Rediscovering God in America

Introduction

THE CREATOR AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SQUARE

There is no attack on American culture more destructive and more historically dishonest than the secular Left's relentless effort to drive God out of America's public square. The 2002 decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals that the phrase "under God" is unconstitutional represents a fundamental assault on our American identity. A court that would unilaterally modify the Pledge of Allegiance as adopted by the Congress in 1954, signed by President Eisenhower, and supported by 91 percent of the American people is a court that is clearly out of step with an America that understands that our unalienable rights come from God.

This book, a walking tour of our nation's capital, is a rebuttal to those who seek to write God out of American history. Step by step, you will see the concrete case for defending the place that America has always acknowledged for the Creator in our public life.

In the Pledge of Allegiance case, while the Supreme Court overruled the Ninth Circuit on procedural grounds, it did not affirm that saying "under God" was constitutional. Only three of the justices took that position. Five of the justices hid behind procedural excuses, ruling that the plaintiff did not have legal standing to file the suit. The ninth justice, Antonin Scalia, had recused himself because he had made a public speech supporting the Pledge.

But if the plaintiff did have legal standing, the Supreme Court might have had—amazingly—a five to four majority in 2004 for declaring "under God" unconstitutional. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor only defended the phrase "under God" in the Pledge by arguing that it was meaningless:

The Pledge, she deemed, merely invoked "civic deism." Yet, if pledging allegiance to one nation under God does not mean we believe America is a nation under God (and by extension, ourselves as citizens as well), what could it possibly mean?

When a handful of judges can ignore history and decide they can overrule the culture of 91 percent of America, how can the judiciary, including the Supreme Court, maintain its moral authority? It can't. The Court itself begins each day with the proclamation, "God save the United States and this honorable Court." This phrase has been used for almost two hundred years. It was not adopted as a ceremonial phrase of no meaning; it was adopted because justices in the 1820s actually wanted to call on God to save the United States and the Court.

Similarly, the Pledge of Allegiance does not contain a "ceremonial" reference to God. The term "under God" was inserted deliberately by Congress to draw the distinction between atheistic tyranny (the Soviet Union) and a free society whose freedoms were based on the God-given rights of each person. As Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas wrote in Zorach vs. Clauson just two years before the Congress added the words "under God" to the Pledge: "We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being."

In the last fifty years, the Court has moved from recognizing the central importance of religious supports of America's republican institutions to tolerating traditional expressions of religious belief only on the basis of their presumed insincerity.

For most Americans, the blessings of God are the basis of our liberty, prosperity, and survival as a unique country.

For most Americans, prayer is real, and we subordinate ourselves to a God on whom we call for wisdom, guidance, and salvation.

For most Americans, the prospect of a ruthlessly secular society that would forbid public reference to God and systematically remove all religious symbols from the public square is horrifying.

Yet, the voice of the overwhelming majority of Americans is rejected by a media-academic-legal elite that finds religious expression frightening and threatening, or old-fashioned and unsophisticated. The results of their opposition are everywhere.

Our schools have been steadily driving the mention of God out of American history. (Look at your children's textbooks or at the curriculum guide for your local school.)

Our courts have been literally outlawing references to God, religious symbols, and stated public appeals to God. For two generations we have passively accepted the judiciary's assault on the values of the overwhelming majority of Americans. It is time to insist on judges who understand that throughout our history—and continuing to this day—Americans believe that their fundamental rights come from God and are therefore unalienable.

The secular Left has been inventing law and grotesquely distorting the Constitution to achieve a goal that the Founding Fathers would consider a fundamental threat to liberty.

A steadfast commitment to religious freedom is the very cornerstone of American liberty.

People came to America's shores to be free to practice their religious beliefs. That hope brought the Puritans with their desire to create a "city on a hill" that would be a beacon of religious belief and piety. The Pilgrims were another group that poured into the new colonies. Quakers in Pennsylvania were another; Catholics in Maryland yet a fourth. All came seeking religious liberty.

One of the first things English settlers did when arriving to the new world in 1607 was to erect a cross at Cape Henry to give thanks to God for safe passage.

A religious revival, the Great Awakening in the 1730s, inspired many Americans to fight the Revolutionary War to secure their God-given freedoms. Another great religious revival in the nineteenth century inspired the abolitionists' campaign to end slavery.

It was no accident that the marching song of the Union army during the Civil War included the line "as Christ died to make men holy let us die to make men free." That phrase was later changed to "let us live to make men free." But for the men in uniform—who were literally placing their lives on the line to end slavery—they knew that the original line was the right one.

It is a testament to the genius of the Founding Fathers that they designed a practical form of government that allows religious groups the freedom to express their strong religious beliefs in the public square—a constitutional framework that avoids inter-religious conflict and discrimination, which had characterized part of the colonial period.

First Principles

For the colonists, the argument with the British government was an argument about first principles. Where did power come from? Who defined rights between king and subject? What defined loyalty?

It was in this historic context that America proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that all people "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." This is the proposition upon which America was based, and when Thomas Jefferson wrote these lines, he turned on its head the idea that power only came from God through the monarch and then to the people.

Jefferson's immortal words about unalienable rights coming from our Creator echoed the thinking of so many of the Founding Fathers.

Four years before the Declaration of Independence was written, John Adams wrote, "If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce and give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the great end of society, would absolutely vacate such renunciation; the right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of Man to alienate this gift, and voluntarily become a slave."

In 1775, Alexander Hamilton wrote, "The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power."

John Dickinson, a Pennsylvania Quaker and signer of the U.S. Constitution, wrote in the same year of the Constitution's adoption that "Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness—we claim them from a higher source—from the King of Kings and the Lord of all the Earth. They are not annexed to us by parchments or seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature. They are born with us; and cannot be taken from us by any human power."

The Founding Fathers believed that God granted rights directly to every person. Moreover, these rights were "unalienable"—government simply had no power to take them away. Throughout the dramatic years of America's founding, religious expression was commonplace among the Founding Fathers and considered wholly compatible with the principles of the American Revolution. In 1774, the very first Continental Congress invited the Reverend Jacob Duche to begin each session with a prayer. When the war against Britain began, the Continental Congress provided for chaplains to serve with the military and be paid at the same rate as majors in the army.

During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Benjamin Franklin (often considered one of the least religious of the Founding Fathers) proposed that the Convention begin each day with a prayer. As the oldest delegate, at age eighty-one, Franklin insisted that "the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the Affairs of Men."

Because of their belief that power had come from God to each individual, the framers began the Constitution with the words "we the people." Note that the Founding Fathers did not write "we the states." Nor did they write "we the government." Nor did they write "we the lawyers and judges" or "we the media and academic classes."

These historic facts pose an enormous problem for the secular Left. How can they explain America without addressing its religious character and heritage? If they dislike and, in many cases, fear this heritage, then how can they communicate the core nature of the American people and their experience?

The answer is that since the secular Left cannot accurately teach American history without addressing America's religious character and its religious heritage, it simply ignores the topic. If you don't teach about the Founding Fathers, you do not have to teach about our Creator. If you don't teach about Abraham Lincoln, you don't have to deal with fourteen references to God and four Bible verses in his 703- word second inaugural address. That speech is actually carved into the wall of the Lincoln Memorial in a permanent affront to every radical secularist who visits this public building. You have to wonder how soon there will be a lawsuit to scrape the references to God and the Bible off the monument so as not to offend those who hate or despise religious expression.