Abigail Adams, wife of 2nd President John Adams and mother of 6th President John Quincy Adams, wrote to Mercy Otis Warren on November 5, 1775: “A patriot without religion in my estimation is as great a paradox as an honest Man without the fear of God. Is it possible that he whom no moral obligations bind, can have any real Good Will towards Men?” She concluded: “Scriptures tell us ‘righteousness exalteth a Nation.’” According to the U.S. Code, every person enlisting in the armed forces must take the following oath: “I, ________, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.” the oath for commissioned officers is similar; e.g., in the Army, officers “do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.” George Mason, the “Father of the Bill of Rights,” argued at theVirginia Ratification Debates in 1788, “[D]ivine providence has given to every individual the means of self-defense.” In 1775, even Revolutionary patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Painewrote, “Could the peaceable principle of the Quakers be universally established, arms and the art of war would be wholly extirpated: But we live not in a world of angels.… I am thus far a Quaker, that I would gladly agree with all the world to lay aside the use of arms, and settle matters by negotiation: but unless the whole will, the matter ends, and I take up my musket and thankHeaven He has put it in my power.” William Bradford, Governor of the fledgling Plymouth Plantation in Massachusetts, declared November 29, 1623, a day of thanksgiving to God for his protection and providential hand on the Pilgrims. His order stated “that all Pilgrims, with your wives and little ones, do gather at the meeting house . . . there to listen to the pastor and render thanksgiving to Almighty God for all His blessings. At the request of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress ratified a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians on Dec. 3, 1803. The Treaty provided that the U.S. would give to the tribe $100 per year, for 7 years, “toward the support of a priest of [the Catholic] religion, who will engage to perform for said tribe the duties of his office, and also to instruct as many of their children as possible, in the rudiments of literature”; and would also give $300 “to assist the said tribe in the erection of a church.” On December 16, 1773, men known as “Sons of Liberty” dressed as “Indians” and threw chests of tea in the Boston Harbor to protest stringent British taxes. In the months building up to the Boston Tea Party, the men of Marlborough, Mass. issued a declaration stating, “Death is more eligible than slavery. A free-born people are not required by the religion of Jesus Christ to submit to tyranny, but may make use of such power as God has given them to recover and support their laws and liberties…[We] implore the Ruler above the skies that He would bare His arm in defense of His Church and people and let Israel go.” In his last Christmas Eve radio address as President (1988), Ronald Reagan said, “Tomorrow is a day for celebration: celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ. Joy envelops us, as it must have enveloped our ancestors 1,988 years ago when unto us a Child was born.” This year, even Pres. Barack Obamawished a “Merry Christmas” to those at the “Christmas in Washington” concert: “This season, we celebrate that sacred moment – the birth of a child and the message of love He would preach to the world….” On January 8, 1815, General Andrew Jackson fended off a British assault in the victorious Battle of New Orleans, fought at the end of the War of 1812. Later that month “Old Hickory” wrote to Col. Robert Hays, “It appears that the unerring hand of Providence shielded my men from the shower of balls, bombs, and rockets, when every ball and bomb from our guns carried with them a mission of death.” Jackson also wrote to Sec. of War James Monroe: “Heaven, to be sure, has interposed most wonderfully in our behalf, and I am filled with gratitude, when I look back to what we have escaped.” On January 25, 1984, President Ronald Reagan used part of hisState of the Union Address to promote the freedom to acknowledge God in public schools: “Each day your members observe a 200-year-old tradition meant to signify America is one nation under God. I must ask: If you can begin your day with a member of the clergy standing right here leading you in prayer, then why can’t freedom to acknowledge God be enjoyed again by children in every school room across this land?” At the first meeting of the first Continental Congress (Sept. 1774),Rev. Jacob Duché read Psalm 35 and then gave anextemporaneous prayer that began, “O Lord, our Heavenly Father, high and mighty King of kings and Lord of lords, Who dost from Thy throne behold all the dwellers of the earth, and reignest with power supreme and uncontrollable over the kingdoms, empires, and governments, look down in mercy, we beseech Thee, on these American States, who have fled to Thee from the rod of the oppressor and thrown themselves on Thy gracious protection.” He ended “in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Savior. Amen.” The Boy Scouts of America turns 100 years old on February 8, 2010. In his pamphlet “Scouting & Christianity,” the founder of the Scouts’ predecessor in England, Sir Robert Baden-Powell,wrote, “Scouting is nothing less than applied Christianity.” To this day the Scout Oath states: “On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.” One of the Scout Laws requires a Scout to be “Reverent – A Scout is reverent toward God. He is faithful in his religious duties. He respects the beliefs of others.” George Washington often publicly acknowledged America’s dependence upon God and, at the same time, the individual freedom of religion. He wrote to the Society of Quakers in 1789, “The liberty enjoyed by the people of these states, of worshiping Almighty God agreeably to their conscience, is not only among the choicest of their blessings, but also of their rights.” Rev. John Witherspoon (1723-1794) was the only ordained minister to be a signer of the Declaration; he was a Continental Congressman and as Pres. of the College of New Jersey (Princeton) was mentor to many other Founders. In a famous sermon preached on a Nat’l Day of Fasting and Prayer, May 17, 1776, Witherspoon said, “Whoever is an avowed enemy to God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country.” He concluded,”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.” On April 4, 1841, Pres. William Henry Harrison delivered the longest Inaugural Address, in which he expressed “a profound reverence for the Christian religion and a thorough conviction that sound morals, religious liberty, and a just sense of religious responsibility are essentially connected with all true and lasting happiness; and to that good Being who has blessed us by the gifts of civil and religious freedom, who watched over and prospered the labors of our fathers and has hitherto preserved to us institutions far exceeding in excellence those of any other people, let us unite in fervently commending every interest of our beloved country in all future time.” Thomas Jefferson, born April 13, 1743, wrote these words now paraphrased on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC: “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 for ever . . . . “ In his sermon delivered on a National Day of Prayer and Fasting, May 17, 1776, Rev. John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration and a Continental Congressman, said, “It would be a criminal inattention not to observe the singular interposition ofProvidence hitherto, in behalf of the American colonies.” But he also warned, “While we give praise to God the supreme disposer of all events, for his interposition in our behalf, let us guard against the dangerous error of trusting in, or boasting of an arm of flesh.” In the Washington National Cathedral stands a bronze statue of Abraham Lincoln kneeling in prayer. The sculptor’s grandfather, Noah Brooks, said he saw Lincoln kneeling in the woods just before delivering the Gettysburg Address and that Lincoln once admitted to him, “I have been many times driven to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had nowhere else to go.” During the Korean War, Gen. Douglas MacArthur said, in an address to the Salvation Army on December 12, 1951, “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 19:58:34 +0000
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