Yes, Uncle Sam was Born a Christian!

Romeo, lacing wit with hope, once said to Juliet, “a rose by any other  name would smell as sweet.”  His suggestion to the fair maiden is that something is what it is no matter what others might want it to be.  The same is true concerning the founding of our nation.

          Once again I heard a politician parroting the mantra of the dismally

misinformed concerning our nations founders.  He said they were seeking to form a secular government.  Well, that doesn’t smell right.  At the same time as the American Revolution there was a country seeking to establish a secular government free of religion–France.  Bungling through a government sanitized of Christianity they ushered in “The Reign of Terror” in which French blood flowed in the streets.

             Montesquieu, a French philosopher, wrote prior to the American Revolution and his thoughts suggest why the revolution in America did not result in a “Reign of Terror” like that in France.  This is part of what Montesquieu had to say in “Spirit of the Laws” written in 1748: “The Christian religion is a stranger to mere despotic power.  The mildness so frequently recommended in the Gospel, is incompatible with the despotic rage with which a prince punishes his subjects... we owe to Christianity, in government... benefits which human nature can never sufficiently acknowledge. [Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, Vol. 2, A Donaldson, 1768, pp.146-147].

             A French historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, visited the United States after the Revolutionary War.  Here is a brief quote from his observations concerning the place of religion and freedom within the public square: “Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed.  In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom

pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same

country.” [Alexis de Tocqueville, The Republic of the United States of America and its Political Institutions, Reviewed and Examined, Henry Reeves, translator, Barnes & Co., 1851, Vol.1, p.337.]

           One year after the signing of The Declaration of Independence a request came before congress that it secure more Bibles due to a severe shortage.  Daniel Roberdeau, John Adams, and Jonathan Smith as a committee reported to congress on September 11: “...the use of the Bible is so universal, and its importance so great... your Committee recommend that Congress will order the Committee of Commerce to import 20,000 Bibles from Holland, Scotland, or elsewhere, into the different ports of the States of the Union.” [Journals of... Congress (1907), Vol. 8, p. 734, September 11,1777].  Congress agreed and ordered the Bibles imported.

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