Poll after poll, the United States ranks as the most “God-fearing” nation on the planet. Good on us! Whether you believe in God or not, it’s tough to deny the reality of Christian principles being an intricate part of our country’s historical fabric.

One has to ask themselves however, as arguably the last “Christian nation” around, why were our Founders so adamant about keeping the Feds grimy paws out of our churches?

Most of Europe upheld state religions, yet only 52 percent of its citizens maintain a belief in God.

My home province of Quebec force-fed its people their state-enforced brand of Catholicism for years, yet it now enjoys the title of being the single most un-churched population of the industrialized world. Compare these statistics to the well-over 80% of Americans who believe in God and one can’t help but notice a pattern there.

There’s no doubt that the Founding Fathers were deeply spiritual men (and when I say spiritual, I mean in the Judeo-Christian sense, not in the Disney/Pray-to-colors-of-the-wind type silliness). With that being said, could it be that they wanted to separate church and state, in order to PRESERVE the Christian principles that built this country?

Think about it. When has government successfully forced people to do ANYTHING that they didn’t already want to do? From forced “integration” in Detroit, to putting a tax on a morning breakfast beverage, the results have always been disastrous.

A freedom-saturated environment is conducive to the growth of faith in God. I’m guessing that might be why our Founding Fathers were much more “spirit” rather than “letter of the law” Christians like their English counterparts.

You know who else felt the same way… Jesus.

No, really. Jesus was forthright with his whole “I am the way, the truth and the light” deal (heck he was even crucified for it), but ultimately, the man left the decision up to us.

I guess what I’m wondering now is, if the Son of Man never felt the need to force anything down our throat… Where does our government get off thinking that they can?

Americans don’t want universal health care, we’re getting it. We don’t want Cap and Tax, we’re getting it. If freedom has generally bred positive choices, one would have to wonder what comes of statism. Historically, all signs point towards revolution. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that, even though the muskets would be fun to have.

As an even bigger point, I think that the systematic removal of our individual liberties is not only anti-American … it’s Anti-Christian. Ask yourself not only how the Founding Fathers would feel about the current administrations diametric opposition to their original intentions for our country, but what would Jesus think? It sounds gimmicky I’m sure, but when you get to pondering, it can be a real trip.

Of course, whenever I find myself still in doubt I ask: What would Sean Penn do?

We [Americans] see America, from the Pilgrims who signed the Mayflower Compact to the Biblical scholars… who birthed the nation, to the spirit of sacrifice and charity that thrives to this very day, not as a nation of Christians (for that freedom is at the deepest core of our common philosophy) but as a Christian nation.

It seems that there is a growing belief that because our Founders were stalwart advocates for religious liberty, and because some of them had very nuanced and sometimes cynical views about organized religion, the United States was somehow conceived to be a secular nation. This belief is not only untrue, but detrimental to an adequate understanding of the underlying political philosophy of the founding, not least of all because it envisions the government as the nation instead of merely the organization through which the nation conducts its civil affairs, and more importantly because it betrays the singular belief that undergirds the entire American experiment: That the rights of man come not from government but from God.

When the Founders crafted the Constitution of the United States, they were not setting about to create a nation; they were setting about to create a system of government. The people of the United States had successfully waged war against Great Britain, formed alliances with foreign powers, brokered trade, and secured national debt before the current system of government was ever established. The Constitution merely created a system of administrative and judicial structures meant to represent the nation and to conduct the affairs of the people of that nation. This is perhaps best evidenced by the opening words to the document itself: “We the people of the United States… establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” The United States already existed. Its people created the Constitution to “form a more perfect Union… and to secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The birth of the nation occurred in 1776 when the second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence. It was this document that “dissolved the political bands” which connected the people of America to the people of Great Britain and assumed for them “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” entitled them. It was also in this document that the Founders outlined the uniquely American philosophy of the legitimate rights of the governed. “Self-evident” truths, they called them: that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator (not afforded by their government) with certain un-alienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Governments, says the Declaration, are formed to help man secure these rights and derive their power only from the consent of the people themselves. If government should exceed the people’s authority, or encroach upon the rights man received from his Creator (also called, in official documents by the same congress, “Providence,” “Almighty God,” “the Common Father,” “Nature’s God,” “God,” “Supreme Being,” “Holy Ghost,” and, wait for it, “Jesus Christ”), it was “the Right of the People to alter or abolish it.” The Founders then go on to cite, as the moral authority from which their philosophy is derived (rectitude as they called it), the “Supreme Judge” of the world, and call upon “Divine Providence” for their protection in carrying out their God-given rights.

It was hardly a secular origin then for these United States. Instead, a founding document that proposes a theory, really a theology of government, never enacted before. The people of this country are entitled by God to independent statehood. They were created by God with rights that no government can legitimately take away. Their philosophy was deemed morally correct because it has been judged so by God, and God will protect them in the execution of war against those that would subjugated them in violation of that philosophy. This is how the Founders viewed rightful governance, and this is the sort of government that they sought to give life when, a decade later, they drafted the Constitution of the United States.

Of the four claims about God and Americans outlined in the Declaration, it was the idea that man was made by God to be free that was the most radical, and which was so pivotal. The British press mocked it openly. It is, however, at the very heart of the founding ideology. If it is God who made men free, then Liberty is not a pragmatic imperative; it is a moral one. Governments that encroach on that liberty are not only violating the preferences of the governed, they are violating the very intention of God for government. For the Founders, this idea would fundamentally redefine the relationship between government and citizen. Man does not exist to be governed; governments exist to protect man’s freedom. Man does not owe government anything, other than what is necessary to aid that government in securing his basic rights. Likewise, government does not owe man anything other than protection from those who would intrude upon his freedom, be it his fellow citizen, foreign enemies, or the government itself.

It is this idea, above all others, that marked this country as unique among the nations of the world. It is an idea so deeply held by our Founders that many actually feared making references to the rights of man in the Constitution itself. They didn’t think they needed to. They also knew that to do so might one day be interpreted to mean that those rights were not natural at all, but rather were gifts from a benevolent master called the state. When the Bill of Rights was finally added, the Congress selected the language very carefully to make clear that the document was not bestowing rights on the people, but limiting the rights of government: “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 to peaceably assemble…,” “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” “The right of the people to be secure… shall not be violated…” The Constitution doesn’t grant man rights; God does. The Constitution only protects those rights from the government. The idea that the Founders believed government must exist independent of God is thereby false since their own view of the rightful place of government was in the protection of the rights granted to man by his Creator.

The tired argument that the Founders were not Christians but Deists is not only false (there were more overtly Christian men among the Founders than even supposed Deists by orders of magnitude), but more importantly, it is irrelevant. Whatever the nuances of their personal faiths, the Founders were to-a-man theists, believers in God, and in the Christian tradition. While some of them, men like Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson, were skeptical of many of the miraculous claims of the Bible, they were none-the-less scholarly about and reverent toward what they saw as its philosophy, and its God. They may not have been Christians by the standards of the church, but they were certainly Christians by the standards of atheists. They believed in the God of the Bible and believed faith was critical to the workings of a free society. Not only that, but they made clear what they thought about the relationship between God and government in both word and deed. Franklin called for prayer at the Constitutional Convention and suggested spending government revenue on chaplains. Adams declared the Constitution was “made only for a moral and religious people…” and wrote the Massachusetts State Constitution, which required that its governors pledge their Christian faith in order to serve (This was considered a legitimate state law under the original reading of the First and Tenth Amendment). Jefferson spent federal revenue on Bibles, declared that the Bible should be taught in public schools, and approved of the use of federal buildings for church gatherings – including the capital building where he personally attended services during his presidency. Oh, and he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Of course Jefferson also, in a letter to the Danbury Baptists, first coined the popular phrase, “Separation of Church and State,” which has been used for so long to inform a reading of the ‘Establishment Clause’ which seeks to excise all religious expression from public institutions. So how could he approve of the innumerable expressions of faith by himself and the government under his watch? It is important here to bear in mind the context of Jefferson’s thinking.

The Danbury Baptists were concerned that the First Amendment’s very existence might one day be taken to imply that it was the government who gave men religious freedom, not God, and therefore imply government could also take that freedom away (a possibility Alexander Hamilton had also raised in Federalist No. 84). The Baptists feared that this left open the possibility that at some point in the future the government might claim for itself the power to enforce religious edicts through civil coercion. This fear was not without historical precedent.

The original European settlers of what would become the United States of the Revolution were almost exclusively British. They were also immensely religious. That’s why they were here. After a millennia of state-religion mandated by Rome, Henry VIII had rejected the authority of the Pope in Britain and created a state-religion of his own. The Church of England made the king not only the ultimate political power in the land, but the ultimate religious authority as well. A violation of Henry’s religious positions was a violation of the law, and a violation of the law was heresy. The punishment was severe: Beheading, hanging, burning at the stake… Terrible things happen when civil and religious authority are mingled together.

The problem for Henry, and for Rome, was that a Reformation was also taking place. Men like Martin Luther and William Tyndale (who Henry had strangled and burned) had begun translating the Bible into common languages, giving the people the opportunity to explore God for themselves. What they discovered surprised them. In the Book of Exodus, God establishes a civil leader for his people in Moses. He also establishes a religious leader in Aaron. Then he does something really interesting: He commands that they remain separate forever. If the king tries to supersede the religious authority of the priesthood, God will destroy him, as he does in 2 Chronicles, cursing a king named Uzziah for conducting a religious rite in the temple. Of course, God was God of the state, as well as the religion. He gave guidance to Moses just as surely as he did to Aaron. He just precluded the civil leader from also being the religious leader. Undoubtedly, God understood that without that distinction, all kings would be like Henry VIII. Separation of church and state, then, is actually a Biblical principle.

When Jefferson’s own American forefathers, the Pilgrims, took sanctuary from religious persecution in this new world, they sought to be true to the Biblical teachings that their former rulers had violated. In America, as in Israel thousands of years before, government and religious authority would be forever separated, though just as in Israel, God would be God of both. God and religion, after all, are not the same thing. One is the Supreme Being over all, and the other is the institution by which he is taught and worshiped. Jefferson understood this distinction, which is why he could assure the Danbury Baptists that there was a “wall of separation between church and state,” ensuring that the government would never dictate or enforce religious decrees, while at the same time he also recognized God though the government, and based the legitimacy of both on him.

There is far more to say on this subject than could possibly be explored in one sitting: The fact that the opening lines of the most important state law concerning religious freedom discuss how God made the mind free though it was within his Almighty power not to as Lord of both and Author of our religion (Jefferson). There is Washington’s Presidential warning that no man can call himself a patriot and oppose religion, since it is intrinsically linked to free government. There is Congress authorizing an official translation of the Bible and Thanksgiving Proclamations calling upon Jesus Christ to forgive of our national sins. For nearly two centuries government was separated from religious authority by Jefferson’s wall, but there was simply no separation of the government and God. The Bible was read in schools, there were prayers at most public functions, churches continued to meet in federal buildings, and America’s rich Christian heritage was taught and celebrated, not denied, suppressed, and scorned. To be sure, there were always Americans of diverse faiths, but as the nation was settled by Christians, founded on the principles of Christianity, and peopled by an overwhelming majority of Christian citizens, it didn’t seem a terrible thing to consider her a Christian Nation. It was not until 1947, when the Supreme Court heard a case called Everson vs Board of Education, that the modern understanding of America as a secular nation was first introduced. In a stunning act of judicial activism, the court declared that Jefferson, in his Danbury Letter, in contradiction to earlier court rulings on the subject and to everything Jefferson himself had ever written including the Declaration and the actual letter itself, must have intended that the government be legally bound to secularism. This effectively turned two centuries of American history on its head. In the sixty years since, generations of Americans have been fed a radical reinterpretation of the Founders’ intent. Government, we are now taught, must protect the people from public expressions of, or support for, religion. God must be stripped from the public square, which is in large part why the true history of our founding has been so stripped from our schools. In this newly interpreted separation, the chief concern of our Founders seems to have been preventing anyone from encountering religion at all. That they often argued publicly that the republic could not survive without religion is ignored entirely, as is their own reliance on God for their authority to create the government in the first place. Like so many other issues in post-New Deal America, if the courts disagree with the Founders, they simply re-invent them, avoiding the sticky democratic practices of debate and legislation all together.

Since God no longer exists in government, and his history there is no longer taught, is it any wonder that millions upon millions of Americans believe, in utter opposition to the founding philosophy, that our rights come from the government? Where else would they come from? And should it be any surprise if those same Americans desire that the government give them other things as well? After all, if our rights are not by the grace of God but by the grace of government, then whoever controls the government has the ultimate authority over man. Government by definition can do no wrong. This is precisely the kind of thinking our Founders literally warred against. It is also precisely why Americans of all faiths should be proud to own America’s Christian Heritage, and why without it, America is lost.

“God who gave us life gave us liberty. 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 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.” – Thomas Jefferson, “Deist”

“Whatever we once were, we are no longer a Christian Nation…” - Barack Obama, “Christian”

“Thou shalt not bear false witness…” Sounds familiar. That would be one of the Ten Commandments liberal judges say cannot be posted in public schools, or on government monuments because that would be an establishment of religion by the US Government.

Here’s the President of this pluralist, secular, democracy paraphrasing Cain and Abel found in the book of Genesis: “…what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation that we look out for one another, that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper.”

We have a moral obligation? So now we can legislate morality. Check.

I’m not even sure what Obama means by this, “We are God’s partners in matters of life and death,” I was kind of hoping he still thought it was above his pay grade.

“Should” is a moral word —a philosophical one. You can’t weigh it in a lab, it cannot be found in the materials. So to tell America’s (liberal) religious leaders to spread the word that we should pass the President’s health care plan, he’s pushing a value from his office as the president.

I love it.

He’s actually living out what the left has railed against when a Republican refuses to divorce their religion from their political decisions. I just wanted to mark this day that the POTUS used his state position to disperse a religious, philosophical point of view…and all I can hear from the ACLU are crickets chirping. NAMBLA-defending crickets.

I smell a rat. It’s implied that when Republicans call up religious support that we are just doing it to manipulate the Gods-n-guns folks. When Bush reaches out to faith leaders it’s duplicitous and inherently manipulative. But when the left does it, it’s genuine — they have somehow divined the true spirit of Christ in our political discourse. The right is pandering to faith communities while the left is reaching out to faith communities.

Obama even comports himself like a charismatic preacher. That’s his rhetorical style. Hillary channeled black preachers when speaking in the South. John Kerry took many a photo op in front of huge robed choirs when touting his own religion while running against Bush. Bill Clinton and the Baptist Al Gore did the same. So why is it that when Obama quotes the book of Matthew he’s not a threat but a journalist has a heart attack because he heard from a source who heard from a source who heard from a source that Bush had an active prayer life with Jesus?

The answer is simple, the true religion of the left is pragmatism, and even the Christianity they hate will be embraced so long as it gets them to their leftist, Utopian goals. That’s why a Republican can be gay, a woman, a black man, a poor fellow, and they are still demonized. The left doesn’t hate blacks. It’s that they love their own ends more than any standard, value or government. If turning a blind eye to the horrors of Islamists is useful, then so be it. But don’t think that they actually embrace Christianity. Because as soon as a Republican Christian is in office it will be back to “Jesusland” and “God-n-guns” rhetoric.

Cindy Sheehan told Byron York, “The ‘anti-war’ ‘left’ was used by the Democratic Party. I like to call it the “anti-Republican War’ movement.” But Cindy didn’t go far enough. Because they won’t just use the anti-war left, but the Democratic Party will use Christians, gays, Mormons, terrorists, body-counts, Republicans (Specter), southerners, high unemployment, low unemployment to achieve their means. And as soon as they’re done using any of these in the back seat of the Donkey Van the same groups are discarded. Cindy Sheehan who?

It’s not the practice of religion that the left hates about conservatives any more than it was the practice of war for why they hated Bush. It’s that they hate conservatives so much that their practice of religion, war or tiddlywinks will be cast in the darkest shade possible.

But as for me and my house, we welcome religion into our politics. I just want the left to remember this day where with this posting I supported the President’s reaching out to lefty religious people.

Religious politicians acting on their faith is not an establishment of a government church, nor was it when Bush did it.

God-kings are not new on the stage of human history, nor do they exclusively occupy the dusty corners of the distant past. One need only look to the Japanese worship of Emperor Hirohito during World War II to see that an industrialized, modern country can still vest in its leaders supernatural authority. And there are far more subtle ways of making divinity out of men as well.

The Apostle Paul was warned two-thousand years ago that, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Certainly his intention was to illuminate to the self-righteous that they do not live up to an actual standard of perfection, but perhaps there is more. For as surely as a man might be blind to his own failings, there seems to be some propensity in man to be selectively blind to the failings of others as well. This selective blindness may have many causes and find many expressions.  Some in our society carry cultural guilt and fear of accusations of bigotry that cause them to hold entire social, racial, and religious groups to different standards of judgment than others.  Still, it is the elevation of individuals above common scrutiny that creates idols of men. Whether it is a rock-star or actor, sportsman or elected leader, holding any man above reproach is folly, for in ceding to anyone our power to critique them, we grant them power man was not meant to have.

Now, to some, this double standard of generosity may seem harmless enough.  After all it might be argued that most people are far too judgmental as it is.  However it is no less sinister to apply a positive double-standard than it is a negative one. Both of these biases have the same result on the individual making the unfair judgment – by limiting the individual’s ability to accurately see the humanity of the judged, they falsely color that individual’s understanding of the human condition in general. Just as the thoughtless demonization of any person renders them sub-human to the person making the judgment, and therefore their choices, actions, and motives are no longer subject to the same thoughtful consideration as those of others, Hero-Worship creates a blindness in which it is not necessary to consider the fundamental humanity of the so-called hero, nor is it necessary to emulate their actual virtues or accomplishments. After all, if Hitler is simply the most evil creature to ever live, why question the motives, politics, or persuasions by which his actual, human evil was allowed to thrive? Similarly, if a Martin Luther King, Jr. was simply better than everyone else by design, what point is there in attempting to follow his virtuous lead?

This power that hero-worship imbues in its champions is also a narcotic that dulls the mind of the worshiper, and allows and even promotes abuses by the worshiped.

Clearly, this is the case with the current President of the United States. With so many people seeing President Obama as a super-human, almost religious figure, and placing so many of their hopes on his shoulders, they blind themselves to the reality of the man, both his better qualities as well as his more troubling ones. Any accusation of wrong-doing or hubris is instantly and angrily rejected by the faithful as an attack on a man who is simply above petty criticism. He can do no wrong, and further, no one else can do the good that he might. He is, as Evan Thomas so aptly and honestly put it, “standing above the country, above the world, he’s sort of a God.” There is nothing more dangerous than this kind of isolation of a man from the restraining power of common criticism, especially one who by his office already has so much power over so many and so much. After all, if criticism is suppressed and virtues are seen as intrinsic and not attained or attainable, an elected leader doesn’t actually answer to the will of the people at all, rather, the people exist to validate his will.

For man to truly be free, he must reject elevating any human to super-human stations, reserving such worship exclusively for the truly divine. Christ may be perfect, but President Obama is only a man. A compelling case can be made that George Washington was one of the best men who has ever lived. The Indispensable Man, he twice surrendered his sword, and almost absolute power, to the new country he had bled to create when frankly most people would have preferred he kept it. But this same great man had great failings, not least of which were his somewhat nuanced views on human slavery.

If even a man with the moral fortitude of Washington did not escape the human condition, then what man could? I can say without shame that there is no public figure alive who I hold in higher esteem than I hold George W. Bush. I realize the cultural-correctness barons who have demonized him for the last eight years will recoil at the fact, but I would rather have some BBQ or sit on a fishing boat with 43 than meet a Beatle. He was true to his convictions, and he exuded a grace and good-will to his enemies even when beset on all sides by a recklessly hostile, slandering, hate-filled media and opposition.  President Bush is as close as I have to a hero. But I am not fooled by my affection into believing he was superior to his mold. Despite the public claims of exuding calm, I have little doubt what was going through the president’s mind during those excruciating seven minutes in the school-house in Florida in 2001. Fear. We’re being attacked? Confusion. If we’re being attacked, why aren’t they pulling me out of here? Uncertainty. Am I supposed to be doing something or did I misunderstand? The sort of very human things any of us might have felt in that sort of situation. Would I have preferred that he sprung to his feet, strode to his jet, and took command of the war we did not yet know we were in? Sure. I would rather he hadn’t passed TARP, articulated conservative principles like Reagan, and defended himself against his hate-drunk critics too, but I don’t look for God-like perfection in human beings. Even Presidents. Especially Presidents. I have an actual God for that, so my admiration for Mr. Bush can survive exposure to his actual humanity expressly because it isn’t built on the false premise that he has none. It is respect, not worship, and it is a deep respect.

Because in application, worship is all a man requires to reign as a God. Hold one man to a more generous standard, bind him by a less restrictive set of rules than you do other men, and you give to him transcendent powers no matter what secular name you might call him by. If you make that man-God the leader of a country, then he is a God-King as surely as any who has gone before, and making a God-King of a man only makes slaves of the rest, no matter how he uses his authority or for what. This is what the idea of separation of Church and State was actually meant to protect us from, un-checked executives consolidating personal-religious powers. Let us direct our prayers elsewhere that we might have eyes to see this man as man.

I decided a long time ago that religion would play no part in my life, but I felt no compulsion to convert others.  Oddly enough, I never resented the folks who would ring my doorbell and try to proselytize me.  Although I don’t like dealing with uninvited guests, I always thought it was nice of them to be that concerned about the eternal soul of a perfect stranger. Having said all that, I wish to announce that I despise the ACLU for its relentless attacks on Christianity and Judaism.  It’s bad enough that they will wage battle on behalf of any busybody looking to banish Christmas and Hanukkah symbols from public places, including one’s own front yard.

However, these very same lawyers will eagerly go to the mat to safeguard a Muslim’s right to wear a disguise on her driver’s license, a Navajo’s right to ingest peyote, and a cultist’s right to ritualistically slaughter small animals. 

The ACLU proclaims that they’re merely abiding by the Constitution’s insistence on the separation of church and state.  The only problem with that position is that the Constitution says no such thing.  Although the secular Left has glommed on to that catch phrase like a pitbull gnawing on a shinbone, the First Amendment simply states: “Congress shall make no law respecting establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” 

That is a far cry from forcing apartment dwellers to remove holiday wreaths from their door, or insisting that communities remove Nativity scenes from parks, or compelling small towns to change “Christmas Holiday” in their high school calendars to “Winter Break.” 

The problem with the ACLU is that it is composed in equal measure of self-righteous fools and fascistic bullies.  Because so many of their members are rich and privileged, they will, on the one hand, blather on about their love of democracy, while, at the same time, assume they alone know what’s best for everyone else. 

Because they are so out of step with the majority, they can rarely have their way via a democratic ballot.  There are, in fact, only two means by which they ever have their way.  The first is by getting liberal judges to set aside election results, as they have done over such issues as capital punishment, illegal immigration, and affirmative action.  The second way is by intimidating those — be they individuals, cities or organizations – that lack the backbone or the financial wherewithal to defend themselves against the ACLU’s mob of shysters. 

If the authors of the Constitution had ever, in their worst nightmares, envisioned a group as vile as the ACLU, I feel certain that they would have rephrased the First Amendment to read: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.  Period!  And we’re not kidding, so help us God!” 

BurtPrelutsky@aol.com