
in my humble opinion, by Donn Clarius
This is a controversial topic; America is renowned for its ‘religious liberty,’ and ‘separation of
church and state,’ but Americans have been – oh, let’s be gentle – we’ve been underinformed about
the attitudes of our founders. There were Muslims, and Jews among our early leaders, but
ninety-five percent of our founders were devout Christians; however our founders didn’t want to
impose any religion on anyone.
We know this by studying the letters our founders wrote home to their wives, and family that not
only were they believers in Christ, but they were ‘Christ¬ followers’ 24/7! When i was ten years
old my family traveled from our NYC home to Washington D.C. We sat in on a session of the U.S.
Senate; there was an opening prayer that lasted 25- or 30-seconds; it seemed totally appropriate.
How things have changed over the nearly quarter-millennium; our founders were so religious, the
very first session of congress opened with a prayer, and Bible study that lasted three-and-a-half
hours! Yes – that’s excessive, until you consider what our founders were dealing with.
They faced a crisis of unprecedented magnitude – we were not allowed to make any products from our
own resources; we had to send trees to England to be made into brooms or ploughs; when they arrived
here they were heavily taxed so that the Brits could recover the enormous cost of The French and
Indian War.
If you read the Declaration of Independence [which I’m not recommending you do, by the way] you will
discover that it was not the British, nor Parliament with whom we found fault – it was their king –
our king – George the Third because of his ‘abuse of power.’
During the Revolution our troops lost many battles, but we also won many battles in which we were
hopelessly outnumbered, and out-gunned. When asked how he’d won, our Commander-in-Chief, General
Washington would always give the same answer: ‘I always pray before the fight; i ask for divine
guidance; i always get it.”
One of our founders was Dr. Benjamin Franklin; ‘tho’ an inventor and humorist his occupation was
newspaper publisher. He was amazed at all the miracles that happened during such battles; ev’ry
single miracle favored our cause!
A dozen years later when we realized the Articles of Confederation were inadequate, and we held a
constitutional convention ‘to form a more perfect Union,’ Dr. Franklin reminded his fellow
delegates that we were only a nation as a result of divine intervention; because of his testimony
our constitution is not only godly – it is based on particular verses from the Bible.
As i mentioned in my last article, America’s patriotic songs are actually hymns that praise God.
Consider The Battle-hymn of the Republic for example. The verses that we still sing are clearly the
Christian gospel. There are two verses that we no longer sing – one about Christ’s second coming,
and the other His words to us, perplexed that more of us have not embraced His sacrifice.
In 1892 the U. S. Supreme Court concluded a case that had lasted an unprecedented ten-years years;
it’s been nicknamed ‘The Trinity Case’ – is the
U. S. a ‘Christian nation?’ Their study of our founding documents left much doubt; for example, the
Declaration calls God, “nature’s god,” however they also used unusual language.
Whenever a word is used that represents the divine, it starts with an upper-case letter; the
Declaration states that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain rights …” later it states
that we are guided by “Divine Providence.” The constitution was written “in the year of our Lord
…” Clearly our founders were declaring the influence of an almighty God.
However, they needn’t have gone to all that trouble; the very first document written by our nation
was the peace treaty ending the war with Britain; it was written by our government, and starts with
these words: “In the Name of the most Holy, and undivided Trinity- Amen!” The ‘Trinity’ is a unique
Christian doctrine – one God in three Persons: Father, Son [Jesus] , and the Holy Spirit!