Erroneously???

I had planned this morning to blog about the David Crowder Band but before I started, I noticed this article on USA Today's website and I realized this is something a little more substantial than a band with good music

From USA Today LINK
55% of Americans think founders wanted Christian USA

"Most Americans believe the nation's founders wrote Christianity into the Constitution, and people are less likely to say freedom to worship covers religious groups they consider extreme, a poll out today finds.

The survey measuring attitudes toward freedom of religion, speech and the press found that 55% believe erroneously that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. In the survey, which is conducted annually by the First Amendment Center, a non-partisan educational group, three out of four people who identify themselves as evangelical or Republican believe that the Constitution establishes a Christian nation. About half of Democrats and independents do."

I love how USA Today gives it's opinion that more than half the United States is wrong in their belief. While not specifically spelled out in the Constitution, the idea of having a government not based on God would have been unthinkable to the framers of our Constitution. When the Constitution was written, the only possible explanation for the existence of the Universe was creation by God. The Constitution did not specifically mention God because to the founders it was a given that God created the heavens and the earth. By not adding God the founders were in no way creating a "secular" nation in the modern sense of the term. The concept of "secularism" as it is used today didn't even exist in 1787 when the Constitution was written. It is largely a twentieth-century concept, one that has arisen with the myth of Darwinism and a false belief that science should be our guild in the world rather than the Bible.

"Half of Americans say teachers should be allowed to use the Bible as a factual text in history class. Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, says the Constitution "clearly established a secular nation where people of all faiths or no faith are protected to practice their religion or no religion without governmental interference.""

I agree with Mr. Haynes that the Constitution gives freedom to people to practice whatever religion or none at all as they so desire. But as mentioned above, at the time of our Constitution the United States was a God fearing Christian Nation. The first reading textbook of that time was The New England Primer which starts off with, "In Adam's Fall, we sinned all" can it get any more clear than that? God was in almost every aspect of their culture! Most of the the first colonist were fleeing religious persecution in Europe. The Founders knew this and did not want that happening in America, so we have the First Amendment, giving us freedom to practice our religion as well as freedom of speech to talk in public about our religion. Even with this freedom to be "secular" if someone so chose, the framers most certainly did believe that religion and religious values should influence the government and its policies.

On the day that the first Congress finished its work on the First Amendment, George Washington was called on to issue a Proclamation to the people of the United States to thank God for the freedoms we enjoy. Eight days later the First President's opening paragraph in this Proclamation said: "Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . ." By stating "acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will" George Washington and the framers of our Constitution were clearly showing that they believed in the one true God and His will should guide us. Any suggestion that the Constitution "clearly established a secular nation" is false.

Still Secularists insist that the absence of the word "God" means that the Constitution created a godless government in America, never mind the fact that there have been multiple suggestions to amend the Constitution and add it. There were efforts to add "Almighty God" and "Jesus Christ" to the Preamble for example, and several members of Congress suggested that "In the Name of God" should be inserted before the Preamble. Even though Congress was never able to come to an agreement on how God should be phrased the individual states did. With the exception of Oregon where the words "Almighty God" appear in the state religion clauses rather than the preamble, all 50 states have God mentioned in one form or another in their constitutions with "Almighty God" being the most popular.

Unfortunately our spiritual culture has now shifted so far from where it was during our founding, that even if the word "God" was in the Constitution, it probably would not make any difference. Secularist would just dismiss it as a mere formality. There are 50 reasons to believe that this is true. Secularists dismiss all references to God in the state constitutions, so there is really no reason to believe that they would view things differently with our nation's Constitution.

LINK to the whole USA Today article