Secular Nation not intended
Interesting column by Bernie Hendricks:
Larry E. Moran recently declared (Argus Leader, July 25) that the U.S. was "founded as a secular nation ..." and that it was therefore the original intent of our founding fathers to banish God from the principles by which we are to govern ourselves.
The evidence countering Moran's reading of history is considerable.
While no one disputes that our founders intended to prohibit the federal government from officially sanctioning a given church or denomination, they never intended to separate God and state.
James Wilson was one of six founding fathers to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In his work, "The First Legal Commentaries on the Constitution" (1792) Wilson wrote: "Human law must rest its authority ultimately upon that law which is divine. You cannot have good civil law if it separates itself from God."
Another founding father, George Mason, was a Virginia delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He is known as the "Father of the Bill of Rights" for his influence on the writing and acceptance of our first 10 amendments. Mason stated, "The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superceded by no power on earth."
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 approved the request (Oct. 3, 1789) and established the proclamation.
The very act which called our nation into existence, The Declaration of Independence, acknowledges the "Creator," "Divine Providence," and "The Supreme Judge of the Universe."
The Supreme Court (Gulf, Colorado and Santa Fe Railway Co. v. Ellis 1897) affirmed 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 once declared, was that virtuous "platform upon which the Constitution of the United States had been erected."
