By Louis DeBroux
“If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.” –2 Chronicles, 7:14 (Holy Bible, KJV)
At times, it seems hard to fathom that the nation that we live in today is the same nation established by the Founding Fathers, perhaps the greatest group of political minds ever assembled. These were men who changed the course of history by acknowledging, for the first time, the truth that man’s rights come not from government, but from God, unalienable by virtue of their birth. They founded this nation on Judeo-Christian principles, proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the Constitution and, though they did not all share the same religion, they all revered the teachings of Jesus Christ, and almost all accepted his divinity.
It was George Washington who taught us that religion and morality are the “indispensable supports” of our republic, without which our Constitution, said John Adams, was “wholly inadequate” to govern the people. Some have claimed our Founders were not religious men, and some even claim they rejected religion, and religious influence on government, altogether. This is absolutely false. Even those famous founders that we can point to as being arguably non-religious, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson, understood the dire need for the power of religious influence in perpetuating liberty and governing a free people.
Franklin, in a letter to the French ministry, attested that “Whoever shall introduce into public affairs the principals of primitive Christianity will change the face of the world.” And Jefferson, whom atheists love to claim as their own, once wrote, in a letter to Benjamin Rush, that “To the corruptions of Christianity I am, indeed, opposed; but not to the genuine precepts of Jesus himself. I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines in preference to all others.”
Indeed, until recent decades, most Americans acknowledged, whether religious or not, that we are a Christian nation, founded upon those principles, with allegiance to them above all others. Though we did not establish through force of government a particular religious sect above any other, we embraced Christianity as inseparably intertwined with our national character.
Read more at http://patriotpost.us/commentary/17929