David Barton

Many of these annual sermons directly involved the Founding Fathers. For example, such sermons were regularly preached before John Hancock (signer of the Declaration and the first Governor of Massachusetts) and before Samuel Adams (also a signer of the Declaration and the first Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts) and before the Council, Senate, and House of Representatives of that State.(Many States began their legislative session by inviting a minister to preach a sermon addressing the Biblical principles regarding lawmaking. The Bible truly offers much guidance on this topic, for not only is God the Great Lawgiver but many heroes of our faith were also lawgivers, including Moses, Joseph, and Daniel.)

Many sermons preached in legislative chambers were attended by a number of our Founding Fathers. For example, one was preached before Samuel Huntington, the Governor of Connecticut and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Another was preached before Caleb Strong, the Governor of Massachusetts and one of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention and a framer of the Constitution. Another was preached before Oliver Wolcott, theGovernor of Connecticut and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. And there were many others. Another sermon topic was “A Voice of Warning to Christians on the Ensuing Election of a President of the United States.” 44 In earlier generations, American ministers stood in the pulpit and called candidates and parties by name, set forth their positions, compared them to the Bible, and then advised that a Christian should or should not vote for a candidate or party based on what the candidate said compared with what the Bible said. Today, this type of sermon might make many listeners in churches uncomfortable, but it shouldn’t; not only was this a traditional practice of American pulpits, it was also a traditional practice set forth in the Scriptures. Consider how often God sent His ministers either to interface with or to confront civil leaders: Elijah with Ahab and Jezebel, Samuel with Saul, Nathan and Gad with David, Isaiah with Manasseh, Jeremiah with Josiah, and so many others. There certainly is no Biblical model where God has His ministers remain silent with civil leaders, or about civil issues. The church speaking into the civil arena was a long-standing practice in America, as was the practice of ministers serving directly in the legislature. In fact, it was Thomas Jefferson himself who encouraged the lifting of restrictions against ministers and clergy that had been imposed in his own state of Virginia:

I observe . . . [in the Virginia] Constitution an abridgment of [a] right . . . I do not approve. It is the incapacitation of a clergyman from being elected.

Thomas Jefferson wished to see clergymen possess the same rights as others. Today, however, this is not the case in the area of free speech, nor has it been since 1954, when a U. S. Senator became responsible for enacting a policy that treated non-profit organizations, including churches, differently. 46 He had been criticized for his political affiliations and his private business dealings and, not liking that criticism, he added a rider to an appropriation bill in the U. S. Senate stipulating for the first time that a 501(c)(3) organization – and churches are 501(c)(3) organizations – must stay out of the political arena. Few Christians realize that the current restrictions on free speech in the pulpit are of recent origin, but both American law books and early American sermons clearly demonstrate that such is the case. The historical record is clear: the Church helped shape the way that early America approached the issues of the day. The nation learned the relevancy of God’s word to every aspect of life; it is not surprising, then, that the Scriptures – and expositors of the Scriptures – had such a profound impact on the founding of our government and on its documents. Consider the Declaration of Independence. No nation has ever been as long under the same founding document as America has under the Declaration. In fact, France had their Revolution more than a decade after America did, and she is now in her fifteenth government. Brazil has had seven constitutions since 1822; Poland has had seven since 1921; Afghanistan has had five since 1923; Russia has had four just since 1918; and the story is similar for other nations. This type of instability has characterized nations in Europe, Africa, South America, and the rest of the world – except America. So where did our Founders find the ideas that made the Declaration the most successful government document in the history of the world? They themselves answer that question. James Otis – the mentor of both Samuel Adams and John Hancock – declared that:

The authority of Mr. Locke has . . . been preferred to all others. Declaration signers such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Rush, and many others also sang the praises of John Locke; and John Quincy Adams declared that: The Declaration of Independence [was] . . . founded upon one and the same theory of government . . . expounded in the writings of Locke

What we see in our elected officials – whether praiseworthy or culpable – reflects our own actions (or lack thereof) as citizens. And although there are many exemplary public officials in office today, by our negligence and lack of investigation into the private religious and moral beliefs of candidates, the nation has become plagued with an increasing number of corrupt officials.

In fact, the Statistical Abstract of the United States now documents the harmful aftermath of embracing the two aberrant teachings of compartmentalization and of ignoring a candidate’s private life. The Statistical Abstract, published annually by the federal government, sets forth statistics from the various cabinet level departments, and the appearance of a new category in the Statistical Abstract always heralds the emergence of a new national problem.

For example, it was not until 1976 that the category on sexual abuse of children first appeared. While the crime has always existed, prior to 1976 it occurred so infrequently that it did not warrant individual monitoring; but by 1976, so many police reports on this crime were being filed that a serious effort was made to ascertain the scope of the problem. When tracking began in 1976, the rate of sexual abuse of children was already too high, with three cases for each 10,000 children; but within only a decade, the problem had increased by almost 500 percent. 51 Nevertheless, it was the Statistical Abstract that first heralded the emergence of this new national problem.

Similarly, the recording of AIDS cases did not begin until 1981. At that time, 199 cases of AIDS had been reported – enough to warrant attention as a serious problem. Today, there are almost 40,000 new cases each year, with half-a-million having died from AIDS and nearly half-a-million more currently living with it – an increase of over 5,000 percent from that original reporting. Again, the Statistical Abstract first recorded the emergence of AIDS as a new national problem.

Interestingly, federal prosecutions of public corruption did not appear as a category in the Statistical Abstract until 1973. At that time, 244 cases of alleged public corruption were reported – enough to indicate a serious national problem and a disturbing trend among public officials.
However, within a few short decades, the number had increased by nearly 400 percent to more than 1,200 cases. This rapid increase in public corruption should come as no surprise, however, since (1) voters had been discouraged from examining a candidate’s roots and (2) so many people of faith voluntarily compartmentalized themselves from the political process. They evidently forgot that good government was the result of good leaders, and that good leaders had to be elected by good people.

Not surprisingly, embracing these two destructive teachings resulted in a change not only in the quality of our leaders but also a change in their philosophy and worldview. And logically so, for when God-fearing individuals depart any arena, their values depart with them; and when ungodly individuals enter an arena, their values enter with them. The result is that many offices are now filled with leaders who are not God-fearing and who therefore have no respect for traditional religious and moral values. A vivid illustration of this truth is readily apparent in a short review of the U. S. Supreme Court’s decisions on specific issues.

For example, voluntary school prayer had been permitted in America’s public schools for over three centuries, and had been constitutional for 171 consecutive years under the Constitution before the Court struck down that practice in 1962. Why had voluntary school prayer remained constitutional for 171 consecutive years? Because voluntary prayer had been laudable in the personal beliefs of the Founding Fathers originally placed on the Court as well as in the beliefs of subsequent Justices who filled their places. But by the 1960s, a new group had been seated on the Court with a different set of personal values. They seized a statement that suited their personal beliefs – a misleading phrase found neither in the Constitution, the First Amendment, nor any other official founding document (“separation of church and state”). Under those Justices’ distorted application of that two-centuries-old phrase, in the case Engel v. Vitale, 54 voluntary school prayer was suddenly and without precedent 55 deemed to be improper.

The next year, the Court struck down another long-standing practice – a practice specifically implemented by Founding Fathers such as Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Jedidiah Morse, William Samuel Johnson, Benjamin Franklin, Fisher Ames, Francis Hopkinson, John Witherspoon, Abraham Baldwin, and numbers of others. What was that practice? The use of the Bible in schools.

On what ground did the Court order the removal of the Bible from education? One need only read the written opinion in that case
(available either online or at any local county law library) to answer this question. In reaching its decision, the lower court had relied on the testimony of a psychologist who explained the danger of reading the Bible in schools, and the Supreme Court then repeated that testimony in its decision, reporting:

[I]f portions of the New Testament were read without explanation, they could be and . . . had been psychologically harmful to the [student].

What an amazing pronouncement by the Court: the New Testament causes psychological damage – it causes brain damage to students! This statement was not a reflection of law or history; rather, it was a statement reflecting the beliefs of the Justices who issued that ruling. Consider: is it likely that God-fearing individuals would have declared that the Bible caused psychological harm? Hardly. Why? Because God-fearing individuals do not believe that.

Yet, the Court was not finished enacting its personal beliefs, for in the case Stone v. Graham, 58 it even ruled that it was unconstitutional for students at school voluntarily to see a copy of the Ten Commandments. That ruling was amazing, for a picture of Moses holding the Ten Commandments is actually etched in stone inside the Supreme Court, and depictions of the Ten Commandments appear in numerous locations throughout the Court building. Yet, the Court held that it was unconstitutional for students to see what appeared inside the Supreme Court building – one of America’s most public structures!

Significantly, the Ten Commandments are found in hundreds of civic buildings, courthouses, and legislatures across the nation. In fact, one is more likely to find the Ten Commandments displayed in a government building than a church building. Why? Because for over two thousand years, the Ten Commandments have been recognized as the basis of civil law in the Western World – it is from the Ten Commandments that we derive laws against murder, theft, perjury, etc. Furthermore, courts have cited the Ten Commandments as an authority in dozens of cases over the past two centuries. Nevertheless, the Supreme Court ruled that students could no longer see the laws that formed the basis of our current civil laws because: If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the school children to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. . . . [This] is not . . . permissible.

Amazing! Students can’t be allowed to see the Ten Commandments, for they might obey religious teachings at school – things like “Don’t steal” and “Don’t murder.” Rarely has such anti-religious bias been so visibly manifest, yet that bias accurately reflected the beliefs of the Justices who made that decision.

The same personal bias of a judge against the Ten Commandments was evidenced in a Florida courtroom where a man was on trial, accused of the brutal first-degree murder of his four-year-old stepdaughter. In that courthouse – as in so many others – the Ten Commandments hung on the wall. However, the judge ordered that the Ten Commandments be covered during the trial for fear that jurors would be prejudiced against the defendant if they saw the command, “Do not murder.” 61 Yet, if jurors aren’t to see the law that forbids murder, then why was the man even on trial?

The reasoning behind the Court’s decisions in the voluntary prayer case, the Bible reading case, the Ten Commandments case, and other similar cases provide convincing evidence that leaders will rule by what they personally believe. All public policies – whether sound or ludicrous, whether from the judicial, legislative, or executive branch – will always reflect the personal ideas and beliefs of the public officials making those decisions.

Obviously, public policies directly affect the individual citizens who are the intended objects of those policies (such as the defendant in the Florida courtroom). However, public policies also have a direct impact on the entire city, state, or nation in which a policy is implemented, for just as God holds individuals accountable for what they do, He also holds communities, states, and nations accountable for what is done by their public officials. As the Reverend Chandler Robbins reminded the Massachusetts legislature in 1791:

The Supreme Governor of the World rewards or punishes nations and civil communities only in this life. . . . [Political bodies] have no existence as such but in the present state; consequently, [they] are incapable of punishments or rewards in a future. We can conceive no way in which the divine Being shall therefore manifest the purity of his nature . . . towards such societies but by rewarding or punishing them here according to their public conduct [i.e., their public policies]. George Mason – the Father of the Bill of Rights – had previously affirmed that God judged communities for the public stands and policies of their political leaders. On the floor of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, he reminded delegates that:

As nations cannot be rewarded or punished in the next world, so they must be in this. By an inevitable chain of causes and effects, Providence punishes national sins by national calamities.
When fellow delegate Luther Martin returned home from the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, he reminded officials in his state of the same message:

It was said – it ought to be considered – that national crimes can only be, and frequently are, punished in this world by national punishments.

Because God blessed or cursed nations, states, or communities based on the policy positions taken by each, it was vital to place at the helm of government individuals who would take stands that God could honor and bless, thus causing the entire nation, state, or community (and those within it) to be blessed. As President George Washington reminded Americans in his “Inaugural Address”:

[T]he propitious [favorable] smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.

Regrettably, in recent decades, the three branches of government from the federal to the local level have too often been filled with public officials who are politicians rather than statesmen – with individuals whose personal belief systems have not merely disregarded but have even countermanded “the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” When those rules are disregarded by leaders, all citizens pay the price – a truth now affirmed statistically.

For example, following the 1962-1963 court mandate that religious principles be separated from students and official public venues, violent crime skyrocketed almost 700 percent. Not surprisingly, funding for prisons also skyrocketed and is now one of the fastestgrowing expenditures for state government; states simply cannot build prisons fast enough to house all the criminal offenders. And despite the fact that school students are responsible for twenty percent of all crimes and that half of all violent crimes, murders, and robberies are committed by youth aged 24 and below, the Court nevertheless holds that these youth should not see things like “Don’t steal” and “Don’t kill” for fear that they might obey those “religious” teachings. Nine Justices made the original decision but the entire nation now pays the price both economically and in the destroyed lives of crime victims and offenders.

The Founding Fathers had specifically forewarned of the adverse effects of excluding religious influences from the public arena. (Recall Declaration signer Benjamin Rush, Bill of Rights signer John Adams, and Speaker of the House Robert Winthrop had specifically warned that if the public teaching of the Bible were restricted, crime and violent behavior would escalate.) It is therefore not surprising that there have been measurable societal changes in the wake of the Court’s rulings.

For example, following the Court’s 1962-1963 decisions to exclude basic religious teachings from students, violent crime increased 700 percent, with metal detectors and uniformed police officers becoming a normal part of the student educational experience. In fact, crime so exploded among junior high students that the federal government began separate tracking of murders, assaults, and rapes committed by students ages 10-14 (significantly, none of these categories of statistics existed before the Court’s decisions – that is, these crimes occurred so infrequently that separate monitoring of these problems was unnecessary).

Yet, despite these alarming trends and burgeoning increases in violent crime among students, they still cannot be permitted to see things such as “don’t steal” or “don’t kill” – or even teachings such as the Golden Rule or the Good Samaritan – for they might obey those teachings, and that would not only be unconstitutional but it also might cause them psychological harm! The incongruity of this public policy became apparent to Colorado’s State Board of Education following the frightful school shootings at Columbine. After serious introspection in the wake of that tragedy, the Board issued a letter openly acknowledging: As we seek the why behind this infamous event, we must find answers beyond the easy and obvious. How weapons become used for outlaw purposes is assuredly a relevant issue, yet our society’s real problem is how human behavior sinks to utter and depraved indifference to the sanctity of life. As our country promotes academic literacy, we must promote moral literacy as well. . . . Our tragedy is but the latest – albeit the most terrifying and costly – of a steadily escalating series of schoolhouse horrors that have swept across the nation. The senseless brutality of these calamities clearly reveals that a dangerous subculture of amoral violence has taken hold among many of our youth. . . . . [W]e must remember, respect, and unashamedly take pride in the fact that our schools, like our country, found their origin and draw their strength from the faith-based morality that is at the heart of our national character. Today our schools have become so fearful of affirming one religion or one value over another that they have banished them all. In doing so they have abdicated their historic role in the moral formation of youth and thereby alienated themselves from our people’s deep spiritual sensibilities. To leave this disconnection between society and its schools unaddressed is an open invitation to further divisiveness and decline. For the sake of our children, who are so dependent upon a consistent and unified message from the adult world, we must solve these dilemmas. . . . Perhaps across the ages we can hear the timeless words of Abraham Lincoln, and, applying them to our own circumstance, renew his pledge “that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” With history as our judge, let us go forward together with a strong and active faith.

The letter from the Colorado State Board of Education is simply recognizing the wisdom of the federal law signed by President George Washington on August 7, 1789, stipulating that schools and education systems were indeed the proper means to encourage the “religion, morality, and knowledge” so “necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” Another aspect of behavior directly impacted by the removal of religious principles was morality. Recall that both George Washington and Fisher Ames had warned that neither national morality in general nor student morality in particular could be maintained apart from religious principles. Statistics now verify the accuracy of their warnings.

For example, following the 1962-1963 court-ordered removal of religious principles from students, teenage pregnancies immediately soared over 700 percent, 52 with the United States recording the highest teen pregnancy rates in the industrialized world. 53 Similarly, sexual activity among fifteen year-olds skyrocketed, 54 and sexually transmitted diseases among students ascended to previously unrecorded levels. 55 In fact, virtually every moral measurement kept by federal cabinet-level agencies reflects the same statistical pattern: the removal of religious principles from the public sphere was accompanied by a corresponding decline in public morality.

To help combat the escalating teen pregnancy rates, some schools began to teach abstinence; but opponents of that teaching claimed that pre-marital sexual abstinence was a “religious” teaching and that it thus violated “separation of church and state.” They therefore filed suit in court, where judges agreed with their view and disallowed the teaching of abstinence. The sex education curriculum utilized by the opponents is described as “comprehensive sex-education” and takes an approach in which no morals – no “rights” or “wrongs” – are presented. Instead, students are told all the various possibilities of what can be done sexually in cultures around the world and then encouraged to make their own choices, no matter how extreme or abhorrent (or even illegal under American laws) those sexual behaviors may be. In essence, students are told: “It’s your sexual life – live it as you choose! Do not let anyone tell you what is right or wrong. Do what is sexually pleasurable for you.” With such teachings, it certainly is not surprising that teen pregnancy rates soared – as did the massive economic costs associated with teen mothers. What economic costs? According to recent statistics, eighty percent of teen mothers end up on welfare; half of all long-term welfare recipients started their families as teens; and teen mothers are much more likely to live below the poverty level. Consequently, over $9 billion dollars is spent annually through federal, state, and local welfare and poverty programs to address the economic costs of teen pregnancies. In an attempt to reduce the extremely high teen pregnancy rate and the massive governmental spending that it generates, Congress passed the Adolescent Family Life Act, offering federal grant money to any group that would teach pre-marital sexual abstinence.Not surprisingly, that law, like the previous abstinence measures, was immediately challenged and taken to court, where the lower court held that abstinence was a religious teaching and thus could not be taught to students. That ruling was appealed to the U. S. Supreme Court, where logic seems to be reasserting itself: the Court reversed the lower court decision and held that even though abstinence was a religious teaching, it was nevertheless beneficial for students.

Richard Stockton declared: [I] subscribe to the entire belief of the great and leading doctrines of the Christian religion, . . . [and I exhort] that the course of life held up in the Christian system is calculated for the most complete happiness that can be enjoyed in this mortal state.

Dr. Benjamin Rush succinctly declared: My only hope of salvation is in the infinite transcendent love of God manifested to the world by the death of His Son upon the Cross. Nothing but His blood will wash away my sins [ACTS 22:16]. I rely exclusively upon it. Come, Lord Jesus! Come quickly! [REVELATION 22:20] Consider the words of some of the signers of the Constitution. John Dickinson declared: Rendering thanks to my Creator . . . for my birth in a country enlightened by the Gospel . . . to Him I resign myself, humbly confiding in His goodness and in His mercy through Jesus Christ for the events of eternity.

Gunning Bedford declared: To the triune God – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost – be ascribed all honor and dominion, forevermore – Amen.

Roger Sherman (a signer of both the Declaration and the Constitution) declared:

I believe that there is one only living and true God, existing in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. . . . [and] that at the end of this world there will be a resurrection of the dead and a final judgment of all mankind when the righteous shall be publicly acquitted by Christ the Judge and admitted to everlasting life and glory, and the wicked be sentenced to everlasting punishment.

And John Jay, the original Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court and an author of the Federalist Papers, declared:

Unto Him who is the author and giver of all good, I render sincere and humble thanks for His manifold and unmerited blessings, and especially for our redemption and salvation by His beloved Son. . . . Blessed be His holy name.

These Founding Fathers, and the overwhelming majority of the others, were overt Christians and were not enemies of Christ, nor were they atheists – despite what current sources may claim. To the contrary, God was so important to the Founding Fathers that when they met in Congress for the first time, in September of 1774, they opened with prayer. But apparently it was not a routine, genteel little prayer such as those often prayed at public meetings today. According to the writings of those who were there, that time of prayer in Congress was momentous as well as extended. In fact, John Adams explained that Congress not only prayed but that it also studied four chapters of the Bible – in Congress. That Bible study was so timely, and one chapter in that study had such a profound effect upon the delegates, that John Adams wrote his wife Abigail, telling her: I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on the morning. . . . I must beg you to read that Psalm. . . . [R]ead this letter and the 35th Psalm to [your friends]. Read it to your father.

(Her father was the Rev. William Smith, the pastor of their local church.) Silas Deane said that this time of prayer and Scripture reading in Congress was so powerful that “even Quakers shed tears.” There is no doubt that America has been a successful nation with a stable, successful government because of the foundation on which it was built – a foundation unlike any other nation in the world. In fact, George Washington, in his famous “Farewell Address” of 1796, reminded Americans why our government and its policies were so successful. He declared: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.