-Caveat Lector-
> From: William Shannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> John Adams (1735-1826)
> 2nd President of the United States
> " As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense
> founded on the Christian religion ...."
> George Washington (1732-1799)
> 1st Elected President of the United States
> "The United States is in no manner founded on Christian principle."
Here's what they said when they weren't drinking.....
John Adams, Second President:
(Speaking of July 4, 1776) - "I am apt to believe that it will be
celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary
Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the day of
deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty." 101
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with
human passions unbridled by morality and religion...Our Constitution
was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the
government of any other." 113
Patrick Henry, Founding Father:
"It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great
nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians, not on religions
but on the gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths
have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here." 102
"[The Bible] is a book worth more than all the other books that were
ever printed." 117
John Jay, First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court:
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." 105
Alex de Tocqueville, French historian who visited the U.S. in the early
1800's:
"Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the
country was the first thing that struck my attention...The
Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so
intimately in their minds,that it is impossible to make them
conceive the one without the other...Religion in America...must
be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country,,,
>From the earliest settlement of the emigrants, politics and religion
contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved." 106
John Quincy Adams, Sixth President (son of John Adams, Second
President):
"[T]he birthday of the nation is indissolubly linked with the birth-day
of the Saviour [and] forms a leading even in the progress of the gospel
dispensation..[T]he Declaration of Independence first organized the
social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer's mission upon
earth [and] laid the corner stone of human government upon the first
precepts of Christianity." 107
Noah Webster, Founding Father:
"[T]he religion which has introduced civil liberty, is the religion of
Christ and his apostles, which enjoins humility, piety and benevolence;
which acknowledges in every person a brother, or a sister, and a citizen
with equal rights. This is genuine Christianity, and to this we owe our
free constitutions of government." 108
"The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to
form the basis of all our civil constitutions and law... All the miseries and
evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice,
oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the
precepts contained in the Bible." 109
Dr. Jedediah Morse, The Father of American Geography;
"To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil
freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys. 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... All efforts to destroy the
foundations of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our
political freedom and happiness. Whenever the pillars of Christianity
shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the
blessings which flow from them, must fall with them." 110
William Holmes McGuffey, Publisher of the McGuffey Readers a vital
cornerstone of this nation's early education system:
"From no source has the author drawn more copiously than from the Sacred
Scriptures. For this [I] certainly apprehend no censure. In a Christian
country, that man is to be pitied, who, at this day, can honestly object
to imbuing the minds of youth with the language and spirit of the Word of
God." 111
Thomas Jefferson, Third President:
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have
removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that
these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but
with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is
just: that his justice cannot sleep forever." 112
George Washington, First President:
"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."
114
Abraham Lincoln, Sixteenth President:
"But for [the Bible] we could not know right from wrong. All things most
desirable for man's welfare...are to be found portrayed in it." 115
Harry S. Truman, Thirty-Third President (not a "founding father," but
still interesting):
"The basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from
Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we
emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have a proper fundamental
moral background, we will finally end up with a...government which
does not believe in rights for anybody except the State!"116
Our founding fathers did not consider that a requirement of belief in
God as a religious test. What they considered a religious test would be what we
today would consider a statement of denomination. Hard to believe? Well
how else can you interpret the following:
Excerpt from the Tennessee constitution of 1796:
"Article VIII, Section II. No person who denies the being of God, or a
future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the
civil department of this State.
Article IX, Section IV. That no religious test shall ever be required as
a qualification to any office or public trust under this state." 103
Oath required for office in State of Delaware (1776):
"I, ____________, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus
Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Spirit, one God, blessed for
evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old
and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration." 104
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes: The above quotations were excerpted from "The Myth of Separation"
by David Barton, published by Wallbuilder Press. The following citations
are from the same.
101. John and Abigail Adams, Letters of John Adams, Addressed To His
Wife,
Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown,
1841), Vol. I, p. 128, July 3, 1776.
102. Steve C. Dawson, God's Providence in America's History (Rancho
Cordova,
CA: Steve C. Dawson, 1988), p.9:6.
103. The Constitutions of the United States of America with the Latest
Amendments (Trenton: Moore & Lake, 1813), pp. 342, 344.
104. Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S.; 143 U.S. 457, 469-470 (1892).
105. John Jay, The Correspondence and Papers of John Jay, Henry P.
Johnston,
ed. (New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1890), Vol. IV, p. 393, Oct. 12,
1816.
106. Alexis de Tocqueville, The Republic of the United States of America
and
Its Political Institutions, Reviewed and Examined, Henry Reeves, trans.
(Garden City, NY: A.S. Barnes & Co., 1851), Vol. I, p. 335.
107. John Quincy Adams, An Oration Delivered Before the Inhabitants of
the
Town of Newburyport at their Request on the Sixty-First Anniversary of
the
Declaration of Independence (Newburyport: Charles Whipple, 1837), pp.
5-6.
108. Noah Webster, History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie &
Peck,
1832), p. 300, ¶ 578.
109. Id. at p. 339, ¶ 53.
110. Jedediah Morse's Election Sermon given at Charleston, Mass. on
April
25, 1799, taken from an original in the Evans collection compiled by the
American Antiquarian Society.
111. William H. McGuffey, McGuffey's Eclectic Fourth Reader (Cincinnati:
Winthrop B. Smith & Co., 1853), p. 3, preface.
112. Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (Philadelphia:
Matthew
Carey, 1794), Query XVIII, p. 237.
113. John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United
States, Charles Francis Adams, ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1854), Vol.
IX,
p. 401, June 21, 1776.
114. Henry Halley, Halley's Bible Handbook (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan,
1927, 1965), p. 18.
115. Abraham Lincoln, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P.
Basler,
ed. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers Union Press, 1853), p. 542, September 7,
1864.
116. Steve C. Dawson, God's Providence in America's History (Rancho
Cordova,
CA: Steve C. Dawson, 1988), p.13:1.
117.
William Wirt, The Life and Character of Patrick Henry (Philadelphia:
James
Webster, 1818), p. 402
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