Topics: Bibles & Religion

Unconfirmed Quotation: Franklin Principles of Primitive Christianity

confirmed

Unconfirmed Quotation

“Whosoever shall introduce into public affairs the principles
of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”
– Benjamin Franklin

This particular quotation above has been used in many works since the 1970s that seek to remind Americans of our religious heritage.1 In fact, David used it in the Myth of Separation (1989), but around 1995, when he was preparing Original Intent and was unable to find this quote in any primary source, he stopped using it and WallBuilders put it on our “Unconfirmed Quotations” list. But we are now able to report that we have found an early primary source that does attribute the core of this quotation to Franklin.

Before we get to the quote, we would remind readers that in the early 1990s, David challenged historical writers on all sides of the debate over religion in the Founding Era to stop relying on secondary sources and quotations from later Eras and to instead utilize original sources. As an act of good faith, David went through his earlier works and not only removed quotations that could not be verified from original sources, he publicly announced them on WallBuilders’ website. Although many people, including several respected academics, have told him that they admire his honesty and transparency, others have attempted to use this practice against him. For instance, in a recent critique of David’s work, Professor Gregg Frazer of The Master’s College writes:

Having been confronted over the use of false quotes, Barton was forced to acknowledge their illegitimacy in some way on his website. There, he describes them as “unconfirmed” – as if there is some doubt about their legitimacy. In a computer age with search capabilities, we know that these quotes are false – the fact that they are listed as “unconfirmed” reflects a stubborn attempt to hold onto them and to suggest to followers that they might be true. That is made worse by the fact that under these “unconfirmed” quotes are paragraphs maintaining that the bogus quote is something that the person might have said.2

So much for honesty and transparency.

As we clearly state in our piece “Taking on the Critics”, we were not confronted by any individual or group about these quotes. To the contrary, we were the first to step forward and challenge all sides in the historical debate over religion in the Founding to “raise the bar” and use only quotations that could be verified by primary sources.

Calling these unconfirmed quotes “bogus” implies that they were simply made up by David. Yet each and every one of them can be found in reputable secondary sources such as George Bancroft’s A History of the United States (1866).

Frazer suggests that David and WallBuilders live in a fantasy world where they stubbornly engage in wishful thinking that these unconfirmed quotations are accurate. He ignores the fact that we have been able to confirm numerous of these quotations. We clearly list and document this fact.

With respect to the above quotation from Franklin, David originally cited it to works from the 1970s (see footnote 1 above). But in searching backwards to find a primary source, he found it in George Bancroft’s 1866 History of the United States, which stated:

He [Franklin] remarked to those in Paris who learned of him the secret of statesmanship: “He who shall introduce into public affairs the principles of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.”3

This is no insignificant source, for Bancroft is considered “The Father of American History.” He is most famous for his thorough, systematic history of the nation published in ten volumes from 1854-1878). David did not simply make this quote up. It appeared in one of the greatest histories of the United States ever written! But, adhering to his own standards, he stopped using it until it could be confirmed in an original source. As noted, above, we have found such a source.

Here is its context: Franklin had been sent by America as an ambassador to France in 1776, a position in which he served until 1785. He was highly beloved by the French, and he offered them many useful and friendly recommendations including political advice to those who would listen.4 Shortly after Franklin’s death in 1790, Jacques Mallet Du Pan, a French journalist and leader, published his historical memoirs, in which he reported:

Franklin often told his disciples in Paris that whoever should introduce the principles of primitive Christianity into the political state would change the whole order of society.5

While this 1793 work does not contain the word for word quotation so often cited today, it clearly communicates the main ideas in the quotation. One reason for the difference may be because the work was written in French, so there may be some variations in how a particular translator renders that statement into English.6

It may be objected that a second-hand account of what someone said is not as reliable, say, a letter clearly penned by Franklin in which he writes the same quotation. We agree. And yet students of the American founding repeatedly utilize such sources. For instance, speeches made in the Federal Convention of 1787 are regularly quoted as if they were directly spoken by particular delegates, although in most (but not all) cases what is being quoted is Madison’s notes of the speeches.

Those who wish to deny America’s Christian heritage will undoubtedly brush off Du Pan’s account of Franklin’s views. Yet those interested in an accurate account of religion in the American Founding cannot afford to be so dismissive of this intriguing find.

Endnotes

1 See, for example, Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Light and the Glory (NJ: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1977), 370; Stephen McDowell, America’s Providential History (Charlottesville, VA: Providence Foundation, 1989), 1; William Federer, America’s God and Country: Encyclopedia of Quotations (Coppell, TX: Fame Publishing, Inc., 1994), 246; Martin H. Manser, Westminster Collection of Christian Quotations (Westminster: John Knox Press, 2001), 31; Classics of American Political and Constitutional Thought, Scott J. Hammond, Kevin r. Hardwick, Howard L. Lubert, editors (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007), II:228.

2 From a written review on David Barton and WallBuilders conducted by Dr. Gregg Frazer at the request of Dr. Jay Richards. That written critique was subsequently passed on to David Barton on August 13, 2012, by the Rev. James Robison, who had received it from Jay Richards.

3 George Bancroft, History of the United States, From the Discovery of the American Continent (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1866), IX:492.

4 See, for example, Benjamin Franklin, Two Tracts: Information to Those Who Would Remove to America. And, Remarks Concerning the Savages of North America (London: 1784), 3-24, “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America.”

5 M. Mallet Du Pan, Considerations on the Nature of the French Revolution, and on the Causes which Prolong its Duration Translated from the French (London: J. Owen, 1793), 31.

6 The original reads: “Francklin répéta plus d une fois à ses Paris que celui qui transporteroit état politique les principes du christianisme changeroit la face de la société.” Jacques Mallet du Pan, Considerations sur la nature de la revolution de France (Londres, 1793), 28.

Statement: David Barton on The Jefferson Lies

Statement: David Barton on The Jefferson Lies

The announcement that Thomas Nelson has pulled The Jefferson Lies because it has “lost confidence” in the work has become national news. However, while Thomas Nelson may have “lost confidence” in the work, others have not and thus the book has already been picked up by a much larger national publisher and distributor. Even at the time Nelson dropped the work, they admitted that it was still selling very well.

As is the case with all of our published items, we go above and beyond with original source documentation so that people can be thoroughly confident when they see the truth of history for themselves. We find it regrettable that Thomas Nelson never contacted us with even one specific area of concern before curtly notifying us they had dropped the work. Had they done so, we would have been happy to provide them with the thorough and extensive historical documentation for any question or issue they raised; they never asked. The Jefferson Lies has not been pulled from publication and it will continue to sell nationally.

The Importance of Voting and Christian Involvement in the Political Arena

John Adams

We electors have an important constitutional power placed in our hands; we have a check upon two branches of the legislature . . . the power I mean of electing at stated periods [each] branch. . . . It becomes necessary to every [citizen] then, to be in some degree a statesman, and to examine and judge for himself of the tendency of political principles and measures. Let us examine, then, with a sober, a manly . . . and a Christian spirit; let us neglect all party [loyalty] and advert to facts; let us believe no man to be infallible or impeccable in government any more than in religion; take no man’s word against evidence, nor implicitly adopt the sentiments of others who may be deceived themselves, or may be interested in deceiving us.1

Samuel Adams

Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present or a compliment to please an individual – or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.2

Nothing is more essential to the establishment of manners in a State than that all persons employed in places of power and trust be men of unexceptionable characters. The public cannot be too curious concerning the character of public men.3

Matthias Burnett

Consider well the important trust . . . which God . . . [has] put into your hands. . . . To God and posterity you are accountable for [your rights and your rulers]. . . . Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you. . . . [L]ook well to the characters and qualifications of those you elect and raise to office and places of trust. . . . Think not that your interests will be safe in the hands of the weak and ignorant; or faithfully managed by the impious, the dissolute and the immoral. Think not that men who acknowledge not the providence of God nor regard His laws will be uncorrupt in office, firm in defense of the righteous cause against the oppressor, or resolutly oppose the torrent of iniquity. . . . Watch over your liberties and privileges – civil and religious – with a careful eye.4

Frederick Douglass

I have one great political idea. . . . That idea is an old one. It is widely and generally assented to; nevertheless, it is very generally trampled upon and disregarded. The best expression of it, I have found in the Bible. It is in substance, “Righteousness exalteth a nation; sin is a reproach to any people” [Proverbs 14:34]. This constitutes my politics – the negative and positive of my politics, and the whole of my politics. . . . I feel it my duty to do all in my power to infuse this idea into the public mind, that it may speedily be recognized and practiced upon by our people.5

Charles Finney

[T]he time has come that Christians must vote for honest men and take consistent ground in politics or the Lord will curse them. . . . Christians have been exceedingly guilty in this matter. But the time has come when they must act differently. . . . Christians seem to act as if they thought God did not see what they do in politics. But I tell you He does see it – and He will bless or curse this nation according to the course they [Christians] take [in politics].6

James Garfield

Now more than ever the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless, and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness, and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave, and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature. . . . [I]f the next centennial does not find us a great nation . . . it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces.7

Francis Grimke

If the time ever comes when we shall go to pieces, it will . . . be . . . from inward corruption – from the disregard of right principles . . . from losing sight of the fact that “Righteousness exalteth a nation, but that sin is a reproach to any people” [Proverbs 14:34]. . . .[T]he secession of the Southern States in 1860 was a small matter with the secession of the Union itself from the great principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence, in the Golden Rule, in the Ten Commandments, in the Sermon on the Mount. Unless we hold, and hold firmly to these great fundamental principles of righteousness…our Union…will be “only a covenant with death and an agreement with hell.”8

Alexander Hamilton

A share in the sovereignty of the state, which is exercised by the citizens at large, in voting at elections is one of the most important rights of the subject, and in a republic ought to stand foremost in the estimation of the law.9

John Jay

Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.10

The Americans are the first people whom Heaven has favored with an opportunity of deliberating upon and choosing the forms of government under which they should live.11

Thomas Jefferson

The elective franchise, if guarded as the ark of our safety, will peaceably dissipate all combinations to subvert a Constitution, dictated by the wisdom, and resting on the will of the people.12

[T]he rational and peacable instrument of reform, the suffrage of the people.13

[S]hould things go wrong at any time, the people will set them to rights by the peaceable exercise of their elective rights.14

William Paterson

When the righteous rule, the people rejoice; when the wicked rule, the people groan.15

William Penn

Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men than men upon governments. Let men be good and the government cannot be bad. . . . But if men be bad, let the government be never so good, they will endeavor to warp and spoil it to their turn. . . .[T]hough
good laws do well, good men do better; for good laws may want [lack] good men and be abolished or invaded by ill men; but good men will never want good laws nor suffer [allow] ill ones.16

Daniel Webster

Impress upon children the truth that the exercise of the elective franchise is a social duty of as solemn a nature as man can be called to perform; that a man may not innocently trifle with his vote; that every elector is a trustee as well for others as himself and that every measure he supports has an important bearing on the interests of others as well as on his own.17

Noah Webster

In selecting men for office, let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate – look to his character. . . . When a citizen gives his suffrage to a man of known immorality he abuses his trust; he sacrifices not only his own interest, but that of his neighbor, he betrays the interest of his country.18

When you become entitled to exercise the right of voting for public officers, let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers, “just men who will rule in the fear of God.” The preservation of government depends on the faithful discharge of this duty; if the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted; laws will be made, not for the public good so much as for selfish or local purposes; corrupt or incompetent men will be appointed to execute the laws; the public revenues will be sqandered on unworthy men; and the rights of the citizens will be violated or disregarded. If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws.19

John Witherspoon

Those who wish well to the State ought to choose to places of trust men of inward principle, justified by exemplary conversation. . . .[And t]he people in general ought to have regard to the moral character of those whom they invest with authority either in the legislative, executive, or judicial branches.20

Endnotes

1 John Adams as ‘U’ to the Boston Gazette, August 29, 1763, The Papers of John Adams, ed. Robert J. Taylor (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 1:81.
2 Samuel Adams in the Boston Gazette, April 16, 1781, The Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Harry Alonzo Cushing (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), IV:256.
3 Samuel Adams to James Warren, November 4, 1775, Writings of Samuel Adams, ed. Cushing (1907), III:236-237.
4 Matthias Burnett, An Election Sermon, Preached at Hartford, on the Day of the Anniversary Election, May 12, 1803 (Hartford: Printed by Hudson & Goodwin, 1803), 27-28.
5 Frederick Douglass speech delivered at Ithaca, New York, October 14th, 1852, The Frederick Douglass Papers, ed. John Blassingame (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 2:397.
6 Charles G. Finney, Lectures on Revivals of Religion (New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1868), 281-282.
7 James A. Garfield, “A Century of Congress,” July, 1877, The Works of James Abram Garfield, ed. Burke Hinsdale (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1883), II:486, 489.
8 Rev. Francis J. Grimke, from “Equality of Right for All Citizens, Black and White, Alike,” March 7, 1909, published in Masterpieces of Negro Eloquence, ed. Alice Moore Dunbar (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2000), 246-247.
9 Alexander Hamilton, The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, ed. Harold C. Syrett (New York, Columbia University Press, 1962), III:544-545.
10 John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1890), IV:365.
11 John Jay, The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, ed. Henry P. Johnston (New York: G.P. Putnams Sons, 1890), I:161.
12 Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Albert Bergh (Washington: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1903), 10:235.
13 Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 12:136.
14 Thomas Jefferson, The Works of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 10:245.
15 Supreme Court Justice William Paterson reminding his fellow justices of Proverbs 29:2. United States Oracle (Portsmouth, NH), May 24, 1800.
16 William Penn quoted from: Thomas Clarkson, Memoirs of the Private and Public Life of William Penn (London: Richard Taylor and Co., 1813), I:303.
17 Daniel Webster Remarks at a Receiption to the Ladies of Richmond, Virginia, October 5, 1840, The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1853), II:108.
18 Noah Webster, Letters to a Young Gentleman Commencing His Education to which is subjoined a Brief History of the United States (New Haven: S. Converse, 1823), 18, 19.
19 Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), 336-337.
20 John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), IV:266, 277.

How Does Jeremiah 17:9 Relate to the Constitutional Separation of Powers?

In their public presentations, our WallBuilders speakers frequently provide historical examples of how specific Bible verses impacted particular aspects of American culture. For example, the story of Matthew Maury and his geographical discoveries involves Psalm 8 and Ecclesiastes 1:6; James Kent (“A Father of American Jurisprudence”) cites 1 Samuel 7:15-16 with the formation of circuit courts; Isaiah 33:22 is associated with the three branches of government; and other such examples. 1

Many audience members, intrigued by how specific Bible verses directly shaped American practices, look up the Bible references that we routinely mention and are immediately impressed with their specificity and obvious applicability. But almost universally when they check John Adams’ mention of Jeremiah 17:92 as the basis of the constitutional separation of powers, they are perplexed and often conclude that our speaker must have used the wrong reference. It doesn’t seem that Jeremiah 17:9 relates to constitutional separation of powers, but it actually does. Allow us to explain, but first let’s lay some groundwork.

When Progressives grasped the reins of common education in the early 1900s, they introduced profound systemic changes, including age-graded education (previously, students were grouped according to knowledge level rather than age level), compulsory education (school attendance had been generally voluntary), extended school years (school was often three months a year, but Progressives made it most of the year), and twelve years of government education (prior to the Progressives, virtually no one went past eight-grade learning levels, after which they would enter college or some trade or profession). 3

These changes were not because previous educational practices had been unsuccessful, for it had been just the opposite. In fact, few college graduates today can master the eighth-grade exit exam given in the early 1900s by most states, 4 when school only lasted for a few months a year and for only eight years.

Perhaps the most significant transformation imposed by Progressives was that students were no longer taught how to think, but rather how to learn. Instead of being trained to reason sequentially and study and confirm independent sources, students were now required to listen to what the teacher said and then repeat it back. Thus, true/false, multiple choice, and fill-in-the-blank tests were introduced, 5 for they did not require a mastery of subject-matter knowledge but rather only a mastery of whatever the teacher had said.

By this change, the teacher became the small end of the funnel of knowledge – everything flowed through the teacher to the student. To invoke an old proverb, no longer did the student learn how to fish, but rather the teacher now gave them the fish. Because students were no longer trained in critical thinking, widespread indoctrination became the result – whatever the teacher believed was what was communicated to students, which they also came to believe. The warning by Jesus in Luke 6:40 had become reality: “Every student, when he is fully trained, will be like his teacher.”

Progressivism, liberalism, secularism, relativism, socialism, and other isms were now freely communicated to students by academia, and these beliefs have now thoroughly permeated the culture as those students become adults and filled various professions.

One teaching common among Progressives (and now widely believed even by many Christians) is that man is innately good but sometimes does bad things.6 But the Bible teaches just the opposite – that man is innately bad but sometimes does good things; and that is only when man’s wicked heart is remade by God.

Under the Progressive belief, if man shoots someone, the problem is with the gun; since man is instinctively good, it can’t be his fault that something bad happened, so we need to regulate the gun, not the man. Or if someone gets drunk and abuses his spouse, it is because man has a medical disease beyond his control – it’s not his fault, for he is inherently good. Or if someone fathers a dozen children out of wedlock, it is because he was not given enough condoms in school. In short, under Progressivism, if man does something bad, there was some outside cause for it, for man is inherently good.

But the Bible says just the opposite. Notice a few verses on this:

  • Mark 7:21-23 – For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within. (Matthew 5:19)
  • Genesis 6:5 & 8:21 – The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.
  • Romans 3:9 – It is written: “None is righteous, no, not one.” (c.f. Psalm 14:1-3, 53:1-3)
  • Ecclesiastes 9:3 – The hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts.
  • Galatians 5:19-21 – Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.
  • Psalm 5:9 – For there is no truth in their mouth; their inmost self is destruction; their throat is an open grave; they flatter with their tongue.

According to the Bible, man will only begin to do what is good when God changes his heart (see, for example Romans 6:6,16-17,19-20, 2 Corinthians 5:17, etc.). Without a life changed by God, mankind is naturally inclined to do what is wrong.

The Founders firmly held this Biblical view. They therefore constructed government fully expecting the worst – expecting that the people leading all three branches would become corrupt. Fifty-five hundred years of recorded history prior to the Founding Fathers had demonstrated that as the pattern of every human government that had ever existed. Understanding this, the Founders made specific plans to help limit the inherent corruption of man and they sought ways to prevent all three branches from becoming wicked at the same time. They wanted a fail-safe so that if one did, then perhaps the other branches could restrain it or drag it back to its limited function. The result was the various clauses providing and enforcing Separation of Powers.

The following excerpt is from the Founders’ Bible and it explains how the truth inherent in Jeremiah 17:9 helped produce the constitutional separation of powers.

Jeremiah 17:9 – The Constitutional Separation of Powers

“The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?”

The separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances incorporated throughout the Constitution has been heralded as one of the most important features of American government, enabling it not only to survive but to thrive for over two centuries. History was filled with examples showing that when government power was centralized in one body or leader, that government always became a danger to the rights of individuals and brought that nation to ruin. But the Founding Fathers had not only the examples of history to guide them but especially the teachings of the Bible.

A well-known verse addressing this subject was Jeremiah 17:9: “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked; who can know it?” This verse encapsulated what Calvinistic ministers and theologians termed the “depravity of man” or “total depravity” 7 (that the natural heart of man easily embraced moral and civil degradation), and it was a frequent topic for sermons in the Founding Era. The Founding Fathers understood the import of this verse and openly cited it – as when John Adams reminded Americans:

Let me conclude by advising all men to look into their own hearts, which they will find to be ‘deceitful above all things and desperately wicked’ [Jeremiah 17:9].8

The Biblically illiterate believe in the innate goodness of man – that man will naturally do what is right, but experience regularly affirms the opposite: without a heart regenerated by the power of God, man will routinely do what is wrong. Adams specifically rejected any notion of the innate goodness of man, especially when it came to government:

To expect self-denial from men when they have a majority in their favor, and consequently power to gratify themselves, is to disbelieve all history and universal experience – it is to disbelieve revelation and the Word of God, which informs us ‘the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked’ [Jeremiah 17:9]. . . . There is no man so blind as not to see that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodies of men left to themselves will practice a course of self-denial is either to babble like a newborn infant or to deceive like an unprincipled impostor.9

And even those who had experienced a regenerated heart through the power of God in Christ and who did not embrace Calvinism nevertheless knew enough about the truth of this verse and the tendencies of the heart to not even fully trust themselves to be above its corrupting influence. As John Quincy Adams explained:

I believe myself sincere; but the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked [Jeremiah 17:9]. I do not believe the total depravity of man, but I am deeply conscious of the frailty of my own nature.10

Understanding this principle from Jeremiah 17 – a principle that was accepted by all sides of the theological spectrum – the Founders knew that government would be much safer if all power did not repose in the same authority. Making practical application of this Biblical truth, they therefore divided and checked power between branches so that if one leader or branch went wicked, the other two might still check and stop it. As George Washington explained:

A just estimate of that love of power and proneness to abuse it which predominates in the human heart is sufficient to satisfy us of the truth of this position. The necessity of reciprocal checks in the exercise of political power by dividing and distributing it into different depositories . . . has been evinced [demonstrated] by experiments ancient and modern, some of them in our country and under our own eyes.11

This remarkable feature of American government – the separation of powers and reciprocal checks and balances – can be attributed to the Founders’ understanding of Jeremiah 17:9.

Endnotes

1 For more information, see The Founders’ Bible (Shiloh Road Publishers, 2012).

2 John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. III, p. 443, “On Private Revenge III,” published in the Boston Gazette, September 5, 1763; John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London: John Stockdale, 1794), Vol. III, p. 289, “Letter VI. The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, examined.”

3 For more information, see “A Short History of United States’ Education 1900 to 2006,” historyliteracy.org (accessed on September 7, 2016); “10 Things You Should Know About the American Founding,” The Catholic World Report, July 3, 2012; “A campus shared by the College, the Academy and the Charity School,” Penn University Archives & Records Center (accessed on September 7, 2016); “John Dewey,” Biography (accessed on September 7, 2016).

4 See some examples of 8th grade exit exams in: B. A. Hathaway, 1001 Test Examples in Arithmetic with Answers (Cleveland, OH: Burrows Brothers Company, 1890); Warp’s Review Books (Minden, NE: Warp Publishing Company, 1928), on various subjects; Colorado State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book (Lincoln, NE: Lincoln Supply Co., 1927).

5 See, for example, Colorado State Eighth Grade Examination Question Book (Nebraska: 1927), pp. 4, 10, 12, questions from a 1927 Agriculture, Arithmetic, and Civics test; “true-false test,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 7, 2016); “multiple-choice,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 7, 2016).

6 See an example of this philosophy in Theodore Roosevelt, “Who is a Progressive?” Teaching American History, April 1912.

7 See, for example, “total depravity,” Merriam-Webster (accessed on September 6, 2016); Herman Hanko, The Five Points of Calvinism (1976), “Chapter 1: Total Depravity.”

8 John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), Vol. III, p. 443, “On Private Revenge III,” published in the Boston Gazette, September 5, 1763.

9 John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America (London: John Stockdale, 1794), Vol. III, p. 289, “Letter VI. The Right Constitution of a Commonwealth, examined.”

10 John Quincy Adams, Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co, 1876), Vol. XI, p. 270, November 16, 1842.

11 George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army, to the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: Christopher Jackson, 1796), p. 22.

How to Respond to “Separation of Church and State”

We’ve all heard the phrase “separation of Church and State.” It is one of the best-known but least understood phrases in America today. It expresses the belief that there should be a wall of separation between one’s personal faith and any display of that faith in public. In America we advocate freedom of religion, yet if a teacher places a Bible on her desk,1 if a student bows his head to pray in school,2 or cheerleaders display Bible verses on their posters,3 they are accused of violating separation of church and state – of “subjecting” those around them to their faith.

As Christians, we must know how to respond. Do we know the history behind the phrase? Do we know our rights? Do we know our Founding Fathers’ intentions with the phrase?

Here are some simple ways we can respond so that we do not fall prey to the silencing of freedom of religion in the public square.

1. Where does the phrase “Separation of Church and State” originate?4

The concept of separation of Church and state actually originates in the Bible, where God created three institutions. In Genesis, God established the institution of family by creating male and female and placing them together in a lifelong union. Next came the institution of civil government to address our relationship with our fellow man. The final institution addressed our relationship with God, and was the creation of the temple, or the Church.

When God’s people left Egypt, God had them establish their own nation. At that time, God placed Moses over government and civil affairs and Aaron over spiritual ones, thus separating those two roles and jurisdictions. Neither excluded God from its operation, but each was to be headed and run by a different individual and not the same person. Later in the Bible when King Uzziah tried to combine the two institutions and serve as both a King and a Priest, God sovereignly weighed in and made clear that He did not want the same individual running both institutions together.

But in 391 AD, Emperor Theodosius combined both Church and State, and for the next twelve centuries, the State was in charge of the Church. The government decided what the official Church doctrines would be, and it punished violators who disagreed with those positions, not allowing them to practice their faith. There was a state-established Church, with the Church becoming an official arm of the State and with it being run by church officials appointed by the government. In the 1500s during the Reformation, those who followed the Bible began to call for a return to a Biblical separation of Church and State so that the government would no longer control or prohibit religious activities.

The early colonists who came to America brought this view with them, and in America they made sure that the government, or the State, could not control or limit religious beliefs or activities. This was their understanding of the separation of Church and State.

The phrase “separation of Church and State” cannot be found in the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it is not found in any of our nation’s founding documents. Related to government, the phrase first appeared in a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut in 1801.5

Thomas Jefferson had worked very hard to separate the Anglican Church from the government in his home state of Virginia so that all other denominations could practice their faith without government penalty or persecution. Jefferson contributed to ending government-run religion in his state, so when he became president of the United States, the Baptists and those from other denominations were his strong supporters because he had fought for their freedom of religion – for their right to be free from state control in matters of faith.

The Danbury Baptists wrote Thomas Jefferson expressing their concern that the government might try to regulate their religious expression. In response, Jefferson wrote his now famous letter, using the phrase “Separation of Church and State” to reassure the Danbury Baptists that the First Amendment prohibited the government from trying to control religious expression. In short, the First Amendment was intended to keep government out of regulating religion, but it did not keep religion out of government or the public square.

2. What Does the Constitution Actually Say?

Today, people believe that “separation of Church and State” is in the First Amendment of the Constitution. But in the First Amendment the Constitution says, “Congress shall make no law…”


First Amendment:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

The famous separation phrase appears nowhere in that Amendment, or in the Constitution.

So we must ask the question: How does a student praying over his lunch mean the same thing as Congress making a law? The answer: it doesn’t. The First Amendment meant Congress is limited from setting up a national denomination and Congress is limited from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. The First Amendment does not limit faith or the people, only the government.

The First Amendment was created by America’s Founders because of their desire to avoid something like the government-run Church of England. In fact, it was not just the government of England they longed to be different from, but they were also striving to be different from the way that churches and government had operated across most of Europe for the previous thousand years, for most nations at that time had state-established and state-controlled churches.

The Pilgrims, Puritans, and others who settled America wanted to return to God’s original plan of separating the church from government control. That long-standing American desire and practice of freedom of religion was specifically written in the First Amendment.

Here is one of the Bibles (dated 1590) that the Pilgrims and Puritan brought to America with them.6

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state
The notes in this Bible actually discuss having a separation between government and the church. The Pilgrims therefore set up a system where they would have separate elections for both state leaders and church leaders so that the leaders would be different, rather than the same, as was the practice in England.

3. Faith has been part of American public Society for over 180 years.

Students had been praying over their lunches for over 180 years under the Constitution with no problem, as well as doing other religious activities that were always constitutional.

In fact, we actually have several original sermons from a church that Thomas Jefferson helped facilitate. It was a church that met inside the U.S. Capitol,7 where services were held in the House Chamber every Sunday. Both as Vice President and as President of the United States, Jefferson faithfully attended those church services inside the US Capitol and saw no constitutional problem with them, for Congress was not controlling religion for the entire nation but rather was only allowing religious expressions to occur, which was their constitutional role.

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state-2
These are sermons preached at the Church that met inside the U.S. Capitol. The first one is on “The Public Worship of God,” and the second is on “The Imperishable and Saving Words of Christ.” Both sermons were preached in the Chamber of the U. S. House of Representatives.

how-to-respond-to-separation-of-church-and-state-3

It has only been in recent years that faith has been excluded from public schools, governmental venues, and the public square. Did we just invent separation of church and state? No, the phrase has existed since centuries before Jefferson, but today its meaning has been taken out of context and twisted to mean something entirely different.

This first happened in 1947 when the Supreme Court quoted only one phrase from Jefferson’s short 1801 letter to the Danbury Baptists. The Court claimed that there was to be “a wall of separation between Church and State” and that religious activities could no longer occur in the public square.8 They took the intent and clear purpose of Jefferson’s letter completely out of context. They did not show his short letter of only three paragraphs and 233 words which contained all the context and explanation but rather lifted a 8-word phrase out of it and remained silent on the rest.

Next time you hear someone claim religion has no place in public because of the “wall of separation,” I hope you’ll remember a few of the key pieces of history that many today have forgotten.

Endnotes

1 See, for example Roberts v. Madigan, 702 F. Supp. 1505 (D. Colo. 1989), aff’d, 921 F.2d 1047 (10th Cir. 1990).

2 See, for example, Broadus v. Saratoga Springs City School District, 02-cv-0136 (N.D.N.Y. 2002).

3 See, for example, Kountze Indep. Sch. Dist. v. Matthews, No. 09-13- 00251 (Tex. App.— Beaumont 2014).

4 See an article on the history of the phrase “Separation of Church and State” here.

5 See the text of the Danbury Baptists 1801 letter to Thomas Jefferson, and Jefferson’s 1802 reply here.

6 A Geneva Bible from the WallBuilders library, belonging to the Arthur Upton family.

7 See David Barton’s article “Church in the U.S. Capitol” for more information.

8 Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1 (1947).

Biblical Christianity: The Origin of the Rights of Conscience

Overview

Significantly, 1 Timothy 1:5 declares that the goal of the entirety of everything taught in the Scriptures is threefold:

The goal of our instruction is love from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and a sincere faith.

Significantly, the three are inseparable, and without a good conscience, there will not be either a sincere faith or a pure heart. It is therefore not surprising that developing, maintaining, and living according to a good conscience is referenced more than thirty times in the New Testament (cf. Acts 24:16, 1 Timothy 1:19, 3:9, 1 Peter 3:16, 21, Romans 13:5, 2 Corinthians 4:2, etc.).

In fact, 1 Corinthians 8:4-12 flatly states that if a Christian views something as a matter of conscience – if the inner voice that God has placed within him or her tells them that something is sin to them – they are not to violate their conscience; and if anyone makes them do so, then they “sin against Christ.” (This message is repeated in Romans 1:1-23, 1 Corinthians 10:28-32, and elsewhere.) Few subjects in the Bible are stressed as strongly as that of maintaining a pure conscience – of preserving the conviction that one will answer directly to God for what his religious faith requires him to do, or refrain from doing.

Strikingly, only nations who respect Biblical teachings and traditions offer protection for the rights of religious conscience. Secular and non-Biblical nations, and those with state-established churches (such as those that predominated in England and Europe at the time of the American Founding), do not allow rights of conscience but instead demand conformity, which often requires governmental punishment coercion concerning religious beliefs, which violates the Scriptures.

Christ Himself established religious non-coercion as the standard. His approach was so voluntary that He even directed His disciples that when they presented the Gospel to others, if someone was interested, then they could stay and share the message with them; but if someone did not want to hear, then they were to leave the area and not force the issue (Luke 10:8-12). There was absolutely no coercion. It was also this way with Paul and the other Apostles: in every case; hearers then chose whether or not to follow Christianity; there was never any penalty, pressure, or force levied against them.

As John Quincy Adams noted, Jesus Christ “came to teach and not to compel. His law was a Law of Liberty. He left the human mind and human action free.”1 Two generations later, legal writer Stephen Cowell (1800-1872) similarly avowed:

Nonconformity, dissent, free inquiry, individual conviction, mental independence, are forever consecrated by the religion of the New Testament as the breath of its own life – the conditions of its own existence on the earth. The book is a direct transfer of human allegiance in things spiritual from the civil and ecclesiastical powers to the judgment and conscience of the individual.2

And several generations after that, President Franklin D. Roosevelt continued to affirm the same truth, noting: “We want to do it the voluntary way – and most human beings in all the world want to do it the voluntary way. We do not want to have the way imposed. . . . That would not follow in the footsteps of Christ.”3

From the beginning, America faithfully observed these principles, refusing to apply government coercion or conformity to the religious beliefs and practices of individuals. But today, this is dramatically and rapidly changing, with government routinely requiring people of faith to violate their religious conscience, particularly on social issues such as those surrounding aspects of sexuality, whether the taking of unborn human life, contraception, or requiring participation in homosexual nuptials, affirmation of transgenderism, and other major sexual elements of the LGBT agenda.

The American Experience on Religious Conscience

Colonial Era

Many of the early colonists who came to America were familiar with the Bible teachings on conscience and brought them to America, where they took root and grew to maturity at a rapid rate, having been planted in virgin soil completely uncontaminated by the religious apostasy and routine violations of the rights of conscience that had characterized the previous millennia. Hence, Christianity as practiced in America became the world’s single greatest historical force in securing non-coercion, religious toleration, and the rights of conscience.

For example, in 1640, the Rev. Roger Williams established Providence (the city that became the center of the Rhode Island colony), declaring:

We agree, as formerly hath been the liberties of the town, so still, to hold forth liberty of conscience.4

Similar language and protections were also included in subsequent American documents, including the 1649 Maryland “Toleration Act,”5 the 1663 charter for Rhode Island,6 the 1664 Charter for Jersey,7 the 1665 Charter for Carolina,8 the 1669 Constitutions of Carolina,9 the 1676 charter for West Jersey,10 the 1701 charter for Delaware,11 the 1682 frame of government for Pennsylvania,12 and many others. As John Quincy Adams affirmed, “The transcendent and overruling principle of the first settlers of New England was conscience.”13

Revolutionary Era

In 1775 (a year before our official separation from Great Britain), Commander-in-Chief George Washington addressed Continental soldiers and from the beginning charged them:

While we are contending for our own liberty, we should be very cautious of violating the rights of conscience in others, ever considering that God alone is the judge of the hearts of men and to Him only in this case they are answerable.14

With America’s official break from Great Britain in 1776, the states created their very first state constitutions and specifically secured the religious toleration, non-coercion, and the rights of conscience. For example, the 1776 constitution of Virginia declared:

[R]eligion . . . can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force and violence; and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience.15

The 1776 Constitution of New Jersey similarly protected the rights of conscience,16 causing Governor William Livingston (a signer of the U. S. Constitution) to happily proclaim:

Consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation. . . . In contrast with this spiritual tyranny, how beautiful appears our catholic [expansive] constitution in disclaiming all jurisdiction over the souls of men, and securing (by a never-to-be-repealed section) the voluntary, unchecked, moral suasion of every individual – and his own self-directed intercourse with the Father of Spirits!17

When New York’s first constitution (1777) likewise protected the rights of conscience,81 Governor John Jay (an author of the Federalist Papers and the original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court) similarly rejoiced that:

Adequate security [under our constitution] is also given to the rights of conscience and private judgment. They are by nature subject to no control but that of Deity, and in that free situation they are now left. Every man is permitted to consider, to adore, and to worship his Creator in the manner most agreeable to his conscience.19

Similar clauses securing the rights of religious conscience also appeared in many other early state constitutions, including that of Delaware (1776),20 North Carolina (1776),21 Pennsylvania (1776),22 Vermont (1777),23 South Carolina (1778),24 Massachusetts (1780),25 New Hampshire (1784),26 etc. Today, the safeguards for the rights of conscience explicitly appear in forty-five state constitutions, and by inference in the other five.27

Federal Era

In 1788 following the ratification of the federal Constitution, six states submitted proposals for a Bill of Rights,28 with several specifically recommending national language that “all men have an equal, natural, and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience.”29 Although the word “conscience” did not ultimately appear in the final language of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, those who framed that Amendment believed that by preventing the government from establishing a national religion and by guaranteeing to the people their “free exercise of religion,” that the rights of conscience had been fully secured30 – a fact affirmed by President Thomas Jefferson when he penned his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists assuring them that the First Amendment was an “expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience.”31 Subsequent constitutional commentaries reiterated that the First Amendment did indeed protect the rights of conscience.32

Founding Fathers

In addition to the several Founders already mentioned, here are a few more unequivocal declarations regarding the constitutional duty of official to protect and defend the rights of religious conscience:

Government is instituted to protect property of every sort. . . . Conscience is the most sacred of all property.33 JAMES MADISON

No provision in our Constitution ought to be dearer to man than that which protects the rights of conscience against the enterprises of the civil authority.34 It behooves every man who values liberty of conscience for himself to resist invasions of it in the case of others, or their case may, by change of circumstances, become his own.35 Our rulers can have no authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them. The rights of conscience we never submitted – we could not submit. We are answerable for them to our God.36 THOMAS JEFFERSON

[T]he consciences of men are not the objects of human legislation. . . . For what business, in the name of common sense, has the magistrate (distinctly and singly appointed for our political and temporal happiness) with our religion, which is to secure our happiness spiritual and eternal? . . . [T]he state [does not] have any concern in the matter. For in what manner doth it affect society . . . in what outward form we think it best to pay our adoration to God?37 WILLIAM LIVINGSTON, SIGNER OF THE CONSTITUTION

Modern Era

As a result of the conscience protections long provided in American history and law, government exemptions are routinely granted to those whose religious faith requires them to participate in, or refrain from activities that violate their religious conscience. For example:

  • Pacifists and conscientious objectors are not forced to fight in wars;38
  • Jehovah’s Witnesses are not required to say the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools;39
  • The Amish are not required to complete the standard compulsory twelve years of education;40
  • Christian Scientists are not forced to have their children vaccinated or undergo medical procedures often required by state laws;41
  • Muslim and Jewish men are not required to shave their beards in jobs that otherwise require employees to be clean-shaven;42
  • Seventh-Day Adventists cannot be penalized for refusing to work at their jobs on Saturday;43

and there are additional examples.

Conclusion

Clearly, protection for the inalienable rights of religious conscience is deeply embedded into the fabric of American governmental policy. But as currently demonstrated in countless nations around the world, and now in America, when secularism or any other non-Biblical philosophy becomes dominant in its culture, a loss of legal protections for religious rights is usually one of the first casualties of the change.

Today in America, to seek to provide protection for the traditional rights of religious conscience is now regularly denounced as discriminatory.44 The LGBT movement, and those in government aligned with it, disdain the rights of religious conscience and instead use the power, penalties, and full force of the law to coerce all others to embrace and participate in affirming their views, including Christian bakers,45 florists,46 photographers,47 churches,48 homeowners,49 pastors,50 clerks,51 business owners,52 officials,53 religious schools,54 military personnel,55 sportscasters,56 and others.57

Our Framers recognized that if religious liberties and our civil liberties were inseparable – that if our religious liberties were diminished, our civil liberties would soon follow. As Joseph Story (a “Father of American Jurisprudence,” placed on the Supreme Court by President James Madison) pointed out:

There is not a truth to be gathered from history more certain or more momentous than this: that civil liberty cannot long be separated from religious liberty without danger, and ultimately without destruction to both. Wherever religious liberty exists, it will, first or last, bring in and establish political liberty.58

Signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon concurred:

There is not a single instance in history in which civil liberty was lost and religious liberty preserved entire. . . . God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.59

And Jedidiah Morse (a pastor, educator, and historian of the American Revolution, appointed by the federal government to document the condition of Indian affairs) agreed:

All efforts made to destroy the foundations of our Holy Religion ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness. In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation . . . in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom.60

Secularism produces an antipathy toward religion and religious rights, when ultimately diminish our civil rights. In fact, after President Obama announced that America no longer should be viewed as a Christian nation,61 he then announced that he was rescinding the traditional religious rights of conscience for those working in the medical profession.62 Historically, governmental protection for religious rights is the only sure indicator of protection for other non-religious civil rights.

Endnotes

1 John Quincy Adams, A Discourse on Education Delivered at Braintree, Thursday, October 24th, 1839 (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1840), 18.

2 Stephen Colwell, Politics for American Christians: A Word upon our Example as a Nation, our Labour, our Trade, Elections, Education, and Congressional Legislation (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co. 1852), 82, Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine, for 1844 (Edinburgh: William Tait, 1844), 752, “The Politics of the New Testament,” December 1844.

3 “Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Christmas Greeting to the Nation,” The American Presidency Project, December 24, 1940.

4 The Federal and State Constitutions, Colonial Charters and Other Organic Laws, ed. Francis Newton Thorpe (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1909), VI:3205-3207, “Plantation Agreement at Providence – August 27-September 6, 1640.”

5 William MacDonald, Select Charters and Other Documents Illustrative of American History 1606-1775 (New York: MacMillan Company, 1899), 104-106, “Maryland Toleration Act,” April 1649.

6 <a href=”https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015001567794;view=1up;seq=27″ target=”“blank”” rel=”noopener”>Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), VI:3211, “Charter of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations-1663.”

7 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2537, “The Concession and Agreement of the Lords Proprietors of the Province of New Caesarea, or New Jersey, 1664.”

8 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2771, “Charter of Carolina – 1665.”

9 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2785, “The Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina – 1669.”

10 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2549, “The Charter or Fundamental Laws of West New Jersey, Agreed Upon – 1676.”

11 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), I:558, “Charter of Delaware – 1701.”

12 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:3063, “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania, May 5, 1682.”

13 John Quincy Adams, A Discourse on Education Delivered at Braintree, Thursday, October 24th, 1839 (Boston: Perkins & Marvin, 1840), 28.

14 George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, ed. John C. Fitzpatrick (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1931), 3:492, to Benedict Arnold, September 14, 1775.

15 The American’s Guide: Comprising the Declaration of Independence; the Articles of Confederation; the Constitution of the United States, and the Constitutions of the Several States Composing the Union (Philadelphia: Hogan & Thompson, 1835), 180, 1776 Constitution: Bill of Rights, No. 16.

16 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2597, “Constitution of New Jersey – 1776.”

17 William Livingston, The Papers of William Livingston, ed. Carl E. Prince (Trenton: New Jersey Historical Commission, 1980), 2:235, 237, article under the name “Cato,” originally published in the New Jersey Gazette on February 18, 1778.

18 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), V:2636-2637, “Constitution of New York – 1777.”

19 William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), I:82, John Jay’s charge to the grand jury during the first term of the New York state Supreme Court.

20 Constitutions of the Several Independent States of America (New York: E. Oswald, 1786), 129.

21 Constitutions (1786), 185.

22 Constitutions (1786), 109.

23 Federal and State Constitutions, ed. Thorpe (1909), VI:3740.

24 Constitutions (1786), 215.

25 Constitutions (1786), 11-12.

26 Constitutions (1786), 4.

27 Forty-five state constitutions contain explicit language specifically singling out the rights of conscience. Five other states – Alaska, Hawaii, Louisiana, Montana, and South Carolina – use similar language to the U.S. Constitution (“make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”). As is seen in the subsequent section, the Founding Fathers believed that this language provided specific protection for the rights of conscience.

28 Those states initially included Massachusetts, South Carolina, New Hampshire, Virginia, New York, and North Carolina; two years later in 1790, Rhode Island submitted its proposals. See Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution (Washington: 1836), I:322-333.

29 Anson Phelps Stokes, Church and State in the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1950), 1:600-610. New Hampshire recommended an amendment stating that “Congress shall make no law touching religion, or to infringe the rights of conscience.”

30 The Debates and Proceedings in the Congress of the United States, ed. Joseph Gales (Washington: Gales and Seaton, 1834), I:757-796, August 15, 1789 to August 21, 1789.

31 Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington (Washington D.C.: Taylor & Maury, 1854), VIII:113, “Messrs. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, and Stephen S. Nelson, A Committee of the Danbury Baptist Association, in the State of Connecticut,” January 1, 1802.

32 See, for example, Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, and Company, 1833), I:701, § 990-991:

The rights of conscience are, indeed, beyond the just reach of any human power. They are given by God, and cannot be encroached upon by human authority, without a criminal disobedience of the precepts of natural, as well as revealed religion. The real object of the amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus sought to cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and the power of subverting the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age.

St. George Tucker, Blackstone’s Commentaries: with Notes of Reference, to the Constitution and Laws, of the Federal Government of the United States; and of the Commonwealth of Virginia (Philadelphia: William Young Birch and Abraham Small: 1803), I:489, “Appendix: Note G. Of the Right of Conscience; and Of the Freedom of Speech and Of The Press”:

Liberty of conscience in matters of religion consists in the absolute and unrestrained exercise of our religious opinion, and duties, in that mode which our own reason and conviction dictate, without the control or intervention of any human power or authority whatsoever. This liberty though made a part of our constitution, and interwoven in the nature of man by his Creator, so far as the arts of fraud and terrors of violence have been capable of abridging it, hath been the subject of coercion by human laws in all ages and in all countries as far as the annals of mankind extend.

James Wilson, Thomas McKean [Wilson and McKean both signed the Declaration of Independence, and Wilson was a signer of the Constitution and an original Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court], Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States of America (London: 1791), II:61:

In the third place we are told, that there is no security for the rights of conscience. I ask the honorable gentleman, what part of this system puts it in the power of Congress to attack those rights? When there is no power to attack, it is idle to prepare the means of defense.

And others.

33 James Madison, The Writings of James Madison, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1906), VI:102, “Property,” originally published in The National Gazette on March 29, 1792.

34 Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. H. A. Washington (New York: Biker, Thorne, & Co., 1854), VIII:147, to the Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church at New London, CT on February 4, 1809.

35 Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies, ed. Thomas Jefferson Randolph (Charlottesville: F. Carr, an Co., 1829), III:507, to Benjamin Rush on April 21, 1803.

36 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (London: John Stockdale, 1787), 265, “Query XVII: The different religions received into that state?”

37 William Livingston, Papers, ed. Prince (1980), 2:235, 237, article under the name “Cato,” originally published in the New Jersey Gazette on February 18, 1778; Hezekiah Niles, Principles and Acts of the Revolution in America: Or, An Attempt to Collect and Preserve Some of the Speeches, Orations, & Proceedings (Baltimore: William Ogden Niles, 1822), 306-307, “Remarks on liberty of conscience, ascribed to his excellency William Livingston, governor of New Jersey, 1778”; B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, Developed in the Official and Historical Annals of the Republic (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), 162-163, from William Livingston.

38 United States v. Seeger, 380 U.S. 163 (1965).

39 West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).

40 Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972).

41 See, for example, “Parents claim religion to avoid vaccines for kids,” NBCNews, October 17, 2007; “Vaccination Exemptions,” College of Physicians of Philadelphia (accessed on May 9, 2016).

42 Potter v. District of Columbia, Civil Action No. 01-1189 (D.D.C. Sept. 28, 2007).

43 Hobbie v. Unemployment Appeals Commission of Florida, 480 U.S. 136 (1987); Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398, 409 (1963).

44 See, for example, Adam Serwer, “Arizona passes law allowing discrimination,” MSNBC, February 21, 2014; Paresh Dave, “Miss. governor signs religious freedom bill; civil rights groups dismayed,” Los Angeles Times, April 4, 2014; Chris Johnson, “Georgia Senate passes religious discrimination bill,” Washington Blade, March 5, 2015; Tony Cook, “Gov. Mike Pence signs ‘religious freedom’ bill in private,” IndyStar, April 2, 2015; Monica Davey, “Indiana and Arkansas Revise Rights Bills, Seeking to Remove Divisive Parts,” The New York Times, April 2, 2015; Timothy Holbrook, “Georgia, North Carolina bills are about LGBT discrimination. Period,” CNN, March 28, 2016; Marina Fang, “Tennessee Legislature Resurrects Discriminatory Transgender Bathroom Bill,” Huffington Post, April 6, 2016.

45 See, for example, Ken Klukowski, “Baker Faces Prison for Refusing to Bake Same-Sex Wedding Cake,” Breitbart, December 12, 2013; Chris Enloe, “‘Sweet Cakes’ Owners’ Bank Accounts Seized as Damages for Refusing to Bake Wedding Cake for Lesbian Couple,” The Blaze, December 29, 2015.

46 See, for example, Danny Burk, “A florist loses religious freedom, and much more,” CNN, February 20, 2015.

47 See, for example, Ken Klukowski, “New Mexico Court: Christian Photographer Cannot Refuse Gay-Marriage Ceremony,” Breitbart, August 22, 2013; Kristine Marsh, “Gays Force San Francisco Wedding Photographers to Close Shop,” MRC NewsBusters, November 21, 2014; Samuel Smith, “Christian Videographer Faces Legal Action After Refusing to Work Lesbian Wedding, Says It’s Against Her Biblical Beliefs,” Christian Post, March 18, 2015.

48 See, for example, Molly Montag, “Group asks IRS to investigate Cornerstone Church,” Sioux City Journal, October 1, 2010; “Southern Baptists draw distance from harsh anti-gay rhetoric, yet hold to convictions,” Baptist Press, May 24, 2012.

49 See, for example, Andrea Peyser, “Couple fined for refusing to host same-sex wedding on their farm,” New York Post, November 10, 2014.

50 See, for example, Todd Starnes, “Fired for preaching: Georgia dumps doctor over church sermons,” Fox News, April 20, 2016; Natalie Jennings, “Louie Giglio pulls out of inauguration over anti-gay comments,” The Washington Post, January 10, 2013.

51 See, for example, Allan Smith, “Anti-gay-marriage Kentucky clerk jailed for refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses,” Business Insider, September 3, 2015; Jim Douglas, “Hood County is focal point of same-sex debate,” WFAA, July 1, 2015.

52 See, for example, Katie Zezima, “Couple Sues a Vermont Inn for Rejecting Gay Wedding,” The New York Times, July 19, 2011; Billy Hallowell, “Lesbian Couple Wins Discrimination Lawsuit Against Religious Bed and Breakfast Owner Who Denied Them a Room,” The Blaze, April 16, 2013; Justin Moyer, “Kentucky T-shirt printer that wouldn’t make gay pride shirts vindicated by court,” The Washington Post, April 28, 2015; Charlie Butts, “Iowa couple fined for refusing gay wedding: ‘We are still here’,” OneNewsNow, June 3, 2015.

53 See, for example, Kathleen Gilbert, “San Diego firefighters victorious in suit against forced participation in gay pride parade,” Life Site News, January 28, 2011; Eryn Sun, “Court Affirms CDC’s Firing of Counselor Over Same-Sex Advice,” Christian Post, February 8, 2012; Ryan T. Anderson, “Atlanta Fire Chief Fired for Expressing Christian Beliefs,” The Daily Signal, January 8, 2015; “Utah officer who objected to role in gay pride parade says he was unfairly labeled a bigot,” Fox News, February 25, 2015; Randy Ludlow, “Ohio judges who perform weddings must marry same-sex couples,” The Columbus Dispatch, August 11, 2015.

54 See, for example, “Evangelical College Gay Rights Stand Causes Uproar,” NewsMax, November 2, 2014; “Gay Teacher Files Sex Discrimination Claim Against Georgia School,” NPR, July 9, 2014; “Lesbian teacher who was fired for becoming pregnant sues Catholic school for discrimination,” Daily Mail, August 22, 2014.

55 See, for example, Todd Starnes, “Fox Exclusive: Airman Faces Punishment for her Religious Beliefs,” Fox News, August 6, 2013; Kirsten Anderson, “Air Force Sergeant claims he was fired for refusing to endorse gay ‘marriage’: faces court martial,” Life Site News, September 10, 2013; “Navy Threatens To End 19-Year Career Of Decorated Chaplain Who Served Navy SEAL Teams, According To Liberty Institute,” PR Newswire, March 9, 2015.

56 See, for example, Melissa Barnhart, “Fox Sports Southwest Charged With Discrimination for Firing Craig James Over Homosexuality Remarks,” Christian Post, March 7, 2014; Ahiza Garcia, “‘I’m not transphobic,’ says ex-ESPN analyst Curt Schilling,” CNN Money, April 22, 2016.

57 See, for example, “Missouri school sued by student who refused to support gay adoptions,” USA Today, November 2, 2006; Paul Strand, “University Employee Punished over Marriage Petition,” CBN News, October 18, 2012; Billy Hallowell, “Christian Product Engineer Claims Ford Motor Fired Him for Voicing His Bible-Based Opposition to the Company’s Promotion of ‘Pro-Homosexual Ideas’ — Now He’s Fighting Back,” The Blaze, January 28, 2015.

58 Joseph Story, A Discourse Pronounced at the Request of the Essex Historical Society, on the 18th of September, 1828, in Commemoration of the First Settlement of Salem, in the State of Massachusetts (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1828), 46.

59 John Witherspoon, The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men. A Sermon, Preached at Princeton, on the 17th of May, 1776. Being the General Fast appointed by the Congress through the United Colonies (Philadelphia: 1777), 27-28, 38.

60 Jedidiah Morse, A Sermon, Exhibiting the Present Dangers and Consequent Duties of the Citizens of the United States of America. Delivered at Charlestown. April 25, 1799, The Day of the National Fast (MA: Printed by Samuel Etheridge, 1799), 9.

61 Aaron Klein, “Obama: America is ‘no longer Christian’,” WorldNetDaily, June 22, 2008. See also David Brody, The Brody File, “Exclusive: Barack Obama E-mails the Brody File,” CBN News, July 29, 2007; “Obama says U.S., Turkey can be model for world,” CNN, April 6, 2009.

62 See, for example, Rob Stein, “Obama Plans to Roll Back ‘Conscience’ Rule Protecting Health Workers Who Object to Some Types of Care,” The Washington Post, February 28, 2009; Saundra Young, “White House set to reverse health care conscience clause,” CNN, February 27, 2009; Rob Stein, “Obama administration replaces controversial ‘conscience’ regulation for health-care workers,” The Washington Post, February 18, 2011.

* This article concerns a historical issue and may not have updated information.

Is America a Christian Nation?

Modern claims that America is not a Christian nation are rarely noticed or refuted today because of the nation’s widespread lack of knowledge about America’s history and foundation. To help provide the missing historical knowledge necessary to combat today’s post-modern revisionism, presented below will be some statements by previous presidents, legislatures, and courts (as well as by current national Jewish spokesmen) about America being a Christian nation. These declarations from all three branches of government are representative of scores of others and therefore comprise only the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.”

Defining a Christian Nation

Contemporary critics who assert that America is not a Christian nation always refrain from offering any definition of what the term “Christian nation” means. So what is an accurate definition of that term as demonstrated by the American experience?

Contrary to what critics imply, a Christian nation is not one in which all citizens are Christians, or the laws require everyone to adhere to Christian theology, or all leaders are Christians, or any other such superficial measurement. As Supreme Court Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) explained:

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[I]n what sense can [America] be called a Christian nation? Not in the sense that Christianity is the established religion or that the people are in any manner compelled to support it. On the contrary, the Constitution specifically provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Neither is it Christian in the sense that all its citizens are either in fact or name Christians. On the contrary, all religions have free scope within our borders. Numbers of our people profess other religions, and many reject all. Nor is it Christian in the sense that a profession of Christianity is a condition of holding office or otherwise engaging in public service, or essential to recognition either politically or socially. In fact, the government as a legal organization is independent of all religions. Nevertheless, we constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation – in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world.1

So, if being a Christian nation is not based on any of the above criterion, then what makes America a Christian nation? According to Justice Brewer, America was “of all the nations in the world . . . most justly called a Christian nation” because Christianity “has so largely shaped and molded it.”2

Constitutional law professor Edward Mansfield (1801-1880) similarly acknowledged:

In every country, the morals of a people – whatever they may be – take their form and spirit from their religion. For example, the marriage of brothers and sisters was permitted among the Egyptians because such had been the precedent set by their gods, Isis and Osiris. So, too, the classic nations celebrated the drunken rites of Bacchus. Thus, too, the Turk has become lazy and inert because dependent upon Fate, as taught by the Koran. And when in recent times there arose a nation [i.e., France] whose philosophers [e.g. Voltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Helvetius, etc.] discovered there was no God and no religion, the nation was thrown into that dismal case in which there was no law and no morals. . . . In the United States, Christianity is the original, spontaneous, and national religion.3

Founding Father and U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall agreed:

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[W]ith us, Christianity and religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people our institutions did not presuppose Christianity and did not often refer to it and exhibit relations with it.4

Christianity is the religion that shaped America and made her what she is today. In fact, historically speaking, it can be irrefutably demonstrated that Biblical Christianity in America produced many of the cherished traditions still enjoyed today, including:

  • A republican rather than a theocratic form of government;
  • The institutional separation of church and state (as opposed to today’s enforced institutional secularization of church and state);
  • Protection for religious toleration and the rights of conscience;
  • A distinction between theology and behavior, thus allowing the incorporation into public policy of religious principles that promote good behavior but which do not enforce theological tenets (examples of this would include religious teachings such as the Good Samaritan, The Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, etc., all of which promote positive civil behavior but do not impose ecclesiastical rites); and
  • A free-market approach to religion, thus ensuring religious diversity and security for the rights of religious conscience.

Consequently, a Christian nation as demonstrated by the American experience is a nation founded upon Christian and Biblical principles, whose values, society, and institutions have largely been shaped by those principles. This definition was reaffirmed by American legal scholars and historians for generations5 but is widely ignored by today’s revisionists.

American Presidents Affirm that America is a Christian Nation

President Barack Obama is the first American president to deny that America is a Christian nation.6 Notice a few representative statements on this subject by some of the forty-three previous presidents:

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were. . . . the general principles of Christianity.7 JOHN ADAMS

[T]he teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally….impossible for us to figure to ourselves what that life would be if these teaching were removed.8 TEDDY ROOSEVELT

America was born a Christian nation – America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.9 WOODROW WILSON

American life is builded, and can alone survive, upon . . . [the] fundamental philosophy announced by the Savior nineteen centuries ago.10 HERBERT HOOVER

This is a Christian Nation.11 HARRY TRUMAN

Let us remember that as a Christian nation . . . we have a charge and a destiny.12 RICHARD NIXON

There are many additional examples, including even that of Thomas Jefferson.13

Significantly, Jefferson was instrumental in establishing weekly Sunday worship services at the U. S. Capitol (a practice that continued through the 19th century) and was himself a regular and faithful attendant at those church services,14 not even allowing inclement weather to dissuade his weekly horseback travel to the Capitol church.15

(The fact that the U. S. Capitol building was available for church on Sundays was due to the Art. I, Sec. 7 constitutional requirement that forbade federal lawmaking on Sundays; and this recognition of a Christian Sabbath in the U. S. Constitution was cited by federal courts as proof of the Christian nature of America.16 While not every Christian observes a Sunday Sabbath, no other religion in the world honors Sunday except Christianity. As one court noted, the various Sabbaths were “the Friday of the Mohammedan, the Saturday of the Israelite, or the Sunday of the Christian.”17)
is-america-a-christian-nation-4Why was Jefferson a faithful attendant at the Sunday church at the Capitol? He once explained to a friend while they were walking to church together:

No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.18

The U. S. Congress Affirms that America is a Christian Nation

Declarations from the Legislative Branch affirming America as a Christian nation are abundant. For example, in 1852-1853 when some citizens sought a complete secularization of the public square and a cessation of all religious activities by the government, Congress responded with unambiguous declarations about America as a Christian nation:

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HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have been strangled in its cradle. At the time of the adoption of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect [denomination]. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been viewed with universal indignation. . . . In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity; that, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions.19

SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: We are Christians, not because the law demands it, not to gain exclusive benefits or to avoid legal disabilities, but from choice and education; and in a land thus universally Christian, what is to be expected, what desired, but that we shall pay a due regard to Christianity?20

In 1856, the House of Representatives also declared:

[T]he great vital and conservative element in our system is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.21

On March 3, 1863 while in the midst of the Civil War, the U. S. Senate requested President Abraham Lincoln to “designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation”22 because:

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[S]incerely believing that no people, however great in numbers and resources or however strong in the justice of their cause, can prosper without His favor; and at the same time deploring the national offences which have provoked His righteous judgment, yet encouraged in this day of trouble by the assurances of His word to seek Him for succor according to His appointed way through Jesus Christ, the Senate of the United States do hereby request the President of the United States, by his proclamation, to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation.23 (emphasis added)

President Lincoln quickly complied with that request,24 and issued what today has become one of the most famous and quoted proclamations in America’s history.25

Across the generations, our national reliance on God, the Bible, and Christianity has been repeatedly reaffirmed. In fact, consider five representative images produced by the U. S. Government. The first three are from World War II: one shows the Nazis as the enemy because they want to attack the Bible, and the other two encourage Americans to buy War Bonds by pointing to Christian images. The fourth and fifth images are from the Department of Agriculture in the 1960s, using the Bible and even Smokey Bear in prayer as symbols to encourage Americans to be conscious of fire safety and to help preserve and conserve nature.

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There are scores of other official actions by the U. S. Congress over the past two centuries affirming that America is a Christian nation.

The Judicial Branch Affirms that America is a Christian Nation

From the Judicial Branch, consider first some declarations of prominent U. S. Supreme Court Justices regarding America as a Christian nation.

Justice Joseph Story (1779-1845) was appointed to the Court by President James Madison. Story is considered the founder of Harvard Law School and authored the three-volume classic Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833). In his 34 years on the Court, Story authored opinions in 286 cases, of which 269 were reported as the majority opinion or the opinion of the Court26 and his many contributions to American law have caused him to be called a “Father of American Jurisprudence.” Justice Story openly declared:

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One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. . . . There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations. . . . I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society.27

His conclusion about America and Christianity was straightforward:

In [our] republic, there would seem to be a peculiar propriety in viewing the Christian religion as the great basis on which it must rest for its support and permanence.28

Justice John McLean (1785-1861) was appointed to the Court by President Andrew Jackson. McLean served in the U. S. Congress, as a judge on the Ohio Supreme Court, and then held cabinet positions under two U. S. Presidents. His view on the importance of Christianity to American government and its institutions was unambiguous:

is-america-a-christian-nation-12

For many years, my hope for the perpetuity of our institutions has rested upon Bible morality and the general dissemination of Christian principles. This is an element which did not exist in the ancient republics. It is a basis on which free governments may be maintained through all time. . . . Free government is not a self-moving machine. . . . Our mission of freedom is not carried out by brute force, by canon law, or any other law except the moral law and those Christian principles which are found in the Scriptures.29

Already mentioned at the beginning was Justice David Brewer (1837-1910), appointed to the Court by President Benjamin Harrison. Brewer held several judgeships in Kansas and served on a federal circuit court before his appointment to the Supreme Court. In addition to his already noted statements, Justice Brewer also declared:

We constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation – in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world.30

Brewer then chronicled the types of descriptions applied to nations:

is-america-a-christian-nation-13

We classify nations in various ways: as, for instance, by their form of government. One is a kingdom, another an empire, and still another a republic. Also by race. Great Britain is an Anglo-Saxon nation, France a Gallio, Germany a Teutonic, Russia a Slav. And still again by religion. One is a Mohammedan nation, others are heathen, and still others are Christian nations. This republic is classified among the Christian nations of the world. It was so formally declared by the Supreme Court of the United States. In the case of Holy Trinity Church vs. United States, 143 U.S. 471, that Court, after mentioning various circumstances, added, “these and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation.”31

Brewer did not believe that calling America a Christian nation was a hollow appellation; in fact, he penned an entire book setting forth the evidence that America was a Christian nation.32 He concluded:

[I] have said enough to show that Christianity came to this country with the first colonists; has been powerfully identified with its rapid development, colonial and national, and today exists as a mighty factor in the life of the republic. This is a Christian nation. . . . [T]he calling of this republic a Christian nation is not a mere pretence, but a recognition of an historical, legal, and social truth.33

Justice Earl Warren (1891-1974) agreed with his predecessors. Before being appointed as Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court by President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Warren had been the Attorney General of California. Warren declared:

is-america-a-christian-nation-14

I believe the entire Bill of Rights came into being because of the knowledge our forefathers had of the Bible and their belief in it: freedom of belief, of expression, of assembly, of petition, the dignity of the individual, the sanctity of the home, equal justice under law, and the reservation of powers to the people. . . . I like to believe we are living today in the spirit of the Christian religion. I like also to believe that as long as we do so, no great harm can come to our country.34

There are many similar declarations by other Supreme Court Justices, but in addition to the declarations of individual judges, the federal courts have repeatedly affirmed America to be a Christian nation – including the U. S. Supreme Court, which declared that America was “a Christian country,”35 filled with “Christian people,”36 and was indeed “a Christian nation.”37 Dozens of other courts past and present have repeated these pronouncements38 but so,
is-america-a-christian-nation-15too, have American Presidents – as in 1947 when President Harry Truman quoted the Supreme Court, declaring:

This is a Christian Nation. More than a half century ago that declaration was written into the decrees of the highest court in this land [in an 1892 decision].39

American Jewish Leaders Agree with History

Jewish leaders, although firmly committed to their own faith, understand that by defending Christianity they are defending what has provided them their own religious liberty in America. For example, Jeff Jacoby, a Jewish columnist at the Boston Globe explains:

This is a Christian country – it was founded by Christians and built on broad Christian principles. Threatening? Far from it. It is in precisely this Christian country that Jews have known the most peaceful, prosperous, and successful existence in their long history.40

Aaron Zelman (a Jewish author and head of a civil rights organization) similarly declares:

[C]hristian America is the best home our people have found in 2,000 years. . . . [T]his remains the most tolerant, prosperous, and safest home we could be blessed with.41

Dennis Prager, a Jewish national columnist and popular talkshow host, warns:

If America abandons its Judeo-Christian values basis and the central role of the Jewish and Christian Bibles (its Founders’ guiding text), we are all in big trouble, including, most especially, America’s non-Christians. Just ask the Jews of secular Europe.42

Prager further explained:

I believe that it is good that America is a Christian nation. . . . I have had the privilege of speaking in nearly every Jewish community in America over the last 30 years, and I have frequently argued in favor of this view. Recently, I spoke to the Jewish community of a small North Carolina city. When some in the audience mentioned their fear of rising religiosity among Christians, I asked these audience-members if they loved living in their city. All of them said they did. Is it a coincidence, I then asked, that the city you so love (for its wonderful people, its safety for your children, its fine schools, and its values that enable you to raise your children with confidence) is a highly Christian city? Too many Americans do not appreciate the connection between American greatness and American Christianity.43

Don Feder, a Jewish columnist and long time writer for the Boston Herald, similarly acknowledges:

Clearly this nation was established by Christians. . . . As a Jew, I’m entirely comfortable with the concept of the Christian America.44 The choice isn’t Christian America or nothing, but Christian America or a neo-pagan, hedonistic, rights-without-responsibilities, anti-family, culture-of-death America. As an American Jew. . . . [I] feel very much at home here.45

In fact, Feder calls on Jews to defend the truth that America is a Christian Nation:

Jews – as Jews – must oppose revisionist efforts to deny our nation’s Christian heritage, must stand against the drive to decouple our laws from Judeo-Christian ethics, and must counter attacks on public expressions of the religion of most Americans – Christianity. Jews are safer in a Christian America than in a secular America.46

Michael Medved, a Jewish national talkshow host and columnist, agrees that America is indeed a Christian nation:

The framers may not have mentioned Christianity in the Constitution but they clearly intended that charter of liberty to govern a society of fervent faith, freely encouraged by government for the benefit of all. Their noble and unprecedented experiment never involved a religion-free or faithless state but did indeed presuppose America’s unequivocal identity as a Christian nation.47

Burt Prelutsky, a Jewish columnist for the Los Angeles Times (and a freelance writer for the New York Times, Washington Times, Sports Illustrated, and other national publications) and a patriotic Jewish American, gladly embraces America as a Christian nation and even resents the secularist post-modern attack on national Christian celebrations such as Christmas:

I never thought I’d live to see the day that Christmas would become a dirty word. . . .How is it, one well might ask, that in a Christian nation this is happening? And in case you find that designation objectionable, would you deny that India is a Hindu country, that Turkey is Muslim, that Poland is Catholic? That doesn’t mean those nations are theocracies. But when the overwhelming majority of a country’s population is of one religion, and most Americans happen to be one sort of Christian or another, only a darn fool would deny the obvious. . . . This is a Christian nation, my friends. And all of us are fortunate it is one, and that so many millions of Americans have seen fit to live up to the highest precepts of their religion. It should never be forgotten that, in the main, it was Christian soldiers who fought and died to defeat Nazi Germany and who liberated the concentration camps. Speaking as a member of a minority group – and one of the smaller ones at that – I say it behooves those of us who don’t accept Jesus Christ as our savior to show some gratitude to those who do, and to start respecting the values and traditions of the overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens, just as we keep insisting that they respect ours. Merry Christmas, my friends.48

Orthodox Rabbi Daniel Lapin of the Jewish Policy Center unequivocally declares

[I] understand that I live . . . in a Christian nation, albeit one where I can follow my faith as long as it doesn’t conflict with the nation’s principles. The same option is open to all Americans and will be available only as long as this nation’s Christian roots are acknowledged and honored.49

In fact, with foreboding he warns:

Without a vibrant and vital Christianity, America is doomed, and without America, the west is doomed. Which is why I, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi, devoted to Jewish survival, the Torah, and Israel am so terrified of American Christianity caving in.50 God help Jews if America ever becomes a post-Christian society! Just think of Europe!51

— — — ◊ ◊ ◊ — — —
There is much additional evidence, and it unequivocally demonstrates that any claim that America was not a Christian nation is an unabashed attempt at historical revisionism. Of such efforts, former Chief Justice William Rehnquist wisely observed, “no amount of repetition of historical errors . . . can make the errors true.”52

Endnotes

1 David J. Brewer, The United States: A Christian Nation (Philadelphia: John C. Winston Company, 1905), 12.

2 Brewer, A Christian Nation (1905), 57.

3 Edward Mansfield, American Education, Its Principle and Elements (New York: A. S. Barnes & Co., 1851), 43.

4 John Marshall to Rev. Jasper Adams, May 9, 1833, The Papers of John Marshall, ed. Charles Hobson (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), XII:278.

5 Stephen Cowell, The Position of Christianity in the United States in its Relations with our Political Institutions (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambio & Co., 1854), 11-12; Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Marsh, Capen, Lyon, and Webb, 1840), 260.

6 See, for example, “Obama says U.S., Turkey can be model for world,” CNN, April 6, 2009; David Brody, The Brody File, “Exclusive: Barack Obama E-mails the Brody File,” CBN News, July 29, 2007; Aaron Klein, “Obama: America is ‘no longer Christian’,” WorldNetDaily, June 22, 2008; and so forth.

7 John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, June 28, 1813, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), X:45-46.

8 Ferdinand Cowle Iglehart, D.D., Theodore Roosevelt, The Man As I Knew Him (New York: The Christian Herald, 1919), 307.

9 Paul M. Pearson and Philip M. Hicks, Extemporaneous Speaking (New York: Hinds, Noble & Eldredge, 1912), 177, printing Woodrow Wilson, “The Bible and Progress;” The Homiletic Review: An International Monthly Magazine of Current Religious Thought, Sermonic Literature and Discussion of Practical Issues (New York: Funk and Wagnalls Company, 1911), LXII:238, printing Woodrow Wilson, “The Bible and Progress,” May 7, 1911.

10 Herbert Hoover, “Radio Address to the Nation on Unemployment Relief,” American Presidency Project, October 18, 1931.

11 Harry S. Truman, “Exchange of Messages With Pope Pius XII,” American Presidency Project, August 28, 1947.

12 Richard Nixon, “Remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast,” American Presidency Project, February 1st, 1972.

13 Thomas Jefferson to Gouverneur Morris, November 1, 1801, The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Barbara Oberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008), 30:545.

14 See, for example, Bishop Claggett’s (Episcopal Bishop of Maryland) letter of February 18, 1801, available in the Maryland Diocesan Archives; The First Forty Years of Washington Society, ed. Galliard Hunt (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906), 13; William Parker Cutler and Julia Perkins Cutler, Life, Journal, and Correspondence of Rev. Manasseh Cutler (Cincinnati: Colin Robert Clarke & Co., 1888), II:119, to Joseph Torrey, January 3, 1803 & 113, entry of December 12, 1802; James Hutson, Religion and the Founding of the American Republic (Washington, D. C.: Library of Congress, 1998), 84.

15 Cutler and Cutler, Life, Journal, and Correspondence (1888), II:119, to Dr. Joseph Torrey, January 3, 1803; entry of December 26, 1802 (II:114).

16 See, for example, Church of the Holy Trinity v. U. S., 143 U.S. 457, 465, 470-471 (1892); City Council of Charleston v. S.A. Benjamin, 2 Strob. 508, 518-520 (S.C. 1846); State v. Ambs, 20 Mo. 214, 1854 WL 4543 (Mo. 1854); Neal v. Crew, 12 Ga. 93, 1852 WL 1390 (1852); Doremus v. Bd. of Educ., 71 A.2d 732, 7 N.J. Super. 442 (1950); State v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co., 143 S.W. 785, 803 (Mo. 1912); and many others.

17 Ex parte Newman, 9 Cal. 502, 509 (1858).

18 Hutson, Religion, 96, quoting from a handwritten history in possession of the Library of Congress, “Washington Parish, Washington City,” by Rev. Ethan Allen.

19 “Rep. No. 24: Chaplains in Congress and in the Army and Navy,” March 27, 1854, Reports of Committees of the House of Representatives Made During the First Session of the Thirty-Third Congress (Washington: A. O. P. Nicholson, 1854), 6, 8.

20 “Rep. Com. No. 36: Report,” January 19, 1853, The Reports of Committees of the Senate of the United States for the Second Session of the Thirty-Second Congress, 1852-53 (Washington: Robert Armstrong, 1853), 3.

21 January 23, 1856, Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States: Being the First Session of the Thirty-Fourth Congress (Washington: Cornelius Wendell, 1855), 354.

22 March 2, 1863, Journal of the Senate of the United States of America Being the Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1863), 379.

23 March 2, 1863, Journal of the Senate…Third Session of the Thirty-Seventh Congress (1863), 378-379.

24 Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation Appointing a National Fast Day (March 30, 1863), WallBuilders.

25 A May 2016 Bing search for this proclamation resulted in 400,000+ hits.

26 “Story, Joseph,” Dictionary of American Biography, ed. Dumas Malone (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1936), 18:106.

27 Joseph Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story, ed. William W. Story (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), II:8, 92.

28 Joseph Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (Boston: Hillard, Gray, and Company, 1833), III:724.

29 B. F. Morris, Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States (Philadelphia: George W. Childs, 1864), 639.

30 Brewer, A Christian Nation (1905), 12.

31 Brewer, A Christian Nation (1905), 11.

32 Brewer, A Christian Nation (1905).

33 Brewer, A Christian Nation (1905), 40, 46.

34 “Breakfast in Washington,” Time, February 15, 1954.

35 Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, 43 U. S. 126, 198 (1844).

36 U.S. v. Macintosh, 283 U.S. 605, 625 (1931).

37 Church of the Holy Trinity v. U. S., 143 U. S. 457, 465, 470-471 (1892).

38 See for example, Warren v. U.S., 177 F.2d 596 (10th Cir. 1949); U.S. v. Girouard, 149 F.2d 760 (1st Cir.1945); Steiner v. Darby, Parker v. Los Angeles County, 199 P.2d 429 (Cal. App. 2d Dist 1948); Vogel v. County of Los Angeles, 434 P.2d 961 (1967).

39 Harry S. Truman, “Exchange of Messages with Pope Pius XII,” American Presidency Project, August 6, 1947.

40 Jeff Jacoby, “The freedom not to say ‘amen’,” Jewish World Review, February 1, 2001.

41 Aaron Zelman, “An open letter to my Christian friends,” Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership.

42 Dennis Prager, “America founded to be free, not secular,” Townhall.com, January 3, 2007.

43 Dennis Prager, “Books, Arts & Manners: God & His Enemies – Review,” BNet, March 22, 1999.

44 Don Feder, A Jewish Conservative Looks at Pagan America (Lafayette: Huntington House Publishers, 1993), 59-60.

45 Don Feder, “Yes – Once and For All – American is a Christian Nation,” DonFeder.com, February 16, 2005.

46 Don Feder, “The Jewish Case for Merry Christmas,” Front Page Magazine, December 7, 2006.

47 Michael Medved, “The Founders Intended a Christian, not Secular, Society,” Townhall.com, October 3, 2007.

48 Burt Prelutsky, “The Jewish grinch who stole Christmas,” Townhall.com, December 11, 2006.

49 Daniel Lapin, America’s Real War (Oregon: Multnomah Publishers, 1999), p. 116.

50 Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “A Rabbi’s Call to American Christians – Wake Up! You’re Under Attack,” End Time Prophetic Division, January 19, 2007.

51 Rabbi Daniel Lapin, “Which Jews does the ADL really represent?” WorldNetDaily, August 25, 2006.

52 Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U. S. 38, 106-107 (1984), Rehnquist, J. (dissenting).

The Founders As Christians

Note: this is a representative list only, there are many other quotes that could be listed.

Samuel Adams
Father of the American Revolution, Signer of the Declaration of Independence

I . . . recommend my Soul to that Almighty Being who gave it, and my body I commit to the dust, relying upon the merits of Jesus Christ for a pardon of all my sins.

(Will of Samuel Adams)

Charles Carroll
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation and on His merits; not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.

(From an autographed letter in our possession written by Charles Carroll to Charles W. Wharton, Esq., on September 27, 1825.)

William Cushing
First Associate Justice Appointed by George Washington to the Supreme Court

Sensible of my mortality, but being of sound mind, after recommending my soul to Almighty God through the merits of my Redeemer and my body to the earth.

(Will of William Cushing)

John Dickinson
Signer of the Constitution

Rendering thanks to my Creator for my existence and station among His works, for my birth in a country enlightened by the Gospel and enjoying freedom, and for all His other kindnesses, to Him I resign myself, humbly confiding in His goodness and in His mercy through Jesus Christ for the events of eternity.

(Will of John Dickinson)

John Hancock
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

I John Hancock, . . . being advanced in years and being of perfect mind and memory-thanks be given to God-therefore calling to mind the mortality of my body and knowing it is appointed for all men once to die [Hebrews 9:27], do make and ordain this my last will and testament…Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it: and my body I recommend to the earth . . . nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God.

(Will of John Hancock)

Patrick Henry
Governor of Virginia, Patriot

This is all the inheritance I can give to my dear family. The religion of Christ can give them one which will make them rich indeed.

(Will of Patrick Henry)

John Jay
First Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court

Unto Him who is the author and giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for His manifold and unmerited blessings, and especially for our redemption and salvation by His beloved son. He has been pleased to bless me with excellent parents, with a virtuous wife, and with worthy children. His protection has companied me through many eventful years, faithfully employed in the service of my country; His providence has not only conducted me to this tranquil situation but also given me abundant reason to be contented and thankful. Blessed be His holy name!

(Will of John Jay)

Daniel St. Thomas Jenifer
Signer of the Constitution

In the name of God, Amen. I, Daniel of Saint Thomas Jenifer . . . of dispossing mind and memory, commend my soul to my blessed Redeemer. . .

(Will of Daniel St. Thomas Jenifer)

Henry Knox
Revolutionary War General, Secretary of War

First, I think it proper to express my unshaken opinion of the immortality of my soul or mind; and to dedicate and devote the same to the supreme head of the Universe – to that great and tremendous Jehovah, – Who created the universal frame of nature, worlds, and systems in number infinite . . . To this awfully sublime Being do I resign my spirit with unlimited confidence of His mercy and protection.

(Will of Henry Knox)

John Langdon
Signer of the Constitution

In the name of God, Amen. I, John Langdon, . . . considering the uncertainty of life and that it is appointed unto all men once to die [Hebrews 9:27], do make, ordain and publish this my last will and testament in manner following, that is to say-First: I commend my soul to the infinite mercies of God in Christ Jesus, the beloved Son of the Father, who died and rose again that He might be the Lord of the dead and of the living . . . professing to believe and hope in the joyful Scripture doctrine of a resurrection to eternal life.

(Will of John Langdon)

John Morton
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

With an awful reverence to the great Almighty God, Creator of all mankind, I, John Morton . . . being sick and weak in body but of sound mind and memory-thanks be given to Almighty God for the same, for all His mercies and favors-and considering the certainty of death and the uncertainty of the times thereof, do, for the settling of such temporal estate as it hath pleased God to bless me with in this life . . .

(Will of John Morton)

Robert Treat Paine
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

I desire to bless and praise the name of God most high for appointing me my birth in a land of Gospel Light where the glorious tidings of a Savior and of pardon and salvation through Him have been continually sounding in mine ears.

(Robert Treat Paine, The Papers of Robert Treat Paine, eds. Stephen Riley & Edward Hanson (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1992), I:48.)

[W]hen I consider that this instrument contemplates my departure from this life and all earthly enjoyments and my entrance on another state of existence, I am constrained to express my adoration of the Supreme Being, the Author of my existence, in full belief of his providential goodness and his forgiving mercy revealed to the world through Jesus Christ, through whom I hope for never ending happiness in a future state, acknowledging with grateful remembrance the happiness I have enjoyed in my passage through a long life.

(Will of Robert Treat Paine)

Charles Cotesworth Pinckney
Signer of the Constitution

To the eternal, immutable, and only true God be all honor and glory, now and forever, Amen!

(Will of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney)

Rufus Putnam

Revolutionary War General, First Surveyor General of the United States

[F]irst, I give my soul to a holy, sovereign God Who gave it in humble hope of a blessed immortality through the atonement and righteousness of Jesus Christ and the sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit. My body I commit to the earth to be buried in a decent Christian manner. I fully believe that this body shall, by the mighty power of God, be raised to life at the last day; ‘for this corruptable (sic) must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality.’ [I Corinthians 15:53]

(Will of Rufus Putnam)

Benjamin Rush
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

My only hope of salvation is in the infinite, transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly!

(Benjamin Rush, The Autobiography of Benjamin Rush, ed. George Corner (Princeton: Princeton University Press for the American Philosophical Society, 1948), 166.)

Roger Sherman
Signer of the Declaration of Independence, Signer of the Constitution

I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . . that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a revelation from God. . . . that God did send His own Son to become man, die in the room and stead of sinners, and thus to lay a foundation for the offer of pardon and salvation to all mankind so as all may be saved who are willing to accept the Gospel offer.

(Lewis Henry Boutell, The Life of Roger Sherman (Chicago: A. C. McClurg and Company, 1896), 272-273.)

Richard Stockton
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

I think it proper here not only to subscribe to the entire belief of the great and leading doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the Being of God, the universal defection and depravity of human nature, the divinity of the person and the completeness of the redemption purchased by the blessed Savior, the necessity of the operations of the Divine Spirit, of Divine Faith, accompanied with an habitual virtuous life, and the universality of the divine Providence, but also . . . that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom; that the way of life held up in the Christian system is calculated for the most complete happiness that can be enjoyed in this mortal state; that all occasions of vice and immorality is injurious either immediately or consequentially, even in this life; that as Almighty God hath not been pleased in the Holy Scriptures to prescribe any precise mode in which He is to be publicly worshiped, all contention about it generally arises from want of knowledge or want of virtue.

(Will of Richard Stockton)

Jonathan Trumbull Sr.
Governor of Connecticut, Patriot

Principally and first of all, I bequeath my soul to God the Creator and Giver thereof, and body to the Earth . . . nothing doubting but that I shall receive the same again at the General Resurrection thro the power of Almighty God; believing and hoping for eternal life thro the merits of my dear, exalted Redeemer Jesus Christ.

(Will of Jonathan Trumbull)

John Witherspoon
Signer of the Declaration of Independence

I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for there is no salvation in any other [Acts 4:12]. . . . [I]f you are not reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, if you are not clothed with the spotless robe of His righteousness, you must forever perish.

(John Witherspoon, “The Absolute Necessity of Salvation Through Christ,” January 2, 1758, The Works of John Witherspoon (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1815), V:276, 278.)

Benjamin Franklin’s letter to Thomas Paine

Benjamin Franklin (1706-90) was a printer, author, inventor, scientist, philanthropist, statesman, diplomat, and public official. He was the first president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery (1774); a member of the Continental Congress (1775-76) where he signed the Declaration of Independence (1776); a negotiator and signer of the final treaty of peace with Great Britain (1783); and a delegate to the Constitutional Convention where he signed the federal Constitution (1787); Franklin was one of only six men who signed both the Declaration and the Constitution. He wrote his own epitaph, which declared: “The body of Benjamin Franklin, printer, like the cover of an old book, its contents torn out, stripped of its lettering, and guilding, lies here, food for worms. But the work shall not be lost; for it will, as he believed, appear once more in a new and more elegant edition, revised and corrected by the Author.”

Benjamin Franklin was frequently consulted by Thomas Paine for advice and suggestions regarding his political writings, and Franklin assisted Paine with some of his famous essays. This letter1 is Franklin’s response to a manuscript Paine sent him that advocated against the concept of a providential God.

TO THOMAS PAINE.
[Date uncertain.]

DEAR SIR,

I have read your manuscript with some attention. By the argument it contains against a particular Providence, though you allow a general Providence, you strike at the foundations of all religion. For without the belief of a Providence, that takes cognizance of, guards, and guides, and may favor particular persons, there is no motive to worship a Deity, to fear his displeasure, or to pray for his protection. I will not enter into any discussion of your principles, though you seem to desire it. At present I shall only give you my opinion, that, though your reasonings are subtile and may prevail with some readers, you will not succeed so as to change the general sentiments of mankind on that subject, and the consequence of printing this piece will be, a great deal of odium drawn upon yourself, mischief to you, and no benefit to others. He that spits against the wind, spits in his own face.

But, were you to succeed, do you imagine any good would be done by it? You yourself may find it easy to live a virtuous life, without the assistance afforded by religion; you having a clear perception of the advantages of virtue, and the disadvantages of vice, and possessing a strength of resolution sufficient to enable you to resist common temptations. But think how great a portion of mankind consists of weak and ignorant men and women, and of inexperienced, inconsiderate youth of both sexes, who have need of the motives of religion to restrain them from vice, to support their virtue, and retain them in the practice of it till it becomes habitual, which is the great point for its security. And perhaps you are indebted to her originally, that is, to your religious education, for the habits of virtue upon which you now justly value yourself. You might easily display your excellent talents of reasoning upon a less hazardous subject, and thereby obtain a rank with our most distinguished authors. For among us it is not necessary, as among the Hottentots, that a youth, to be raised into the company of men, should prove his manhood by beating his mother.

I would advise you, therefore, not to attempt unchaining the tiger, but to burn this piece before it is seen by any other person; whereby you will save yourself a great deal of mortification by the enemies it may raise against you, and perhaps a good deal of regret and repentance. If men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it. I intend this letter itself as a proof of my friendship, and therefore add no professions to it; but subscribe simply yours,

B. Franklin

Paine later published his Age of Reason, which infuriated many of the Founding Fathers. John Adams wrote, “The Christian religion is, above all the religions that ever prevailed or existed in ancient or modern times, the religion of wisdom, virtue, equity and humanity, let the Blackguard [scoundrel, rogue] Paine say what he will.”2

Samuel Adams wrote Paine a stiff rebuke, telling him, “[W]hen I heard you had turned your mind to a defence of infidelity, I felt myself much astonished and more grieved that you had attempted a measure so injurious to the feelings and so repugnant to the true interest of so great a part of the citizens of the United States.”3

Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration, wrote to his friend and signer of the Constitution John Dickinson that Paine’s Age of Reason was “absurd and impious”;4 Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration, described Paine’s work as “blasphemous writings against the Christian religion”;5 John Witherspoon said that Paine was “ignorant of human nature as well as an enemy to the Christian faith”;6 and Elias Boudinot, President of Congress, even published the Age of Revelation—a full-length rebuttal to Paine’s work.7 Patrick Henry, too, wrote a refutation of Paine’s work which he described as “the puny efforts of Paine.”8

When William Paterson, signer of the Constitution and a Justice on the U. S. Supreme Court, learned that some Americans seemed to agree with Paine’s work, he thundered, “Infatuated Americans, why renounce your country, your religion, and your God?”9 Zephaniah Swift, author of America’s first law book, noted, “He has the impudence and effrontery [shameless boldness] to address to the citizens of the United States of America a paltry performance which is intended to shake their faith in the religion of their fathers.”10 John Jay, an author of the Federalist Papers and the original Chief-Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, was comforted by the fact that Christianity would prevail despite Paine’s attack, “I have long been of the opinion that the evidence of the truth of Christianity requires only to be carefully examined to produce conviction in candid minds.”11 In fact, Paine’s views caused such vehement public opposition that he spent his last years in New York as “an outcast” in “social ostracism” and was buried in a farm field because no American cemetery would accept his remains.12

Endnotes

1 Benjamin Franklin to [Thomas Paine], undated, The Private Correspondence of Benjamin Franklin, ed. William Temple Franklin (London: Henry Colburn, 1818), I:274-275.

2 John Adams diary entry for July 26, 1796, The Works of John Adams, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Charles Little and James Brown, 1841), III:421.

3 Samuel Adams to Thomas Paine, November 30, 1802, William V. Wells, The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1865), III:372-373.

4 Benjamin Rush to John Dickinson, February 16, 1796, Letters of Benjamin Rush, ed. L. H. Butterfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), II:770.

5 Joseph Gurn, Charles Carroll of Carrollton (New York: P. J. Kennedy & Sons, 1932), 203.

6 John Witherspoon, “The Dominion of Providence over the Passions of Men,” May 17, 1776, The Works of the Reverend John Witherspoon (Philadelphia: William W. Woodward, 1802), III:24,n. 2.

7 Elias Boudinot to his daughter, The Age of Revelation (Philadelphia: Asbury Dickins, 1801), xii-xiv.

8 Patrick Henry to his daughter Betsy, August 20, 1796, S. G. Arnold, The Life of Patrick Henry of Virginia (Auburn and Buffalo: Miller, Orton and Mulligan, 1854), 250; George Morgan, Patrick Henry (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1929), 366 n; Bishop William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1857), II:12.

9 John E. O’Conner, William Paterson: Lawyer and Statesman (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1979), 244, from a Fourth of July Oration in 1798.

10 Zephaniah Swift, A System of Laws of the State of Connecticut (Windham: John Byrne, 1796), II:323-324.

11 John Jay to Rev. Uzal Ogden, February 14, 1796, William Jay, The Life of John Jay (New York: J. & J. Harper, 1833), II:266.

12 “Paine, Thoams,” Dictionary of American Biography.

John Witherspoon

Should Christians – Or Ministers – Run For Office?

Today’s critics assert that Christians should not be involved with politics or government, and especially that ministers should not be involved. Such opposition is not new. In fact, two centuries ago, Founding Father John Witherspoon delivered a sagacious rebuttal to these same objections.

John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was a distinguished Founding Father – the president of Princeton University, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and a ratifier of the U.S. Constitution. He served on over 100 committees in Congress and was head of the Board of War (essentially, he was the congressional “boss” for Commander-in-Chief George Washington). But John Witherspoon was also a minister of the Gospel, he was the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon! In fact, Dr. Witherspoon was the Billy Graham of his day, one of the most famous American ministers of that era, with volumes of published Gospel sermons.

A provision in the 1777 Georgia constitution reflected the belief that ministers should not be involved in politics. Supporters of this provision asserted the ministry of the Gospel was so important that ministers should not be distracted from their duty. (For example, the 1777 New York Constitution explained, “Whereas ministers of the Gospel are, by their profession, dedicated to the service of God and the care of souls and ought not to be diverted from the great duties of their function; therefore, no minister of the gospel . . . shall be eligible to . . . any civil office within this State.”) Following this same logic, the Georgia constitution declared, “No clergyman of any denomination shall be allowed a seat in the legislature.”

When Dr. Witherspoon learned of this prohibition, he penned the following tongue-in-cheek piece exposing the absurdity of that position. Interestingly, when Georgia wrote its third Constitution in 1798, a strong declaration of the rights of religious persons was inserted – a vast change from its first Constitution.

Following is Dr. Witherspoon’s writing on why ministers should be able to serve in State legislatures:

Sir,

In your paper of Saturday last, you have given us the new Constitution of Georgia, in which I find the following resolution, “No clergyman of any denomination shall be a member of the General Assembly.” I would be very well satisfied that some of the gentlemen who have made that an essential article of this constitution, or who have inserted and approve it in other constitutions, would be pleased to explain a little the principles, as well as to ascertain the meaning of it.

Perhaps we understand pretty generally, what is meant by a clergyman, viz. a person regularly called and set apart to the ministry of the gospel, and authorized to preach and administer the sacraments of the Christian religion. Now suffer me to ask this question: Before any man among us was ordained a minister, was he not a citizen of the United States, and if being in Georgia, a citizen of the state of Georgia? Had he not then a right to be elected a member of the assembly, if qualified in point of property? How then has he lost, or why is he deprived of this right? Is it by offence or disqualification? Is it a sin against the public to become a minister? Does it merit that the person, who is guilty of it should be immediately deprived of one of his most important rights as a citizen? Is not this inflicting a penalty which always supposes an offence? Is a minister then disqualified for the office of a senator or representative? Does this calling and profession render him stupid or ignorant? I am inclined to form a very high opinion of the natural understanding of the freemen and freeholders of the state of Georgia, as well as of their improvement and culture by education, and yet I am not able to conceive, but that some of those equally qualified, may enter into the clerical order: and then it must not be unfitness, but some other reason that produces the exclusion. Perhaps it may be thought that they are excluded from civil authority, that they may be more fully and constantly employed in their spiritual functions. If this had been the ground of it, how much more properly would it have appeared, as an order of an ecclesiastical body with respect to their own members. In that case I should not only have forgiven but approved and justified it; but in the way in which it now stands, it is evidently a punishment by loss of privilege, inflicted on those, who go into the office of the ministry; for which, perhaps, the gentlemen of Georgia may have good reasons, though I have not been able to discover them.

But besides the uncertainty of the principle on which this resolution is founded, there seems to me much uncertainty as to the meaning of it. How are we to determine who is or is not a clergyman? Is he only a clergyman who has received ordination from those who have derived the right by an uninterrupted succession from the apostles? Or is he also a clergyman, who is set apart by the imposition of hands of a body of other clergymen, by joint authority? Or is he also a clergyman who is set a part by the church members of his own society, without any imposition of hands at all? Or is he also a clergyman who has exhorted in a Methodist society, or spoken in a Quaker meeting, or any other religious assembly met for public worship? There are still greater difficulties behind: Is the clerical character indelible? There are some who have been ordained who occasionally perform some clerical functions, but have no pastoral charge at all. There are some who finding public speaking injurious to health, or from other reasons easily conceived, have resigned their pastoral charge, and wholly discontinued all acts and exercises of that kind; and there are some, particularly in New England, who having exercised the clerical office some time, and finding it less suitable to their talents than they apprehended, have voluntarily relinquished it, and taken to some other profession, as law, physic, or merchandize[sic]–Do these all continue clergymen, or do they cease to be clergymen, and by that cessation return to, or recover the honorable privileges of laymen?

I cannot help thinking that these difficulties are very considerable, and may occasion much litigation, if the article of the constitution stands in the loose, ambiguous form in which it now appears; and therefore I would recommend the following alterations, which I think will make every thing definite and unexceptionable.

“No clergyman, of any denomination, shall be capable of being elected a member of the Senate or House of Representatives, because {here insert the grounds of offensive disqualification, which I have not been able to discover} Provided always, and it is the true intent and meaning of this part of the constitution, that if at any time he shall be completely deprived of the clerical character by those by whom he was invested with it, as by deposition for cursing and swearing, drunkenness or uncleanness, he shall then be fully restored to all the privileges of a free citizen; his offence shall no more be remembered against him; but he may be chosen either to the Senate or House of Representatives, and shall be treated with all the respect due to his brethren, the other members of Assembly.”

(Source: John Witherspoon, The Works of John Witherspoon, (Edinburgh: J. Ogle, Parliament-Square, 1815), Vol. IX, pp 220-223.)