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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