U.S. CONSTITUTION AND BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES
October 30, 2012
“The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.” –John Adams wrote this on June 28, 1813, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson.
A liberal commenter left the following: “Can you point out one place in the bible (any version is okay) where it describes anything remotely similar to a democracy in government? I thought not. How about the Constitution. Anything about god or Jesus in there? Nope.. not a word. Nor do you even describe what “Biblical principles” made it into the Constitution. How about just one? Just one principle that went from the Bible to the Constitution.”
“Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of the Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise; and in this sense and to this extent our civilization and our institutions are emphatically Christian.” – United States Supreme Court, 1892.
The United States of America is not a democracy, so for the commenter to state such shows the ignorance of this obviously poorly educated individual. Nonetheless, I get what the poor soul is asking, and so that this person has the opportunity to learn, I have decided to address the topic of God in the Constitution, and how the Constitution was inspired by Biblical principles.
Biblically speaking, there is no reference to democracies and republics. But when one speaks of the Constitution being based on Biblical principles, that is not what is meant. Democracies and republics are not Biblical principles, but instead styles of governance. The principles being referred to that are in the U.S. Constitution are how our laws were inspired by the moral principles of the Ten Commandments, and how the Blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity (principles of freedom) were inspired by the biblical principles of free will, individualism, personal responsibility, moral conduct, and so forth.
George Mason was one of the Founding Fathers that insisted on the Bill of Rights, or the first ten amendments, to be added to the Constitution, saying regarding his decision that, “The laws of nature are the laws of God, whose authority can be superseded by no power on earth.”
Even Benjamin Franklin, the lone member of the group of founders that claimed to be anything but religious, attended every kind of Christian worship, called for public prayer, and contributed to all denominations. In fact, when the Constitutional Convention was finding itself stalling, and the members of the convention were arguing to the point that it was nearly coming to blows, Ben Franklin was the one that proposed that the delegation pray before each session of the Constitutional Convention.
In his request, Franklin stated, “I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God Governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”
Read the rest of this great blog at Political Pistachio
Read more: http://kirkcameron.com/2012/10/u-s-constitution-and-biblical-principles/#ixzz2BTGkdiEl
The American Heritage Project 