The following is a post I made recently on face book regarding why the phrase: "One Nation Under God" and "In God We Trust" and my premise was that these statements do not infringe on the rights of any human being regardless of religious theological view, or philosophical view, nor does it infringe on atheists who say they do not hold any belief in a higher power. The matter under discussion, revolves around the concept of what do you put your faith in versus a belief system revolving around theology or philosophy. This is ultimately about natural rights of our Creator versus rights bestowed by human law.
The First Amendment's Establishment Clause does not “separate” government from faith; it separates government from theology or philosophies of life.
The phrase "separation of church and state" is not found in the language of the First Amendment and it’s Establishment Clause. Rather the clause is designed to clearly prevent establishing a national church or a theological position of a particular view of God and this includes any kind of philosophical view of life including the atheist view. These are matters of conscience and belief. All mankind have faith in something and what this rationale is that humans are born with natural rights regardless of whether a man believes life evolved or just happened, or whether life began with creation of Adam in the Garden of Eden. Man has faith in himself or the Bible, the Koran, or the writings of Budha, etc. It’s all faith.
These phrases were placed on our national monuments, in our Constitutional documents, and on our currency by men who were both Christian, Deists, Agnostic, Atheist .... namely Jefferson a Deist, and Franklin who was most likely an atheist. There were many learned non-religious men involved in the forming of our government who were agreeable to the addition of these phrases. Why?
This is about Natural Law straight out ... which these men fully understood. Let me try to explain through this post:
Consider this, America has not nor have we ever been a nation of atheists and that while the minorities are represented and have their natural rights secured along with the majority, it is the majority that rules how the Constitution will be worded. The Constitution was ratified by the votes of a majority. That said, is it’s language discriminating against the small minority of secularist, atheists, and humanists who do not hold to a religious view point?
On the contrary, it is this language “One nation under God” that guarantees every citizen of every philosophic view that their natural rights will be forever protected. Without this language, there is no guarantee.
There is a very important reason our Founding Fathers included these phrases and also amended the Constitution to clarify their position with the Establishment Clause in the First Amendment. No doubt driven language driven probably by non-Christians statement of the time. However, note that there in no specific wording "separation of church and state" in this amendment. That phrase has been added over time and has become CONVENTIONAL WISDOM which is used to declare that we are NOT one nation under God but separated from God. If you think I am wrong, prove me wrong. Go read it for yourself.
The Establishment Clause prevented any religious denomination or sect … a certain theology or philosophy … from ever being established as America's national religion or philosophical view of life, therefore, preventing the teaching of a particular brand of theology or philosophy of life. In doing so the Founders prevented the creation of any specific government church or government view point that should be a matter of personal conscience and is improvable one way or the other. No one can prove there is a God or disprove there is no god. This is brilliant. This move keeps theology of any religious stripe or a philosophy of life from being dictated and imposed upon American citizens. Rather every citizen decides these things according to their own conscience. However, that Amendment did not deny nor did they ever separate this nation from FAITH IN GOD ... or faith in a god.
Faith in God or faith in a god concerns a belief system or philosophy of life and that is why Jefferson and others wrote extensively about natural rights of men. They included resoundingly these phrases such as ... IN GOD WE TRUST, and ONE NATION UNDER GOD in our documents of governance and then engraved the motto everywhere on this our currency and coins, and continued to chisel into stone these mottos all over Washington DC into the stones of our monuments and in our anthems.
This is why. Having a simple FAITH is vastly different from being a Catholic, a Baptist, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a New Age wacko who bows down to magic rocks, or even a Satanist witch bowing down to worship the black magic of Lucifer, or atheists who bow down to themselves and worship man himself thus making himself his own god. Like the Greeks did. All of mankind has faith in something.
Very smart men...weren't they? So if it is in God you trust or if it is in a god you trust or yourself you trust in there is a guarantee extended to by your which is your natural right.
Let me explain.
For example, if your god is yourself, and you think you know all things and the meaning of life and there is no other power higher than yourself according to your conscience and that creation evolved all by itself, and you have decided mankind holds all the answers to the meaning of life, you are quite free to pursue that philosophy freely in the United States of America. Find others who believe as you do, organize and go vote for your favorite atheist or humanist candidate. Maybe you can persuade one day the majority to your way of thinking. That is your natural right.
In my view, people who do that have just made for themselves their own idol... namely man … themselves. That is who they have faith in. Man will have faith in something. Some have faith in science, education, philosophy and so on; other have faith in the what the Bible says or some other sacred text. Yet, no person has the right to impose his brand of philosophy or religious view on another. There is the problem.
The Founding Fathers understood this concept.
Mankind is flawed. This also is a recognized fact. The Bible tells Christian believers and the Jew this truth; history also records this truth to the atheists and secularists. Can anyone say there is a perfect man without flaws? Can you honestly say mankind has improved the human character and over come his flaws? Power, wealth, envy, and covetousness corrupts and men resist it yet few overcome these temptations especially in governance. Would you agree?
THEREFORE, it was essential to get the nation to agree that there are certain natural rights that are given by our Creator that are inalienable. That means a right that no man can take away from another other man; further, no man can endow or give another person that right. It is these "inalienable rights that only God" can give or take away. Man is born with certain rights that only God has the authority to give or deny it to humans. God has that authority because he created all of us in His own image...they are Natural Rights.
Now this is an important principle for a group of people to agree upon because it guarantees human beings in America that they have an uncontested RIGHT TO LIFE, an uncontested RIGHT TO LIBERTY i.e. personal freedom, and AN uncontested RIGHT TO PURSUIT HAPPINESS....but that is UNDER GOD not under man or a government. Agreeing to these Natural Rights is the guarantee because it rests outside of man or government authority. Your rights can never be revoked by government or any man.
In this way all citizens are given a guarantee of these rights under our laws which are then fully enumerated in our Constitution, accepted by a majority of God fearing and non-god fearing individuals. All laws are judged against the Bill of Rights and that is why the Supreme Court Justices are so important...that is their job....they don't create law, they judge it but these natural rights stand.
Right now Obama Care demands that you buy something. Your personal liberty is now in jeopardy ... and that is the uproar. Simple. The government has no right to force you to buy something.
Now, on this subject, if you think differently, you, in my opinion, are not a student of the writings of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and the original founding documents.
Do you think they ever envisioned a monster of a proletariat government that is now in place? They knew that states rights were essential for dispersing power and de-centralizing it .... and so the Federalist Papers were written to clarify that and they also knew that there had to be a way to fix any problem they might not have foreseen with the Amendment processes but they divided the power to do so among the three judicial branches to make it extremely difficult and cumbersome to change anything and as any student of civics knows, this Constitution has held without further need of Amendment all these years except ... as the Fathers saw on women's rights and slavery issues.
It is brilliant thinking ... and it has worked pretty well for 200 years. It still reflects the majority position of this nation for over 95% of the population profess to be Judeo-Christian or other faiths and sects leaving a tiny few atheists who declare, in my view to be their own god ..... who say they have no faith in anything but themselves.
Atheist view is a silly notion in my view....but then I'm a Christian...I would think that.
THEN FROM THE OPPOSITIONS WHO WROTE:
I am a student of American history and government. The founders -- in religious terms at least -- were as diverse a group as our leaders today and perhaps as diverse as we ourselves.
Among them, were John Adams and Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration) who were deists and not Christians, George Washington whom I believe was Christian as were many of his peers, Ben Franklin who was either agnostic or atheist, and Thomas Paine who was an avowed atheist. Our nation is strong so long as we realize it is made up of all of us working together as one.
Historically and philosophically, it is of a movement that grew out of the European Enlightenment which came up with the novel idea that people should rule themselves and that nobody should be able to dictate their private belief or unbelief.
MY ANSWER: Ha, ha, ha. ....David ... did you not read all of the rationale I posted (ABOVE)? Yes, you are exactly right and my friend ... I think you are making my point nicely .... ( Maybe I lack clarity....ha.)
The fact that Jefferson and Franklin and many others at that time...back then supported "In God We Trust" and "One Nation Under God" language is significant ... and the mention of "Our Creator" and so forth apparently satisfied their views .... making my point precisely. They did not see that including those phrases to be any sort of a threat to their own atheistic or deist views at all. Ever wonder why?
Study "Natural Rights."
I hope all those who agree with my post will cast their votes for a return to common sense governance November 2nd .... all those who hold to America's core beliefs as found in the Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as the Federalist Papers, strengthening State's Rights and holding to the wonderful ideas of governance of our Founding Fathers.
So it is "In God I Trust" in my heart ... as I go to the polls and vote in a few days. Character is everything...we'll see if we still have knowledgeable people left in this nation. Move the power back to the center.
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9 comments:
While disagreeing with much of what you conclude, I applaud your thoughtfulness and research. I think, though, your reasoning slips in a few respects.
1. Separation of Church and State
The phrase “separation of church and state” is but a metaphor to describe the underlying principle of the First Amendment and the no-religious-test clause of the Constitution. That the phrase does not appear in the text of the Constitution assumes much importance, it seems, only to those who may have once labored under the misimpression it was there and, upon learning they were mistaken, reckon they've discovered the smoking gun solving a Constitutional mystery. To those familiar with the Constitution, the absence of the metaphor commonly used to describe one of its principles is no more consequential than the absence of other phrases (e.g., Bill of Rights, separation of powers, checks and balances, fair trial, religious liberty) used to describe other undoubted Constitutional principles.
Some try to pass off the Supreme Court’s decision in Everson v. Board of Education as simply a misreading of Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists–as if that is the only basis of the Court’s decision. Instructive as that letter is, it played but a small part in the Court’s decision. Perhaps even more than Jefferson, James Madison influenced the Court’s view. Madison, who had a central role in drafting the Constitution and the First Amendment, confirmed that he understood them to “[s]trongly guard[] . . . the separation between Religion and Government.” Madison, Detached Memoranda (~1820). He made plain, too, that they guarded against more than just laws creating state sponsored churches or imposing a state religion. Mindful that even as new principles are proclaimed, old habits die hard and citizens and politicians could tend to entangle government and religion (e.g., “the appointment of chaplains to the two houses of Congress” and “for the army and navy” and “[r]eligious proclamations by the Executive recommending thanksgivings and fasts”), he considered the question whether these actions were “consistent with the Constitution, and with the pure principle of religious freedom” and responded: “In strictness the answer on both points must be in the negative. The Constitution of the United States forbids everything like an establishment of a national religion.”
The First Amendment embodies the simple, just idea that each of us should be free to exercise his or her religious views without expecting that the government will endorse or promote those views and without fearing that the government will endorse or promote the religious views of others. By keeping government and religion separate, the establishment clause serves to protect the freedom of all to exercise their religion. Reasonable people may differ, of course, on how these principles should be applied in particular situations, but the principles are hardly to be doubted. Moreover, they are good, sound principles that should be nurtured and defended, not attacked. Efforts to undercut our secular government by somehow merging or infusing it with religion should be resisted by every patriot.
Wake Forest University recently published a short, objective Q&A primer on the current law of separation of church and state–as applied by the courts rather than as caricatured in the blogosphere. I commend it to you. http://tiny.cc/6nnnx
2. Natural Rights
In noting that the Declaration of Independence refers to "the laws of nature and nature's God," you open the door to a sizeable subject (see, e.g., http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rights). The question of the origin and nature of human rights is fascinating. It is, at bottom, a philosophical question, but it also has legal and thus practical aspects. In this respect, it bears noting that the concept of natural rights is not necessarily dependent on a belief in god(s); some philosophers ground the concept in such a belief, and some don't.
I agree with you that the religious and philosophical views of the founding generation necessarily underlie and, at least in some sense, are reflected by the laws enacted by the government they founded, which is hardly surprising given its republican nature. That said, I would stop short of claiming there is a legal connection between our government and the philosophical view that human rights are god given. To the extent any such claim seeks to "establish" some form of theism as an inherent aspect of our government, it is antithetical to the constitutional principle of separation of religion and state.
While some draw meaning from the reference to "Nature's God" and "Creator" in the Declaration of Independence and try to connect that meaning to the Constitution, the effort, I think, is baseless. Apart from the fact that these references could mean any number of things (some at odds with the Christian idea of God), there is no "legal" connection or effect between the two documents. Important as the Declaration is in our history, it did not operate to bring about independence, nor did it found a government. The colonists issued the Declaration not to effect their independence, but rather to explain and justify the move to independence that was already well underway. Nothing in the Constitution depends on anything said in the Declaration. Nor does anything said in the Declaration purport to limit or define the government later formed by the free people of the former colonies; nor could it even if it purported to do so. Once independent, the people of the former colonies could choose whatever form of government they deemed appropriate. They were not somehow limited by anything said in the Declaration. Sure, they could take it as inspiration and guidance if, and to the extent, they chose--or they could not. They could have formed a theocracy if they wished--or, as they ultimately chose, a secular government founded on the power of the people (not a deity) by a Constitution that says nothing substantive of god(s) or religion except in the First Amendment where the point is to confirm that each person enjoys religious liberty and that the government is not to take steps to establish religion and another provision precluding any religious test for public office. The founders refrained from any expression in the Constitution even remotely suggesting that the government is somehow connected to or predicated on any religious belief. Given the norms of the day, that was quite a remarkable and controversial and plainly intentional choice.
3. Affirmation of God(s) in the National Motto and Pledge of Allegiance
The government's inscription of the phrase "In God we trust" on coins and currency, as well as its addition of the words "under God" to the pledge of allegiance in 1954 and adoption of the phrase "In God we trust" as a national motto in 1956, were mistakes, which should be corrected. Under our Constitution, the government has no business proclaiming that "we trust" "In God." Some of us do, and some of us don't; each of us enjoys the freedom to make that choice; the government does not and should not purport to speak for us in this regard. Nor does the government have any business calling on its citizens to voice affirmation of a god in any circumstances, let alone in the very pledge the government prescribes for affirming allegiance to the country. The unnecessary insertion of an affirmation of a god in the pledge puts atheists and other nonbelievers in a Catch 22: Either recite the pledge with rank hypocrisy or accept exclusion from one of the basic rituals of citizenship enjoyed by all other citizens. The government has no business forcing citizens to this choice on religious grounds, and it certainly has no business assembling citizens' children in public schools and prescribing their recitation of the pledge--affirmation of a god and all--as a daily routine.
But that's just me talking. The courts, on the other hand, have sometimes found ways to excuse such things, for instance with the explanation that they are more about acknowledging tradition than promoting religion per se. Draining the government's nominally religious statements or actions of religious meaning (or at least purporting to do so) and discounting them as non-religious ritual--sometimes dubbed "ceremonial deism"--is one way the courts have sometimes found them not to conflict with the First Amendment. Ordinary folks, though, commonly see things quite differently; when most read "[i]n God we trust," they think the Government is actually declaring that "we" as a people actually "trust" the actual "God" they believe in. If they truly understood it as merely a ritualistic phrase devoid of religious meaning, they would hardly get as exercised as they do about proposals to drop it. As you can imagine, those more interested in championing their religion than the constitutional principle of separation of church and state sometimes seek to exploit and expand such "exceptions" even if it requires they fake interest only in tradition.
Doug,
Actually you have your history a bit wrong...but you miss my two important points. "Under God" guarantees freedom of conscience for all mankind because there in no higher authority than God. That is why we swear on a Bible to the truth in a court of Law.
Maybe you need to study some theology.
Rights established by our Creator guarantees our inherent human rights FOR ALL OF MANKIND -- believer or non-believer. i.e. Natural Law...an inheritance, endowment. Again, study theology and the Law. Without God's guarantee there is no assurance to any human being for there is no higher authority than our Creator. My first point. Don't know how to make it any clearer.
(God is immutable and cannot change; man cannot ...not change. There is no permanence with man ... he is ever changing, evolving. Science changes, religions change, philosophies change, education changes etc... only God is immutable. Unchanging. If God gives you your rights it is impossible to ever lose them. If man or government gives you a right it is guaranteed you will lose them in time. This is really hard to explain.)
My second point is ... American has not nor has it ever been a nation of atheists.
I'll post more in the next comment...continued...
Let's take a tour of Washington DC...and just see.
Throughout the Capitol Building, there are references to God and faith. In the Cox Corridor a line from America the Beautiful is carved in the wall: America! God shed His grace on thee, and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea!
In the House of Representatives chamber is the inscription, In God We Trust. Also in the House chamber, above the Gallery door, stands a marble relief of Moses, the greatest of the twenty-three law-givers (and the only one full-faced).
At the east entrance to the Senate chamber are the words Annuit Coeptis which is Latin for God has favored our undertakings. The words In God We Trust are also written over the southern entrance.
In the Capitol's Chapel is a stained glass window depicting George Washington in prayer under the inscription In God We Trust.
Also, a prayer is inscribed in the window which says, Preserve me, God, for in Thee do I put my trust.
Continued....
The Washington Monument
The tallest monument in Washington, DC, is the Washington Monument. From the base of the monument to its aluminum capstone are numerous references to God. This is fitting since George Washington was a religious man. When he took the oath of office on April 30, 1789, he asked that the Bible be opened to Deuteronomy 28. After the oath, Washington added, So help me God and bent forward and kissed the Bible before him.
Construction of the Washington Monument began in 1848, but by 1854 the Washington National Monument Society was out of money and construction stopped for many years.
In 1876, Congress appropriated money for the completion of the monument which took place in 1884. In a ceremony on December 6, the aluminum capstone was placed atop the monument. The east side of the capstone has the Latin phrase Laus Deo, which means Praise be to God.
The cornerstone of the Washington Monument includes a Holy Bible, which was a gift from the Bible Society. Along with it are copies of the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
If you walk inside the monument you will see a memorial plaque from the Free Press Methodist-Episcopal Church.
On the twelfth landing you will see a prayer offered by the city of Baltimore.
On the twentieth landing you will see a memorial offered by Chinese Christians.
There is also a presentation made by Sunday school children from New York and Philadelphia on the twenty-fourth landing.
The monument is full of carved tribute blocks that say: Holiness to the Lord; Search the Scriptures; The memory of the just is blessed; May Heaven to this union continue its beneficence; In God We Trust; and Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
So what was George Washington's faith?
Historians have long debated the extent of his faith. But Michael Novak points out that Washington's own step-granddaughter, Nelly Custis, thought his words and actions were so plain and obvious that she could not understand how anybody failed to see that he had always lived as a serious Christian.
During the first meeting of the Continental Congress in September 1774, George Washington prayed alongside the other delegates. And they recited Psalm 35 together as patriots.
George Washington also proclaimed the first national day of thanksgiving in the United States.
In 1795 he said, When we review the calamities which afflict so many other nations, the present condition of the United States affords much matter of consolation and satisfaction. He therefore called for a day of public thanksgiving and prayer. He said, In such a state of things it is in an especial manner our duty as people, with devout reverence and affectionate gratitude, to acknowledge our many and great obligations to Almighty God and implore Him to continue and confirm the blessings we experience.
The Lincoln Memorial
The idea of a memorial to the sixteenth president had been discussed almost within days after his assassination, but lack of finances proved to be a major factor. Finally, Congress allocated funds for it during the Taft administration. Architect Henry Bacon wanted to model it after the Greek Parthenon, and work on it was completed in 1922.
Lincolns speeches are displayed within the memorial. On the left side is the Gettysburg Address (only 267 words long). He said, We here highly resolved that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.
On the right side is Lincolns second inaugural address (only 703 words long). It mentions God fourteen times and quotes the Bible twice. He reflected on the fact that the Civil War was not controlled by man, but by God. He noted that each side looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God; and each invokes his aid against the other.
He concludes with a lament over the destruction caused by the Civil War, and appeals to charity in healing the wounds of the war. With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
At a White House dinner during the war, a clergyman gave the benediction and closed with the statement that The Lord is on the Unions side. Abraham Lincoln responded: I am not at all concerned about that, for I know that the Lord is always on the side of the right. But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lords side.
Continued....
I have much much more to post but I have made the point....to show that it is a contemporay view that denies the very core nature of this nation...we are a nation of Faith.
What has been stricken down is the establishment of a theological view of God or a humanist secular view of life ... both of which would endanger the natural inherited right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That is my essential point.
As a person of faith who believes in the existence of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit ... I also believe that we as a nation have been blessed ... have become the greatest civilization in history for a reason ... directly due to those blessings from God Almighty ... and I know this nation can also come under the heavy hand of judgment from the same hand of blessedness...the hand of God will administer both justly.
It is a sobering thought...that this nation has to some degree lost her awesome fear of God's Power.
Hebrew 10:30 "For we know him that hath said, Vengeance [belongeth] unto me, I will recompense, saith the Lord. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. [It is] a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God."
Doug,
I am so happy you posted and I really need to copy your posted comments and just take each of the point by point, one by one to really give a studied rebuttal for or against your position.
You and I lack brevity...ha...and I have to watch my time on the computer. I would like to just restate this point one more time.
On your statement regarding "separation of church and state." however, I reiterate, that phrase is not in the Amendment nor is is it in the Establishment clause nor did the framers INTEND to make the government and society a purely secularist state.
You have interpreted it wrongly in my view and the view of countless other scholars...for this is merely conventional wisdom coming from a bias.
What the amendment does is to not allow ANY theological view of God to be established or ANY secularist view of philosophy of life.
This amendment does not deny the importance of recognizing that we are a nation of faith based people; not a nation of atheists. This view (coming from discussions of Natural Law) actually safeguards the right of ALL men and has for two centuries nicely.
To a RELIGIOUS God fearing person there is none higher than God and if these rights are given by God then no religious person will deny a non-religious person their life, their liberty or the right to pursue happiness as they see fit. It holds religious people at bay. People like myself cannot dictate to another person ... they must follow their own conscience even if a disagree ... they are free to believe what they want to believe. UNDERSTAND?
That is why Sharia Muslim Law will never be imposed on Americans, or any philosophy may be imposed on Americans against their will...nor will an atheist be able impose his secularism upon people of faith.
I just don't know how to explain this any better. Makes perfect sense to me and I believe when you study a bit more you'll see that this view truly protects all people of all stripes.
Golly this has been fun.
Thanks for posting Doug...I'm might comment further but I really need to get back to my easel. Again. Thanks for taking the time to post.
Wish I were more articulate.
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