President Harry Truman, crusty old Democrat that he was, said the following while he was POTUS: “This is a Christian nation. In this great country of ours has been demonstrated the fundamental unity of Christianity and democracy.” He was correct in the first part, and misleading at the end, since I’m certain that he knew that the U.S. was established as a Constitutional Republic, and purposely NOT as a “democracy”,which our wise Founders, from their Biblical knowledge and their study of history, regarded as one of the WORST forms ofgovernment, and they were correct about that. (Using the word “democracy” in any way to describe our REPUBLIC is semantically misleading at best, labels one as a mal-educated person, and is politically incorrect in the historic use of that term, especially when uttered by those who should know better, or even worse—by those who have subversive and anti-constitutional agendas as their goal!)
Interestingly, for the first 150 or so years of our country’s existence, it was our presidents who spoke out favorably about Christianity and its positive influence on our new nation. They were unabashedly certain that the U.S. was strongly influenced by Christian beliefs, always had been, and always needed to be so influenced. More recent presidents—BOTH of the “New World Order” Bushes, the sleazy progressive Bill Clinton, and especially the Marxist/socialist Comrade Barak Obama, and now Obama’s toady, the nauseous Marxist, Joe Biden, seem to have had a lapse in historical memory regarding the positive role that Christianity and Christians have played in the saga of America. (Not a “perfect” role, of course, because while God’s Word IS perfect—IS infallible--NO Christians are “perfect”— just FORGIVEN—but a significant role, nonetheless!)
For all of the years that the American colonies were under the rule of the British Monarchy and Parliament, it was forbidden for those colonies to print any Bible in the English language. During that time, Bibles were printed in the languages of several Indian tribes and in various European languages, but NOT in English. (The only “English” translations allowed to be imported were those officially ‘authorized’ by the English King). However, within a year of the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783, which officially ended the War of the Revolution, the FIRST English language Bible published in America was printed at the direction of the new Confederated government. Seems to me that our American ancestors valued God’s Word highly, and wanted it spread far and wide, and as quickly as possible, partly to help heal the ravages perpetrated against Christianity and Christian living that our young nation suffered during the tumultuous and violent formative years of 1775 to 1800. Odd that, since we have been beaten over our heads for most of our lives that our nation was founded by “secularists” and “deists” and not by those who valued the teachings of Christianity. But we all know that those who proclaim such error are uneducated at best, or who have agendas of anti-Christian hate in their hearts, at worst.
CHRISTIAN IDIOMS
The dictionary definition of the word, idiom, is: A group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deductible from those of the individual words; (e.g. ‘raining cats and dogs’, ‘kick the bucket’, etc.). God’s Word, our Bible, is said to contain over 250 of those “idioms” that have found their way into the common usage of English-speaking people. Here are a few examples (check them out yourself):
IDIOM - BIBLICAL REFERENCE
- By the skin of your teeth - Job 19:20
- Two cents worth - Mark 12:41-44
- A leopard can’t change its spots - Jeremiah 13:23
- There’s nothing new under the sun - Ecclesiastes 1:9
- Thorn in the flesh - 2nd Corinthians 12:7
- From the cradle to the grave - Job 10:19
- Handwriting on the wall - Daniel 5:5
- Fly in the ointment - Ecclesiastes 10:1
My, how those “secularists” of our early American history used God’s Word to such an extent that the vernacular of Americans was changed. Must have been purely “co-incidental”, of course.
President John Quincy Adams reminded his countrymen in 1848: “With regard to the history contained in the Bible, it is not so much praiseworthy to be acquainted with it as it is SHAMEFUL to be ignorant of it.” My, such politically incorrect “preaching” from a former POTUS. Apparently J.Q. Adams didn’t realize that America was not a Christian nation but a secular one, and that he had no business embarrassing his countrymen over their lack of Biblical knowledge.
Even President Teddy Roosevelt felt compelled to add his “two cents worth” in the early 1900’s, when he observed, “The teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our civic and social life that it would be impossible for us to figure what life would be if these teachings were removed.” Teddy surely was correct about that, but our modern day “progressives” (or as I call them—‘regressives’) would severely castigate him for his non-politically correct and “non-woke” speech.
GOD’S WORD IS IN THE U.S. CONSTITUTION!
Our modern Christian Heritage deniers love to pontificate that there is “no mention of God” or Biblical teaching in our U.S. Constitution. Oh really? If one knows the Bible, one can read the U.S. Federal Constitution of 1787 and discover many Christian/Biblical teachings, which the Framers knew well. For example:
- Article 1 Sec. 8: Uniform Immigration: comes from Leviticus 19:34;
- Article 11 Sec. 1: President must be ‘natural born’: comes from Deuteronomy 17:15;
- Article 111 Sec. 3: About witnesses: comes from Deuteronomy 17:6;
- Article 111 Sec. 3: About ‘attainders’: comes from Ezekiel 18:20
- Separation of Powers: comes from Jeremiah 17:9;
- 3 Branches of Government: comes from Isaiah 33:22;
- Tax exemptions for churches: comes from Ezra 7:24.
- Free market economic system: comes from 1st Timothy 5:8, 2nd Thessalonians 3:10, Matthew 20, Luke 19, Matthew 25;
- Republican form of government: comes from Exodus 18:21, Deuteronomy 1:15, Deuteronomy 16:18.
Look them all up yourself to discover how Biblically literate were our Founders, especially those who directly wrote our Constitution! Plus, of course, the references to “Sunday” and the dating of the Constitution “IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1787…). How easily the secularists and anti-Christians of our time love to deny REALITY! (See Part 2 of this series.)
Without being too “judgmental”, it seems obvious that those people who claim that God and our Christian Bible are “not in the Constitution” are really just Biblically ILLITERATE (or, of course, that they have sinister agendas designed to belittle and defame God’s Word and its affect on our U.S. Constitution)! What these “illiterates” and “defamers” also appear not to know is that by the year 1815, less than 30 years after the “Godless Constitution” was written, there were over 1400 calls to NATIONAL PRAYER AND REPENTENCE BY THE U.S. GOVERNMENT! Doesn’t sound like a “secular government” at that time to me. It’s truly fortunate that our country survived all those years with so much Christian “religious sentiment” being expressed by our “secular” federal government. Perhaps our leaders and our people in those days only “imagined” that they were Christians! Too bad for our earlier generations that they didn’t have the various “Humanist Manifestos”, the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, CNN, MSNBC and the rest of the alphabet media liars, the totally scurrilous and virulently anti-Christian/anti-conservative Southern Poverty Law Center, the far leftwing American Civil Liberties Union, et. al. to teach them how wrong they really were to consider themselves as Christians!
Even the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that the United States was essentially “a Christian Nation”, or at least Associate Justice David Brewer (1837-1910) did in his book: The United States—A Christian Nation, written in 1905, wherein he wrote: “We constantly speak of this republic as a Christian nation in fact, as the leading Christian nation of the world.” He was the Supreme Court Associate Justice who wrote the unanimous opinion in the case “Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States (1892) stating UNANIMOUSLY: “THIS IS A RELIGIOUS PEOPLE…FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THIS CONTINENT TO THE PRESENT HOUR, THERE IS A SINGLE VOICE MAKING THIS AFFIRMATION.” (See the picture at the top of this article.)
A FINAL WARNING
I conclude this series with cautionary advice from Rev. Mathias Burnett who, in 1801, gave the following warning to the legislators of Connecticut:
“To God and your posterity you are accountable for your rights and your rulers. Let not your children have reason to curse you for giving up those rights and prostrating those institutions which your fathers delivered to you.” Reverend Burnett’s good advice was cogent when he first gave it---but even more to the point today!
Does the U.S. have a “Christian Heritage”? I believe that it was born out of God’s Word and does have a heritage that originated from that very Word, even if all of those who founded this nation may not have been true, born-again Christians. That has always been my contention. I’ve not changed, and I never will. Prove me wrong---if you can!
