Evidence of Our Christian Nation
So, President Obama, if ours is not a Christian nation, explain this:
Invocation offered before the Texas House of Representative on May 8th, 2009 by Dr. Dennis W. Young, pastor, Missouri City Baptist Church, Missouri City, as follows:
God of mercy, God of grace, God of love, God of patience, God of hope, God of joy, and God of peace, we are truly thankful that you have protected us throughout the night and have allowed us to see another beautiful day. Today, we come offering a special intercessory prayer for the Texas House of Representatives. We pray your blessing on every member of the house, and ask that you will endow each one with the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding needed to perform his or her task well. We pray that every decision made today would be led and directed by you.
God, we are currently experiencing difficult economic times and in our humanism we have difficulty resolving them. Lord, we place the economic situation in your hands, recognizing that you are the chief economist and that you have the plans in place to bring about economic prosperity. You say if we ask believing it will be done; so we ask, we believe, and we claim the victory. Lord, we ask that you would say a word to those who are distressed, discouraged, depressed, or downcast because of loss of jobs or anticipated loss of jobs, loss of their homes, loss of courage, or loss of hope.
God, we pray for the State of Texas and everyone who lives therein. We pray for the governor, the mayors, the law enforcement officers, and all who are tasked with leading our state. We pray that you would direct our leaders in every decision they make and that they will rely on you in good times as well as in bad times. We pray that they would always rely on you, realizing that you are the source of their strength.
God, we pray for our country. We are mindful of how privileged we are to live in a free country. We pray that you will bless our national leaders, and we ask that everything they say and do would be led and influenced by you. We ask that you continue to bless us, guide us, lead us, and protect us. We ask all these things in the name of the Father, in the name of the Son, and in the name of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
If you would look back at our founding documents and journals documenting the business conducted in our State and Federal houses which have convened across this land throughout our history, you would find loads of such evidence of our reliance upon the God of Abraham, Issac, Jacob, upon the Holy Spirit, and upon Jesus himself written into the documents and lifted up in prayer and proclamation before the countless governing bodies.
I guess that would make your recent comments to the contrary those of either a liar or a fool. Which is it, President Obama?
I guess that would make your recent comments to the contrary those of either a liar or a fool. Which is it, President Obama?
Posts
1 comment:
It is important to distinguish government from society. Certainly, at the time of the founding of our government and yet today (even if to a lesser extent), America is a Christian nation in the sense that Christianity is a dominant religious influence in society. Just as certainly, America is a secular nation in the sense that our government is established by the people and predicated on the power of the people (and not any diety), as is clear from the Constitution which says nothing substantive of god or religion except in the First Amendment where the point is to confirm that each person enjoys religious liberty and that the government is not to do anything to establish religion and another provision precluding any religious test for public office.
To be sure, as you have observed, some of those who drafted the founding documents professed their belief in a god, some specifically the Christian god. So what? Others among the drafters did not profess, or denied, any such belief. In any event, they drafted documents plainly founding the government on the power of the people (not a deity). In that fundamental sense, the government is secular. Beyond that, the First Amendment and the no-religious-test clause of the Constitution aim to ensure that government and religion continue to maintain some measure of separation.
Lest there be any doubt, shortly after the founding, President George Washington (a founder) drafted and President John Adams (a founder) signed, with the unanimous consent of the Senate (comprised in large measure of founders), the Treaty of Tripoli declaring, in pertinent part, “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This is not an informal comment by an individual founder, but rather an official declaration of the most solemn sort by the United States government itself. Note too that the Constitution provides that treaties, apart from the Constitution itself, are the highest law of the land—higher even than statutes. Appeals, no matter how earnestly or often repeated, to unofficial, informal comments by individual founders do not, indeed cannot, trump the plain import of legal documents such as the Constitution and Treaty of Tripoli.
Post a Comment