Un-Reconstructed American Patriot

May 7, 2006 - A Family for Freedom

According to the Webster’s 1828 dictionary:

Family: One man, one woman, and children, living and growing together in faith and life, using the Scriptural commands of God as our basis.

Freedom: A state of exemption from the power or control of another; liberty; exemption from slavery, servitude or confinement. Freedom is personal, civil, political, and religious.

So what is a family for Freedom? It is a family that desires to be able to teach and raise their children as they see fit, to worship God as they feel led, and to live their life according to God’s will, unmolested. In short, they want the freedom to be, act, and live like a family.

Could the words family and freedom actually be synonymous if we were really to think about it. We are a family because we have freedom, and because of our freedom, we are a family.

A family should strive to live their life and raise their children according to the Bible, such a family would be a family for freedom.

I believe that this great country wrote its Constitution under the auspices of the Bible and that its founding fathers were very firmly grounded in their belief in the Almighty God.

The prerequisite for this Constitution to function as intended, according to John Adams, was that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." [Adams, Charles Francis, ed. "The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: Volume IX." Boston: Little, Brown, 1854, p. 229.] Their intention was for this country to be a free country which would allow its citizens to worship that same Almighty God and line their lives with their God-given rights, unhindered by a tyrannical government. Our Constitution does not, and I pray to God, will never, force us to put our belief in the Almighty God aside to allow other gods and belief systems to overrule us. The family for freedom raises their children to know that all people are created equal, none are less than another, none are more, but that the Almighty God is the rule maker and determines right and wrong. Man, no matter what position he holds, has no authority to change God’s definition of right and wrong.

Therefore as American citizens who are first and foremost Christians, we believe that the Bible is our rule book and the Constitution sets the rule for the American government. Not to add more or change the rules – but to enforce the rules already given and to limit the power of the government to that which the founding fathers have already determined to be correct. The Constitution, like the Bible, is not a living document that changes with the times but is a standard written to be applicable and unchangeable forever more. It does not evolve, it is not a changing standard. Franklin Sanders has said, about the Constitution, "to say that it is living, is to say that it is dead." An evolving "standard" is no standard.

Such a family will not stand idly by and watch their rights be taken away. Daniel Webster said, "A good Christian is a good citizen."

So as we raise our families and as all future parents raise their children, we must fight to keep the freedom that we were given by the Almighty God in the Bible.

We must also hold our American government accountable to accept and remain under the authority of the founding documents that were declared necessary so as to prevent this government from attempting to tyrannize the people.

December 6, 2007 - John Adams and Religion

Posted by David Harley

You write:---
The prerequisite for this Constitution to function as intended, according to John Adams, was that "Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

This quotation is frequently repeated nowadays, especially by those who wish to erode the separation of church and state, arguing that it was never intended by the Founders. Curiously, it was the Baptist and Catholic minorities who were formerly the stoutest proponents of the separation, because they had been persecuted in America. Today, they are among those most eager to break the barrier.

Today, these two sentences were quoted by Mitt Romney, in his speech on the role of religion in his candidacy.

Two points:-- firstly, Adams was by no means a believer in anything that resembles the Christianity of those who quote him so frequently. He respected the early Church, but not the denominations that he saw around him. His religion, like that of the other leading Founders was Deist or Unitarian at best. He does not cite the authority of an incarnate God, still less that of any existing Christian confession, but rather that of an abstract Maker, who built natural religion into the construction of Creation.

"The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity. Nowhere in the Gospels do we find a precept for Creeds, Confessions, Oaths, Doctrines, and whole carloads of other foolish trumpery that we find in Christianity."
--- John Adams

Secondly, the quotation of this passage from a speech by Adams usually omits, without so much as an ellipsis to note its absence, the sentence between the two quoted. It thus becomes impossible to understand what it was that Adams was warning against, what he thought would be the consequence of popular irreligion. Politicians and the more vociferous religious leaders would find themselves skewered on the full quotation.

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other."
--- John Adams

Like the philosophers of eighteenth-century France and most of the Founders, Adams did not believe that his own philosophical religion was suitable for the public as a whole. The vulgar masses were best kept restrained by the religion of their forefathers and the checks and balances set into the Constitution, designed to restrict the power of the popular vote.

"The proposition that the people are the best keepers of their own liberties is not true. They are the worst conceivable, they are no keepers at all; they can neither judge, act, think, or will, as a political body."
--- John Adams

More generally, I would suggest that if one wishes to make a case for a larger role in public life for the moral opinions of that minority of Americans who attend church regularly, whether for religious or social reasons, one needs to argue on more solid grounds than cherrypicked quotations from the views of the Founders.

The wide diversity of religious opinions among even sincere Christians has to be recognized, and a search for common ground initiated on the basis of first principles rather than specific political issues. The attempts to induce schism among the mainstream Protestant churches or to exclude some groups from other denominations, largely on political grounds, should be rejected. A universal (i.e. "catholic", "ecumenical" in their original meanings) church should not be intent upon dividing into ever smaller groups of gathered Christians.

Do most serious believers really think that the welfare of the poor should be sacrificed for the sake of tax cuts for the wealthy? I think not. Do most serious believers really think that Christianity (in the guise of commerce, democracy, or Western Civilization) can or should be imposed by force? I think not. Yet politicians from both parties, who wrap themselves in religion during their election campaigns, vote for just such policies even while the leaders and theologians of their own churches oppose them.

Furthermore, it needs to be recognized that most churchgoers in America could not even explain the most basic doctrines, which they mouth every week in the historic creeds. Neither practising Catholics nor born again evangelical Protestants understand the relationship between the Trinity, Incarnation and Atonement, and it is far from clear they would believe these foundational doctrines if they did understand them.

America is a nation of crypto-Deists, who call themselves by some religious label for reasons of identity or social connection. 40% say they attend church regularly, 25% actually attend church regularly, and perhaps 10% understand their own denomination's history, traditions, and core beliefs. Far fewer have any clear understanding of the beliefs of others. Hence the widespread habit of shifting from one denomination to another, usually for reasons unconnected with beliefs.

It is necessary to stare this phenomenon in the face, if religion is to become the basis for a renewed social morality and practice. If only a common language could be found, it might be discovered that those who are denounced as "secular humanists" are closer in their moral principles to religious people than either are to the majority of Americans. Of course, the fervent preachers on either side of this divide would be uncomfortable with such a discovery.

Christian belief of whatever kind, if taken seriously, always has implications for one's engagement with the world. That is, after all, one of the meanings of the Incarnation. Humanism too, as a post-Christian belief system, also has sincere moral principles at its heart and they are derived from Christianity.

Attending church for social reasons has no profound moral implications.

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April 7, 2009 - Untitled Comment

Posted by Anonymous

"If only a common language could be found, it might be discovered that those who are denounced as "secular humanists" are closer in their moral principles to religious people than either are to the majority of Americans."

That very well may be the case... I have no statistics to corroborate or disprove such a statement. BUT, IF such a statement is indeed true, the scary part is that these people are behaving in such a way with no real grounding (ie: rhyme or reason). They could just as easily decide to behave in some other way which would be abhorrent to most of us. The REASON they act as they do, is because they are living on a morality system borrowed from the Christian worldview... whether they realize it or not.

It doesn't really matter to the argument of whether Christianity is true or not, if 'secular humanists' are better Christians than some Christians are (or if certainly presidents were Christian or not). The truthfulness of Christianity stands on the evidence.

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I blog about mostly government, current events, and American history from a Southern constitutionalist point of view. And anything else I want to talk about. ---------------------------------------------------------- "...I had rather be the echo of truth than the voice of falsehood." -- Charles H. Spurgeon

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