The Founders and Religion

When I reached 4th grade my teacher handed me and the rest of the students in 4th grade a book on American History. While I do not remember the title or the author of said book I do remember there was an American flag on the cover. I also remember ten Bible versus being read, the Lord's prayer being said, and the Pledge of Allegiance spoken by all students present that day and every day of the school year.

When it came time for history I was a happy student. I loved history. We learned about the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War and how we defeated the British. After the War we covered the Constitution and then went on to the early years of our country. I remember reading about and discussing the Founding Fathers as I went through school and how these were principled men. Their principles were based on their religion and their faith in God.

Somewhere along the way we began to take a different path not the one recommended by those who gave us those two divinely inspired documents that formed our nation. Can I name that time? Yes, I can. It was February 27-28, 1963, when the United States Supreme Court by an 8-1 margin voted to end the policy of reading 10 Bible verses in school. That put America on the slippery slope to becoming a secular nation and took us off the path discovered by the Founders. The case, by the way, was Abington Township School District v. Schempp. To this case was added Murray v. Curlett. The Murray case was brought by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the founder of an atheist organization. Ms. O"Hair, her son, and her granddaughter were brutally murdered in 1995.

The dumbing down of the nation, however, had begun even earlier. In fact you can go back to the early years of the 20th century when we got rid of the McGuffey readers, they taught lessons of morality, and they went to John Dewey's plan for public educaation, the miserable system we have today.

We also began the degrading of the Founders. They were not religious. Men like Jefferson and Washington were really Deists. On top of that, these men were slave holders and even fornicated with their slaves impregnating them. This theme became a primary one during the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s so that we could remove the pictures and names of the Founders from the public square and rename the schools after criminals like Eldridge Clever.

Our Founders gained a great deal of inspiration from Cicero and his writings on the principles of natural law. Cicero believed that Natural Law is true law. "True law is right reason in agreement with nature...." Cicero proclaimed that Natural Law comes from God our creator. It "is the distinction between things just and unjust, made in agreement with that primal and most ancient of all things Nature; and in conformity to Nature's standard are framed those human laws which inflict punishment upon the wicked and protect the good."

It was the studying of Cicero that convinced the Founders that being virtous and morally strong was important when it came to the writing of our founding documents. Benjamin Franklin stated,"Ony a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt or vicious, they have more need of masters." Jefferson pointed out that virtue was something that had to be earned and learned. Virtue was also something that could be lost. Washington said "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."

It is evident that contrary to what has become the popular view of our Founders, they weren't really a religious group and they really believed that there was a "wall of separation" between church and state, that these men believed in people being virtous, moral and principled individuals. Indeed, all of that was necessary to maintain our liberty and economic freedom.

Now we have a president who tells the world that America is not a Christian nation. He tells the rest of the world that like them we are a secular nation. If that, my readers, is indeed true, we will, as the Founders pointed out over and over again, fail and fall and the rest of the world will follow. The reason for the fall and failure is simple. If we fail to believe in something, in this case our greatness, morality and principles, we will fall for anything.