Hendricks: God should have a place in our Christian nation

Speakout

Posted

An Argus Leader editorial reprinted in The Brookings Register (April 11, 2019), questioned the constitutionality of a bill signed into law by Gov. Kristi Noem requiring the prominent display of our nation’s motto, “In God We Trust,” in our public schools.  The Argus Leader’s arguments in opposition to this bill ignore a large body of evidence in its favor.

The United States Supreme Court itself opens each session with the crier presenting the invocation: “God save the United States and this Honorable Court.” 

The Washington Monument in our nation’s capital includes memorial stones along its 50 landings and 898 steps, several engraved with Biblical messages from Christian groups and Sunday school children of that era.  Sitting atop the 555-foot Washington Monument is a 3-sided aluminum cap with another engraved declaration. The first rays of the sun reaching our nation each day illuminate the east side of this cap which is engraved with two words: “Laus Deo.”  The literal translation: “Praise be to God.”

On Sept. 25, 1789 (from The Annuls of Congress), Congress formulated a request to President George Washington for a national day of Thanksgiving to “Almighty God.”  This happened to be the same day that the final wording for the First Amendment was approved. Washington established the proclamation, Oct. 3, 1789.

The Constitution of the United States certainly protects the freedom of people to openly practice any (or no) religion – providing such practices not lead to licentiousness or express themselves in deviant or socially violent behavior. These protections, however, were never intended to oblige official governmental indifference, or worse yet, hostility, toward Christianity. 

The very act which called our nation into existence, The Declaration of Independence, acknowledges the “Creator,” and “Divine Providence,” and “The Supreme Judge of the Universe.”  Samuel Adams, the “Father of the American Revolution,” affirmed (January 17, 1794):  “Before the formation of this Constitution… this Declaration of Independence was received and ratified by all the States in the Union and has never been disannulled.”

The Supreme Court itself affirmed, in Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Company v. Ellis 1896, that the Declaration and the Constitution are interdependent: “The latter [Constitution] is but the body and the letter of which the former [Declaration of Independence] is the thought and the spirit, and it is always safe to read the letter of the Constitution in the spirit of the Declaration of Independence.”  The Declaration of Independence, John Quincy Adams declared, was that virtuous “platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected.” 

Moreover, Christianity, whose moral virtue is grounded in the advancement of benevolence and good will toward those of other faiths, was deemed to be an essential foundation for true pluralism, or true religious tolerance.  There is significant legal support for this guiding principle, including Charleston v. Benjamin, 1846 (Christianity cited as that “Noble safeguard of religious toleration”) and Lindenmuller v. The People, 1860 (“This liberty of conscience in matters of faith and practice is entirely consistent with the existence, in fact, of the Christian religion”).

Would the Argus Leader care to name one other nation without a Christian foundation, in which the people of various faith traditions within that country enjoy anything remotely close to the democratic freedoms, and religious tolerance, and the general principles of pluralism that are present in America today?

For a full 170 years, “In God We Trust,” Bible reading, and prayer were lawful acts in America’s public schools.  When the Supreme Court finally intervened to prohibit these heretofore legal activities (Engel v. Vitale, 1962 and Abbington v. Schemp, 1963), it cited 1940s case law – not the U.S. Constitution.  Several court cases from the late 1940’s were used to justify  this ‘selective incorporation’ – whereby those restrictions on “Congress” regarding the First Amendment, such as they were, were also deemed to apply to the states.

Jefferson spoke directly against such an incursion of federal power, citing the First Amendment and Tenth Amendment restrictions on the federal government.  

He confirmed, “Certainly, no power to prescribe any religious exercise or to assume authority in any religious discipline has been delegated to the General [federal] Government.  It must then rest with the States” (to Samuel Miller, January 23, 1808).

Jefferson also admonished against inventing new legal concepts (‘selective incorporation’):  “On every question of construction, carry ourselves back to the time when the Constitution was adopted, recollect the spirit manifested in the debates, and instead of trying what meaning may be squeezed out of the text, or invented against it, conform to the probable one in which it was passed” (to Supreme Court Justice, William Johnson, June 12, 1823). 

It was never the intention or design of our Founding Fathers for the United States to be governed under the sterile glare of an atheist-humanist ethic. 

At his presidential inauguration on April 30, 1789, George Washington swore his oath of office with his hand placed upon the Holy Bible, opened to the 28th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy.  He later avowed in his inaugural address, “We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained...”