David Barton

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness? The mere politician ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail, in exclusion of religious principle. The visible and firm reliance on religious principles which Washington displayed in the Executive Branch was also just as visible in the practices of the Judicial Branch. In the original Supreme Court, each Justice was assigned responsibilities over a specific geographic region.

Although that practice still continues today, those early Justices, unlike today’s Justices, traveled to the different geographic locations across the country to impanel grand juries to hear cases rather than requiring all parties to travel to the federal capital. Chancellor James Kent considered one of the two Fathers of American Jurisprudence observed that this was a practice with Biblical precedent: The Jewish judges rode the circuits, and Samuel judged Israel all the days of his life, and he went from year to year in circuit, to Bethel and Gilgal and Mizpeh, and judged Israel in all those places I SAMUEL 7:15-16.

In preparation for these visits, local officials would correspond with the Supreme Court Justices to ensure that all necessary arrangements had been made prior to their arrival. For example, on February 24, 1790, Richard Law of New London, Connecticut, inquired of Chief Justice John Jay which of the Judges are to ride the eastern circuit and whether they would wish to give any directions relative to the preparation for their reception in point of parade, accommodations or the like, whether any uniformity particularly formalities of dress i.e., manner of judicial robe is expectable, whether they would wish to have a clergyman attend. Chief Justice Jay responded:

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The Congress desirous to have people of all ranks and degrees duly impressed with a solemn sense of God’s superintending providence, and of their duty devoutly to rely on His aid and direction do earnestly recommend a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer; that we may with united hearts confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions and, by a sincere repentance and amendment of life, and through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, obtain His pardon and forgiveness.

With all channels of reconciliation exhausted, on July 2, 1776, Congress approved in principle a separation from Great Britain. Two days later, July 4, 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. At this stage, it was signed only by John Hancock, President of Congress, and Charles Thomson, it’s Secretary.

The fifty-six leaders who approved the separation from Great Britain realized that their struggle against the much superior British military could not be won solely through their own efforts. Thus, in their Declaration of Independence they openly acknowledged the Source of help on whom they would rely: “the laws of nature and of nature’s God”; “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”; “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World, for the rectitude of our intentions.” Then, in the last line of that document, those Patriots announced: For the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. The Declaration of Independence was actually a dual declaration: a Declaration of Independence from Britain and a Declaration of Dependence on God.

This act preserved a lesson for future generations. As explained by signer of the Declaration Benjamin Rush: I sat next to John Adams in Congress, and upon my whispering to him and asking him if he thought we should succeed in our struggle with Great Britain, he answered me, “Yes if we fear God and repent of our sins.” his anecdote will, I hope, teach my boys that it is not necessary to disbelieve Christianity or to renounce morality in order to arrive at the highest political usefulness or fame. The day after the separation from Great Britain was approved; John Adams wrote Abigail two letters. The first was short and concise, jubilant that the separation had come; 93 the second was much longer and more pensive. In it, Adams cautiously noted: This day will be the most memorable epoch a in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival.

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It was not uncommon for subsequent American literacy laws to stress the need to know the Scriptures. For example, the 1690 Connecticut law declared: This legislature observing that there are many persons unable to read the English tongue and thereby incapable to read the holy Word of God or the good laws of this colony it is ordered that all parents and masters shall cause their respective children and servants, as they are capable, to be taught to read distinctly the English tongue.

The concern that caused this educational law to be passed was that many were illiterate and thereby “incapable to read the holy Word of God” The inseparability of Christianity from education, whether public or private, was evident at every level of American education. For example, the 1636 rules of Harvard declared: Let every student be plainly instructed and earnestly pressed to consider well the main end of his life and studies is to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life JOHN 17:3 and therefore to lay Christ in the bottom as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning. And seeing the Lord only giveth wisdom let everyone seriously set him by prayer in secret to seek it of Him PROVERBS 2:3.

Every one shall so exercise himself in reading the Scriptures twice a day that he shall be ready to give such an account of his proficiency therein. Those Harvard requirements changed little over subsequent years. For example, the 1790 rules required: All persons of what degree forever residing at the College, and all undergraduates shall constantly and seasonably attend the worship of God in the chapel, morning and evening.

All the scholars shall, at sunset in the evening preceding the Lord’s Day, lay aside all their diversions and. it is enjoined upon every scholar carefully to apply himself to the duties of religion on said day. So firmly was Harvard dedicated to this goal that its two mottos were “For the Glory of Christ” and “For Christ and the Church?” This school and its philosophy produced signers John Adams, John Hancock, Elbridge Gerry, John Pickering, William Williams, Rufus King, William Hooper, William Ellery, Samuel Adams, Robert Treat Paine, and numerous other illustrious Founders.

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It was doubted whether M’Creery’s estate could legally be left to an alien unless it could be proven that he had become a citizen of the United States before his death. The case was settled when a certificate was produced showing that he had indeed become a naturalized American citizen through an oath taken before Judge Samuel Chase. Chase not only was a signer of the Declaration of Independence but was also nominated by President George Washington as a Justice for the United States Supreme Court.

Below is an excerpt from the document Chase executed in the naturalization of M’Creery; notice especially the requirement for naturalization: I, Samuel Chase, Chief Judge of the State of Maryland, do hereby certify all whom it may concern that personally appeared before me Thomas M’Creery and did repeat and subscribe a declaration of his belief in the Christian Religion and take the oath required by the Act of Assembly of this State entitled “An Act for Naturalization.”  Runkel v. Winemiller, 1799 Supreme Court of Maryland

This case involved a conflict between a minister of a German Reformed Christian Church and the church from which he had been dismissed. The Judge who delivered the ruling noted that the court’s decision had been unanimous. What was it upon which all the Judges concurred? Religion is of general and public concern and on its support depends, in great measure, the peace and good order of government, the safety and happiness of the people. By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed upon the same equal footing and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.

The Commonwealth v. Sharpless, 1815 Supreme Court of Pennsylvania. This case, and two following it, deal with “morality;” and although many today assert that “you can’t legislate morality,” such charges are utter nonsense. Every law that exists is the legislation of morality. As signer of the Declaration John Witherspoon explained: Consider all morality in general as conformity to a law. Consequently, it is never a matter of if morality can be legislated, only whose morality will be legislated. The Founders believed the Bible to be the perfect example of moral legislation and the source of what they called “the moral law.” For nearly 150 years, the Courts relied on that moral law as the basis for our civil laws a fact clearly illustrated in the following three cases.

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Therefore what religious privileges we enjoy as a minor part of the State we enjoy as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights. The inclusion of Constitutional protection for the “free exercise of religion” suggested to the Danbury Baptists that the right was government given thus alienable rather than God given hence inalienable, and that therefore the government might someday attempt to regulate religious expression. This was a possibility to which they strenuously objected unless someone’s religious practice caused him, as they explained, to “work ill to his neighbor.” Jefferson understood their concern; it was also his own. He made numerous statements declaring the inability of the government to regulate, restrict, or interfere with religious expression. For example: No power over the freedom of religion is delegated to the United States by the Constitution Kentucky Resolutions, 1798.

In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general federal government Second Inaugural Address, 1805. Our excellent Constitution has not placed our religious rights under the power of any public functionary. Letter To The Methodist Episcopal Church, 1808 I consider the government of the United States as interdicted prohibited by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions or exercises.

Letter To Samuel Miller, 1808 Jefferson believed that the government was to be powerless to interfere with religious expressions for a very simple reason: he had long witnessed the unhealthy tendency of government to encroach upon the free exercise of religious expression. As he explained to Noah Webster: It had become an universal and almost uncontroverted position in the several States that the purposes of society do not require a surrender of all our rights to our ordinary governors and which experience has nevertheless proved they the government will be constantly encroaching on if submitted to them; that there are also certain fences which experience has proved peculiarly efficacious effective against wrong and rarely obstructive of right, which yet the governing powers have ever shown a disposition to weaken and remove. Of the first kind, for instance, is freedom of religion.

Thomas Jefferson had no intention of allowing the government to limit, restrict, regulate, or interfere with public religious practices. He believed, along with the other Founders, that the First Amendment had been enacted only to prevent the federal establishment of a national denomination a fact he made clear in a letter to fellow signer of the Declaration of Independence Benjamin Rush.

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This was the prevalent sentiment across America. In fact, signer of the Declaration Charles Carroll (a Roman Catholic) even declared that the reason that he and many other Founders had entered the Revolution was to ensure that all Christian denominations were placed on an equal footing: To obtain religious as well as civil liberty I entered jealously into the Revolution, and observing the Christian religion divided into many sects, I founded the hope that no one would be so predominant as to become the religion of the State. That hope was thus early entertained, because all of them joined in the same cause, with few exceptions of individuals.

Although this was the tone common among the States, it was not the result of any provision of the federal Constitution. The constitutional prohibition against “an establishment of religion” forbade only the federal establishment of a national denomination.

Earlier generations long understood this, and thus prevented any misapplied enforcements of those constitutional provisions. Notice, for example, Justice Story’s clear articulation: We are not to attribute this [First Amendment] prohibition of a national religious establishment to an indifference to religion in general, and especially to Christianity (which none could hold in more reverence, than the framers of the Constitution. Probably, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, and of the Amendment to it now under consideration, the general, if not the universal, sentiment in America was that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the State. An attempt to level all religions and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference would have created universal disapprobation disapproval if not universal indignation.

Notice, too, the same clear understanding expressed in the 1853-1854 House and Senate Judiciary Committee reports: House Judiciary Committee: What is an establishment of religion? It must have a creed defining what a man must believe; it must have rites and ordinances which believers must observe; it must have ministers of defined qualifications to teach the doctrines and administer the rites; it must have tests for the submissive and penalties for the nonconformist.

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It is unconstitutional to present to students the concept of the Creator which is so openly acknowledged in the Declaration of Independence and numerous other Founding writings. EDWARDS v. AGUILLARD, 1987; FREILER v. TANGIPAHOA PARISH BD. OF EDUC., 1999; SELMAN v. COBB COUNTY, 2005; KITZMILLER v. DOVER AREA SCH. DIST., 2005; HURST v. NEWMAN, 2006

It is unconstitutional for a classroom library to contain books that deal with Christianity, or for a teacher to be seen with his personal copy of the Bible at school. ROBERTS v. MADIGAN, 1990 It is unconstitutional for advertisers who purchase advertising space in school settings to include any religious content in their paid advertisement. DILORETO v. DOWNEY UNIFIED SCH. BD. OF EDUC., 1999; 89 ANDERSON v. MEXICO ACADEMY AND CENTRAL SCH., 2002; 90 OXFORD BAPTIST CHURCH v. CATAWBA COUNTY SCH. BD. OF EDUC., 2004 91

It is unconstitutional for a speaker to deliver a secular message to public schools if that expert is also publicly known to be a Christian even if he is a member of the President’s Drug Task Force. ALEXANDER v. NACOGDOCHES SCH. DIST., 1991; 92 CARPENTER v. DILLON ELEMENTARY SCH. DIST. 10, 2005. It is unconstitutional for a kindergarten class to ask whose birthday is celebrated by Christmas. FLOREY v. SIOUX FALLS SCH. DIST., 1979 94

It is constitutional for public schools to display Jewish and Islamic religious holiday symbols but not Christian ones. SKOROS v. CITY OF NEW YORK, 2006 95 There are hundreds of similar rulings. It is therefore not surprising that an independent poll affirmed that 77 percent of the nation believes that “the courts have gone too far in taking religion out of public life,” and that 59 percent believe that judges have singled out Christianity for attack.

Furthermore, as the latter two rulings suggest, Christmas tends to be an especially restrictive time of year, when many schools completely eliminate or severely censor historic holiday words and traditions. For example: • “Christmas Holiday” is frequently changed to “Winter Holiday” or “Winter Break” to avoid using the word “Christmas,” 97 which is offensive because it contains the word “Christ.”

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In recent years, clashes over religious expressions have been among the most frequent controversies decided by federal courts, with the U. S. Supreme Court having issued numerous rulings on the subject (a previously unprecedented practice in American history). Consequently, a body of nine unelected Justices now exercises more control over how, when, where, or if public religious activities will occur than any other entity in America. In fact, one Justice describes the Court as “a national theology board.”

The modern Court largely amassed its control over religion first by discarding the traditional limitations of the religion clauses of the First Amendment, and then by adopting the phrase “separation of church and state” as the modern measuring stick for judging the propriety of a challenged religious expression. By imputing a non-historic meaning to this celebrated historic phrase, the modern Court began declaring unconstitutional many long-standing religious practices and expressions.

The subsequent overzealous application by state and local officials of these court decisions (and of the “separation” phrase in general) produced even greater restrictions. Because of the current widespread coupling of “separation of church and state” with First Amendment controversies, many Americans now believe that the phrase is part of the First Amendment. Yet concerning religion, the First Amendment only states: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

For generations after its ratification, the courts relied solely on the clear and unambiguous wording of the First Amendment; the reliance on the “separation” metaphor is a recent judicial trend. For example, in the Supreme Court’s first 150 years, the separation idiom was invoked by the Court in only two cases; it has since been cited in seemingly countless cases. In fact, in actual cases filed under the First Amendment’s religion clauses in recent decades, the First Amendment was cited by courts in less than three thousand cases while the separation metaphor was cited in over four thousand. Strikingly, in examining First Amendment controversies, courts are more likely to cite the separation metaphor than they are the First Amendment itself.

That metaphor became the contemporary standard for judicial policy in 1947 in Everson v. Board of Education when the Court proclaimed: The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach. 4 Relying on this phrase rather than the First Amendment, courts began striking down religious activities and expressions that had long been constitutional.

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Another interesting anecdote about President Lincoln involved a Mrs. Carolyn Johnson of Philadelphia, the African American president of an organization to help soldiers. Mrs. Johnson, who had been a slave, wanted to make a gift and give it to President Lincoln for what he had done for black Americans. A Quaker friend of hers wrote a letter introducing Mrs. Johnson to President Lincoln, who agreed to meet with her. When Mrs. Johnson went to meet the President, she brought her Baptist minister with her because she was terrified to speak for fear of embarrassing herself. Her minister spoke with the President and then turned to Mrs. Johnson and asked if she had anything to say. According to Mrs. Johnson’s own account:

I had not a word to say and I cast my eyes upon the floor, when the fire began to burn within me and I tell you it was the Spirit. I looked up and said, “Mr. President, I believe God has hewn you out of the rock for this great and mighty purpose; so many have been led away by bribes, by silver, and gold, but you have stood firm because God was with you and He will be with you if you are faithful unto the end.” To which the President replied, “You must give God the praise, and not man.”

Mrs. Johnson then presented President Lincoln a magnificent basket of wax fruit that she personally had made for him. Returning to 1865, while there were numerous celebrations by black Americans and others at the end of the Civil War, even before the war had come to an end, a vote had been held in Congress on the constitutional amendment to abolish slavery the 13th Amendment. Congress passed that Amendment and a poster was quickly issued to honor the 137 members of Congress who had voted to end slavery. At the time of the vote, there were 118 Republicans in Congress and 82 northern Democrats. Of the 118 Republicans, all 118 voted to abolish slavery; of the 82 Democrats, only 19 voted to end slavery only 23 percent of Democrats and those were the northern Democrats!

When the vote was taken in Congress on the 13th Amendment to abolish slavery, the chambers were packed from wall to wall with expectant observers. After the numbers were counted and it was announced that the amendment had passed, a roar erupted from the celebrating the passage of the thirteenth amendment and the end of slavery thousands in the chamber; hats were thrown and voices were raised in exuberant cheers. Congress had voted to end slavery! How something that profound should be celebrated?

Members of the House asked that a sermon be preached to commemorate the event. And whom did they ask to preach the sermon? The Rev. Henry Highland Garnet, who became the first African American to speak in the halls of Congress.

Rev. Garnet preached his sermon on Sunday, February 12, 1865, and it was powerful. His discourse began with a recollection of his own personal experiences: What is slavery? Too well do I know what it is? I was born among the cherished institutions of slavery. My earliest recollections of parents, friends, and the home of my childhood are clouded with its wrongs. The first sight that met my eyes was my Christian mother enslaved. Rev. Henry Garnet Rev. Garnet’s sermon Garnet then reviewed the prominent historical leaders of both church and state who had strongly opposed slavery:

Augustine, Constantine, Ignatius, Polycarp, Maximus, and the most illustrious lights of the ancient church denounced the sin of slaveholding. Thomas Jefferson said – at a period of his life when his judgment was matured and his experience was ripe – “There is preparing, I hope, under the auspices of heaven, a way for a total emancipation.” The sainted Washington said, near the close of his mortal career and when the light of eternity was beaming upon him, “It is among my first wishes to see some plan adopted by which slavery in this country shall be abolished by law. I know of but one way by which this can be done, and that is by legislative action; and so far as my vote can go, it shall not be wanting.” Patrick Henry said, “We should transmit to posterity our abhorrence of slavery.” So also thought this Congress.

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Several other pro slavery laws were also passed by Democrats in Congress, including the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. That law required Northerners to return escaped slaves back into slavery or else pay huge fines. In many instances, the law became little more than an excuse for southern slave hunters to kidnap Free Blacks in the North and carry them into slavery in the South, for if a black was simply accused of being a slave, under the Fugitive Slave Law he was denied the benefit of both a jury trial and the right of habeas corpus despite the fact that those rights had been explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law became little more than a law to sanction kidnapping, whenever a slave-hunter entered a State such as Massachusetts, broadsides were printed to warn black Americans about this threat to their freedom. Such broadsides were published when it was learned that a slave hunter had come north. The anti-slavery States wanted to make sure that every poster were printed to warn blacks about southern kidnappers and slave hunters black American in the North could take cover so they would not be kidnapped and taken to slavery in the South.

Because the Fugitive Slave Law allowed Free Blacks to be carried into slavery, this law was disastrous for blacks in the North; and as a consequence of the atrocious provisions of this Democratic law, some 20,000 blacks in the North left the United States and fled to Canada. In fact, the Underground Railroad reached the height of its activity during this period, helping thousands of slaves escape from slavery in the South all the way out of the United States and into Canada simply to escape the reach of the Democrats’ Fugitive Slave Law.

In 1854, the democratically controlled Congress passed another law strengthening slavery: the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Even though Democrats in Congress had already expanded the federal territories in which slavery was permitted through their passage of the Missouri Compromise, they had retained a ban on slavery in the Kansas-Nebraska territory. But through the Kansas-Nebraska Act, Democrats the Underground Railroad moved thousands of black Americans to safety repealed those earlier restrictions, thus allowing slavery to be introduced into parts of the new territory where it previously had been forbidden, thereby increasing the national area in which slavery would be permitted.

This law led to what was called “bleeding Kansas,” where pro slavery forces came pouring into that previously slave free territory and began fighting violent battles against the anti slavery inhabitants of the territory. The Kansas Nebraska territory covered much of what is now the upper United States Following the passage of these pro-slavery laws in Congress, in May of 1854 a number of the anti-slavery Democrats in Congress along with some anti slavery members from other political parties, including the Whigs, Free Soilers, and Emancipationists formed a new political party to fight slavery and secure equal civil rights for black Americans.

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