“It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post after his first assassination attempt. “We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness.”
America was founded as a Christian nation. The Constitution states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The Supreme Court in the 1971 Lemon case proffered the “Lemon” test: The government can assist religion only if the primary purpose of the assistance is secular, the assistance neither promotes nor inhibits religion, and there is no excessive entanglement between church and state.
Our founding document is replete with religious references. We’re told that its author, Thomas Jefferson, was a deist. That’s someone who believes God exists and created all of us but is no longer involved in human affairs. Deists also do not subscribe to the view that Christ is a deity. Deist or non-theistic, Jefferson alternated between belief in Christianity and deism in his personal life, but he did not doubt that there was a God and that He would again play a role in our lives. “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: His justice cannot sleep forever,” he wrote.
The document Jefferson is best known for, the Declaration of Independence, makes it abundantly clear what convinced the founding fathers that they had the right to break with England. The declaration begins by saying that “all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” King George compelled the colonists to revolt because he had violated the laws of nature and nature’s God.
The declaration ends with its signatories appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for guidance and expressing firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence. Jefferson had complex religious views but understood the importance of starting our new nation with a firm spiritual foundation. “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that our liberties are the gift of God?” he wrote.
Some historians have also told us that Benjamin Franklin was a dashing fellow and a non-Christian during the revolution. This is the same Franklin who, in 1787, told the Constitutional Convention of Philadelphia that each of their sessions should be opened with prayers. He thought that only God’s spirit would help the delegates agree. “In the beginnings of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger,” he told his fellow delegates, “We had daily prayers in this room for divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of superintending Providence in our favor. And have we now forgotten this powerful friend? Or do we no longer need His assistance?”
The debate over whether America was founded as a religious nation is not academic. The great Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn once wrote, “To destroy a people, you must first sever their roots.” Those who would undermine America and turn it into an egalitarian utopia know that they have to first chip away at Americans’ faith, at their very spiritual foundations. They will try to convince people to replace their faith in God with the belief in alphabet soup agencies, faceless bureaucrats, and government giveaways.
But man is a spiritual being. If his faith in God is destroyed, the void will be filled with something else. Throughout history, that substitute for faith has been a belief in a man-made god called the state. Untold crimes have been committed in its name, Hitler and Stalin being the most recent bloody examples.
The separation of church and state in our Constitution is not there to protect Americans from religion. It is there to protect Americans and the Church from the government. But in their desire to promote their secular humanist philosophy using the power of government, many liberals today want to alter America’s heritage and remove religion from its history.
Progressives expressed a desire not to safeguard denominational neutrality by the state but to eradicate every vestige of religion from our institutions. Liberals didn’t always believe that. William O. Douglas, one of the most liberal justices to ever sit on the Supreme Court, once wrote that we are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being. It’s time we reminded ourselves and our children of that and returned religion to its honored place in the life of this nation.
Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., eloquently said, “If you didn’t believe in miracles before, you better be believing right now. Thank God Almighty that we live in a country that still believes in the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, the Alpha and the Omega. Our God still saves. He still delivers, and he still sets free. Because the devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle. But an American lion got back up on his feet.”
Many religious leaders may scoff, but we may be at the brink of an American religious revival, a renaissance of faith? If so, it is even more amazing that Donald J. Trump ushered it in with his obsession with Making America Great Again.
1 comment
Amen and again I say, Amen. The democrat/lib/traitors would all have us bowing before them as gods. I’m reminded of the scene in Harry Potter when Voldemort declares, “Harry Potter is dead! From now on you must put you faith in me.” Of course Harry was not dead and it was Voldemort who died. Thus ends all those who would deny Him as the source of all justice and mercy.