Part Nine: American Values and Principles
This may come as a shock but the Founders also thought that “without religion the government of a free people cannot be maintained. In 1787, the same year the Constitution was written and approved by Congress, that same Congress also passed the Northwest Ordinance. In it they emphasized the essential need to teach religion and morality in the schools. Here is how they said it: Article 3: Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.”
George Washington: Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion, and morality are indispensable supports…Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?
“Alexis de Tocqueville Discovers the Importance of Religion in America in1831, concerning religion in America, he wrote”: “On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there, the more I perceived the great political consequences resulting from this new state of things.
Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions… I do not know whether all Americans have a sincere faith in their religion-for who can search the human heart? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation and to every rank of society.”
“In Europe, it had been popular to teach that religion and liberty were enemies of each other. De Tocqueville saw the very opposite happening in America. He wrote: The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained in a very simple manner the gradual decay of religious faith. Religious zeal, said they, must necessarily fail the more generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused. Unfortunately, the facts by no means accord with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equaled by their ignorance and debasement; while in America, one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world, the people fulfill with fervor all the outward duties of religion.”
Can you imagine what kind of world it was back in 1831 when a Frenchman would come to America and say what De Tocqueville said about this country? Once again it seems we are or already have become the Europe of his day where we are saying religion and freedom must be separated. De Tocqueville continued: “The revolutions of America are obliged to profess an ostensible respect for Christian morality and equity, which does not permit them to violate wantonly the laws that oppose their designs… Thus, while the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.”
My, my how far have we come? Read this from De Tocqueville: “In New England every citizen receives the elementary notions of human knowledge; he is taught, moreover, the doctrines and the evidences of his religion, the history, of his country, and the leading features of its Constitution. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, it is extremely rare to find a man imperfectly acquainted with all these things, and a person wholly ignorant of them is a sort of phenomenon.”
Lastly from De Tocqueville a quote some of you may have heard before and a bit of a warning:
“I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because America is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
AMEN
(All quotes taken from “The Five Thousand Year Leap”)
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