http://www.survivalblog.com/

I know I learned quite a bit from a hasty half hour skimming through the various pages.

We agree with you that America was founded as a Christian nation and should still be formally designated as a Christian nation. We also agree with you that, if anything, our founding fathers did not go far enough in making this explicit, although Thornwell tried to fix that problem with an amendment to the Confederate Constitution. We also agree that we should not be surprised when covenantal disobedience brings punishment.

The only part of your show that we considered rubbish is the idea that Christians are Americans but other members of our tribe are not. We are bound by blood to the descendants of the White men whose great deeds you have listed in your comment above. We have the same obligation to them as the Apostle Paul had to his “kinsmen according to the flesh” – Romans 9:3. And while we are certainly bound in a covenant of faith to fellow Christians, we are called worse than infidels if we neglect the duties to our own by blood. Therefore, it is simply false that only Christians are true Americans, just as it is not true that only Christians are true Lithuanians.

We also agree 100% with Tim Harris that Lincoln’s so-called “racism” was the only good thing about him. Would that we all could be as “racist” as Abraham Lincoln. In his quote above, he sought to endear himself to the audience by moving close to Douglas on the issue, and the ideas he expressed, especially on miscegenation, found nearly unanimous agreement in both the North and the South, because both sections were still almost entirely Christian in those days.

The realization that our country was indeed founded as a Christian nation must begin with the understanding that our founding began 150 or so years before the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. And a superb, well-documented argument for our Christian origins is a little book I have only recently acquired by a former Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, David J. Brewer, titled “the United States As A Christian Nation” (John C. Winston Co.,, 1905). As Brewer notes:

The first colonial grant, made to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584 authorized him to enact statutes for the government of the proposed colony provided that “they not be against the true Christian faith now professed by in the Church of England.” The first charter of Virginia, granted by King James I in 1606, commenced this grant invoked “the providence of Almighty God…in propagating the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.” The Mayflower Compact of 1620 says that they the Pilgrims did what they did “for the glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith.” And the charter of New England, granted by James I in 1620, expressed the “hope thereby to advance the enlargement of Christian religion, to the glory of God Almighty.”

The Massachusetts Bay charter, granted in 1629 by Charles I, vows to “win and incite the natives of the country to their knowledge and obedience of the only true God and Savior of mankind, the Christian faith…[which] is the principle end of this plantation.” This declaration was substantially repeated in the 1991 Massachusetts Bay charter granted by William and Mary. The fundamental orders of Connecticut, under a provisional government instituted in 1638, stated that its purpose was “to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, also the discipline of the churches, which, according to the truth of the said gospel, is now practiced amongst us.” And the preamble of the Constitution of 1776 specifically says that among the things due to ever man in his place and proportion are “civility and Christianity.”

In 1638 the first Rhode Island settlers organized a local government and agreed to “submit our persons, lives and estates to our Lord Jesus Christ, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and to all those perfect and most absolute laws of his holy word of truth, to be guided and judged thereby. Exod. 24:3,4; II Chron. 11:3; II Kings 11:17.” The 1663 Rhode Island charter speaks of its petitioners as “godly edifying themselves and one another in the holy Christian faith and worship as they were persuaded.” The charter of Carolina granted this same year by Charles II says its petitioners are “excited with a laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith.” In the preface of the frame of government prepared by William Penn in 1682 “the Lord from heaven” is mentioned as the “highest attainment” at which men on earth may arrive. And the laws prepared to go with this frame of government called for the keeping of the Sabbath Day as did “the primitive Christians…to worship God according to their understandings.”

In the charter of privileges granted in 1701 by Penn to the province of Pennsylvania and its territories (later including Delaware) “Almighty God” is said to be “the only Lord of Conscience, Father of Lights and Spirits, and the author as well as object of all divine knowledge, faith and worship, who doth enlighten the minds and persuade and convince the understandings of the people.” Vermont’s 1777 Constitution also called for observance of the Sabbath and for “some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the revealed will of God.” The 1788 Constitution of South Carolina declared that “the Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed and is hereby constituted and declared to be the established religion of this state: and “that the Christian religion is the only true religion; that the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament are of divine inspiration, and are the rule of faith and practice.”

Within 100 years of the landing at Jamestown Christians established three colleges: Harvard, William and Mary and Yale. The first seal used by Harvard read “In Christi Gloriam,” its charter saying that among its purposes was “through the good hand of God” to educate the English and Indian youth “in Knowledge latter observing: “But it would scarcely be asked of a court, in what professes to be a Christian land, to declare a law unconstitutional because it requires rest from bodily labor on Sunday (except works of mercy and necessity) and thereby promotes the cause of Christianity.”

Commenting on all of this, Associate Justice Brewer says: “You will have noticed I have presented no doubtful facts. Nothing has been stated which is debatable. The quotations from charters are in the archives of the several States; the laws are on the statute books; judicial opinions are taken from the official reports; statistics from the census publications…I have said enough to show that Christianity came to this country with the first colonists; has been powerfully identified with its rapid development, colonial and national, and today (as of 1905 – J.L.) exists as a mighty factor in the life of the republic. This is a Christian nation, and we can all rejoice as truthfully we repeat the words of Leonard Bacon:

O God, beneath Thy guiding hand
Our exiled fathers crossed the sea,
And when they trod the wintry strand,
With prayer and psalm they worshiped Thee.
Thou heardst, well pleased, the song, the prayer –
Thy blessing came; and still has power
Shall onward through all ages bear
The memory of that holy hour
Laws, freedom, truth, and faith in God
Came with those exiles o’er the waves,
And where their pilgrim feet have trod,
The God they trusted guards their graves.
And here Thy name, O God of love,
Their children’s children shall adore,
Till these eternal hills remove,
And spring adorns the earth no more.

John Lofton / JLof@aol.com

What songs do you recommend?