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Real Answers™
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Copyright: © 20004 Tom Flannery
700 words

AMERICA'S CHRISTIAN HERITAGE

By: Tom Flannery

Although Independence Day has been secularized beyond recognition in recent decades, the fact remains that the birth of America from beginning to end is rooted in religious fervor.

Christopher Columbus became convinced that the world was round after reading a verse of Scripture from the Book of Isaiah: "It is He [God] who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers" (Isa. 40:22a, emphasis mine). This revelation led ultimately to his decision to sail to the Indies and his discovery of America in 1492.

"It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies," Columbus wrote in his Book of Prophecies. "All who heard of my project rejected it with laughter, ridiculing me. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit, because He comforted me with rays of marvelous illumination from the Holy Scriptures...encouraging me continually to press forward."

The Pilgrims were a local church body in England whose voyage represented nothing less than a church relocation project. Before disembarking from the Mayflower in November of 1620, they drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact, "The Birth Certificate of America." In its opening, they explained that the purpose of their journey and the establishment of their new colony was "the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith."

Our forefathers confirmed that statement by making their collective purpose plain once again in the New England Confederation of 1643, in which they declared: "We all came into these parts of America with one and the same end and aim, namely, to advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ."

In 1776, our founding fathers fought the tyrannical King George with the rallying cry of "No king but King Jesus!" The Declaration of Independence they signed to break from Britain contains three separate references to God and acknowledges that our inalienable human rights come from Him. When our nation was forged, weekly worship services were held in government buildings such as the House of Representatives and at the Supreme Court.

Prayer was even an integral part of the Constitutional Convention, where Benjamin Franklin addressed the founders gathered there with this stinging rebuke: "In the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine protection. Our prayers, sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered...And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance? I have lived, sir, a long time, and the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth, that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.' I firmly believe this; and I firmly believe that without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel." Upon concluding his remarks, a motion for daily prayer was quickly adopted.

George Washington, our first president and "Father Of Our Country," said "it is impossible to rightly govern without God and the Bible"; Thomas Jefferson, our third president and author of the Declaration of Independence, called the Bible "the cornerstone of liberty."

These days, the mere posting of the 10 Commandments in public sends secular humanists into convulsions, but James Madison (hailed as the "Chief Architect of the Constitution") couldn't have been clearer when it came to the importance of these laws to our very survival. He stated: "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all our political institutions...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the 10 Commandments of God."

Now if we could just get the ACLU to understand that.

"Real Answers™" furnished courtesy of The Amy Foundation Internet Syndicate. To contact the author or The Amy Foundation, write or E-mail to: P. O. Box 16091, Lansing, MI 48901-6091; amyfoundtn@aol.com

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