by David Barton
We are not forgetting that the public acts of our Pennsylvania ancestors abound with declarations in favor of liberty of conscience.60
However, the court pointed out that “liberty of conscience” had its limitations:
They [the Founders] could not admit this [liberty of conscience] as a civil justification of human sacrifices, or parricide [killing one’s parents or close kin], infanticide, or thuggism [religious murders], or of such modes of worship as the disgusting and corrupting rites of the Dionysia, and Aphrodisia, and Eleusinia, and other festivals of Greece and Rome.
They did not mean that the pure moral customs which Christianity has introduced should be without legal protection because some pagan, or other religionist, or anti-religionist, should advocate as matter of conscience concubinage, polygamy, incest, free love, and free divorce, or any of them.
They did not mean that phallic processions and satyric dances and obscene songs and indecent statues and paintings of ancient or of modern paganism might be introduced under the profession of religion, or pleasure, or conscience, to seduce the young and the ignorant into a Corinthian degradation; to offend the moral sentiment of a refined Christian people; and to compel Christian modesty to associate with the nudity and impurity of Polynesian or of Spartan women. No Christian people could possibly allow such things….
By our … laws against vice and immorality we do not mean to enforce religion; we admit that to be impossible. But we do mean to protect our customs, no matter that they may have originated in our religion; for they are essential parts of our social life. Instinctively we defend and protect them. It is mere social self-defence….
Law can never become entirely infidel; for it is essentially founded on the moral customs of men and the very generating principle of these is most frequently religion.61
United States v. Macintosh, 1931
United States Supreme Court
This case concerned a Canadian who applied for naturalization; although occurring 140 years after the ratification of the Constitution, the U. S. Supreme Court was still articulating the same message:
We are a Christian people … according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledging with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.62
Zorach v. Clauson, 1952 United States Supreme Court
Although this case was after the 1947 Everson case announcing “the wall between church and state,” the Court nevertheless continued to uphold the constitutionality of students receiving religious instruction during the school day. However, this case represented a major departure from historical precedent in that the Court ruled that the instruction must occur off campus. Even that decision, though radical at the time, was still light-years away from the Court’s current position. That ruling declared:
The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State…. Otherwise the State and religion would be aliens to each other – hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly….
We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being…. When the State encourages religious instruction or cooperates with religious authorities by adjusting the schedule of public events to sectarian needs, it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe…. [W]e find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion and to throw its weight against efforts to widen the effective scope of religious influence.63
The Court concluded that the argument for separation of church and state did not apply to student religious instruction during school hours …
… unless separation of Church and State means that public institutions can make no adjustments of their schedules to accommodate the religious needs of the people. We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion.64
As evident from the numerous cases excerpted above (and many others not presented in this chapter), contemporary courts have abundant legal precedents on which they may rely. The simple fact is that these precedents are ignored.
† Following the French Revolution (1789), France made a calendar change so that workers were allowed one day rest in ten rather than the traditional religiously based one in seven. (See, for example, Noah Webster, The Revolution in France Considered in Respect to Its Progress and Effects (New York: George Bunce, 1794), p. 20). Apparently, the result on the workers’ health and morale was so detrimental that the one day rest in seven was reinstituted.
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The Historical Evidence
When the Holy Trinity Court described America as a “Christian nation,” it did so because, as it explained:
This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…. [T]hese are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons: they are organic utterances; they speak the voice of the entire people…. 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.1
According to the Court, it was the “organic utterances” which proved that America was a “Christian nation.” “Organic utterances” are the bulk of historical documents and previous legal rulings that comprise what is called the “common law.” The previous chapter examined several legal precedents which formed part of the “common law”; this chapter will survey some of its historical components.
These historical precedents will be presented in the same chronological order noted by the Court: “from the discovery of the continent to the present hour.” The records from each period will sample the “volume” and “mass of organic utterances” which prompted the Court’s declaration that “this is a Christian nation.”
America’s Discovery
The Court’s allusion to the “discovery of this continent” immediately evokes an image of Christopher Columbus. Although Columbus clearly was not the first European to visit the “New World” (Vikings had traveled here centuries earlier), he first widely publicized, and thus “discovered” its existence to the Europeans.
Columbus undertook his first voyage facing the prospect of great danger. The professional opinion of that day not only assured him of the impossibility of his proposed endeavor, but it also warned him that dragons and death awaited him beyond the charted waters. With such advice coming from the intellectual leaders, his decision to embark on this answered that question in his own writings:
[O]ur Lord opened to my understanding (I could sense his hand upon me) so it became clear to me that it [the voyage] was feasible…. All those who heard about my enterprise rejected it with laughter, scoffing at me…. Who doubts that this illumination was from the Holy Spirit? I attest that He [the Spirit], with marvelous rays of light, consoled me through the holy and sacred Scriptures … they inflame me with a sense of great urgency…. No one should be afraid to take on any enterprise in the name of our Savior if it is right and if the purpose is purely for His holy service…. And I say that the sign which convinces me that our Lord is hastening the end of the world is the preaching of the Gospel recently in so many lands.2
America’s First Colonies
Other explorers soon followed Columbus to the new continent, with each making proprietary claims for his own king or monarch. Therefore, when subsequent groups of colonists wished to settle in the New World, they were required to beseech their particular sovereign for a land charter. If granted, the resulting charter would present the reasons set forth by that group for its proposed endeavor.
Hence, the motivations of the colonists who came to America can be documented from an examination of their
approved intentions. For example, the 1606 charter for a colony in Virginia declared the settlers’ desire:
[T]o make habitation … and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia … in propagating of Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness.3
In 1609, another charter for Virginia stated:
[T]he principal effect which we can desire or expect of this action is the conversion … of the people in those parts unto the true worship of God and Christian religion.4
In November of 1620, the Pilgrims arrived in America on the Mayflower. Having originally set out for an established settlement in Virginia, they were blown far north by strong winds and severe storms, finally landing in an uncolonized area. Before disembarking in that new area which had no established civil government, the Pilgrims drafted and signed the “Mayflower Compact” – the first government charter drafted solely in America. It declared:
Having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith … [we] combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for … furtherance of the ends aforesaid.5
William Bradford, one of their leaders, confirmed this purpose when he explained that the Pilgrims had come to the New World because …
… a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world.6
The Puritans, who began arriving in America nearly a decade after the Pilgrims, had come for a similar purpose. Their leader, John Winthrop, warned them of the consequences of forgetting their goal:
[W]e are a company professing ourselves fellow-members of Christ … knit together by this bond of love…. [W]e are entered into covenant with Him for this work…. [F]or we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world.7
Other charters documented the same goal for their respective groups. For example, the 1629 charter of Massachusetts declared:
[O]ur said people … be so religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed [that] their good life and orderly conversation may win and incite the natives of … [that] country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, and the Christian faith, which … is the principal end of this plantation [colony].8
The 1632 charter issued by King Charles II to Lord Baltimore set forth the goals for Maryland colony, noting that:
[O]ur well beloved and right trusty subject Cæcilius Calvert, Baron of Baltimore … being animated with a laudable and pious zeal for extending the Christian religion … hath humbly besought leave of us that he may transport … a numerous colony of the English nation to a certain region … having no knowledge of the Divine Being.9
When Lord Baltimore and his group finally arrived at the land designated by the charter, Father White, a member of the expedition, reported:
[W]e celebrated the mass…. This had never been done before in this part of the world. After we had completed the sacrifice [mass], we took upon our shoulders a great cross which we had hewn out of a tree and advancing in order to the appointed place…. we erected a trophy to Christ the Savior.10
In 1653, Quakers and other Christian groups began to settle North Carolina; their 1662 charter explained that they were:
[E]xcited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith … in the parts of America not yet cultivated or planted, and only inhabited by … people who have no knowledge of Almighty God.11
The 1663 charter for Rhode Island set forth the colonists’ intent:
[P]ursuing with peace and loyal minds, their sober, serious and religious intentions of Godly edifying themselves and one another in the holy Christian faith, … a most flourishing civil state may stand and best be maintained … with a full liberty in religious concernments.12
The 1680-1681 charter for Pennsylvania declared:
William Penn … out of a commendable desire to … [convert] the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the love of civil society and Christian religion, hath humbly besought leave of us to transport an ample colony unto a certain country … in the parts of America not yet cultivated and planted.13
The charter of Connecticut,14 and the early documents in New Hampshire,15 New Jersey,16 and other areas, were a virtual restatement of the Christian goals reflected above.
America’s First Governments
Originally, a charter provided adequate civil government for most colonies. However, as population increased, so did the need for more elaborate governments. It was this need which resulted in the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” – not only the first constitution written in the United States but also the direct antecedent of our current federal Constitution.17 The “Fundamental Orders” explained why that document had been created:
[W]ell knowing when a people are gathered together, the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people, there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God.18
That constitution next declared the colonists’ desire to:
[E]nter into combination and confederation together to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess … which, according to the truth of the said Gospel, is now practiced amongst us.19
Later that year (1639), when the colonists of Exeter, New Hampshire, established a government, that document similarly declared:
[C]onsidering with ourselves the holy will of God, and our own necessity that we should not live without wholesome laws and civil government among us, of which we are altogether destitute; do in the name of Christ and in the sight of God combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such government as shall be to our best discerning agreeable to the will of God.20
In 1643, the colonies of Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Plymouth, and New Haven joined together to form the New England Confederation – America’s first “united” government. These colonies banded together because, as that document explained, each had similar goals:
[W]e all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely to advance the kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.21
In 1669, John Locke assisted in the drafting of the Carolina constitution under which no man could be a citizen unless he acknowledged God, was a member of a church, and used no “reproachful, reviling, or abusive language” against any religion.22
When Quaker minister William Penn established the 1682 “Frame of Government of Pennsylvania,” he prefaced the document with a lengthy exegesis of the spiritual and Biblical nature of civil government, chronicling its general progress and referring to numerous Scripture references.23 (Penn’s introduction is recommended as excellent supplementary reading.)
These, and numerous similar documents, establish that Christianity was the prominent influence in the early growth and orderly development of civil government in the New World.
The Founding of Education in America
Many settlers to America had suffered persecution for their Christian beliefs at the hands of other “Christians” (many of the civil abuses of Europe inexcusably occurred under the banner of Christianity – the Inquisition, the Crusades, etc.). When Europe finally began to move away from such abuses, it did so because of the efforts of leaders like Martin Luther, John Wycliffe, John Huss, William Tyndale, and others. These individuals believed that it was the Biblical illiteracy of the people which had permitted so many civil abuses to occur; that is, since the common man was not permitted to read the Scriptures for himself, his knowledge of rights and wrongs was limited to what his civil leaders told him.
The American settlers, having been exposed to the Reformation teachings, believed that the
proper protection from civil abuses in America could be achieved by eliminating Biblical illiteracy. In this way, the citizens themselves (rather than just their leaders) could measure the acts of their civil government compared to the teachings of the Bible. Consequently, one of the first laws providing public education for all children (the “Old Deluder Satan Law,” passed in Massachusetts in 1642 and in Connecticut in 1647) was a calculated attempt to prevent the abuse of power which can be imposed on a Biblically-illiterate people. That public school law explained not only why students needed an education but also how it was to be accomplished:
It being one chief project of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former time…. It is therefore ordered … [that] after the Lord hath increased [the settlement] to the number of fifty householders, [they] shall then forthwith appoint one within their town, to teach all such children as shall resort to him, to write and read…. And it is further ordered, that where any town shall increase to the number of one hundred families or householders, they shall set up a grammar school … to instruct youths, so far as they may be fitted for the university.24