations with beliefs, for WWII and the Holocaust would not be justified though. He was a manaical meglomaniac, dropped into German history at just the exact right moment when the German conscience was at it’s lowest point, having lost the German Battle for the Bible to the higher critics and declaring the death of God in German theology and academia. That added to loss of WWI and the German economic depression, left Hitler with an open door to preach nationalism and take power.

Nationalism swept Europe in the years of the War. But it was a demonic anti-Jewish, anti-Christian, pro-Darwinist and at least functional atheism that caused him to seek out all methods of exterminating the Jews from Germany and other parts of Europe. With piles of bodies so huge that they could not dispose of them all, and yet they continued killing, day after day, doesn’t lend itself to just an explanation of nationalism, even errant ones.

Underlying that belief in one’ superiority is a construct which the superiority has to rest on. Nationalism doesn;t explain it. So you are German, so what? What makes you superior?

Well, as I said, I believe the constructs which led these Germans to carry out Hitler’s orders were once again, atheism (German higher criticism essentially gutted German social ethics and left them able to intellectualize the horrors of the Holocaust. Rememeber, Hitler didn’t kill those millions, some German officers and soldiers carried out his orders. If Hitler was using nationalism or Darwinism or whatever for his excuses, we can understand one man being nuts.

But the entire German central command? The entire Volksreich? No, there has to be something greater than just nationalism driving all these people to commit horrific murders in the millions. Antinomianism, institutional atheism, Darwinian survival of the fittest “theology and sociology”, whatever. These were certainly heavy elements, if not the center of the German psychosis. For this crime, Germany should never have been allowed to field another army, and their national identity should be attached with a mark of shame for all of human history, until the end of days when Christ can restore their nation, as surely he is the only one who can atone for that sin. The United Nations doesn’t have the moral authority to do so, and they certainly don’t have the moral authority to now stand over the systemic destruction of modern Israel at the hands of these hypocrites, murderers, and enemies of humanity, the U.N.

In closing, the crime of the Holocaust requires justice, in history, or “post-history.” If there is no justice given for the Holocaust victims, and the general crime against humanity, then the world is as you say, deterministic and devoid of meaning in the existential sense.

Your system says there is no redemption for that crime, it’s just one of those things, like the extinction of the dinosaurs. One day a rock hits you and that’s that.

My system is really answering the question, in my view, instead of begging the question. What is the question?

Is philosophy and theology and epistemology really important? Can these systems of thought be shown to be true to what is there, or are they nothing more than vain attempts at human beings trying to make sense of nonsense in a world and universe that is impersonal and without purpose?

My system says that the Holocaust was wrong, and why it was wrong. It points to a standard. It also provides sanctions in the Law for those who committed these crimes. It answers the temporal need for justice. It also provides an eschatological system that not only recognizes the injustice and punishes it in this world, it also teaches an ethic that one day those who received no justice in life will receive it at another time, at the Last Day (well, sort of, it’s more complicated than you think). Those who perpetrated the crime can receive restoration (national Germany) from the only one qualified to give it, Jesus Christ.

Thus the German people’s shame will one day be wiped away, and they can take their rightful place again amongst the Nations in the New Heavens and New Earth.

This kind of “rational” system of thought does more than just proclaim materialism the winner and whatever happens, happens because of genetics and, of course, religion.

Religion is ultimately to blame for EVERYTHING. And sanything that’s not methodological materialism and neo-Darwinian, is religion, no matter what it is. Ghenghis Khan? Religion (somehow associated with Christians, not sure how). Robespierre? Religion. The French religion of atheist head-cutters, somehow also associated with Christians one way or another, surely.

Not these other things I have described.

The following article argues your point for you. I’d thought you’d like to read it:

http://home.earthlink.net/~libraryofsocialscience/logic.htm

“Based on the impact and according to the logic of ideas like these about “life unworthy life,” the “euthanasia movement” was initiated by the Nazis. By 1939, prior to the Final Solution, nearly 100,000 defective children and mental patients had been killed by the German state. A major figure in the euthanasia movement, Dr. Pfanmuller, articulated the link between the death of soldiers in war and state killing of the mentally ill when he said: “The idea is unbearable to me that the best, the flower of our youth must lose its life at the front in order that feeble-minded and irresponsible asocial elements can have a secure existence in the asylum.” What was unbearable was that the idea that the state had no qualms about sending the most valuable human beings to die, but took great pains to preserve the lives of those that made no contribution to the community.

“In order to “balance things out,” therefore, achieve a kind of “fairness,” the Nazis put forth and acted upon the idea that it was necessary to kill bad persons as well as good ones. If the state acted without compunction to cause the deaths of those who made the greatest contribution to the nation (German soldiers), surely it should have no misgivings about killing mentally ill or anti-social elements that made no contribution to the community. Indeed, according to Nazi ideology, the nation would be better off if it was relieved of the burden of these “parasites on the body of the people” that consumed resources but did not produce or create them.”

http://easia.imb.org/classroom/religion/communism.html

Sorry for the length of these posts everybody, but these arguments George is graciously producing are old, and they hold no more weight than the day someone first used them in debate. Being that secular humanism is practically an infant, historically speaking, as well as neo-Darwinism, it says nothing to point back throughout all of the rest of human history and say religion and belief in God is the cause of all war and death in the world. It’s non-sequitor. Doesn’t follow.

If you take that line of reasoning, and go back far enough (assuming such a thing exists) you find AMH’s and pre-moderns, and other human ancestral lineages, who killed each other in perhaps greater proportions, if not numbers, than that of all the relgions put together. Go back far enough, and you have the human animal, red with tooth and claw. Devoid of ethics except that which allows me to survive. In that environment, the Holocaust means nothing more than the evening meal for the Neanderthals, doesn’t it?

Now, you can argue that you are better than a Neanderthal, and better than a Nazi, and I’m sure you are.

But you haven’t shown how you arrive at that standard.

So far all I’ve seen is some misty glances towrds the direction of the Greek polis, and maybe the Code of Hammurabi, but you haven’t shown how those things transfer from ancient laws to modern, specifically the U.S. Constitution.

Remember not to emulate your YEC counterparts. Fallacies of Dilemma, non-sequitor arguments, guilt by association, ad hoc (“Religion pre-dates secularism. Most wars and death occurred prior to secularism. Therefore religion is the predominant cause of war and death.”).

We began this discussion with the question, “is American law based on the Mosiac Law, and Judeo-Christian ethics?”

I’m trying to answer that. If you sidetrack me on the whole issue of human and divine theodicy and who is historically the nicer guy, I can’t get that done.

This is an important topic. The answer to this may not be accepted by you, but there are those Christians out there who never received an education in historical Christian polity or in divine American destiny, because the education system in this country doesn’t want you to know that information. Remember, they are about redefinition, so that the communist system may flower and bloom without a shot.

It is worthy of our time to show a thread of continuity from the Law of the Hebrews, and of the Christian system in our government, so that the LAW OF LIBERTY can be thoroughly understood and defended to the last man.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

my, isn’t that dramatic? Yeah, every time a soldier dies in combat, which is everyday, it is that dramatic.

Atheism makes no claim to moral perfection?

Isn’t that what you are doing?

You have pronounced judgment on thousands of years of human history in one fell swoop, by invoking the nasty “religion kills people” argument. By extension, you have claimed that American law adn ethics are not based in Judeo-Christian law, but something pre-dating those, just what you have not articulated. That is a straw man argument. It matters not whether there were some codes of laws and ethics prior to the Hebrews, there were and I have noted those.

The question is what form of law came down to us and transferred into the American system of jurisprudence and social politick, and of Western civilization as well.

We have examined some of that and will continue in the days ahead, as long as Nathan allows me. Certainly those who represent atheism in the world today certainly do make the claim that their epistemological and ethical system is superior, read the Humanist Manifesto and other atheist tomes.

Now, I am saying Christian epistemology, ethics, law, EVERYTHING about the Christian system is superior to any atheist belief system, except one. Scientific methodological materialism. You have to practice that to get anything done.

But the Christian system that I’m talking about, and the one you think you are railing against, are two different animals.

For one thing, you have to have a solid grasp of history, not easy in today’s schools, second, you have to have a working knowledge of comparative religions, philosophical belief systems, epistemological methods, and you have to understand the nuances of Christian history and theology, and it’s errors and gaps.

How many people can do this, just to answer simple questions like the one we are addressing?

Not many, let me put it that way.

Hey George, I want to respond to all the sidebars, but I’ve missed some, like the German Catholics cooperating with Hitler.

I would have to do some quick research to refresh my last connection with this subject, but it was a few years ago when John Paul II was still alive, and some Vatican documents or German documents were released that showed more of facts surrounding the appeasement of the Catholics to the Nazis.

“In August 2006 extracts from the 60-year-old diary of a nun of the Convent of Santi Quattro Coronati[94] were published in the Italian press, stating that Pope Pius XII ordered Rome’s convents and monasteries to hide Jews during the Second World War.[95]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Pius_XII

If you read the article, you will see the Vatican follow pretty much the same course as any other government did between 1933 and 1939. After 1939, with a couple of exceptions, Pope Pius XII made strong statements against forced deportations of Jews, although he did not immmediately issue condemnations of the Nazi regime. Yet in 1941 and 42 and through out the war, he was instrumental in saving thousands of Jews, in this article alone is mentioned something like 10,000 he personally gave sanctuary to in the Vatican and convents.

Even America did not break it’s economic ties with the Nazi’s until 1939.

I think looking to the Vatican for blame is not the point, more to the point is Germany’s descent into higher critical atheism, in essence the clergy were corrupted and ripe for tolerating atrocities, and this extended to all denominations, Catholics included. So I’m sort of agreeing with you, just modifying it a bit. Even more to this point is this damning indictment of the state of German religion
brought on by the Nazi’s, laid on the foundation of higher criticism.

We were asking ourselves what Hitler’s religion was, well this is what Wikipedia says:

Volkism was inherently hostile toward atheism: freethinkers clashed frequently with Nazis in the late 1920s and early 1930s. On taking power, Hitler banned freethought organizations and launched an “anti-godless” movement. In a 1933 speech he declared: “We have . . . undertaken the fight against the atheistic movement, and that not merely with a few theoretical declarations: we have stamped it out.” This forthright hostility was far more straightforward than the Nazis’ complex, often contradictory stance toward traditional Christian faith.[24]

The prevailing scholarly view[25] since the Second World War is that Martin Luther’s 1543 treatise On the Jews and their Lies exercised a major and persistent influence on Germany’s attitude toward its Jewish citizens in the centuries between the Reformation and the Holocaust . The National Socialists displayed On the Jews and their Lies during Nuremberg rallies, and the city of Nuremberg presented a first edition to Julius Streicher, editor of the Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer, the newspaper describing it as the most radically antisemitic tract ever published.[26] Against the majority view, theologian Johannes Wallmann writes that the treatise had no continuity of influence in Germany, and was in fact largely ignored during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.[27]

According to Daniel Goldhagen, Bishop Martin Sasse, a leading Protestant churchman, published a compendium of Martin Luther’s writings shortly after the Kristallnacht; Sasse “applauded the burning of the synagogues and the coincidence of the day, writing in the introduction, “On November 10, 1938, on Luther’s birthday, the synagogues are burning in Germany.” The German people, he urged, ought to heed these words “of the greatest antisemite of his time, the warner of his people against the Jews.”[28] Diarmaid MacCulloch argued that On the Jews and Their Lies was a “blueprint” for the Kristallnacht.[29]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazism

I know from personal experience that this is the case even with today’s Calvinist and Reformed theologians, their theology is inherently racist and anti-Semitic.

This is why is strive so hard to correct the impressions of these theologies in the culture of Christianity.

You may think I’m just a big wind bag, and maybe you’d be right.

To me, it’s a Mission from God.

So wait. I’m confused. Are you blaming atheism for the Nazis, or German Christians, or neither? Because you seem to say one thing, then the exact opposite.

Atheism makes no claim to moral perfection?

Isn’t that what you are doing?

You have pronounced judgment on thousands of years of human history in one fell swoop, by invoking the nasty “religion kills people” argument.

I only invoked that argument in response to your invocation of the nasty “atheism kills people” argument. But if you didn’t mean to invoke that argument, I’m sorry- I had figured you probably weren’t even reading half your copy-pastings, so I guess that’s one you didn’t notice you had posted. Let me refresh your memory- it’s the essay entitled “The Assault on God and the Bible”, by Gary DeMar.

We began this discussion with the question, “is American law based on the Mosiac Law, and Judeo-Christian ethics?”

I’m trying to answer that. If you sidetrack me on the whole issue of human and divine theodicy and who is historically the nicer guy, I can’t get that done.

Ok, but you’re the one sidetracking yourself. I’m only responding to what you put on the table.

Let’s stop sparring point for point and perhaps we’ll make our arguments rationally, and understand what the other is trying to say.

I understand that secular humanism as it is practiced by many Americans does not seem like the insidious doctrine I am portraying it to be. There is of course truth to your position, not all atheists seek the same things as militant atheists who have perpetrated crimes in the name of atheism. That point is stipulated.

On the Nazi crimes against humanity, I said that I was not an expert on Hitler’s religious views, I was not sure what form of philosophy he believed on the subject of theism. I assumed he was an atheist, because of his radical views on evolution, and his methodological racism and nationalism. While writing that post,I stumbled on that article that agreed with your supposition that Hitler did not use atheism as a justification for his views, in fact Nazi “Volkism” which I assume was the Nazi form of civil religion, persecuted free thinkers, i.e. atheists.

As for making any sense of Hitler’s religious views, I think that is impossible, he was a psychotic who combined ideologies from anywhere it pleased him if it struck him as useful to perpetuating his manaical philosophy.

I assumed atheism was the central tenet of Nazi religious ideology, because Nazism is Socialist, and a central tenet of all true socialism is atheism, the sovereignty of man is an absolute.

But again, Hitler was no ordinary despot. According to that article, he took anti-Semitic elements from Calvinism, Nordic mythology to support his “German superman” fantasies, and if you believe what you see on some TV documentaries, he was into the occult too.

So the guy was nuts, and I backed up on that assertion that you cannot make a case that atheism was innocent in the crime of the Holocaust. That’s why I posted that article, to give you room.

But I do not back off the assertion that while Hitler’s views may be mysterious and schizo, there are other indicators of functional German atheism that enabled the German military, the clergy, and the people, to justify carrying out the Final Solution when they discovered it or were ordered to murder innocents on Hitler’s word alone.

German theology had been destroyed by Higher Criticism, which is functionally atheistic, and the clergy had no moral backbone to take a position against evil, because they equivocated evil and good. What was expedient, was moral. If that meant murdering Jews, old people, homosexuals, the infirm, etc., so be it.

And the people had been steeped in this castrated theology for 50 years or so, and had lost their moral compass, and were demoralized as a nation from their loss of WWI, and their economy was in serious recession/depression.

They were ready to follow any madmen who came along and claimed to have restorational answers for Germany’s national honor. All these elements taken together, plus the fact that much of the public was ignorant of the depth of the horror until three years into the war, combined to create a “social and cultural psychosis” that allowed the Third Reich to carry out their plans without objection. Granted the Gestapo made any German fear for their lives if they even smelled a whiff of treason, but fear of death and imprisonment is no excuse for tolerating institutional evil on scales that we are discussing.

Some did dissent, like the German pastor and theologian, Detrich Bonhoffer. He was imprisoned and murdered by the Nazi’s just before the capture of Berlin by the Russians.

Very few others paid the price to stand against evil.

I believe the reasons I stated are elements of the whole, but the Holocaust issue and Hitler’s Germany is not a cut and dried example like China, Russia, and Cuba are.

As for “blaming” the Holocaust on Hitler’s weird views of Darwinism, certainly as I said, this is an element of the whole that cannot be refuted. His ideas on eugenics derived from a misapplication of Darwinist science, and his human “medical” experimentation was probably related to his obtuse science views. His entire racist ideology was based in a belief that the German/Aryan race was pure, and that Germany would under his control make the next leap forward in human evolution. To facilitate that goal, he made the logical conclusion (based on those suppositions) that to speed up the process of evolution, all he needed to do was remove from nature that which was impeding humanity from advancing, the Jews, and other undesirables.

Thus, I conclude that there was a functional atheism at work in the culture of Nazi Germany, especially the clergy, and that Darwinian evolutionary theory, misapplied, directly is a justification Hitler used to perpetrate the Holocaust.

What “percentage” these played, I don’t know. Obviously there was the nationalism issue (but as I said, the doesn’t follow for the whole nation), and there is the political issue of Lebensraum, which made Nazi Germany imperialistic and expansionist, by themselves.

So, that said, if you want to make assertions here, there’s enough room for everybody on this one empire.

The biggest shame I see in this is that Calvinism is a anti-Semitic and racist theological system, and so if there’s any blame for the Holocaust on Christianity, it is going to be on German higher critics, and on traditional Calvinists whose sick views on theology are sometimes used to perpetrate crimes in the name of religion.

There. You got that much out of me, and I think that’s a fair evaluation.

How to answer the question of the Christian history of American law and ethics is more important than just answering the question.

The subject carries so much importance, and is so little understood by the culture at large, that to not, when given the opportunity, make a clear case that leaves the reader with an understanding of why and what makes the American Covenant unique and different from any other on the planet, would be a dereliction of my duty.

1. The first point we made was that the Founders were not atheists.

They were not Deists forced to use the language of Christianity in their speeches and documents, but who really were pluralists and secularists. This is a common view of American Founders that is preached in the communist seminaries of America, universities and colleges. They have used the argument ad infinitum, said it until their face turned blue, and now everybody believes it. Nothing could be further from the truth as we shall see.

2. The second point we made was that the Founders (with a couple exceptions, granted) held a high view of the Doctrine of Divine Providence.

We perused a good amount of the original documents, and found the concept of Providence mentioned in nearly all of them. To them it was not just a theoretical or theological issue, they believed it because their experience justified it. A recounting of the stories of divine providence ordering the establishment of the Christian republic may not prove that God actually interferred in the affairs of men, as opposed to the view that these events were just accidents of history, but goes to prove that the Founders believed that God did interveneon their behalf, and that based on this history He would do so in the future as well. And their belief was not entirely unselfish. Had they lost the war, they would all be hanged as traitors.

An example of providential acts would be the Pilgrims being blown off course and landing at Cape Cod when their destination was Virginia. Unable to advance to Virginia, they settled at Plymouth. Had they arrived just a few years earlier, they would have encountered hostile Indians that would have certainly killed them. In 1617, that tribe was wiped out by a plague. A single survivor of that tribe, Squanto, was kidnapped and taken to Britain and educated there, and having returned to Plymouth he became an invaluable resource to the Pilgrims that secured their survival. Squanto showed them how to plant and fertilize corn, and he mediated treaties and translated for the settlers with the Indian tribes. Squanto personally negotiated a 50 year peace treaty with the Indians, and was drafter of a law that treated Indians and Pilgrims justly under the rule of law.

Another example of providence is the escape of Washington’s army at New York when Washington’s military inexperience caused him to divide his forces, send part of his army to Brooklyn, where they were defeated and surrounded by a large land and sea force of General Howe. Facing certain death, Washington devised a plan to slip through the enemy lines by night across the East River back to Manhattan, using a flotilla of boats. 8,000 men boarded their vessels, and immediately a fog arose so thick it masked their escape and even dampened the sounds of their oars aplshing in the water. When the British army saw daylight, Washington’s army was gone. So masterful was their escape, they even took the horses and the heavy guns with them.

A new article questioning the Christian faith of Washington appears in Christianity Today (http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2006/aprilweb-only/114-22.0.html)
“the Novaks contend that there is sufficient evidence to be certain that Washington was “Not a Deist, but Judeo-Christian” as one of their chapter titles declares, albeit “a very private Christian. The Novaks’ central argument, following several chapters recapitulating Washington’s life, is based upon Washington’s incessant appeals to and observations of the ways of Providence. This is something ignored or dismissed by many biographers, which is foolish; Washington used “Providence” so often that it can be characterized as one of his three ruling ideas of how the world works or should work (the other two, I believe, are “West” and “Union”). His idea of Providence was that it was the intervention of an all-powerful and all-merciful God in the events of mankind.”
So,
3. Providence – the Founders continually in their documents reaffirmed their belief that God governs in the affairs of men, especially as pertaining to the American nation
4. Liberty and Property – Secondly, we must acknowledge what the central principles were that America was founded upon. The fundamental principle is of course, Liberty. But what is Liberty, and why is it necessary that the colonists separate from England to attain Liberty?
The answer to this question lies in the definition of the concept of Property, in our own worldview, and that of competing philosophical systems.
Life, Liberty, and Property as central tenets of the American system of law, ethics, and government.
Noah Webster defined Property as that “exclusive right of possessing, enjoying, and disposing of a thing; ownership. God, the Creator, gave man dominion over the Earth, which is the foundation of man’s property in the earth and all it’s productions. The labor of inventing, making or producing anything constitutes one of the highest titles to property. It is one of the greatest blessings of civil society that the property of citizens is well secured.” Noah Webster, 1828 Webster’s Dictionary
In the colonial era, if someone had asked them the question, “who owns you and your property?” they would have universally replied that God is the owner, specifically the God of the Bible. We are God’s property.
“For ye are bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body, and spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Cor. 6:20)
One cannot have Liberty if one cannot be secure in their property. Not only his material possessions, but his intellectual property, his property in his posterity (children are ours, not the property of the state as in Marxism), the property of his vocation, and the property of his opinions, and the property he owns in the right to defend himself and his family, and his nation, by force of arms.
Our view of Property, and where we derive the right to Liberty and Property, makes all the difference between being a free man and becoming a victim of history. Ignorance of where our Liberties and rights are derived is inexcusable in free men. The dialectical systems arrayed against us employ several methods to attack and weaken our culture, but two of them are: the use of violence (“Mao said that “peace comes through the barrel of a gun”), and the use of our own legal system against us to undue our own ethics by redefining the values of the culture through legal precedence.
Most of our culture waits to act until they are physically attacked, like 9/11. But as for the backdoor attack on our way of life that uses our legal courts to undermine Liberty, we are silent and inactive, docile. It’s like we equate these attacks as “intellectual,” or social debate, or politics, or free expression, or pluralism, or whatever. We mistakenly view the enemy legislating their morality at us through legal means, as academic. Like it happened in a classroom or something. It’s not. Law affects you. If the enemy uses the courts to redefine the meaning of Eminent Domain to mean that capitalists (like real estate developers, for example) can use the law to convince the city council to allow them the right to appropriate the properties against the consent of the owners of the Property, as long as they offer a market price. The State, in bed with vested interests, has just said that godly government no longer is to protect the Life, Liberties and Property of the People whom they are supposed to represent. Now, the State has redefined itself. It now determines your human rights, they are no longer unalienable rights given by God the Creator.
We derive our humans rights to Life, Liberty, and Property from the Sovereign of history who providentially acts in the affairs of men. The Dominion Mandate in Ge. 1:28 establishes a hierarchy of being (sometimes called the chain of being), and what our corporate vocation as human beings is, a vice-regent of the Sovereign God. We are to be fruitful and multiply (division of labor and fulfillment of God’s eschatological plan which by definition means all the people will be born that were in the mind of God from the beginning. The “filling” of the earth includes you , me, and most importantly Christ, but that’s another subject), extend our talents and giftings to every area of life and steward God’s world as godly, Holy Spirit filled people. This naturally implies science, based in godly principles, law, and economics.
5. The Decalogue, or Ten Commandments, given after the great typology of Freedom, the Exodus, reveals a dual law system. Commands having to do with our relationship to God, and commands having to do with out relationship to other men. Three of these social commands are:
“Thou shalt not murder,” “Thou shalt not steal,” “Thou shalt not covet”
These commands are affirmations of the divinely given and protected human right to private property.
No one is to take my life, nor steal my property, nor covet what is mine.
6. John Locke held that the chief end of government is the preservation of private property.
124. The great and chief end therefore, of Mens uniting into Commonwealths, and putting themselves under Government, is the Preservation of their Property. To which in the state of Nature there are many things wanting.
27. Though the Earth, and all inferior Creatures be common to all Men, yet every Man has a Property in his own Person. This no Body has any Right to but himself. The Labour of his Body, and the Work of his Hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the State that Nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property.
The law man was under, was rather for appropriating. God commanded, and his wants forced him to labour. That was his property which could not be taken from him where-ever he had fixed it. And hence subduing or cultivating the earth, and having dominion, we see are joined together. The one gave title to the other. So that God, by commanding to subdue, gave authority so far to appropriate: and the condition of human life, which requires labour and materials to work on, necessarily introduces private possessions.

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s3.html

7. James Madison added that conscience is the most sacred property.

In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
In the former sense, a man’s land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
Government is instituted to protect property of every sort…
If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html
So we see that men derive their rights from a source that is Sovereign and that has the ability to interfere in the affairs of men, for a Sovereign who is impotent to be imminent to his creation and cannot govern His own creation, is no Sovereign at all, and could be the source of any of these rights enunciated in Scripture.
Divinely established governments are vocationally called to be protectors of the divine rights of God’s people, not to be an abuser of those rights.
8. Government establishes itself in this role using the negative sanction of law.
In other words, government does not seek to make men good, but to punish evil. The substance of the body of the Law is the image of God in man, protected by the force of Law. If the offender kills a man, and destroys the image of God in him as expressed in physical life, the force of Law sanctions that act by taking the offenders life in recompence. If the offender steals the productivity of a man, his goods wrought by his labor, destroying the image of God in him as expressed in a human right to be secure in one’s property, then the force of the Law sanctions that act by requiring the thief to pay restitution in excess of that which he stole (and in our society, imprisonment).
Marxim, for example, sees the state as God, as Sovereign, and views the individual as human capital or as props in the great struggle between the classes, and out of this struggle arises the perfect socialist (communist) state. People have no inherent rights, because they are only a means to an end, and the end is the divinity of the autocratic state.
Secular Humanism sees the individual, not God, as Sovereign. In the humanist system, there are no moral absolutes from which to derive universal truths. Evolution is the basis of all known truth (testable science), and those that are the strongest survive and reproduce. Religion is evil, and the source of all war and injustice in the world. Man now has the ability to influence or control his own evolution, therefore the secular humanist has the right under the Law of Evolution to take steps to secure the survival of and dominance of the best human beings, by advancing the causes of the secularist and actively defeating the purposes of those they view have inferior worldviews, namely the Christian.
Marxism has a goal of a perfect state. Humanism has a goal of the perfect human.
Both of these worldviews use positive sanctioning to effect their purposes. One through the barrel of a gun and by oppressive laws, another through surreptitious manipulation of the legal system, the educational system, the media, and the political system, and we might add, capturing the very religion itself by deconstructionism of it’s theological traditions, namely through the homosexual activist movement.
Positive law systems are oppressive. Since they do not acknowledge human civil rights having come from God, they hold that civil rights are derived from either the state, or the self, or natural law, whatever that is. It doesn’t take too much brain power to recognize that none of these three sources guarantees the individual anything. It’s circular reasoning. The state could change, or repeal your rights, or suppress them. The individual can set his civil rights all day long, but if everyone else in the society doesn’t agree with your logic or enunciation of those rights (“I have the right to be a pedophile, and associate with my man-boy-lover friends in your neighborhood, and date your 3-year old son”) you aren’t getting very far. According to Darwinism, the Neanderthals felt they had the right to eat the Austrolopithecenes (or whatever). But the Austros didn’t agree. So the debate over the source of civil rights raged on for a long time.
9. Now, the Biblical Hebrew-Christian law system is based in self-governance.
The Law is meant to change the human heart and promote goodness from within first, internally. The Israelites were carnal, and instead of desiring to be governed by God (theonomy), they asked God to give them a King like the pagan nations surrounding them. They chose the human Divine Right of Kings, over the King of Kings. But that’s the point God was trying to make. When God gives you rights, He secures them. When men give you rights, they are transient, here today, gone tomorrow.
God said that someday Israel will have the Law written on their hearts, and minds, and that inner Law would transform them. He was speaking of the Holy Spirit and the Gospel.
So,
10. Property is both internal and external. Internal in matters of conscience, and external in matters of the material world, possessions.

This internal to external manifestation of self-government begins with the individual obeying God’s Law, being transformed by it, and effects his outward conduct, externally. Therefore there is a relationship between the individual’s responsibilties to the social contract, and there are governmental responsibilities to the social contract all based in these principle separations and delineations of power under a divine system.
This leads to the great concepts of American government that make us unique from any other government in history, the pillars of American republicanism:
11. Representative government (Jethro told Moses to appoint judges and representatives to help him rule Israel. In the NT the apostles instructed the churches to appoint deacons and elders to represent the needs of the people and establish godly order)
12. The Separation of Powers – (Israel had Prophets, Kings, and Priests)
13. The Dual Form of Government – (Individual and Corporate, Federal and State, Bi-Cameral, etc., the OT Law had two laws, Exodus thru Numbers, and then Deuteronomy being the Second enumeration of the Law, Preistly vs. Civil, Separate laws for citizens of the covenant and for non-covenanted “Strangers and aliens,” and the Two Commandment theology of the NT, which is the greatest of the commandments of Moses (there are 613) “Love the Lord thy God with all of thy heart, mind, soul, and the second is like unto it, Love thy neighbor as thyself. In these are contained all of the Law and the Prophets.” In this comparison, we see that Christ is recognizing the dual nature of the Law of God, commandments that proscribe our duties to God as citizens of the creation, and commandments that proscribe our duties to our fellow man. Civil government and ecclesial government working side by side for the betterment of the social contract.)

Understanding that the governed derive their unalienable rights only from an omnipotent Sovereign God able to defend and protect their individual liberties because He is the Author of history, empowers us reject false philosophies which either cannot guarantee the preservation of our liberties, or falsely claim that they can without showing rationally how that premise is supported by their belief system, or they outright deny that you have any natural rights whatsoever, and the job of the state is to ensure that you never do.
14. Here at this point, British monarchial imperialism (which also was a government system that admitted it’s system could not guarantee personal liberties) collided with American Christian Covenantal Theology.

15. No Taxation without Representation – (don’t steal my property) – This began with the Stamp Act in 1765. The colonists rejected the English Parliaments assertion that it could tax the Americans without their consent or without representation. This arbitrary rule of law supplants self-government by introducing legal instability. Men can’t plan, they can’t invest their livelihoods in future endeavor, if the shifting sands of society makes such efforts too unstable to reasonably make. For a nation to grow and prosper, it needs continuity of law first and foremost. If the arbitrary ruler today says he is going to appropriate your wealth, your property, and you have no choice in the matter, then tomorrow he may appropriate your life, and probably will.
This is of course, an intolerable position. The colonists then wrote “The Rights of the Colonists as Men, as Christians, and as Subjects,”
‘Among the natural rights of the colonies are these: First, a right to Life, Secondly, to Liberty, Thirdly to property together with the right to support and defend them…’

Since Liberty is the gift of God to all, Sam Adams felt that it was contrary to reason that one could ‘voluntarily become a slave,’ (actually, this can be done in Exodus 21, but he’s drawing an analogy, not making theology).
Therefore, the colonists had no right to abdicate their freedoms and property rights, and King George had no right to rob them of Liberty and Property, so there was an impasse between Britain and American on the issue of Life, Liberty, and Property, and had become such an impasse precisely because this was a new experiment in Christian self-government which had reached an impetus and suddenly the theology of the American colonists was flying in the face of British rule.

So far, I have shown that the Founding Fathers were men who believed in the Providence of an Almighty God in their private and public affairs. They were theists, not atheists or secularists.

I have also shown that their theism led them to believe that God as Creator and Sovereign of the world had given to all men equality, and as special creations of God, they were given a mandate to take dominion of the earth as God’s vice-regents, and that God had given them unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and Property and that they were to exercize self-government under God internally, and that transforming power of God’s Law was to be wroked out externally as well, providing the basis for a dual system of law, civil law and ecclesial law.

These precepts were not derived from pagan legal or philosophical models or pagan religions. it was derived from both the OT and NT revelation of God, The Law and the Prophets and the Gospel Law of Liberty in Christ.

We have only scratched the surface of showing that the American Covenant is wholly a Biblical construct.

From here there are many possibilities to learn why it is that many of you believe in an autonomous secularism as the central American ethic. You have been taught from your youth by communist insurgents of the Left that pluralism is the national religion of America, and that Christian ideas are anachronistic and harmful to true liberty. This is a lie.

Our great country and experiment in self-government was not built by athiests and secularists, it was built by covenanted, God-fearing Christians who were world-changing in their outlook, who believed in the concept of nation-building, not for imperialistic domination of others, but to disciple the nations in the Gospel of God and in His Law, as we were commanded to do by Christ Himself (Mt. 28:19) in the Great Commission. We are to share our moral and spiritual and economic capital with the rest of the nations, and teach them the art of self-government, so that also may become secure in their divine rights of Liberty.

The enemy will say that we have no right to do this, that a natural “prime directive” like that on the fictional Star Trek series precludes us from ethically interfering in the development of other nations. What they really mean is that THEY are the only ones who can interfere in the development of other cultures, to preach their gospel of determinism and statism. They want no competition in the marketplace of ideas, because they know that they cannot compete honestly against true principles. They must lie, use subterfuge to undermine others freedoms and knowledge of history, and use force to gain their dominion mandate, which is oppression and domination of the earth.

On September 12, 1905, in a loft above Peck’s restaurant at 140 Fulton Street in lower Manhattan (NYC), five men met to plan the overthrow of the Christian worldview in American culture. Upton Sinclair, a writer and socialist; Jack London, author; Thomas Higginson, a Unitarian minster; J.G. Phelps Stokes, the husband of a socialist organizer; Clarence Darrow, lawyer and atheist.

Their organization was called the Intercollegiate Socialist Society. Their purpose was to promote interest in socialism amongst college men and women. They were the disciples of Karl Marx.

They decided to use a proven method called “gradualism”, taken from the Roman General Quintas Fabius Maximus. They and the army of people who would follow them would infiltrate their ideas onto the university campuses and into the public schools of our nation. By 1912 there were 44 chapters in colleges across the country. In 1921 they changed their name to the League for Industrial Democracy and had become mainstream amongst the educational establisment. By the mid-1930’s there were 125 chapters of student study groups that indoctrinated young impressionable minds of future educators, judges, leaders of commerce, and future politicians and Presidents of the efficacy of the Marxist system. By 1941, John Dewey, the father of modern “progressive” education, was the president of the league and Reinhold Neibuhr, the famous liberal socialist theologian, was treasurer.

The plan they contrived was to slowly permeate the society with their ideas and their influential positions of power, and capture every sphere of American life for Communism. They first captured the educational sphere, by making Marxists out of students, then making those students graduates, then teachers and deans, and board members, and the authors of academic elitism. They would define for America what truth is, according to their worldview. They planned also to capture one of the main political parties, and they did this in the Democratic Party. Today, hard core Communists are the leaders of the Democratic Party, and they use the language of deconstruction to confuse their constituency on that issue, or their constituencies are Communists themselves. They planned the capture of the judiciary, and today in the past 40 years, we have seen the judicial redefinition of values in our society so that Life, Liberty, and Property are no longer protected American values. They planned to capture American media sources, radio, TV, newspapers, and Hollywood entertainment. And they planned to capture religion as well. Today more than half the professing Christian churches are completely liberal in outlook, so far have they drifted from their values that they defend the rights of the godless to dictate to them from their own pulpits, to hold positions of priesthood, to molest their children without so much as removing these demons from their positions, etc.

The scandal of the communist insurgency in America is not something being done in the dark of history. This has been done in the full light of day, slowly, like boiling a frog.

The revisionism of history is used against you by the powerful people to keep you ignorant of the facts, in fact they are so good are the art of psychological warfare (I know something about this methodology) that they have you actually defending their right to abuse you and conquer you, and change your value system by force, and to rob you of your God-given Liberty. And you will defend their right to undermine your freedoms, all in the name of a false pluralism, even as they deny you your right to defend yourself against them.

“Without a vision, the people perish.” Without adequate knowledge of the truth, the truth of history, the truth of intentions, the truth of the meaning of a law passed which effects your life, you will be captured by a hostile force.

Without knowledge, you will be enslaved.

If my words here find no relevance to those of this generation, may God help you all.

Question- how many of the Ten Commandments are, or have ever been, included in US federal law? Answer: two. Commandments six and eight, “Thou shalt not murder” and “thou shalt not steal”. That’s it. Basically all major religions share these bans. In what sense can US law be said to be based on the Ten Commandments?

Question- how many times does the Constitution refer to God, Jesus, or Christianity? None. How many times does it refer to religion at all? Only twice- in preventing the establishment of a state church (First Amendment), and in preventing any religious requirement for entering public office (Article Six). Interestingly enough, Article Six also has this to say:

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land;

Certainly, that is in reference to the federal Constitution having higher authority than any state’s; still, it makes clear that the Constitution is the highest law of the land. Not God’s word, or the Bible.

Question- where is democracy, or anything remotely like it, mentioned as an effective form of government in the Bible? It isn’t, and certainly not in the Old Testament. Of course, as you point out, the Greek Republic in any of its incarnations was quite different, and very arguably inferior, to our modern democracy, but it is far closer than anything in the Bible.
Of course, it is necessary to differentiate between the types and iterations of ancient Greek rule. They experimented with monarchy, aristocracy, timocracy, oligarcy, and- you guessed it- democracy. Of course, the great Greek philosophers were not fond of democracy, but one should keep in mind that it was not our kind of representative democracy they experienced. Rather, it was a pure democracy, no representatives. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle favored aristocracy (which means literally ‘rule by the best’; and so they took it, rather than the modern usage of ‘rule by the upper class’). In a certain sense, our government is a combination of those ideas. The people, the demos, elect those they consider the best, the aristos, to represent them and thus rule them. Again, none of this is in the Bible.

. Why? Because in history, from the Exodus to Jesus, Liberty and Freedom were concepts that were unknown throughout the world except by the Hebrews, and the Christians.

That’s preposterous. The Old Testament knows nothing of individual liberty or freedom. Slavery is commonplace throughout, and God says not a word against it. What Biblical passages you do quote are telling: you quote a passage describing man as God’s property, but not a single passage describing man’s right to property of his own. Why? Because the concept of inalienable property rights truly originates with Hobbes. While Hobbes was, of course, a Christian, it cannot reasonably be argued that his work significantly draws on Biblical text.

Hobbes, in turn, influenced Locke, who it turns out supported the separation of church and state, opposing even broad Christianity as a requirement for citizenship or public office:

If we may openly speak the truth, and as one becomes one man to another, neither Pagan nor Mahumetan, nor Jew, ought to be excluded from the civil rights of the commonwealth, because of his religion. The Gospel commands no such thing.

To change the subject for a bit: Please, stop insisting on this ‘communist insurgency’. I know all about the real communist insurgency, who are a tiny, tiny, radical minority actually plotting the violent overthrow of the government. I know all about them, because my younger brother is one of them; so please, spare me your ignorance on this subject. You merely swallow wholesale the propaganda of the right, making the left out to be radical reds, just as the left’s propaganda makes the right out to be Mussolinis in the making. The mainstream, or even leftist liberals who advocate for elements of socialism in American government no more desire the communist overthrow or transformation of the government than mainstream conservatives desire the fascist overthrow or transformation of the government. Yes, there are fringe groups at both extremes, but you vastly overestimate their appeal and their degree of infiltration.

They planned the capture of the judiciary, and today in the past 40 years, we have seen the judicial redefinition of values in our society so that Life, Liberty, and Property are no longer protected American values.

It’s always interested me how conservatives don’t have a problem with ‘judicial activism’ in regards to matters like racial integration, interracial marriage, etc.- but if it’s for a cause they oppose, then it’s suddenly unconstitutional.

to molest their children without so much as removing these demons from their positions, etc.

Oh, no. You do not get to blame clergy child abuse on the left.

Anyway, returning to the question of separation of church and state and to what degree American legal principle is founded on the Bible.

We have already discussed what influence the Greeks had; if you still are in doubt, you need only read the writings of many of the Founders. The classics were indisputably a major influence in the Revolution and the establishment of American society.
Another obvious source who you forget to mention is John Locke

Many are under the impression that Jefferson coined the term ‘Separation of Church and State,” and that Jefferson, along with Madison, can be considered an exception, a radical Deist who did not reflect the prevailing views of the Founders. Yet the term was actually coined by Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, a century before Jefferson’s time; and Williams’ Rhode Island operated on that model. Both were Christians, Williams a Baptist Minister and Penn a Quaker.
I am not claiming that separation was anything like a universally held view among the Founders. Patrick Henry, for one, supported freedom to choose between religions, but proposed requiring citizens to choose one and pay to support it. Nor am I claiming that the American ‘covenant’ was made wholly without Biblical influence. But the opposite view is patently false. Separation of church and state was cherished by a large number of the Founders, Christian or not; and the American government and system of laws have many sources besides the Bible, several of which are arguably more prevalent.

I’ll leave you with this quote on separation from President Washington. I have not taken this quote out of context in any way, and you may view the Library of Congress page which is my source: http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/treasures/trm006.html. If you read that page for the historical context, you will see that Washington was speaking specifically of religious rights here.

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it was the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily, the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

Yeah, I guess all those monuments down there in Washington are just some big Christian conspiracy to make everybody think the Founders were Christians, like all those huge Stone tablets of the Ten Commndments on buildings and stuff. What was I thinking? And all those lawsuits you Asshole athiests keep filing to get all those religious laws removed from the books, that’s just a money-making operation right?

And all those adultery laws, sodomy laws, drunkenness laws, blue laws ( i just got scolded Sunday for trying to buy some football brewskis before 10 am), et all, all those are just throwbacks to the Neanderthals, right?

Hey, you know whay, Dickweed? Remember that episode on South park when everybody was pooing from their mouth?

They couldn’t say 10 words without froaking up a big steamy terd!

That’s you all over, PAL.

Eat my ass. And then cough one up for Jesus.

Between you atheists here, and the non-committal I don’t know what I believe “progressivist” Nathan, I’m frikkin’ sick to my stomach of Nathan Rice.idiots.

If I may have a final say, Nathan? Sonny did, in the midst of the rudeness, bring up a point that I would like to address, mostly for the edification of anyone else who might happen to read this. The blue laws, and other laws based in Christian tradition that he mentions, do, and did exist, many since the time of the Founders. The reason why this fact does not damage my argument is that we were discussing the influence of Christianity at the federal level; this sort of law has been enacted solely at the state level. Indeed, during the latter half of the nineteenth century such legislation was introduced in the U.S. Congress well over a hundred times, and tellingly, most did not even make it to a vote, and none passed. I do not deny that many state laws stem from Christian principles; but we were discussing the legal backbone of our society, which emphatically does not. The sentiment of separation was strong, though by no means universal, among the Founders; it is not, as Sonny and many religious conservatives believe, the invention of 20th century atheists.

Oh, so he begins acknowledging two commands specifically, murder and theft. He left one out convieniently, adultery. That’s three. He also left out Sabbath laws. Not just blue laws regarding alchohol, which persist until today, but laws requring church membership at that time. Sodomy laws, marraige and divorce laws, CMON” MAN GIVE ME A BREAK.

The Founders were informed by their Puritan backgrounds, they were believers in Covenants, as I showed over and over, and the specific covenant models they believed in are reflected in this one beloe.

If you had any education whatsover in Christian theonomy and theology, you would know some this, but becuase you choose the theology of ignorance form athiests, you don’t know this history, BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT YOU TO KNOW IT. These are the influences of Calvin’s Geneva. Disgareee with it if you like, but if you deny it’s existence then you ar just an ignorant cracker.

Transcendence (sovereignty), yet immanence (presence) Hierarchy/authority/representation Ethics/law/dominion Oath/judgment/sanctions (blessings, cursings) Successionlcontinuitylinheritance

WHAT ARE THE CASE LAWS? For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? Or saith he it altogether for OUT sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (I Cor. 9:9-10). Let the eldem that rule well be counted worthy of double honouq espe- cial~ they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward (I Tim. 5:17-18). This book is designed to press the case for biblical ethics, for it deals with a much-neglected portion of Scripture, the case laws of Exodus. These are the specific applications of the “lively oracles” that God gave to Moses (Acts 7:38). The case laws of Exodus appear in the chapters following the Ten Commandments of Exodus 20, espe- cially in chapters 21-23. They are generally ignored today by Chris- tian commentators, as surely as they were ignored in Moses’ day. James Jordan’s Law of the Covenant (1984)’ is one of the rare excep- tions to this established tradition of neglecting the case laws by Bible- believing scholars as well as liberal higher critics. Christians are supposed to take the Old Testament’s case laws seriously. As Paul’s use of them indicates, they set forth in an encap- sulated form fundamental principles of justice. They provide guide- lines for the specific decisions of day-to-day life, and from them we are supposed to become skilled in discovering and then developing their underlying moral and judicial principles. The early church understood this, although the church’s compromises with the pagan concept of natural law disguised the importance of biblical case laws in the compiling of early medieval law codes. These case law princi- ples have long served as a major component of the judicial founda- tion of Western civilization. As Western civilization steadily departs from the legal principles that the case laws set forth, we walk closer toward the precipice of God’s judgment, oblivious to the mortal danger that faces us. Men have forgotten that God judges nations and cultures in history. Biblical law warns them of this reality (Deut. 28:15-68), but Christians generally, not to mention the pagans who dominate this civilization, pay no attention to biblical law, especially its sanctions.

It is with the case laws of Exodus that the Christian Reconstruc- tionists’ hermeneutical rubber inescapable y meets the historical road. It is here that the Old Testament first presents detailed social appli- cations of the fundamental principles of the Mosaic law and, equally important, the Mosaic law’s required civil sanctions. Theonomists argue that Christians cannot legitimately proclaim the continuing moral validity of the Ten Commandments without also proclaiming the continuing judicial validity of the Mosaic case laws. Further- more, Christians cannot legitimately affirm the binding nature of the Mosaic case laws apart from these laws’ specified sanctions, unless the New Testament has annulled these sanctions individually.z What must be understood from the very beginning is the fol- lowing theonomic principle of biblical interpretation: it was with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ to the right hand of God in heaven that the entire world was placed historically under the full requirements of biblical law. From the creation, God placed the work of the law in the hearts of all men (Rem. 2:14-15). God later made a covenant with Noah, and this covenant necessarily involved law as a tool of dominion (Gen. 9:1-17). He made a covenant with Israel, and He gave laws to Israel that all nations would recognize as being holy and just (Deut. 4:5-8). But it was with the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ that biblical law burst the Old Covenant wineskin of national Israel and~owedj”udicial~ aross all nations. It was not the ministry of Moses that accomplished this; it was the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Modern Bible scholarship has been governed by one overriding concern: to make the Old Testament seem archaic, irrelevant to the modern world, and in no way connected to man’s final judgment by the God whose word the Old Testament is. Indeed, the bulk of all modern scholarship in every academic discipline has this as the pri- mary goal: to deny the biblical doctrine of @al ~“udgnwnt. This was the theological reason why Darwinism flourished so rapidly after its in- troduction in 1859,12 and it is why it still flourishes today. People know that their deeds are evil, so they adopt an eschatology that con- forms to their preferred eternal state, an eschatology without final judgment by a personal Creator God. Secular humanists therefore insist that mankind must be viewed as a randomly evolved being who is headed nowhere in particular, but especially not toward God’s final judgment. Covenant-breakers seek substitutes for God’s final judg- ment: either the heat death of the universe or the endless oscillating cycles of creative explosion, expansion, contraction, and cosmic crushing. 13 Either is deemed preferable to the eternzd lake of fire, which is undoubtedly the place of residence for covenant-breakers. A much better alternative is a return to covenant-keeping. This involves knowing what the ethical terms of the covenant are.

You know what? You know how deep your discussion here is on Nathan Rice? Go back and see how many times you guys actually talk about Jesus. Go ahead. Remember that he is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, or did you know that. The Pleroma. You even know what that means>

You want to listen to atheists? Go for it. You want to be shallow Christians who in a matter of days infuriate others with your milk toast Christianity.

Oh, what’s the use?

Don’t bother replying. I’ll anticipate your response, you’ll deny that after the Constitution was written church memebership was not mandatory. BULL. State churches persisted until well after 1830. Voting required being a male, Christian, property owner who was a member of a church in good standing.

I think you people need to learn how to discern between propaganda and real history.

“In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&.

Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia; do by these presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid; And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.”

Fundamental Agreement, or Original Constitution of the Colony of New Haven

June 4, 1639

THE 4th day of the 4th month, called June, 1639, all the free planters assembled together in a general meeting, to consult about settling civil government, according to GOD, and the nomination of persons that might be found, by consent of all, fittest in all respects for the foundation work of a church, which was intended to be gathered in Quinipiack. After solemn invocation of the name of GOD, in prayer for the presence and help of his spirit and grace, in those weighty businesses, they were reminded of the business whereabout they met, (viz.) for the establishment of such civil order as night be most pleasing unto GOD, and for the choosing the fittest men for the foundation work of a church to be gathered. For the better enabling them to discern the mind of GOD, and to agree accordingly concerning the establishment of civil order, Mr. John Davenport propounded divers queries to them publicly, praying them to consider seriously in the presence and fear of GOD, the weight of the business they met about, and not to be rash or slight in giving their votes to things they understood not; but to digest fully and thoroughly what should be propounded to them, and without respect to men, as they should be satisfied and persuaded in their own minds, to give their answers in such sort as they would be willing should stand upon record for posterity.

This being earnestly pressed by Mr. Davenport, Mr. Robert Newman was intreated to write, in characters, and to read distinctly and audibly in the hearing of all the people, what was propounded and accorded on, that it might appear, that all consented to matters propounded, according to words written by him.

Query I. WHETHER the scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to GOD and men, as well in families and commonwealth, as in matters of the church ? This was assented unto by all, no man dissenting, as was expressed by holding up of hands. Afterwards it was read over to them, that they might see in what words their vote was expressed. They again expressed their consent by holding up their hands, no man dissenting.

Query II. WHEREAS there was a covenant solemnly made by the whole assembly of free planters of this plantation, the first day of extraordinary humiliation, which we had after we came together, that as in matters that concern the gathering and ordering of a church, so likewise in all public officers which concern civil order, as choice of magistrates and officers, making and repealing laws, dividing allotments of inheritance, and all things of like nature, we would all of us be ordered by those rules which the scripture holds forth to US; this covenant was called a plantation covenant, to distinguish it from a church covenant. which could not at that time be made a church not being then gathered, but was deferred till a church might be gathered, according to GOD. It was demanded whether all the free planters do hold themselves bound by that covenant, in all businesses of that nature which are expressed in the covenant, to submit themselves to be ordered by the rules held forth in the scripture t

THIS also was assented unto by all, and no man gainsayed it; and they did testify the same by holding up their hands, both when it was first propounded, and confirmed the same by holding up their hands when it was read unto them in public. John Clark being absent, when the covenant was made, doth now manifest his consent to it. Also Richard Beach, Andrew Law, Goodman Banister, Arthur Halbridge, John Potter, Robert Hill, John Brocket, and John Johnson, these persons, being not admitted planters when the covenant was made, do now express their consent to it.

Query III. THOSE who have desired to be received as free planters, and are settled in the plantation, with a purpose, resolution and desire, that they may be admitted into church fellowship, according to CHRIST, as soon as GOD shall fit them “hereunto, were desired to express it by holding up hands. According all did express this to be their desire and purpose by holding up their hands twice (viz.) at the proposal of it, and after when these written words were read unto them.

Query IV. All the free planters were called upon to express, whether they held themselves bound to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the securing of the purity and peace of the ordinance to themselves and their posterity according to GOD In answer hereunto they expressed by holding up their hands twice as before, that they held themselves bound to establish such civil order as might best conduce to the ends aforesaid.

THEN Mr. Davenport declared unto them, by the scripture, what kind of persons might best be trusted with matters of government; and by sundry arguments from scripture proved that such men as were described in Exod. xviii. 2, Dent. 1. 13, with Dent. xvii. A, and 1 C!or. vi. 1, 6, 7, ought to be intrusted by them, seeing they were free to cast themselves into that mould and form of commonwealth which appeared best for them in reference to the securing. the peace and peaceable improvement of all CHRIST his ordinances in the church according to GOD, whereunto they have bound themselves, as hath been acknowledged.

HAVING thus said he sat down praying the company freely to consider, whether they would have it voted at this time or not. After some space of silence, Mr. Theophilus Eaton answered it might be voted, and some others also spake to the same purpose, none at all opposing it. Then it was propounded to vote.

Query V. WHETHER free burgesses shall be chosen out of the church members, they that are in the foundation work of the church being actually free burgesses, and to choose to themselves out of the like estate of church fellowship, and the power of choosing magistrates and officers from among themselves, and the power of making and repealing laws, according to the word, and the dividing of inheritances, and deciding of differences that may arise, and all the businesses of like nature are to be transacted by those free burgesses. This was put to vote and agreed unto by lifting up of hands twice, as in the former it was done. Then one man stood up and expressed his dissenting from the rest in part; yet granting, 1. That magistrates should be men fearing GOD. 2. That the church is the company where, ordinarily, such men may be expected. 3. That they that choose them ought to be men fearing GOD; only at this he stuck, that free planters ought not to give this power out of their hands. Another stood up and answered, that nothing was done, but with their consent. The former answered, that all the free planters ought to resume this power into their own hands again, if things were not orderly carried. Mr. Theophilus Eaton answered, that in all places they choose committees in like manner. The companies in London choose the liveries by whom the public magistrates are chosen. In this the rest are not wronged, because they expect, in time, to be of the livery themselves, and to have the same power. Some others intreated the former to give his arguments and reasons whereupon he dissented. He refused to do it, and said, they might not rationally demand it, seeing he let the vote pass on freely and did not speak till after it was past, because he would not hinder what they agreed upon. Then Mr. Davenport, after a short relation of some former passages between them two about this question, prayed the company that nothing might be concluded by them on this weighty question, but what themselves were persuaded to be agreeing with the mind of GOD, and they had heard what had been said since the voting; he intreated them again to consider of it, and put it again to vote as before. Again all of them, by holding up their hands, did show their consent as before. And some of them confessed that, whereas they did waver before they came to the assembly, they were now fully convinced, that it is the mind of GOD. One of them said that in the morning before he came reading Deut. xvii. 15, he was convinced at home. Another said, that he came doubting to the assembly, but he blessed GOD, by what had been said, he was now fully satisfied, that the choice of burgesses out of church members and to intrust those with the power before spoken of is according to the mind of GOD revealed in the scriptures. All having spoken their apprehensions it was agreed upon, and Mr. Robert Newman was desired to write it as an order whereunto every one, that hereafter should be admitted here as planters, should submit, and testify the same by subscribing their names to the order: Namely, that church members only shall be free burgesses, and that they only shall choose magistrates and officers among themselves, to have power of transacting all the public civil affairs of this plantation; of making and repealing laws, dividing of inheritances, deciding of differences that may arise, and doing all things and businesses of like nature.

THIS being thus settled, as a fundamental agreement concerning civil government, Mr. Davenport proceeded to propound something to consideration about the gathering of a church’ and to prevent the blemishing of the first beginnings of the church work, Mr. Davenport advised, that the names of such as were to be admitted might be publicly propounded, to the end that they who were most approved might be chosen; for the town being cast into several private meetings, wherein they that lived nearest together gave their accounts one to another of GOD’S gracious world upon them, and prayed together and conferred to their mutual edification, sundry of them had knowledge one of another, and in every meeting some one was more approved of all than any other; for this reason and to prevent scandals, the whole company was intreated to consider whom they found fittest to nominate for this work.

Query VI. WHETHER are you all willing and do agree in this, that twelve men be chosen, that their fitness for the foundation work may be tried; however there may be more named yet it may be in their power who are chosen to reduce them to twelve, and that it be in the power of those twelve to choose out of themselves seven, that shall be most approved of by the major part, to begin the church.

THIS was agreed upon by consent of all, as was expressed by holding up of hands, and that so many as should be thought fit for the foundation work of the church, shall be propounded by the plantation, and written down and pass without exception, unless they had given public scandal or offence. Yet so as in case of public scandal or offense, every one should have liberty to propound their exception, at that time, publicly against any man, that should be nominated, when all their names should be writ down. But if the offence were private, that mens names might be tendered, so many as were offended were intreated to deal with the offender privately, and if he gave not satisfaction to bring the matter to the twelve, that they might consider of it impartially and in the fear of GOD.
Archive location: http://PatriotPost.US/histdocs/constitution_of_new_haven.asp
Home | About The Patriot | Subscribe FREE | Manage Subscription | Current Edition | Alexander’s Essays | Patriot Archive | Reader Comments |

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut

January 14, 1639

For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of his divine providence so to order and dispose of things that we the Inhabitants and Residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield are now cohabiting and dwelling in and upon the River of Connectecotte and the lands thereunto adjoining; and well knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of the people at all seasons as occasion shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one Public State or Commonwealth; and do for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into Combination and Confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also, the discipline of the Churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced amongst us; as also in our civil affairs to be guided and governed accordinbg to such Laws, Rules, Orders and Decrees as shall be made, ordered, and decreed as followeth:

http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/fundorders.htm

Agreement of the Settlers at Exeter in New Hampshire

1639

Whereas it hath pleased the Lord to move the Heart of our dread Sovereigns Charles by the Grace of God King &c. to grant Licence and Libertye to sundry of his subjects to plant themselves in the Westerlle parts of America. We his loyal Subjects Brethern of the Church in Exeter situate and lying upon the River Pascataqua with other Inhabitants there, considering with ourselves the holy Will of God and o’er own Necessity that we should not live without wholesomne Lawes and Civil Government among us of which we are altogether destitute; do in the name of Christ and in the sight of God combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such Government as shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the Will of God professing ourselves Subjects to our Sovereign Lord King Charles according to the Libertyes of our English Colony of Massachusetts, and binding of ourselves solemnly by the Grace and Help of Christ and in His Name and fear to submit ourselves to such Godly and Christian Lawes as are established in the realm of England to our best Knowledge, and to all other such Lawes which shall upon good grounds he made and enacted among us according to God that we may live quietly and peaceably together in all godliness and honesty. Mo. 8. D. 4. 1639 as attests our Hands.

[35 signatures follow.]

The Articles of Confederation of the United Colonies of New England

May 19, 1643

The Articles of Confederation between the Plantations under the Government of the Massachusetts, the Plantations under the Government of New Plymouth, the Plantations under the Government of Connecticut, and the Government of New Haven with the Plantations in Combination therewith:

Whereas we all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel…http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/articles_of_confederation.asp

Maryland Toleration Act of 1649
September 21, 1649

An Act Concerning Religion.

Forasmuch as in a well governed and Christian Common Weath matters concerning Religion and the honor of God ought in the first place to bee taken, into serious consideracion and endeavoured to bee settled, Be it therefore ordered and enacted by the Right Honourable Cecilius Lord Baron of Baltemore absolute Lord and Proprietary of this Province with the advise and consent of this Generall Assembly:

That whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto helonging shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is Curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity the father sonne and holy Ghost, or the Godhead of any of the said Three persons of the Trinity or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachfull Speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shalbe punished with death and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires. http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/mdtol.htm

The First Thanksgiving Proclamation

JUNE 20, 1676

“The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy, and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord’s mercy that we are not consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions:

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced, but we doubt not those who are sensible of God’s Afflictions, have been as diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction; Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ.”

http://patriotpost.us/histdocs/charters/

The Colonial Charters

AMENDMENT XIII

Passed by Congress January 31, 1865. Ratified December 6, 1865.

Note: A portion of Article IV, section 2, of the Constitution was superseded by the 13th amendment.
Section 1.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2.

Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.

**************
Slavery/involuntary servitude is still possible under the Constitution.

You all have been conditioned to believe all forms of slavery are evil. Not true. In many places in the world, servitude is the only legitimate form of upward mobility for classes. Without servitude, Hagar would not have have Ishmael and he would not have been the father of twelve great tribes of heathens. Without servitude, women in the ancient world would have been condemned to a life of poverty.

Your’e thinking is so narrow and limited, it makes me sick.

Religion and the Founding of the American Republic
HOME – EXHIBITION OVERVIEW – OBJECT LIST
SECTIONS: I. America as Refuge – II. 18th Century America
III. American Revolution – IV. Congress of the Confederation – V. State Governments
VI. Federal Government – VII. New Republic
———————————
IV. Religion and the Congress of the Confederation, 1774-89

The Continental-Confederation Congress, a legislative body that governed the United States from 1774 to 1789, contained an extraordinary number of deeply religious men. The amount of energy that Congress invested in encouraging the practice of religion in the new nation exceeded that expended by any subsequent American national government. Although the Articles of Confederation did not officially authorize Congress to concern itself with religion, the citizenry did not object to such activities. This lack of objection suggests that both the legislators and the public considered it appropriate for the national government to promote a nondenominational, nonpolemical Christianity.

Congress appointed chaplains for itself and the armed forces, sponsored the publication of a Bible, imposed Christian morality on the armed forces, and granted public lands to promote Christianity among the Indians. National days of thanksgiving and of “humiliation, fasting, and prayer” were proclaimed by Congress at least twice a year throughout the war. Congress was guided by “covenant theology,” a Reformation doctrine especially dear to New England Puritans, which held that God bound himself in an agreement with a nation and its people. This agreement stipulated that they “should be prosperous or afflicted, according as their general Obedience or Disobedience thereto appears.” Wars and revolutions were, accordingly, considered afflictions, as divine punishments for sin, from which a nation could rescue itself by repentance and reformation.

The first national government of the United States, was convinced that the “public prosperity” of a society depended on the vitality of its religion. Nothing less than a “spirit of universal reformation among all ranks and degrees of our citizens,” Congress declared to the American people, would “make us a holy, that so we may be a happy people.”

The Prayer in the First Congress, A.D. 1774 The Liberty Window
At its initial meeting in September 1774 Congress invited the Reverend Jacob Duché (1738-1798), rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, to open its sessions with prayer. Duché ministered to Congress in an unofficial capacity until he was elected the body’s first chaplain on July 9, 1776. He defected to the British the next year. Pictured here in the bottom stained-glass panel is the first prayer in Congress, delivered by Duché. The top part of this extraordinary stained glass window depicts the role of churchmen in compelling King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215.

The Prayer in the First Congress, A.D. 1774
Stained glass and lead, from The Liberty Window, Christ Church, Philadelphia, after a painting by Harrison Tompkins Matteson, c. 1848
Courtesy of the Rector, Church Wardens and Vestrymen of Christ Church, Philadelphia (101)

George Duffield George Duffield, Congressional Chaplain
On October 1, 1777, after Jacob Duché, Congress’s first chaplain, defected to the British, Congress appointed joint chaplains: William White (1748-1836), Duché’s successor at Christ Church, Philadelphia, and George Duffield (1732-1790), pastor of the Third Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. By appointing chaplains of different denominations, Congress expressed a revolutionary egalitarianism in religion and its desire to prevent any single denomination from monopolizing government patronage. This policy was followed by the first Congress under the Constitution which on April 15, 1789, adopted a joint resolution requiring that the practice be continued.

George Duffield
Oil on canvas by Charles Peale Polk, 1790
Independence National Historical Park Collection, Philadelphia (103)

Congressional resolution, paying military personnel right page Congressional resolution, paying military personnel left page Military Chaplains Pay
This resolution directed that military chaplains, appointed in abundance by Congress during the Revolutionary War, were paid at the rate of a major in the Continental Army.

Congressional resolution, paying military personnel [left page] – [right page]
Broadside, April 22, 1782
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (102)

Legend for the Seal of the United States, August 1776 (Thomas Jefferson) Legend for the Seal of the United States, August 1776 (Ben Franklin) Proposed Seal for the United States
On July 4, 1776, Congress appointed Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams “to bring in a device for a seal for the United States of America.” Franklin’s proposal adapted the biblical story of the parting of the Red Sea (left). Jefferson first recommended the “Children of Israel in the Wilderness, led by a Cloud by Day, and a Pillar of Fire by night. . . .” He then embraced Franklin’s proposal and rewrote it (right). Jefferson’s revision of Franklin’s proposal was presented by the committee to Congress on August 20. Although not accepted these drafts reveal the religious temper of the Revolutionary period. Franklin and Jefferson were among the most theologically liberal of the Founders, yet they used biblical imagery for this important task.

Legend for the Seal of the United States, August 1776 [left side] – [right side]
Holograph notes, Benjamin Franklin (left) and Thomas Jefferson (right)
Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (104-105)

Proposed Great Seal of the United States

Proposed Great Seal of the United States:
“Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.” Drawing
by Benson Lossing, for Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, July 1856.
General Collections, Library of Congress. (106)

Congressional Fast Day Proclamation, March 16, 1776 Congressional Fast Day Proclamation
Congress proclaimed days of fasting and of thanksgiving annually throughout the Revolutionary War. This proclamation by Congress set May 17, 1776, as a “day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer” throughout the colonies. Congress urges its fellow citizens to “confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his [God's] righteous displeasure, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain his pardon and forgiveness.” Massachusetts ordered a “suitable Number” of these proclamations be printed so “that each of the religious Assemblies in this Colony, may be furnished with a Copy of the same” and added the motto “God Save This People” as a substitute for “God Save the King.”

Congressional Fast Day Proclamation, March 16, 1776
Broadside
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (107)

Congressional Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, November 1, 1777 Congressional Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
Congress set December 18, 1777, as a day of thanksgiving on which the American people “may express the grateful feelings of their hearts and consecrate themselves to the service of their divine benefactor” and on which they might “join the penitent confession of their manifold sins . . . that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance.” Congress also recommends that Americans petition God “to prosper the means of religion for the promotion and enlargement of that kingdom which consisteth in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.’”

Congressional Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, November 1, 1777
Broadside
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (108)

Congressional Fast Day Proclamation, March 20, 1779 The 1779 Fast Day Proclamation
Here is the most eloquent of the Fast and Thanksgiving Day Proclamations.

Congressional Fast Day Proclamation, March 20, 1779
Broadside
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (109)

Congressional Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, October 11, 1782 Another Thanksgiving Day Proclamation
Congress set November 28, 1782, as a day of thanksgiving on which Americans were “to testify their gratitude to God for his goodness, by a cheerful obedience to his laws, and by promoting, each in his station, and by his influence, the practice of true and undefiled religion, which is the great foundation of public prosperity and national happiness.”

Congressional Thanksgiving Day Proclamation, October 11, 1782
Broadside
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (110)

Rules and Articles, for the better Government of the Troops . . .page 4 Rules and Articles, for the better Government of the Troops. . .page 5 To all brave, healthy, able bodied well disposed young men. . . .

Morality in the Army
Congress was apprehensive about the moral condition of the American army and navy and took steps to see that Christian morality prevailed in both organizations. In the Articles of War, seen below, governing the conduct of the Continental Army (seen above) (adopted, June 30, 1775; revised, September 20, 1776), Congress devoted three of the four articles in the first section to the religious nurture of the troops. Article 2 “earnestly recommended to all officers and soldiers to attend divine services.” Punishment was prescribed for those who behaved “indecently or irreverently” in churches, including courts-martial, fines and imprisonments. Chaplains who deserted their troops were to be court-martialed.

Rules and Articles, for the better Government of the Troops . . . of the Twelve united English Colonies of North America [page 4] – [page 5]
Philadelphia: William and Thomas Bradford, 1775
Rare Book and Special Collections Division,
Library of Congress (111)

To all brave, healthy, able bodied
well disposed young men. . . .
Recruiting poster for the Continental Army.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania (112)

Extracts from the Journals of Congress, relative to the Capture and Condemnation …page 17 Extracts from the Journals of Congress, relative to the Capture and Condemnation …page 16 Morality in the Navy
Congress particularly feared the navy as a source of moral corruption and demanded that skippers of American ships make their men behave. The first article in Rules and Regulations of the Navy (below), adopted on November 28, 1775, ordered all commanders “to be very vigilant . . . to discountenance and suppress all dissolute, immoral and disorderly practices.” The second article required those same commanders “to take care, that divine services be performed twice a day on board, and a sermon preached on Sundays.” Article 3 prescribed punishments for swearers and blasphemers: officers were to be fined and common sailors were to be forced “to wear a wooden collar or some other shameful badge of distinction.”

Extracts from the Journals of Congress, relative to the Capture and Condemnation of Prizes,
and filling out Privateers, together with the Rules and Regulations of the Navy,
and Instructions to Private Ships of War [page 16] – [page 17]
Philadelphia: John Dunlap, 1776
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (113)

Horn beaker with scrimshaw portrait of Esek Hopkins Commander-in-Chief of the American Navy
Etched on this horn beaker is Esek Hopkins (1718-1802), a Rhode Islander, appointed by Congress, December 22, 1775, as the first commander-in-chief of the American Navy. Hopkins was dismissed, January 2, 1778, after a stormy tenure in which he achieved some notable successes in spite of almost insuperable problems in manning the tiny American fleet.
Horn beaker with scrimshaw portrait of Esek Hopkins
Horn, c. 1876
Mariner’s Museum, Newport News, Virginia (114)

Congressional resolution, September 12, 1782, endorsing Robert Aitken’s Bible…page 469 Congressional resolution, September 12, 1782, endorsing Robert Aitken’s Bible…page 468 Aitken’s Bible Endorsed by Congress
The war with Britain cut off the supply of Bibles to the United States with the result that on Sept. 11, 1777, Congress instructed its Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from “Scotland, Holland or elsewhere.” On January 21, 1781, Philadelphia printer Robert Aitken (1734-1802) petitioned Congress to officially sanction a publication of the Old and New Testament which he was preparing at his own expense. Congress “highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion . . . in this country, and . . . they recommend this edition of the bible to the inhabitants of the United States.” This resolution was a result of Aitken’s successful accomplishment of his project.

Congressional resolution, September 12, 1782, endorsing Robert Aitken’s Bible [page 468] — [page 469]
Philadelphia: David C. Claypoole, 1782 from the Journals of Congress
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (115)

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Newly translated out of the Original Tongues. . . . Aitken’s Bible
Aitken published Congress’s recommendation of September 1782 and related documents (Item 115) as an imprimatur on the two pages following his title page. Aitken’s Bible, published under Congressional patronage, was the first English language Bible published on the North American continent.

The Holy Bible, Containing the Old and New Testaments: Newly translated out of the Original Tongues. . . .
Philadelphia: printed and sold by R. Aitken, 1782
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (116)

An Ordinance for ascertaining the Mode of disposing of Lands in the Western Territory, 1785. Settling the West
In the spring of 1785 Congress debated regulations for settling the new western lands–stretching from the Alleghenies to the Mississippi–acquired from Great Britain in the Peace Treaty of 1783. It was proposed that the central section in each newly laid out township be reserved for the support of schools and “the Section immediately adjoining the same to the northward, for the support of religion. The profits arising there from in both instances, to be applied for ever according to the will of the majority.” The proposal to establish religion in the traditional sense of granting state financial support to a church to be controlled by one denomination attracted support but was ultimately voted down.

An Ordinance for ascertaining the Mode of disposing of Lands in the Western Territory, 1785.
Broadside, Continental Congress, 1785
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (117)

An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, 1787 Northwest Ordinance
In the summer of 1787 Congress revisited the issue of religion in the new western territories and passed, July 13, 1787, the famous Northwest Ordinance. Article 3 of the Ordinance contained the following language: “Religion, Morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, Schools and the means of education shall be forever encouraged.” Scholars have been puzzled that, having declared religion and morality indispensable to good government, Congress did not, like some of the state governments that had written similar declarations into their constitutions, give financial assistance to the churches in the West.

An Ordinance for the Government of the Territory of the United States, North-West of the River Ohio, 1787
Broadside, Continental Congress, 1787
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (118)

Resolution granting lands to Moravian Brethren. right page Resolution granting lands to Moravian Brethren. left page Christianizing the Delawares
In this resolution, Congress makes public lands available to a group for religious purposes. Responding to a plea from Bishop John Ettwein (1721-1802), Congress voted that 10,000 acres on the Muskingum River in the present state of Ohio “be set apart and the property thereof be vested in the Moravian Brethren . . . or a society of the said Brethren for civilizing the Indians and promoting Christianity.” The Delaware Indians were the intended beneficiaries of this Congressional resolution.

Resolution granting lands to Moravian Brethren. [left page] – [right page]
Records of the Continental Congress in the Constitutional Convention, July 27, 1787
National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (119)

Delaware Indian and English Spelling Book… right page Delaware Indian and English Spelling Book… left page A Delaware-English Spelling Book
David Zeisberger (1721-1802) was a famous Moravian missionary who spent much of his life working with the Delaware Indians. His Spelling Book contains a “Short History of the Bible,” in the English and Delaware languages, on facing pages.

Delaware Indian and English Spelling Book for the Schools of the Mission
of the United Brethren [left page] – [right page]
David Zeisberger
Philadelphia: Mary Cist, 1806
Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress (120)

———————————
HOME – EXHIBITION OVERVIEW – OBJECT LIST
SECTIONS: I. America as Refuge – II. 18th Century America
III. American Revolution – IV. Congress of the Confederation – V. State Governments
VI. Federal Government – VII. New Republic
———————————
Go to:

* Exhibitions Home Page
* Library of Congress Home Page

Library of Congress
Comments: Contact Us ( October 27, 2003 )

http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel04.html

As I said in my previous post, every single one of these laws were enacted at the state level. Not one of them, nor anything even similar, was ever enacted at the federal level.

Predictably, you get angry and respond with a wild flurry of cutting and pasting, and as before, very little of it is relevant, and a fair amount of it does not even support your position.

So, you support slavery, and accuse me of a shallow morality? Rather than be angered and respond in kind, I am going to thank you. Thank you, sir, for it is not the moderates and liberals who are going to end Christianity, but your kind; for you will force them to ignore what they have refused to see for so long- the disgusting excuse for ‘morality’ that one finds if one truly takes the Bible seriously, as you certainly do. My hope is that you and others who believe as you do will make it impossible to escape what the Bible really says. Faced with this, some will join you, but I do believe that most people are basically rational, and they will surely cast off the chains which you so willingly wrap yourself in.

Yeah, I support slavery, right. That’s why it’s impossible to have a conversation with the likes of people like you athiests, because you insist on pressing every point out of context, refuse to acknowlwedge the progression of an argument point for point. I was showing you that if the Constitution were in fact the atheistic document you claim it to be, it supports the concepts of slavery and indentured servitude, and under atheism it would be without the context of a Biblical Law to show the underlying ethics that make them unique from just your average blend of slavery.

What do you think happens evertime a judge rendered a judgment in which a criminal has to pay restitution to a family they have committed a crime against? It’s called INDENTURED SERVITUDE.

I getting so pissed off because like some ignornat YEC who refuses to follow the conversation, you want to pick and choose whatever truths and half truths are convienient for you.

You can’t have it both ways. So, slavery in America was caused and supported by athiests, since it was athiests who created the laws which allowed it to flourish and continue. And who were the abolitionists?

Hey, you know what we sing at every ball game in your Atheist America?

God Bless America

“While the storm clouds gather far across the sea,
Let us swear allegiance to a land that’s free,
Let us all be grateful for a land so fair,
As we raise our voices in a solemn prayer. “

God Bless America,
Land that I love.
Stand beside her, and guide her
Thru the night with a light from above.
From the mountains, to the prairies,
To the oceans, white with foam
God bless America, My home sweet home.

Oh, and what does the last stanza of the national anthem say?

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation!
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our Trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.[4]

Editor’s Note: This comment has been edited for content.

While I have serious doubts about the intelligence and the ability of this generation to grasp basic philosophical and theological truths, because of the likes of people like George and pastors like the “Seeker-sensitives” have corrupted their ability to reason, I’m taking a shot here that they can at least read, which I’m not so sure about either.

If they can do that, just read, I have given them more than enough material to ponder that will not only dispel your ridiculous assertion that the Founders of this country were not men of faith, and that the laws of our country were not based in biblical law, but will do so with prejudice. I have as well discussed the problems with Christian doictrine, particularly creationism and others.

Because of your George’s inability to follow the conversation and develop both sides of the problem (a natural theology of America as well as a inherent pluralism), you have raised my ire to the point where this conversation is no longer rational. He wanted to do that because he realized he could not win that argument, and so felt that the only thing left to do was piss me off and get me sidetracked on peripherals. He did that very well.

I do not play the game of attempting to manipulate my readers minds. I don’t want them to agree with me because I’m the nicest guy, or the one most sensitive to their hypocritical sensibilities (they’ll watch foul-mouthed entertainers and love them and rail against me for cursing, where’s the justice in that?). I could care less about their sensibilities, or yours.

I want them to see truth, despite myself.

All of these so-called “progressivites” pride themselves on being so cutting-edge, and really hanging it out there and being different.

Let’s see if they can discern a little truth behind all that fake facade of so-called antiestablishment Christianity. I don’t think they can. I think it requires a lot better thinkers than what they have in their churches.

It requires me, warts and all.

Sure, that’s ego, from your perspective. From my perspective it’s called being chained with a divine burden.

I don’t want to play this game anymore guys. The spiritual ignorance of your generation is making me ill.