THE CREATOR AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC SQUARE
(Most of this article is taken from the book “Rediscovering God in America” by Newt Gingrich featuring the photography of Callista Gingrich. This article is the second of many based on that book) The text in Italics has been inserted by me.The Founding Fathers, from the very birth of the United States, publicly acknowledged God as central to defining America and to securing the blessings of liberty for the new nation. Our first president, George Washington, at his first inauguration on April 30,1789, "put his right hand on the Bible . . . [after taking the oath] adding 'So help me God.' He then bent forward and kissed the Bible before him." In his inaugural address, Washington remarked that: It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe, who presides in the councils of nations, and whose providential aids can supply every human defect, that His benediction may consecrate to the liberties and happiness of the people of the United States a Government instituted by themselves for these essential purposes, and may enable every instrument employed in its administration to execute with success the functions allotted to his charge. . . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. You will join with me, I trust, in thinking that there are none under the influence of which the proceedings of a new and free government can more auspiciously commence. Then in the Thanksgiving Proclamation of October 3,1789, Washington declared, "It is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor." Note that Washington was not only asserting that individuals have obligations before God, but that nations do as well. At this point, the United States government was not yet a year old. That most astute observer of early America, Alexis de Tocqueville, observed in Democracy in America (1835): I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion, for who can read the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This view that religion was an indispensable support of republican government was all encompassing among the founding generation: I dwell on this prospect with every satisfaction which an ardent love for my Country can inspire: since there is no truth more thoroughly established, than that there exists in the economy and course of nature, an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness, between duty and advantage, between the genuine maxims of an honest and magnanimous policy, and the solid rewards of public prosperity and felicity: Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people. — GEORGE WASHINGTON
— First Inaugural Address True religion affords to government its surest support. — GEORGE WASHINGTON
— to the Synod of the Reformed Dutch Church of North America , October 1789 Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. — GEORGE WASHINGTON
— Farewell Address We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. — JOHN ADAMS Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness. —SAMUEL ADAMS The politician who loves liberty sees . . . a gulph [sic] that may swallow up the liberty to which he is devoted. He knows that morality overthrown (and morality must fall without religion) the terrors of despotism can alone curb the impetuous passions of man, and confine him within the bonds of social duty. — ALEXANDER HAMILTON Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore, who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure, which denounces against the wicked, the eternal misery, and insures to the good eternal happiness, are undermining the solid foundations of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. — CHARLES CARROLL Our country should be preserved from the dreadful evil of becoming enemies of the religion of the Gospel, which I have no doubt, but would be the introduction of the dissolution of government and the bonds of civil society. — ELIAS BOUDINOT Religion and Virtue are the only Foundations, not only of Republicanism and of all free Government, but of social felicity under all Governments and in all Combinations of human society. —JOHN ADAMS Reading, reflection, and time have convinced me that the interests of society require the observation of those moral precepts . . . in which all religions agree. — THOMAS JEFFERSON Religion is the only solid Base of morals and Morals are the only possible support of free governments. — GOUVERNEUR MORRIS The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments. —BENJAMIN RUSH For the Founders, it was abundantly clear. Religious liberty and freedom of religious expression would be indispensable supports for our democratic traditions of government and our pluralistic society. And so they have, for over two hundred years. It is important to recognize that the benefits of these supports accrue to people of for all people of goodwill, whether religious, agnostic, atheist, or radical secularist. Likewise, the Founders clearly believed that the weakening of these religious supports—such as by the hostile treatment of religion in American public life—threatens to undermine the very republican institutions under which the religious and the non-religious alike find their liberties. It is with this understanding in mind of the beliefs of America's founding generation that it becomes very clear why our national leaders have consistently invoked the protection of divine Providence in times of great national strife. It didn't happen for the first time in 1954 when the Congress added the words "under God" to the Pledge. On July 2, 1776, as the Continental Congress was meeting in Philadelphia to declare independence, George Washington was gathering his troops on Long Island to meet the British in battle. Washington wrote in the general orders to his men that day: The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves.... The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. The very same week we were declaring our independence from Great Britain, Washington was asserting that American independence ultimately depended on God. Likewise, Abraham Lincoln, in his Gettysburg Address, remarked that: It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; 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; and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Like Washington before him, Lincoln understood that America's new birth of freedom would require that the nation seek the source of its liberties in the same place it had prior to the Civil War—under God. In the ongoing effort to reject the founding generation's vision for religious liberty by removing any form of religious expression from American public life, the courts and the classroom are the two principal places at the center of this fight. These are the two arenas in which the secular Left has imposed change against the wishes of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Yet if we insist on courts that follow the facts of American history in interpreting the Constitution, we will reestablish the right of every American to publicly acknowledge our Creator as the source of our rights, our well being, and our wisdom. And if we insist on patriotic education both for our children and for new immigrants, we will preserve the "mystic chords of memory" that have made America the most exceptional nation in history. In the National Archives you will find the original Declaration of Independence. It is in this document that you will find the immortal phrase declaring that we "are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." This was the beginning of our independence as a free people. Note: For additional quotes by our Founding Fathers, go to the beginning of this blog. Ray R Barmore
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