The Re-programming of the First Amendment Religion Clauses
Significantly, one of the new Associate Justices appointed to the United States Supreme Court by President Roosevelt in 1937 was Hugo Black of Alabama–the judge who would, with one judicial opinion (Everson v. Board of Education (1947)), write Thomas Jefferson’s phrase “wall of separation between church and state” into First Amendment precedent.
Black set the trend for the judicial machines to follow in the area of church and state.
United States District Judge Brevard Hand of the Southern District of Alabama wrote the following in Jaffree v. Board of School Commissioners of Mobile County, Alabama (1983):
From the beginning of our country, the high and impregnable wall which Mr. Justice Black referred to in Everson v. Board of Education, 330 U.S. 1, 18, 67 S.Ct. 504, 513, 91 L.Ed. 711 (1947), was not as high and impregnable as Justice Black’s revisionary literary flourish would lead one to believe.
Black made a key decision: to interpret the Fourteenth Amendment in such a way as to make the Bill of Rights (including the First Amendment) applicable to the states. As Judge Hand wrote in Jaffree:
[I]n Adamson v. California, 332 U.S. 46, 47, 67 S.Ct. 1672, 1673, 91 L.Ed. 1903 (1947), […] Mr. Justice Black concluded that the historical events that culminated in the adoption of the fourteenth amendment demonstrated persuasively that one of the chief objects of the fourteenth amendment was to make the Bill of Rights applicable to the states.
However, Judge Hand said that Justice Black misinterpreted history:
The scholarly analyses of Professors [Charles] Fairman and [Raoul] Berger persuasively show that Mr. Justice Black misread the congressional debate surrounding the passage of the fourteenth amendment when he concluded that Congress intended to incorporate the federal Bill of Rights against the states.
Justice Black set the trend, the programming code, for First Amendment Religion Clause jurisprudence that judicial machines later followed.
Judge Hand said in Jaffree:
There are pebbles on the beach of history from which scholars and judges might attempt to support the conclusions that they are wont to reach. This is what […] the more modern scholars have done in attempting to establish a beachhead, as did Justice Black, that there is a basis for their conclusions that Congress and the people intended to alter the direction of the country by incorporating the first eight amendments to the Constitution. However, in arriving at this conclusion, they, and each of them, have had to revise established principles of constitutional interpretation by the judiciary. Whether the judiciary, inadvertently or eagerly, walked into this trap is not for discussion. The result is that the judiciary has, in fact, amended the Constitution to the consternation of the republic. As Washington pointed out in his Farewell Address, […] this clearly is the avenue by which our government, can and ultimately, will be destroyed. We think we move in the right direction today, but in so doing we are denying to the people their right to express themselves. It is not what we, the judiciary, want, it is what the people want translated into law pursuant to the plan established in the Constitution as the framers intended. This is the bedrock and genius of our republic. The mantle of office gives us no power to fix the moral direction that this nation will take. When we undertake such course we trample upon the law. In such instances the people have a right to complain. The Court loses its respect and our institution is brought low. This misdirection should be cured now before it is too late. We must give no future generation an excuse to use this same tactic to further their ends which they think proper under the then political climate as for instance did Adolph Hitler when he used the court system to further his goals.
Regarding the new interpretation of the First Amendment’s religion clauses, Judge Hand commented in the Jaffree case (note 41):
This Court is confronted with these two additional problems that must be resolved if the appellate courts adhere to their present course of interpreting history as did Mr. Justice Black. [***] A blind adherence to Justice Black’s absolutism will result in an engulfing flood of other cases addressed to the same point raised by intervenors.
Indeed, what followed Justice Black’s Everson opinion was an increasing flood of cases concerning church and state. For example, the pro-evolution opinion of the court in Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 (1968) was written by a justice who was originally a “New Deal lawyer”, and Justice Hugo Black wrote a concurring opinion; this started the trend toward establishment of exclusively pro-evolution (religious secularist) views in the public schools. Edwards v. Aguillard, 482 U.S. 578 (1987) struck down a Louisiana law that required equal teaching of both evolution and creation science. The Court’s Edwards decision thus allowed the teaching of exclusively evolution but forbade the teaching of an alternative scientific viewpoint.
The programming of the judicial machines in the area of church and state was nearly complete.
Judge Hand noted in Jaffree:
Certainty in the law is important. Yet, a rigid adherence to stare decisis “would leave the resolution of every issue in constitutional law permanently at the mercy of the first Court to face the issue, without regard to the possibility that the relevant case was poorly prepared or that the judgment of the Court was simply ill-considered. The danger is particularly great where the court has moved too far in an activist direction; in such a situation, legislative correction of the error is liable to be virtually impossible.” [***] [citation omitted]
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More than any other provision of the Constitution, the interpretation by the United States Supreme Court of the establishment clause has been steeped in history. This Court’s independent review of the relevant historical documents and its reading of the scholarly analysis convinces it that the United States Supreme Court has erred in its reading of history. [***] [T]his Court is persuaded as was Hamilton that “[e]very breach of the fundamental laws, though dictated by necessity impairs the sacred reverence which ought to be maintained in the breast of the rulers towards the constitution.” [***] [citation omitted]
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The interpretation of the Constitution can be approached from two vantages. First, the Court can attempt to ascertain the intent of the adoptors, and after ascertaining that attempt apply the Constitution as the adoptors intended it to be applied. Second, the Court can treat the Constitution as a living document, chameleon-like in its complexion, which changes to suit the needs of the times and the whims of the interpreters. In the opinion of this Court, the only proper approach is to interpret the Constitution as its drafters and adoptors intended. The Constitution is, after all, the supreme law of the land. It contains provisions for amending it; if the country as a whole decided that the present text of the Constitution no longer satisfied contemporary needs then the only constitutional course is to amend the Constitution by following its formal, mandated procedures. Amendment through judicial fiat is both unconstitutional and illegal. Amendment through judicial fiat breeds disrespect for the law, and it undermines the very basic notion that this country is governed by laws and not by men. [***] [citation omitted]
Let us have faith in the rightness of our charter and the patience to persevere in adhering to its principles. If we do then all will have input into change and not just a few.
An Article III Remedy
Whereas the New Deal might have looked good to some during the 1930’s Great Depression, it left an unfortunate legacy: The social programming of the judicial machines didn’t end with the New Deal. Programming for social purposes increased the boldness of the “legal realists”–adherents to the philosophy that law is formed by judicial beliefs, prejudices, and opinions, and that law can be transformed by changing the opinions of the judicial “lawmakers”. (Though constitutionally, the legislature is the law-making branch of government under the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine, in fact the new judicial machines performed, for all intents and purposes, as “lawmakers”.)
As educator John Dewey programmed public schoolchildren in order to prepare them to think and function a certain way in society, the secularist programmers taught judges how to render the decisions necessary for the social transformation of society. That paradigm shift in jurisprudential programming away from the higher law jurisprudence of America’s founders constituted a usurpation of the principles inherent in the U.S. Constitution.
To remedy this judicial usurpation, the United States Constitution (Article III, Section 1) has a built-in antidote: “The judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one Supreme Court, and in such inferior courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behavior ….” Some may apply this section to judges who willfully ignore or stray away from the Constitution’s inherent and implicit higher law jurisprudence in order to intrude upon the lawmaking authority of the United States Congress. Also, Article III, Section 2 states: “[…] the Supreme Court shall have appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the Congress shall make.” (emphasis added). Some may apply this section so as to introduce Congressional legislation that prohibits the Supreme Court from explicitly or implicitly forbidding governmental acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty.
The Link between John Dewey, the Philosophy of Judicial Machines,
and the Extreme “Separation of Church and State” Doctrine
Federal District Judge Brevard Hand wrote regarding Dr. Russell Kirk’s testimony in Smith v. Mobile County Board of School Commissioners (1987):
When asked what he found to criticize in secular humanism as he defined it, Dr. Kirk said: “Why, sir? Because it omits what Plato said was the real important thing in all his writings; the doctrine of the soul. We find in secular humanism no recognition of the soul. There is only the human animal–the naked ape, if you will. What really distinguishes us human beings from the brutes is possession of a soul. Thus the development of the spiritual is the highest aim of a good education. That is not taken into account at all by the Secular Humanists. They think of man as a mechanism, a fleshly computer. That is my primary objection.” (Tr. 1397-98).
Earlier in his Smith opinion, Judge Hand summarized Kirk’s testimony as follows:
According to Dr. Russell Kirk, [***] John Dewey’s school of thought may now be adjudged as dominant in educational circles. Dewey was a humanist and was of the opinion that this humanism which he espoused was the religion of the future. (Tr. 1354). Dewey felt that religions existing at that time were outmoded, and that in the future the individual would be classified as little and the society as much. He believed that his religion was primarily concerned with the social order rather than the ordering of the soul. (Tr. 1355).
Dewey contended one should not read books written prior to 1900 because wisdom was new and not old. One should look to the future rather than to the past and hope to work toward an egalitarian society, marked by equality of condition and talent, a universally peaceful society which would guide itself not by old beliefs, but by new ethics derived from modern scientific doctrine in both the biological and physical sciences. He did not feel that society would have to cease to be religious, for he felt that there was a need for a religion in the sense of a set of central moral beliefs of a permanent character, but this religion would be quite different from any religion of the past. These would have to be cast off. (Tr. 1375). Kirk says Dewey also expressed himself that “We must be militant in our new religion.” (Tr. 1377).
It was Dewey and his colleagues who issued the first Humanist Manifesto. (Tr. 1379-80). Dr. Kirk explained that Dewey’s ideas were called instrumentalism and that it looked upon education primarily as an instrument to prepare the way for an egalitarian society in which people will cooperate and in which there will be little challenge or problems. Thus, education would become a social function as contrasted with other ideas that had prevailed. (Tr. 1388). Present day progressive education is an outgrowth of his ideas and is sometimes carried beyond those ideas by its followers. In short, it is an elaborate system of pedagogy, which established a form of learning through personal experience and by classroom activities that simulate adult life. Though this was established in the 20’s and 30’s, it is still often called today the American educationalist empire. (Tr. 1389).
An illustration is the social science disciplines which came into being during the 20’s and were later enlarged upon and given considerable boost by the former president of Harvard, James Bryant Conant, during the 50’s. Social science is viewed as a kind of “omnium-gatherum” in which improved behavior in society is brought about by imposing upon society a new moral pattern. This social science supplanted the former teachings of history and geography. What history and geography is now taught is under this general umbrella of social science. (Tr. 1389-90).
Thus it is no wonder that the Darwinian theory of evolution devalues human life to the merely biological level (ignoring the fact that humans are created in the image of God, which means they possess eternal souls). The evolutionist view undergirds the “secularist” or “liberal” view of education and legal philosophy–which includes using social science to nudge and push society in a certain direction, toward certain social goals desired by the secularist programmers. This is the real driving force behind judicial machines’ court opinions.
Naturally, such a secularist viewpoint is hostile to the Judeo-Christian worldview and to God’s higher moral law. As Judge Hand summarized Kirk’s statement in Smith:
Dr. Kirk defines secular humanism as “… a creed or world view which holds that we have no reason to believe in a creator,” that the world is self existing, that there is no transcendent power at work in the world, that we should not turn to traditional religion for wisdom; rather that we should develop a new ethics and a new method of moral order founded upon the teachings of modern naturalism and physical science.” (Tr. 1372).
This is the same philosophy involved in eighteenth-century deism (the early form of religious secularism) and secularism’s offspring and companion philosophy, the biological theory of evolution, which social programmers transfer to the public policy setting and apply in socially activist ways. A major mechanism for achieving social change while bypassing the people’s elected representatives is for secularists to trailblaze the desired changes through court decisions rendered by judicial machines, programmed by legal positivism to follow the secularist mindset.
As Judge Hand, in Smith, summarized the testimony of another scholar:
[…] R. S. Peters, a noted British philosopher of education […] observed that the American system is that we do not teach religion in public schools, yet we teach Dewey’s philosophy, and that is a religion. [***]
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It is a philosophy that is hostile to established religion because in the establishment of this new church, a very comprehensive system had to be erected that left out the cornerstone of most previous ethical systems: the absolute. [***]
And note: This is religious secularism. As Dr. Kirk noted, Dewey admitted that his social philosophy was intended to be a new religion. Only religions fight to displace other, previously-existing religions in order to establish their new dominance. Therefore, religious secularism’s very tenacity and hostility to Christianity speak volumes about its true identity as a new religion struggling for ascendancy.
In light of that, judicial decisions to bypass or not uphold the Judeo-Christian moral law, while at the same time affirming the legal positivism and evolutionary philosophy of religious secularism, indicate a purpose that is crystal-clear: the establishment of religious secularism as the new government religion, in place of the transcendent higher law doctrine upon which America’s jurisprudence traditionally has been based.
A Godly Chief Justice
In total contrast to the philosophy of the judicial machines is the cheerfully Providential view of the Honorable Roy Moore of Alabama.
As the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit described him:
During his campaign for the Chief Justice position in the November 2000 election, […] [t]he central platform of his campaign was a promise “to restore the moral foundation of law.” [***] After he was elected, Chief Justice Moore fulfilled his campaign promise by installing the Ten Commandments monument in the rotunda of the Alabama State Judicial Building.
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At the public unveiling of the monument the day after its installation, Chief Justice Moore delivered a speech commemorating the event, and in that speech he talked about why he had placed the monument, which he described as one “depicting the moral foundation of our law,” where he did. He explained that the location of the monument was “fitting and proper” because:
this monument will serve to remind the appellate courts and judges of the circuit and district courts of this state, the members of the bar who appear before them, as well as the people who visit the Alabama Judicial Building, of the truth stated in the preamble of the Alabama Constitution, that in order to establish justice, we must invoke “the favor and guidance of Almighty God.”
[*****]
During that speech, the Chief Justice criticized government officials who “forbid teaching your children that they are created in the image of Almighty God” and who “purport all the while that it is a government and not God who gave us our rights,” because they have “turned away from those absolute standards which form the basis of our morality and the moral foundation of our law” and “divorced the Constitution and the Bill of Rights from these principles.” [***] Recalling his campaign “pledge to restore the moral foundation of law,” he noted that “[i]t is axiomatic that to restore morality, we must first recognize the source of that morality,” and that “our forefathers recognized the sovereignty of God.” [***] He noted during the speech that no government funds had been expended on the monument.
The Chief Justice described various acknowledgments of God throughout this country’s history, some of which, he pointed out, are inscribed on the monument. He proclaimed that the unveiling of the monument that day “mark[ed] the restoration of the moral foundation of law to our people and the return to the knowledge of God in our land.” [***] In closing, he told the audience that they would “find no documents surrounding the Ten Commandments because they stand alone as an acknowledgment of that God that’s contained in our pledge, contained in our motto, and contained in our oath.” [***]
During the trial the Chief Justice testified candidly about why he had placed the monument in the rotunda. The following exchanges between him and one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys establish that purpose:
Q [W]as your purpose in putting the Ten Commandments monument in the Supreme Court rotunda to acknowledge GOD’s law and GOD’s sovereignty?
A Yes.
1st Supp. Rec. Vol. 2 at 100.
Q …. Do you agree that the monument, the Ten Commandments monument, reflects the sovereignty of GOD over the affairs of men?
A Yes.
Q And the monument is also intended to acknowledge GOD’s overruling power over the affairs of men, would that be correct? …
A Yes.
Q …. [W]hen you say “GOD” you mean GOD of the Holy Scripture?
A Yes.
1st Supp. Rec. Vol. 3 at 34.
Glassroth v. Moore, 335 F.3d 1282, 1284-1287 (11th Cir. 2003) (Carnes, Circuit Judge) (July 1, 2003) (citations and footnotes omitted).
Despite the words in Valley Forge Christian College v. Americans United for Separation of Church and State, 454 U.S. 464 (1982), cited by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals–that for the plaintiff to prevail in Establishment Clause claims there must be a
“personal injury suffered by them as a consequence of the alleged constitutional error, other than the psychological consequence presumably produced by observation of conduct with which one disagrees”
Glassroth v. Moore, 335 F.3d at 1292 (emphasis added)—
the 11th Circuit went on to describe the alleged “wound” inflicted by the monument itself:
Contrary to Chief Justice Moore’s contention, the injuries the plaintiffs assert are not based solely on their disagreement with his views about religion and government, which would be a non-redressable injury. While the Chief Justice’s views may aggravate the emotional injury the plaintiffs suffer from viewing the monument, the worst of the wound is inflicted by the monument itself.
Id. at 1293.
The court then went on to disagree with what it described as Chief Justice Moore’s views about religion and government:
He [Chief Justice Moore] insists that for First Amendment purposes religion is “the duty which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it”; nothing more, nothing less. Brief of Appellant at 11-12 (quoting Virginia Declaration of Rights Art. I, [section] 16 (1776)). The Chief Justice argues that the Ten Commandments, as he has presented them in the monument, do not involve the duties individuals owe the Creator, and therefore they are not religious; instead, he says they represent the moral foundation of secular duties that individuals owe to society.
Id. at 1294.
So one can infer that the federal circuit court’s view is: that religion is private, and not public–that is, God is never to be acknowledged as having any bearing on governmental affairs.
But that is a “disagreement with his views about religion and government.” Moore says that God is sovereign over human affairs, including governmental affairs; the federal court says that God is not.
Incidentally, the view of America’s founding fathers, going all the way back to Colonial times, was the same as Chief Justice Moore’s. (See True Heroism and the Rule of Law.)
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals went on to say:
Applying Lemon, the district court concluded that Chief Justice Moore’s purpose in displaying the monument was not secular.
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[….] Chief Justice Moore argues that the district court erred by psychoanalyzing him and, as he puts it, “dissecting [his] heart and mind.”
Id. at 1296.
(A court’s pattern of declaring that a public official or public body that puts up the Ten Commandments for a professedly secular reason has a “sham” or “pretextual” purpose, and the court then using that subjective declaration as a pretext for striking the Commandments down, has been discussed in Pretexts and Commandments.)
Judicial machines don’t want to admit that God’s Law is the moral foundation for secular law, for such a statement goes directly against their secularist legal philosophy (including legal realism) that did not prevail in the early years of this country when God’s transcendent higher law was made the explicit basis for the American Revolution.
The secularist legal philosophy seeks to replace the moral foundation of the Ten Commandments with its amoral, secular self, in a contest of philosophical will to power. The only thing standing in secularism’s way is God’s transcendent higher law–and that’s why, under the guise of “separating church and state”, secularists refuse to let the government acknowledge God, because when the government acknowledges God, what the government is really acknowledging is God’s transcendent higher law–His superior authority that supersedes man-made law.
Citing the Eastern District of Kentucky case Adland v. Russ, 107 F.Supp.2d 782 (E.D. Ky. 2000) (Hood, District Judge), affirmed, Adland v. Russ, 307 F.3d 471 (6th Cir. 2002), the 11th Circuit analogized the Moore case to this and other cases, including Indiana Civil Liberties Union v. O’Bannon, 259 F.3d 766 (7th Cir. 2001). (See the O’Bannon dissent in Ten Commandments Issue Unresolved.)
In keeping with secularism’s liking for paganism, the 11th Circuit contended that displaying a statue of a goddess from the Greek pagan religion is not promoting that religion:
Chief Justice Moore contends that under the district court’s reasoning, the sculpture of “Themis,” the Greek goddess of justice, which is part of the fountain in front of the courthouse where the trial in this case took place, would also be unconstitutional. [***] There is no evidence that the sculpture has had the effect of furthering religion, or that its purpose was to do so.
Glassroth v. Moore, 335 F.3d at 1300-1301 n. 4 (citation omitted).
(For the connection between paganism and secularism, see: Don’t Hide God in a Closet: Religious Secularism and Public Acknowledgment of God in the 21st Century.)
The issue is God’s transcendent standard of justice.
Judicial machines establish the worship of man (secular humanism) and its (unsuccessful) philosophical attempts to devise its own standard of morality, apart from any reference to God’s standard.
Judgment Day
From testimony and arguments stated in the complete transcript of the Honorable Roy Moore’s “ethics case”, it is apparent that the issue was not whether any ordinary judicial order could be disregarded. That was not the issue at all.
The issue really is: Who gives us our rights, God or the government? Whether God or the government gives us our civil, as well as our religious, liberties.
The only “ethics” involved is this: Whose ethics will prevail?–God’s, or religious secularism?
Thus, the case was really a contest between two different jurisprudential philosophies: That of the higher moral law (true natural law) doctrine that serves as the basis for ethics codes and the morality inherent in just laws, versus the secularist legal positivism of the programmed judicial machines, in which ethics and morality are defined as being whatever the government says they are at that given point in time, based on mere human opinion and feelings, whether right or wrong.
In 1738, John Webb said that public officials were acting above the law when they “[broke] in upon the known rights of mankind, or transgress[ed] any of the laws of nature or revelation, when there happens to be an inconsistency between them, as sometimes there has been, through the weakness or wickedness of men in power: But, in this case, the known rule, by which the Apostles of our Lord governed and justified themselves, is to take place, Acts 5:29. ‘We ought to obey God rather than men.'”
Implicit in that statement is the principle that God is the giver of human rights. Therefore, a judge’s order that impinges upon the unalienable rights of mankind–or nullifies the basis for them (by denying the existence of a higher law)–is no ordinary order. It is extraordinary. And extraordinary orders, and the responses to them, happen at crises of human history, frequently times of great social stress such as the so-called “culture war” that is really a “worldview war”.
Such was the case with the American Revolution. The Americans won, so we call them heroes–as indeed they were, but only because they stood up for the unalienable rights given and thus guaranteed by the God-given higher law.
And the people who stand up for that moral law when others are scoffing at it are acknowledging the sovereignty of God, just as much as if they installed a Ten Commandments monument in a courthouse.
The jurisprudential implications go beyond symbolic displays.
The issue is not just about a monument–it’s about acknowledging the sovereignty of God over human government, in the sense that no human laws can ever transgress the transcendent higher law.
The issue is about the transcendent standard of justice that sits in judgment upon all universal human laws and to which all human laws must adhere, be they national or international.
And that’s a fact that a godless judicial philosophy will have to deal with.
Establishing Religious Secularism
in the Trilateral Center of the New World Order
On December 18, 2003, the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit decided the Ten Commandments case of American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky.
In the process, the McCreary decision in essence declared the religion of deism (a.k.a. religious secularism or secular humanism)–instead of the Ten Commandments–to be the foundational base of the Declaration of Independence. This was perfectly in keeping with the secularist agenda described above (see Dr. Kirk’s testimony in Smith v. Mobile County) to establish the secularist religion.
(For a discussion of religious secularism under its old name of deism, or “natural religion”, see: Don’t Hide God in a Closet: Religious Secularism and Public Acknowledgment of God in the 21st Century.)
The Sixth Circuit wrote the following:
To be sure, “[t]he fact that the Founding Fathers believed devotedly that there was a God and that the unalienable rights of man were rooted in Him is clearly evidenced in their writings, from the Mayflower Compact to the Constitution itself.” Abington Sch. Dist., 374 U.S. at 213. There is by no means a consensus, however, that the source of Thomas Jefferson’s belief in divinely-bestowed, unalienable rights, to the extent this belief inspired the writing of the Declaration [of Independence] (5), was the Ten Commandments or even the Bible. One historian has noted that Jefferson believed in the “watchmaker God of deism … who established the laws of nature in the material universe at the time of creation and then left it alone.” Allen Jayne, Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence: Origins, Philosophy and Theology 24 (1998). He therefore posits that the “Nature’s God” Jefferson referenced in the Declaration was not the God of the Bible (and thus the Ten Commandments), but the God of deism. (6) Further, several historians have concluded that Jefferson was most inspired by contemporaneous political writings as well as the musings of European philosophers and writers. (7) [***]
[note 5:] The Continental Congress appointed a committee of five to decide who would write the Declaration. Pauline Maier, American Scripture 99 (1998). The committee assigned Jefferson the task of drafting the document. Id. at 100. The draft was revised based on comments from Benjamin Franklin and John Adams. Id. at 100-02. After incorporating their comments, Jefferson reported the revised draft to the Congress. Id. at 100. Once in Congress, the Declaration was revised by other men. Id. at 105.
[note 6:] Id. at 19 (“Jefferson’s heterodox religious views were founded on an Enlightenment outlook in general and the writings of Henry St. John, Lord Viscount Bolingbroke, in particular. It is the God of his heterodoxy that appears in the Declaration of Independence rather than the God of the Bible.”); id. at 38 (“Jefferson’s God of the Declaration is … antithetical to any God who would manifest partiality by choosing one people or nation over others, as did the God of the Old Testament.”). Jayne also quotes a letter written by Jefferson in which he expressed doubt about the origin and authenticity of the Ten Commandments. Id. at 34 (“‘[T]he whole history of these books [containing the Ten Commandments] is so defective and doubtful, that it seems vain to attempt minute inquiry into it; and such tricks have been played with their text, and with the other texts of other books relating to them, that we have a right from that cause to entertain much doubt what parts of them are genuine.'”) (quoting January 24, 1824, letter from Jefferson to John Adams).
[note 7:] See David McCullough, John Adams 121 (2001) (noting that Jefferson borrowed from his previous writings, as well as the writings of George Mason and Pennsylvania delegate James Wilson; further noting that Jefferson was “drawing on long familiarity with the seminal works of the English and Scottish writers John Locke, David Hume, Francis Hutcheson, and Henry St. John Bolingbroke, or such English poets as Defoe”); Maier, supra note 5, at 104 (noting evidence that Jefferson hastily produced a draft of the Declaration in a day or two and adapted two texts to complete a draft in this short time-frame: the preamble to the Virginia Constitution, “which was itself based on the English Declaration of Rights,” and a preliminary version of the Virginia Declaration of Rights that had been drafted by George Mason); id. at 136 (noting that the Declaration’s reference to “the laws of nature and nature’s god” parallels the laws applicable to “individuals in a state of nature, a point, incidentally, that John Locke made explicitly in his Second Treatise of Government“); Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Ideas 79 (1922) (noting that with respect to “the political philosophy of Nature and natural rights” referenced in the Declaration that the “lineage is direct: Jefferson copied Locke”); Jayne, supra, at 44 (noting “the similarity of many of the provisions of [Locke’s] Second Treatise with those of the Declaration, which clearly shows that Jefferson not only had extensive knowledge of Locke’s work but put it to use in drafting the Declaration”).
ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky, No. 01-5935 (6th Cir., December 18, 2003) (notes appended onto text).
Britain’s Tory, pro-French Secretary of State, Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke (1678-1751), upon whose deism the pro-French Thomas Jefferson is said to have grounded his own views, turned traitor and fled to France in 1715 two years after designing the Treaty of Utrecht (1713) that ended the War of the Spanish Succession. This treaty gave Cape Breton back to the French, leaving the door open for the French to pester New England again after Cape Breton had been won at the cost of some of New England’s finest soldiers.
Safely in France, Bolingbroke struck up a friendship with an obscure writer, into whom Bolingbroke inculcated his deistic views. That writer became the French philosophe, Voltaire.
American Colonial minister Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) commented on Bolingbroke’s deism and its implications for moral government:
Yes, without a revelation, men would be greatly at a loss concerning God; what he is; what manner of Being; whether properly intelligent and willing; a Being that has will and design, maintaining a proper, intelligent, voluntary dominion over the world. Notions of the first Being, like those of [Thomas] Hobbes [author of Leviathan (1651)] and Spinosa, would prevail. Especially would they be at a loss concerning those perfections of God, which he exercises as a moral governor. For we find that some of the Deists, though they, from revelation, have been taught these; yet, having cast off revelation, apparently doubt of them all. Lord Bolingbroke, in particular, insists that we have no evidence of them.
In contrast were the excellent laws based on Biblical principles that Christian Governor Jonathan Belcher (1682-1757) and his close friend, legislator and colony secretary Josiah Willard, enacted and implemented in Massachusetts. (Governor Belcher was also a close friend of Jonathan Edwards.)
Unalienable rights (given to mankind by their Creator God) were defined by the true natural rights doctrine that undergirded Early American history. (See: The Law of Liberty (1775).) And it was the Biblical idea of higher law upon which the American Revolution was based–a higher law that existed even in the Garden of Eden (the original “state of nature”).
Contemporaries of the time viewed Locke’s political philosophy as comporting with the Biblical higher law.
For instance, Nathaniel Whitaker of Long Island, New York, minister of the Third Church in Salem, Massachusetts, of whom, a biographer wrote, “he exercised a wide influence among the people, and was looked upon as a ‘great political counselor.'” Whitaker graduated at Princeton College during the time when Governor Jonathan Belcher was ex officio president of the college’s board of trustees and the college’s president was Aaron Burr, Sr. Whitaker wrote the following about the law of nature, Christian principles, and John Locke, in his Revolutionary sermon, An Antidote Against Toryism (1777) (emphasis added):
The sum of the law of nature, as well as of the written law [the Ten Commandments], is love. Love to God and man, properly exercised in tender feelings of the heart, and beneficent actions of life, constitutes perfect holiness. The gospel breathes the same spirit, and acknowledges none as the disciples of Christ but those who love not their friends only, but even their enemies. Bless and curse not, is one of the laws of His kingdom. Yet the aversion of men to this good and benevolent law prompts them to frequent violations of it, which is the source of all the evils we feel or fear. And so lost are many to all the tender feelings required in this law, as to discover their enmity to their Creator, by opposing the happiness of His creatures, and spreading misery and ruin among them.
When such characters as these present themselves to our view, if we are possessed with the spirit of love required in the law and gospel, we must feel a holy abhorrence of them. Love itself implies hatred to malevolence, [….] [***] True benevolence is, therefore, exercised in opposing those who seek the hurt of society, and none are to be condemned as acting against the law of love, because they hate and oppose such as are injurious to happiness. [***]
[***] So God requires us [society] to execute [legal] vengeance on the murderer, the thief, the adulterer, reviler, and the like; all which sins strike at the peace and happiness of human society. […] He has commanded every society of men, to inflict punishment on them in this world, and has specified the crimes, the punishments, and the officers who are to inflict them.
[* * * * *]
I. The cause of freedom is the cause of God. To open this I will inquire:
[* * * * *]
1. What is meant by liberty, or freedom?
It is sufficient to my present purpose to distinguish liberty into moral, natural, and civil. *
(* I purposely omit what Dr. [Richard] Price, in his excellent Observations on Civil Liberty, p. 2, calls physical liberty, which, I venture to say, with deference to this great man, is not to be found, as he defines it, in any intelligent agent in the universe. For, that actions may be “properly ours,” he makes them the effects of self-determination only, “without the operation of any foreign cause.” This, at one blow, demolishes all the power and value of motives, which are always foreign to the actions they produce, as the cause is to the effect. And thus the issue is, that we must act without any reason, motive, aim, or end of our actions, in order that they may be properly our own. But this reduces us to mere machines.)
Moral liberty lies in an ability, or opportunity, to act or conduct as the agent pleases.
He that is not hindered by any external force from acting as he chooses or wills to act, is perfectly free in a moral sense, and so far as he possesses this freedom, so far, and no farther, is he a moral, accountable creature, and his actions, worthy of praise or blame.
By natural liberty, I mean that freedom of action and conduct which all men have a right to, antecedent to their being members of society. This Mr. [John] Locke defines to be “that state or condition in which all men naturally are to order all their actions, and dispose of themselves and possessions as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending on the will of any man.” In this state all men are equal, and no one has a right to govern or control another. And the law of nature or the eternal reason and fitness of things, is to be the only rule of his conduct; of the meaning of which everyone is to be his own judge.
But since the corruption of nature by sin, the lusts and passions of men so blind their minds, and harden their hearts, that this perfect law of love is little considered, and less practiced; so that a state of nature, which would have been a state of perfect freedom and happiness had man continued in his first rectitude, [is turned] in[to] a state of war [….] Hence arises an absolute necessity that societies should form themselves into politic bodies, in order to enact laws for the public safety, and appoint some to put them in execution, that the good may be encouraged, and the vicious deterred from evil practices; and these laws should always be founded on the law of nature.
Hence it appears, that perfect civil liberty differs from natural only in this, that in a natural state, our actions, persons and possessions, are under the direction, judgment and control of none but ourselves; but in a civil state, under the direction of others, according to the laws of that state in which we live; which, by the supposition, are perfectly agreeable to the law of nature. In the first case, private judgment; in the second, the public judgment of the sense of the law of nature, is to be the rule of conduct. When this is the case, civil liberty is perfect, and everyone enjoys all that freedom which God designed for His rational creatures in a social state. All liberty beyond this is mere licentiousness–a liberty to sin, which is the worst of slavery. But when any laws are enacted which cross the law of nature, there civil liberty is invaded, and God and man justly offended. Therefore, when those appointed to enact and execute laws, invade this liberty, they violate their trust, and oppress their subjects, and their constituents may lawfully depose them […], if they refuse to reform.
Now, if it be unlawful for magistrates in a state, to bind their subjects by laws contrary to the law of nature, […] it is lawful for their subjects to depose them [….]
[* * * * *]
[…] [Tyrannical] conduct is a violation of the law of nature, which requires all to exert themselves to promote happiness among mankind. Love is the fulfilling of the law, but this implies a benevolent frame of heart, exercised in beneficent actions toward all men, as we have opportunity. When therefore we see our fellow creatures, especially our friends and brethren, whose happiness is more immediately our care, reduced to a state of misery, robbed of their most dear and unalienable rights, and borne down with a heavy load of oppression and abuse by the hands of tyrants; this law requires us to stand forth in their defense, even though we are not involved with them in the same evils, and how much more, when our own happiness is equally concerned. Moses, though enjoying all the honors and pleasures of a court, from the pure benevolence of his heart, interposed and smote an Egyptian whom he saw cruelly oppressing one of his brethren. [***]
Swiss-born minister John Joachim Zubly, a native of the American colony of Georgia who preached sermons in three languages (English, German, and French), viewed the political philosophy of the social contract and the law of nature as having its origins in Christianity and the Ten Commandments; see his work The Law of Liberty (1775) that he preached “at the opening of the Provincial Congress of Georgia”.
Jonathan Belcher, a Christian who read John Locke, was a governor in the midst of the emerging Trilateral Center of the New World Order. And the situation he faced was this:
Till the American Revolution, Great Britain’s Board of Trade (the administrative body chiefly responsible for overseeing trade in the American colonies) periodically attempted to revoke the charters of Massachusetts and Connecticut in order to bring them under greater subjection to the British government.
Revolutionary patriot and future United States President John Adams (future co-editor of the Declaration of Independence and future member of the first committee to design the Great Seal of the United States) wrote on January 30, 1775, that Edmund Andros’ plan of dominating New England was revived by the British-born lawyer installed as Massachusetts governor in place of American-born Jonathan Belcher. Andros’ plans were “buried” with him for a long time, Adams said, until this lawyer’s reign, when the plans were “revived” by the British superimperialists whom the American Revolutionaries were resisting in 1775. The Stamp Act was the resultant plan hatched by this “junto” (the eighteenth-century term for a party or clique group), according to Adams. According to what Adams said in this very important letter: In 1754, the lawyer suggested the essence of the Stamp Act to Franklin, who promptly repudiated it. However, Adams speculated whether Franklin’s remarks had an effect on the Stamp Act being temporarily abandoned and the lawyer “removed” from his governorship.
According to Adams, Governor Francis Bernard became the tool of the local junto (the one started by, and left behind by, the lawyer.) This junto persuaded Bernard to revive the Stamp Act idea in 1764. Adams said that Bernard transmitted the junto’s idea to the British government–not the other way around! The junto even misrepresented to the British government that the American people “expected” the colonies to be dominated by Parliament. Furthermore, said Adams, the junto planned to gain financial control of the judicial branch in the colony, thus making it “independent” of the citizens’ will. The junto also planned to abolish the colonial charters–the very thing that Jonathan Belcher had prevented the British government from doing in 1729. (Belcher knew he had to become governor at the end of 1729, upon the death of the Bay Colonies’ current governor, because he understood the importance of having an American, not a Englishman, in the governorship, in order to protect the Colonies’ civil and religious liberties. So he became governor for the good of America.)
The junto also revived their old plans for a colonial union–all under the subjection of Parliament. (All of this is discussed in the article Jonathan Belcher: Governor in the Emerging Trilateral Center of the New World Order; see also the related article Camerica: Trilateral Center of the New World Order for mention of Bolingbroke.)
It was Martin Bladen’s Board of Trade that tried to make America more dependent on Great Britain by calling for the imposition of new imperialistic measures in 1729. The lawyer who proposed the Stamp Act was one of Bladen’s adherents.
John Adams implied he had observed the junto for twelve years, and it was “plain” what the junto’s plans were.
According to Adams, George Grenville, credited proposer of the Stamp Act, actually built upon the junto’s Stamp Act idea.
That’s why the end of Jonathan Belcher’s governorship of Massachusetts and New Hampshire was a turning point in American history–because of what came after him.
Governor Belcher tried to prevent the oppression that led to the American Revolution. The oppression was a program of imperial control that the junto called the New Era of Justice.
In the secularists’ view, the American experiment was a synthesis produced by the dialectical process of history (thesis versus antithesis results in synthesis), whereas Christians know that the best explanation is that history is whatever God’s providence allows to happen. History is shaped by God’s direction.
Secularists assert that deism helped form the United States government. But even then, as with the Great Seal of the United States (coat of arms on the one side, pyramid on the other), the asserted synthesis borrowed from pre-existing models. And its good parts came from Christianity. The United States can’t jettison the transcendent law of Christian principles.
Even if Thomas Jefferson personally thought like Bolingbroke, Voltaire, and David Hume, he was out of step with the majority of the American people who were patriots during the Revolution.
The predominant Christian view, which acknowledged God’s sovereignty over human laws, was expressed by people like Samuel Cooke, Samuel Langdon, Ezra Stiles, Nathaniel Whitaker, John Joachim Zubly, and Elias Boudinot, to name only a few. These people mentioned Moses, the Jewish republic of Israel, the Ten Commandments, God’s Providence, and the phrase “under God” often. That alone is evidence that the prevailing view at the time of America’s founding and the Young Republic was traditional Christianity–not deism (religious secularism). (Stiles specifically stated that deists were in the minority in America.)
And as for George Mason of Virginia and James Wilson of Pennsylvania, mentioned by the McCreary court as sources Thomas Jefferson utilized in drafting the Declaration of Independence, consider the following words of these gentlemen indicating that they acknowledged the sovereignty of God’s higher law over human law and government:
“The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth” — George Mason [Taken from arguments submitted by George Mason in Robin v. Hardaway, 2 Va. Reports (Jeff.) 109, 114 (Va. 1772)]
[*****]
“Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon the authority of that law which is divine” — James Wilson [Taken from Volume 1 of The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, at 104-05 (Bird Wilson ed. 1804)]
Glassroth v. Moore, 229 F.Supp.2d 1290, 1320-1321 (M.D. Ala. 2002) (APPENDIX B Quotations inscribed on the monument’s four sides [the Ten Commandments monument installed by Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore]).
So, if Thomas Jefferson borrowed from the writings of these men, it was their view of natural law and unalienable rights that he incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.
A biographer wrote about another prominent American patriot, Ezra Stiles:
“In a ‘Conspectus of a Perfect Polity,’ the author [Ezra Stiles] has given the outlines of the constitution of a commonwealth, agreeing, in its great principles, with those of the constitution of the United States and of the individual states. But he maintained that a Christian state ought expressly to acknowledge and embosom in its civil constitution the public avowal of the ‘being of a God,’ and ‘the avowal of Christianity.'” — Kingsley’s Life of Stiles
Ezra Stiles said of Hume and Voltaire: “neither of whom had any more taste or judgment in religion or moral reasoning than Cicero in poetry or Cibber for the drama […]” Of these, as well as Bolingbroke, Stiles said: “Step forth, thou Herbert, the father of deism! Come hither, you Bolingbrokes, Tindals, Collinses, Humes, Voltaires, with all your shining abilities, and that disappointed group of self-opinionated deniers of the Lord ‘that bought them,’ with that cloud of deluded followers who ‘would not that […] [God] should reign over them’–evanish from my presence, with all the light of your boasted wisdom, into the blackness of darkness, forever and ever!”
Stiles’ view was the majority view of the American founding fathers. So if Jefferson followed deistic principles, he was in the minority and spoke for himself. But he drafted the Declaration of Independence for the whole American people; the Declaration was for all the people. Not just for the views of Thomas Jefferson.
Ezra Stiles mentioned “Jefferson, who poured the soul of the continent into the monumental act of Independence.” (emphasis added).
Noted constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story said in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833):
Probably at the time of the adoption of the [first] amendment now under consideration, the general if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as not incompatible with the private rights of conscience and the freedom of religious worship.
Indeed, there is a historical theory that Jefferson specifically inserted the phrase “wall of separation between church and state” in his famous letter to the Danbury Baptists in hopes of changing, sometime in the future, the predominant Christianity of the American people. If so, Jefferson tried to gain a victory outside the democratic legislative process–by working, as social programmers later would do, to change the mindset of society.
Regardless of whether or not this was Jefferson’s intention, Justice Hugo Black later interpreted Jefferson’s “separation of church and state” phrase in such a way as indeed changed the mindset of some in society, by virtue of the precedent-making power of his and later court decisions in this area.
However, Judge Brevard Hand said in the Jaffree case (note 41):
The founding fathers were far wiser than we. [***] They were not impatient to bring about a change because we think today that is the proper course or to set about to justify by misinterpretation the original intent of the framers of the Constitution. We must remember that “He, who reigns within Himself, and rules passions, desires, and fears, is more a king.” Milton, Paradise Regained. If we, who today rule, do not follow the teachings of history then surely the very weight of what we are about will bring down the house upon our head, and the public having rightly lost respect in the integrity of the institution, will ultimately bring about its change or even its demise.
It’s time to re-program the judicial machines. Congress can remind them, through judicious exercise of constitutional Article III power, if necessary, that they are accountable to the will of the people–not to religious secularism.
Ezra Stiles faulted deistic secularism for not acknowledging “the excellency and dignity of man, who […] is the image of God” […] under the all-comprehending, the most benevolent administration of the universal Father.” Thus, like Governor Belcher (whom Ezra Stiles had met), Ezra, too, believed in the acknowledgment of God’s sovereignty over secular affairs and the creation of humans in His image to be the basis for human rights. Stiles highly praised Christianity, and he called God “the Author of Nature”–but his celebrated work The United States Elevated to Glory and Honor (1783) clearly indicated that he meant it in the Christian sense of God’s sovereignty.
Stiles wrote about the Christianity brought over from England by the founding fathers of New England:
The more this is realized in a state, the more will its felicity be advanced; for, certainly, the morals of Christianity are excellent. It enjoins obedience to magistracy, justice, harmony, and benevolence among fellow-citizens; and, what is more, it points out immortality to man. Politicians, indeed, usually consider religion only as it may affect and subserve civil purposes, and hence it is mighty indifferent to them what the state of religion be, provided they can ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm. Nothing is more common than to see them in every country making use of sects, for their own ends, whom they in their hearts despise and ridicule with supreme contempt. Not so the Christian patriot, who from his heart wishes the advancement of Christianity [….]
We err much if we think the only or chief end of civil government is secular happiness. [***] Let us model civil society with the adoption of divine institutions [….] Animated with the sublime ideas which Christianity infuses into a people, we shall be led to consider the true religion as the highest glory of a civil polity. [***] So the most perfect secular polity, though very excellent, would lose all its glory when compared with a kingdom wherein dwelleth righteousness, a community wherein the religion of the divine Jesus reigns in vigor and perfection.
[* * * * *]
But I must desist, with only observing that the United States are under peculiar obligations to become a holy people unto the Lord our God, on account of the late eminent deliverance, salvation, peace, and glory with which He has now crowned our new sovereignty.
So to Ezra Stiles, America’s glory was its Christianity. Indeed, he expected the United States to advance Christianity around the world (this was exercising freedom of religion):
In this country, […] aided and armed by the secular power, religion may be examined with the noble Berean freedom, the freedom of American-born minds. [***] Great things are to be effected in the world before the millennium […] and perhaps the liberal and candid disquisitions in America are to be rendered extensively subservient to some of the most glorious designs of Providence, and particularly in the propagation and diffusion of religion through the earth, in filling the whole earth with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord. A time will come […] when Christianity shall triumph over superstition, as well as Deism [….] [***] And when God in His providence shall convert the world, […] should American missionaries be blessed to succeed […] it would be […] a great honor to the United States. And thus the American Republic, by illuminating the world with truth and liberty, would be exalted and made high among the nations, in praise, and in name, and in honor.
Contrast that with the following statement in the McCreary decision:
The animating principle of Stone [v. Graham] applies equally in a courthouse setting: the government must present the Ten Commandments objectively and must integrate them with a secular message. The government achieves this goal by ensuring that the symbols, pictures and/or words in the display share a common secular theme or subject matter. [***]
ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky (December 18, 2003).
Early church father Tertullian (c. 145-220) said that secular law borrowed from God’s Law. Thus the Ten Commandments influenced secular source(s).
Noted constitutional scholar and Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story (whose first wife was a descendant of Governor Belcher’s sister) said in his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833):
[T]he real object of the [F]irst amendment was […] to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which would give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.
However, establishing the “high priests” of religious secularism (the deism of Bolingbroke as filtered through one man, Jefferson), under the guise of “original intent” (as the McCreary decision does) is, indeed, “giv[ing] to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”
The prevailing view of the laws of nature at the time of America’s founding was not Thomas Jefferson’s view–it was the view of patriots like Samuel Cooke: “The laws of nature, though enforced by divine revelation, which bind the conscience of the upright, […]” And he did say “enforced by divine revelation”.
This statement was made before legislators that included the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, John Hancock. Hancock was a close friend of patriot preacher Samuel Cooper, the son of Governor Belcher’s friend William Cooper–whose work The Honors of Christ Demanded of the Magistrate (1740) set forth the Biblical higher law doctrine. (In addition to being heartily endorsed by Governor Belcher, Samuel Cooper was also the friend of Declaration of Independence editors John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, as well as Samuel Adams and many other American Revolutionary leaders.) And the text for Cooke’s discourse was 2 Samuel 23:3-4: “[…] He that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God”.
Another patriot preacher, Samuel Langdon, said: “Thanks be to God, that He has given us, as men, natural rights, independent of all human laws whatever; and these rights are recognized by the grand charter of British liberties. By the law of nature any body of people, destitute of order and government, may form themselves into a civil society according to their best prudence, and so provide for their common safety and advantage.”
This echoed what Nathaniel Whitaker said. These writers understood Locke in a Christian sense; the laws of nature, natural rights, and the will of the people (ideas implicit in the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution) were understood in a Christian context.
Likewise, John Joachim Zubly said in 1775: “Survey the globe, and you will find that liberty has taken its seat only in Christendom, and that the highest degree of freedom is pleaded for and enjoyed by such as make profession of the gospel.”
Samuel Langdon talked about God’s sovereignty over laws made by human legislators. That’s the transcendent basis of all human justice, without which mankind would be ruled by “will to power” (the will of the strongest).
Judicial machines want to replace this higher natural law basis with a secularist legal philosophy masquerading as “natural law”. And such replacement necessarily is accompanied by the establishment of the religious basis for that philosophy: the religion of secular humanism.
Therefore, governmental acknowledgment of God is key to upholding and maintaining the transcendent standard of justice.
The Constitutional viewpoint of Thomas M. Cooley, who said in 1880 that Christianity “‘was always recognized in the administration of the common law'”, existed before the programming of the judicial machines. (See the quote from Cooley in Judge Ryan’s dissent in ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky (2003)).
The McCreary court didn’t just object to the Ten Commandments; they also objected to the introductions to the “Foundations of American Law and Government” displays that acknowledged the Ten Commandments.
These introductions are analogous to Chief Justice Moore’s acknowledgment of God.
They also are analogous to the Pledge of Allegiance and state mottos acknowledging that the government is “under God” or “in God we trust” or “with God all things are possible”. (See: Good Cheer Signs for All Times.)
Strangely, the McCreary decision required historical proof of linkage between the Ten Commandments and the Declaration of Independence, but the decision didn’t call for historical proof of linkage between the other documents in the display.
Jesus, in His Sermon on the Mount, went out of his way to stress that the principles of the Ten Commandments are not limited to a mechanistic reading of the words. He wanted people to think. The approach taken by the lawyers of His era entirely ignored the spirit of the Law–whose principles form the transcendent standard of justice for all humanity, for all time.
Jesus summed up the Commandments thus: “So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12).
Implicit in that summary is fairness and equality and liberty. So the principles undergirding the Declaration of Independence are in the Ten Commandments.
Like the lawyers of Jesus’ time who didn’t want to admit the Commandments’ full scope, secularists want to evade the acknowledgment that the Bible was the foundation for America’s laws. And beyond this: secularists want to go so far as to deny that there is a transcendent standard of justice for all people, and that God’s Law, expressed in the Bible, is in fact that transcendent standard. That’s the issue implicit in a government official’s right to acknowledge God.
The McCreary decision even objected to posting an excerpt from the Congressional Record:
The Joint Resolution [of Congress] itself makes assertions about the role of the Bible in forming the United States and inspiring the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. It then concludes with the following statements:
Whereas the history of our Nation clearly illustrates the value of voluntarily applying the teachings of the Scriptures in the lives of individuals, families, and societies;
….
Whereas that renewing our knowledge of and faith in God through Holy Scriptures can strengthen us as a Nation and a people; Now, therefore, be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the President is authorized and requested to designate 1983 as a national “Year of the Bible” in recognition of both the formative influence the Bible has been for our nation, and our national need to study and apply the teaching of the Holy Scriptures.”
(J.A. 208.) In short, Defendants’ public school displays of the Ten Commandments are contained within a text that exhorts Americans to acknowledge the Bible as “the Word of God” and to apply the teachings of the Bible to their lives. [***]
ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky (opinion of the court).
Apparently, the secularists’ concern is, that the superiority of the Ten Commandments will leap out of the frame and overwhelm all the other documents around it–for
[t]he displays do not present a “passive symbol” of religion like a creche, which, when accompanied by secular reminders of the holiday season, has come to be associated more with the public celebration of Christmas, rather than that holiday’s religious origins. [***] Instead, the Ten Commandments are an active symbol of religion because they “concern [ ] the religious duties of believers: worshipping the Lord God alone, avoiding idolatry, not using the Lord’s name in vain, and observing the Sabbath Day. [***]
Id. (citations omitted) (emphasis added).
Such a concern implicitly admits that the Ten Commandments are powerful influences–else why the concern with their “active” qualities.
After all:
As the Supreme Court has commented, if such displays “are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the schoolchildren to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments. [***]” Stone [v. Graham], 449 U.S. at 42.
Id.
As a song says, Christians have “Something So Good”. And for secularists to admit the power of God’s Word, is for them to contradict themselves in all places where they claim that the acknowledgment of God (as in the phrase “under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance) has become so assimilated into the culture that it has lost its powerful significance. Such acknowledgment of the Ten Commandments’ power belies secularism’s asserted lack of belief in God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence. This shows that, in their hearts, secularists know that God really exists and judges the world, after all.
Creches can be secularized because they are visual images that impart no specific moral principles. In contrast, the Ten Commandments are words that can be read. Creches can be seen with robotic non-reflection; whereas words can be thought about, reflected upon.
Robotic non-reflection is perfect for machines.
And indeed that’s how religious secularism ultimately views humanity: as biological machines–the product of evolution. This is viewing life in materialist, mechanical terms.
But, as the so-called “New Era of Justice” failed before–whose failure sadly brought on the oppression that provoked the Americans to revolt–the New Age of religious secularism will not succeed, for the American people will remember: That human natural rights are God-given, unalienable in the sense that no government has the right to grant them, and no government has the right to take them away. And the principles of fairness and equality inherent in the Ten Commandments (respect for God (and that includes acknowledging God as sovereign over human affairs)), and love your neighbor as yourself (which necessarily requires treating them fairly and equally, and respecting them by acknowledging the liberties and right to life to which a created fellow human being is entitled) were–and are–the bases for American civil, as well as religious, liberties.
(See: John Zoachim Zubly, The Law of Liberty (1775), which discusses the Biblical basis for the rights to life, liberty, and happiness.)
Truly, Christian principles are the law of liberty. And since God is the Creator of life, Christian principles guarantee the right to, and the respect of, life, as well as liberty. Thus, Christian principles are the only antidote to the programming of the judicial machines.
For further reading:
Programming the Judicial Machines (Part 2)
Pretexts and Commandments
True Heroism and the Rule of Law
Don’t Hide God in a Closet: Religious Secularism and Public Acknowledgment of God in the 21st Century
Good Cheer Signs for All Times
The Secularization of Christmas
Judge Ryan’s Dissent in ACLU of Kentucky v. McCreary County, Kentucky (2003)
Reflections on the Ten Commandments (includes Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Stone v. Graham (1980))
Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist, Dissent in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) (about equal time for evolution and creation science)
Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, Dissent from Denial of Certiorari in Tangipahoa Parish Board of Education v. Freiler (2000) (about a disclaimer of endorsement of evolution)
John Joachim Zubly, The Law of Liberty (1775)
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
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