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This year, America is 250 years old. I encourage anyone who reads this to do this simple thing. Open up Google and type in the following question in the search engine: “What is the average lifespan of a country’s constitution?” What you will find in this search should floor you. And because I need the answer to this question to get to my point, spoiler alert, I will tell you the answer you’ll find. The average lifespan of a country’s constitution is around 17-19 years! Give that just a minute to sink in. America is celebrating 250 years of our existence (our Constitution was actually written and ratified after 1776), and the average lifespan of a country’s constitution is less than 20! How in the world can this be? The globe we call Earth is inhabited by human beings who all make mistakes and fail on a regular basis. Change is more the norm than it is an anomaly, and yet America’s age stands out by more than 10-fold from historical averages (and running by the way). This surely can’t be just a coincidence or by accident, can it? There must be something more to this.
I am going to put forth an argument. Can it be that America is founded on Christian Principles with a Christian Foundation and that God, who is alive and well, has had his hand on us up to this point? Yes, that is surely my argument, and now it is time to back it up. I will do just that, no problem. The evidence is overwhelming!
Let’s start with the quick argument that will be hurled at me from those who can’t fathom that our nation has a foundation grounded on God: “The United States Constitution has no mention of the word ‘God’ in it at all! Look it up, it’s not there!”
Yep, it’s not there, I agree. Sometimes this gets played like it’s some be-all, end-all trump card…the ultimate “gotcha” moment! And to the less educated, one might feel checkmated. After all, wouldn’t common sense tell us that if God were the foundation, then the governing letter of the land would surely have the word “God” in it?
Um…not so fast.
I encourage anyone to actually read the U.S. Constitution. It only took me a few minutes in to understand why the word “God” is not in the U.S. Constitution. Sadly, reading of the Constitution is quite boring, at least the 7 Articles that make up the beginning of it. The U.S. Constitution consists of 7 Articles and 27 Amendments. The reason it is quite boring to read is that the 7 articles lay out the technical details of how the country will run itself. In a simpler explanation, it’s like the game rules you would find inside a board game box. Without them, you wouldn’t know how to play the game or even set it up to play it. What the rules in a board game does not tell you or will never tell you is how you will “morally” play the game, or better yet, the way in which you will go about playing the game. The moral expectations are never laid out. Another analogy that comes to mind is an owner’s manual for a piece of equipment. It gives you the technical instructions on how the equipment will function properly, but it doesn’t give you details on how you will actually use the equipment. In other words, it doesn’t demand the nature in which you should use the equipment. As I am reading through the 7 articles of the Constitution, it becomes quite clear, and quite frankly common sense, that I wouldn’t expect the word “God” to show up in the technical instruction of setting up the technicalities of how the country will actually run itself. It’s a game rule playbook or owner’s manual to set up the government. HOWEVER, one tidbit of information that is small in detail, but very telling when we intellectually consider it is this: After the 7 articles are laid out, the Constitution finishes this way:
“Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our names,”
So…what “Lord” do you think they are speaking about when they were time-stamping this government-establishing Constitution document? Keep reading, because with any honest, logical, intelligent coherence applied, there really is no doubt!
Now we get to the 27 Amendments, and something quite obvious should hit you clearly as it surely did for me. Why do we have Amendments in the first place? Hopefully, the obvious answer is you see the 7 articles of the Constitution and realize that the technical rules/laws of the land to start and run a country aren’t quite enough and need to be expounded on to get more into the everyday details of its citizens and what their rights are. And when you start creating amendments you start with the obvious ones first and then work your way toward others as they come up, correct? Yes, I believe this makes perfect sense. The U.S. Constitution was written in 1787 and ratified in 1788, and officially went into effect in 1789, while the first 10 Amendments were ratified in 1791. The next Amendments, 11-27, were ratified anywhere from 1795 until all the way to as recently as 1992. Why is any of this important? Well, the very first Amendment tackles the moral lay of the land, and, with critical thought, a light bulb should go off in our heads.
The First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting the 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.
Even when the First Amendment lays out 4 basic rights, the VERY FIRST one of the four is on religious freedom! Now, please understand what this truly means. This is Freedom “OF” Religion, not Freedom “FROM” Religion. Sorry to my atheist friends, but this amendment does not help you. Don’t stop at the words “no law respecting the establishment of religion”…no no no….keep going and also read the next part…” or PROHIBITING THE FREE EXERCISE THEREOF”. So, the very first amendment our Founding Fathers tackled to get into the details of everyday life for the citizens of the United States was to establish their religious freedom! Why, because this is how our country was founded (Don’t worry, I have quite a bit of ammunition on this as we get into it actually being a Christian foundation). And here are a few important things to truly understand: The reason for “religious freedom” and instead not saying, we are establishing a Christian nation, is quite simple:
1.) As Christians, we don’t believe in forcing Christianity on anyone! God’s love for human beings is a free gift, and we have free will to accept or reject it. So, even though our country was founded on Christian principles, no true Christian would want this forced on another human being. God cannot be fooled or mocked. He wants a relationship with YOU, but God will not force your “love” for Him, nor will He force a relationship with you. So sadly, the very nature of our belief in the One True God and what love actually means allows for the ungodly to use this to their advantage and say, “Look here… there is no establishment of Christianity,” to which I would say, “Of course there isn’t! Christianity doesn’t work that way!”
2.) The founding of our nation was built on those wanting to have the freedom to worship however they wanted. They didn’t want any rules placed on them on how they worshipped their Creator. Where they came from, they had rules regarding this that they simply did not agree with. So much so that they went to a new land, which there was no guarantee that you’d even survive, let alone thrive, to have this freedom. This is written all over our history books, and I will walk through this, as you cannot get away from it when you grab our early history books or do some other simple research.
3.) Keep in mind, during this time (we’re talking pre-1800s here!), there would have been no reason to break down certain religions, as there was not a plethora of religions that came to the American soil at that time that needed to be addressed. You will not see any establishment of Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Scientology, or any of the new age religions, etc., from any of the early settlers or founding fathers. In fact, you won’t see any other religion not associated with Christianity discussed. Instead, the religion that was talked about was the Christian God from different ways of thinking in the way they wanted the freedom “to” worship God (not freedom “from” worshipping God). This came from the Pilgrims, Puritans, Protestants, Catholics, Quakers, etc. The history books show this quite clearly.
So, let’s recap really quick…the “In the year of our Lord” they are referring to as they finalize the Constitution is the Christian God of the Bible. No other explanation comes remotely close to a coherent argument. In fact, let’s do one last thing…do a quick Google search with the question: What does it mean when stated In The Year Of Our Lord? and see what pops up. Here is what you’ll find:
“In the year of our Lord” is the English translation of the Latin phrase Anno Domini (A.D.) meaning “in the year of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Enough of my rant on tackling the “no God” written in the U.S. Constitution and why that argument holds no credibility in proving anything about whether or not our country is a foundation of Christian principles. Instead, let’s get into some telling truths based on historical study. The only way to really get into what was happening at that time to really draw some intelligent conclusions on this subject, is to go back and see what was going on during the earliest times of the foundation of our nation. Let’s start with this, as this is an easy one. I googled the following in the Google engine: “The first schoolbook in the United States of America”. Here is what came up:
The New England Primer was the first reading primer designed for the American colonies. It became the most successful educational textbook published in 17th-century colonial United States and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790s.
Interesting! So, I headed over to the Library of Congress website to do some research and find The New England Primer, dated 1773. You can view the images of the pages of this book yourself by clicking on the link below:
https://www.loc.gov/resource/rbc0001.2015juv23945/?st=gallery
Now, for a country not founded as a Christian nation based on Christian principles, this would make this book extremely odd. The school textbook that “became the most successful educational textbook published in 17th-century colonial United States, and it became the foundation of most schooling before the 1790s”, has everything to do with God and the Bible in it. God and His Word are at the center stage of this book in every aspect and at every turn of the page! Someone would need to explain why a country that was more interested in freedom “FROM” religion would have the major book taught in their schools referencing God and the Bible in its teaching all over it…good luck trying to make that argument with any resemblance of coherence! Oh, and by the way, this book was being taught AFTER the founding of America in 1776, when we claimed our independence!
Let’s keep going, and we’ll go even earlier in the history that led up to our Nation’s founding. I have two history books from the late 1800s in my hands. In this blog, I will just tackle a few pages of one of them, or this won’t be a blog anymore. Instead, I would need to look for a publisher for a book deal, and, well, I am not sought-after as an author.
So, these will come from the book The Leading Facts of American History by D.H. Montgomery, copyright 1890-1920. If you look up D.H. Montgomery, he was an American author of history textbooks, and this book was widely used in schools during this time. I started reading and yellow-highlighting the references to God and how important religion was during this time, and to the foundations that were put in place. I stopped highlighting as it was all over the place. Here are some snippets:
Page 85 writing about the Connecticut Constitution, 1639, in which the three towns of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor drew up the first written American constitution, states the following: “One remarkable fact about the compact is that it made no mention either of the King of England or of the English Company which held a royal grant of the Connecticut lands. It was in reality the constitution of a republic, and the men who framed it refused to bow to any authority outside or above themselves, except that of their Maker.” Yes, the word Maker is capitalized in the book.
Page 86 in writing about the New Haven Colony and Scripture Laws, the book states: “One of its leading men was Rev. John Davenport, a Puritan minister. The spring after they formed the settlement (1639), all the colonies met in a large barn to listen to a sermon from Mr. Davenport and draw up rules for the government of the new community. What those rules were, we can guess from the old verse which tells us how “They in Newman’s barn laid down Scripture foundations for the town.” Those “Scripture foundations”, a few years later, made the severe Jewish laws of the Old Testament those of New Haven. None could vote or hold any public office but members of the church. It was practically the same kind of government as that of Massachusetts. (In the footnotes at the bottom of this page in the book, it states: “In 1644, “the judicial laws of God, as they were delivered by Moses,” were declared to be binding…They were, however, far more merciful than the laws of England…) Again, a major reason for coming to America was to get away from the King of England and their lack of religious liberty laws.
I could continue on in this book as many colonies and states tell a similar story of religious liberty, but I will touch on one more before I wrap this up. Page 90 of this book talks about the Toleration Act of Maryland, 1649. It states: “From the beginning, all the colonists took part in making the laws by which they were governed, and in a few years Lord Baltimore granted them the power of originating those laws. In religion, absolute freedom of worship was given to all Christians, but to Christians only. No other colony in this country then (1634) enjoyed such liberty, and it was unknown in England. In 1649, the famous Toleration Act confirmed their liberty. The result was that Maryland became a refuge not only for the oppressed Catholics of England, but also for many of the oppressed Protestants of the other colonies of America. Puritans were driven out of Virginia by the Church of England. Quakers exiled from Massachusetts by the Puritans, both came to Maryland and found homes there.” Continuing, here is what it says in the footnotes of this page: “The Maryland Toleration Act of 1649 declared that no person professing belief in Jesus Christ shall be “in any ways troubled, molested, or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion, nor in the free exercise thereof.” This law did not protect Jews or any others who denied the doctrine of the Trinity.”
I just took a look at how long this blog is going to be, and although I am just scratching the surface, I should wrap it up. But I’ll be back, as there is so much more.
To those who want to separate us from our Christian foundation, I am sorry that argument simply holds no weight whatsoever. The ammunition I have in my research is insurmountable. Anyone who wants to hang their hat on the fact that the word “God” is not found in our U.S. Constitution as the only determining factor for us being a Christian nation or not, you’re doing that while ignoring the mountain of evidence in our history books that not only proves this wrong, but absolutely obliterates the argument. This would be like me wading in a pool of water up to my shoulders, but claiming I am not in a pool of water because my head is dry. I know it’s not the best analogy here and might sound elementary, but it should at least hit home the absurdity of the argument that America was not founded on Christian principles when America was up to our shoulders in God at the beginning of our nation’s founding…if not totally immersed!
Next up…the Father of Our Country. Surely, he must have said something to make sure we stayed away from having a Christian Foundation, right?
Well, stay tuned and…
Have Character!
J. Noah Russell
