Hi, my name is David Bercot, and tonight we're going to be talking about how God was written out of the United States Constitution. I want to begin by reading you an excerpt from a sermon preached by Dr. Bird Wilson. This was in the year 1831, and his sermon was published in the Albany Daily Advertiser. Now Dr. Wilson had himself done extensive research on the religious beliefs of the Founding Fathers and what had happened during the Constitutional Convention.
He was in a different position than you and I because he was able to actually contact people who knew George Washington, who knew some of the founding fathers. Other tools that he used are available to us today, such as Madison's records of what went on during the Constitutional Convention. Anyway, I want to read you this excerpt from his sermon.
He said this: " When the Revolutionary War was over, and the victory over our enemies won, and the blessings and happiness of liberty and peace were secured, the Constitution was framed, and God was neglected. He was not merely forgotten. He was absolutely voted out of the Constitution.
The proceedings, as published by Thompson, the Secretary of the Constitutional Convention, and the History of the Day show that the question was gravely debated whether God should be in the Constitution or not, and after a solemn debate, He was deliberately voted out of it. There is in the theory of our government no recognition of God's laws and sovereignty. Those who have been called to administer the government have not been men making any public profession of Christianity.
Washington was a man of valor and wisdom. He was esteemed by the whole world as a great and good man. But he was not a professing Christian. " End quote. Now for many of you, that's sort of a startling message to have been preached. But for my own research, and I've been researching this for quite a number of years, I've come to the same conclusion that he did, that there was a deliberate decision to leave God out of the United States Constitution.
And I think by the end of tonight's message, you will come to the same conclusion yourself. Because it becomes clear when we examine the documents pertaining to the founding of the United States, beginning with the Declaration of Independence through the United States Constitution and some of the very first treaties of our new nation. It's particularly obvious when we compare the state constitutions that were in effect when the Founding Fathers met to draft the Constitution.
And in fact, they used some of these state constitutions as a model for the federal government and for the Constitution that they were writing. Let's start with the Declaration of Independence. In my previous messages on the myth of Christian America, we've looked at some of the original documents. We've looked at Life in Puritan New England or more exactly congregationalist New England. We've looked at the causes of the American Revolution. We've talked about George Washington, et cetera.
Anyway, now let's go back to the Declaration of Independence. This is 1776. It was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, who himself was definitely not a Christian. I don't think he even made a profession to be a Christian. He was a deist. He did believe in God.
He said, " When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them. " So right there at the very beginning of the Declaration of Independence, he makes mention of God.
Continues, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You probably memorized those words in grade school. I know I did.
So like I say, right there at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson makes mention of God and of our Creator. Not that what they were doing was necessarily something that was according to the teachings of God, but at least they acknowledged them. Every nation on earth should acknowledge that there is a God, and they should recognize that their power to be a government, to have authority here on earth, comes from God.
Jesus told Pontius Pilate that, that he would have no authority to govern if it had not been granted to him by God. Well, after the Declaration of Independence was ratified and announced, then the various states, they had formerly been colonies, and now they were independent states, began drafting constitutions. Eight different states drafted constitutions in that very year, 1776. New York and Georgia drafted theirs in 1777, and Massachusetts drafted its in 1780.
Now you probably remember from your American history in school that originally these states drew up what were called the Articles of Confederation, and that's how they operated during the American Revolution and for about a decade after the Revolution. The Articles of Confederation were passed in 1777. They don't go into details about God and Christianity the way the state constitutions do, but they do at least have one reference to God.
Towards the end of the article, it says this, " And whereas it has pleased the great governor of the world (that's referring to God) to incline the hearts of the legislatures we respectfully represent in Congress to approve of and to authorize us to ratify the said Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. What I want to do now is to look at the state constitutions that the 13 former colonies drew up to govern their independent states. Now, obviously, I'm not going to read the entire Constitutions to you.
I want to just focus on the parts of the Constitutions that dealt with freedom of religion and the role of religion, or the role of Christianity in that state. We're not going to look at all 13, because in general, they were very similar, but I am going to read you enough that you can get the general picture. So we'll start with the Constitution of Delaware, which was written in 1776. I'm going to just be going in alphabetical order.
Article 22 of that Constitution says this: " Every person who shall be chosen a member of either legislative house or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath or affirmation: " I do profess faith in God the Father and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore. " And I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
So to hold any public office in the state of Delaware, you had to be a professing Christian. I say that because you had to believe in the Trinity and you had to believe in the inspiration of both the Old and New Testaments. Article 29 of that Constitution says, " There shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this state in preference to another. " So they had an establishment clause, like we see in the United States Constitution, but it's a little bit more precise on what it's talking about.
That is, preferring one religious sect. They probably should have used the word " Christian " because I think that's what they had in mind. So they were a little bit more specific of what they meant by establishment of religion, and that was giving preference to one religious sect over another. All right, the Constitution of Massachusetts.
This was drafted and ratified in 1780, and the preamble of it says this: " Therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging with grateful hearts the goodness of the great legislature of the universe, in affording us in the course of his providence, an opportunity to form a government. " It goes on, I won't read the whole thing. So that they acknowledge right at the very beginning, we acknowledge there's a God out there and that our authority comes from Him.
Article II of the Massachusetts Constitution says, " It is the right as well as the duty of all men in society to worship the supreme being, the great creator and preserver of the universe. And no subject shall be hurt, molested, or restrained in His person, liberty or estate for worshiping God in the manner and season most agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, or for his religious profession or sentiments, provided he does not disturb the public peace or obstruct others in their religious worship.
Okay, so it's spelled out in a lot more detail than our U.S. Constitution does the right of freedom of religion. It continues on, as the happiness of a people and the good order and preservation of civil government essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality. And as these cannot be generally diffused through a community, but by the institution of the public worship of God and of the public instructions in piety, religion, and morality.
Therefore, to promote their happiness and to secure the good order and preservation of their government, the people of this Commonwealth have a right to invest their legislature with power to authorize and require.
And the legislature shall from time to time authorize and require the several towns ' parishes precincts and other political bodies or religious societies to make suitable provision at their own expense for the institution of the public worship of God and for the support and maintenance of public Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality. In all cases where such provisions shall not be made voluntarily. And all money is paid by the subject to the support of public worship and of public teachers.
Aforesaid shall, if he require it, be uniformly applied to the support of the public teacher or teachers of his own religious sect or denomination, provided there be any on whose instructions he attends. Otherwise, it may be paid toward the support of the teacher or teachers of the parish or precinct in which the said monies are raised. And every denomination of Christians demeaning themselves peaceably and as good subjects of the Commonwealth shall be equally under the protection of the law.
And no subordination of any sect or denomination to another shall ever be established by law. So Massachusetts was very specific on what they meant by freedom of religion and no establishment of religion. First of all, they acknowledged God, number one. Number two, they recognized that religion, and by religion, they're primarily referring to Christianity. Perhaps though it would include Judaism as well, was something good for the public.
It wasn't just something that, well, you should be free to do it or free not to do it, but it's something that everyone benefits from. It's the exact same view that the government today and most of the population would have about public school education. That even if you don't have any children, you still have to pay taxes to pay for teachers and the funds necessary to operate a public school. Because our government believes that everybody in society benefits when you have an educated population.
Back during the American Revolution, they believed that churches were just as essential, that society benefited from the fact that there were churches and that people were receiving moral instruction. And so the state should actually promote this and help pay for it just like we pay for public schools. Now, they didn't establish one sect over another. They made it clear that the monies that were paid to promote churches were to be applied to your own church if you attended one.
So that if the county government taxed you $10 a year for the promotion of churches, well, your $10 could go to the church that you belong to to help support it. If you didn't belong to any church, well, you still had to pay it because the view was everyone benefits the same way today, even if you have no children, you still have to pay for public schools.
And also, it was very clear that they were promoting specifically the Christian religion, that you would not be treated differently under the law because of the Christian denomination you belong to. Apparently, you could be treated different as a Jew, or as a Muslim, and certainly as an atheist. Not that you necessarily would, but the state could do that. So that's how they felt during the American Revolution in Massachusetts.
And that's interesting because the State Constitution of Massachusetts was one of several constitutions that the men at the Constitutional Convention had before them and used as a basis for the National Constitution they were establishing. And they could have made it as specific as the Massachusetts Constitution, but they deliberately chose not to. Let's move on now to the New Jersey Constitution, which was passed in 1776.
It reads that, this is Article 18, " That no person shall ever within this colony be deprived of the inestimable privilege of worshiping Almighty God in a manner agreeable to the dictates of his own conscience, nor under any pretense whatsoever, be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith and judgment.
Nor shall any person within this colony ever be obliged to pay tithes, taxes, or any other rates for the purpose of building or repairing any other church or churches, place or places of worship, or for the maintenance of any minister or ministry, contrary to what he believes to be right, or has deliberately or voluntarily engaged himself to perform. So they were very explicit on what they meant by freedom of religion.
It goes on, this is Article 19, that there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this province in preference to another, and that no Protestant inhabitant of this colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right merely on account of his religious principles, but that all persons professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or
being a member of either branch of the legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity enjoyed by others, their fellow subjects.
Okay, so they're specific in what they mean by establishment. It's of one religious sect in preference to another. But in religious sect, they make it clear they're talking about Protestant religion. Now, I'm not saying that that was necessarily a good thing, that Catholics could be discriminated against or Jews or Muslims or atheists.
But I am saying that they were very specific on what they meant about no establishment of a religious sect, that it's talking about in preference over another, not that they were to be officially an atheistic state. Now let's look at the Constitution of New York, which was passed in 1777. Now New York would have had one of the more liberal constitutions applying to religion or Christianity.
Article 38 of their Constitution said, " And whereas we are required by the benevolent principles of rational liberty, not only to expel civil tyranny, but also to guard against that spiritual oppression and intolerance, wherewith the bigotry and ambition of weak and wicked priests and princes have scourged mankind.
" This convention does further, in the name and by the authority of the good people of this state, ordain determine and declare that the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever hereafter be allowed within this state to all mankind, provided that the liberty of conscience hereby granted shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state.
North Carolina, in contrast to New York, was one of the more conservative states when it came to religion. Their Constitution, passed on December 18th, 1776, said this, Article 19, " That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences.
" Article 32 that " No person who shall deny the being of God or the truth of the Protestant religion or the divine authority either of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the state, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this state.
" So there in North Carolina, you could not hold a position in public office unless you were a Protestant and believed in the divine authority of the Old and New Testaments. It goes on to say Article 34 that there shall be no establishment of any one religious church or denomination in this state in preference to any other.
Neither shall any person on any pretense whatsoever be compelled to attend any place of worship contrary to his own faith or judgment, nor be obliged to pay for the purchase of any building of any house of worship or the maintenance of any ministry contrary to what he believes right or has voluntarily and personally engaged to perform.
But all persons shall be at liberty to exercise their own mode of worship, provided that nothing herein contained shall be construed to exempt preachers of treasonable or seditious discourses from legal trial and punishment. So there was freedom of religion there. You could worship God according to the dictates of your own conscience. You could not be forced to pay for the ministry or church building of another group other than the place that you worshipped in.
And yet there was, in order to hold office, you did have to be a believing Protestant Christian and believing in the Old and New Testaments as being written under divine authority. Now we'll move to the Constitution of Pennsylvania. It was also passed in 1776.
It said this, Article 2, that all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding, and that no man ought or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect or support any place of worship, or maintain any ministry contrary to or against his own free will and consent.
Nor can any man who acknowledges the being of God be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right as a citizen on account of his religious sentiments or peculiar mode of religious worship, and that no authority can or ought to be vested in or assumed by any power whatever that shall in any case interfere with or in any manner control the right of conscience in the free exercise of religious worship.
Section 11 of the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 said that in each member this is talking about the members of the legislature before he takes his seat shall make and subscribe the following declaration: " I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
And no further or other religious tests shall ever hereafter be required of any civil officer or magistrate in this state. So Pennsylvania, again, granted freedom of religion, but when it came to serving in a position of authority in the state, you essentially had to be a Christian because you had to acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.
Now, I say Christian in a loose sense because I think, for example, Benjamin Franklin would have easily been able to say he believed those two things, but he would not have believed in the infallibility of the Scriptures, nor in everything that they teach about Jesus Christ. Finally, I want to look at the Constitution of Virginia passed in 1776.
Section 16 of it says, " That religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men are equally entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love and charity towards each other.
" So again, even the more liberal state constitutions make mention of God, refer to the fact that we owe a duty to our Creator, and often will specifically mention Christian or Protestant when they talk about freedom of religion. Keep in mind what we've just read from those state constitutions. Now we're going to look at the United States Constitution, which was written in 1787, just 11 years later.
And notice the huge difference between what we saw in those state constitutions and what was written in the United States Constitution, which was written in 1787. That's just 11 years later. But what a dramatic difference. Article 6, Section 3 of the United States Constitution says this: " No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. " Now, as I said, those men at the Constitutional Convention had before them the state constitutions.
Some of the men there in fact had been involved in drafting the state constitutions. And whereas nearly all of the state constitutions had some sort of test that to hold public office you either had to be a Protestant or a Christian or at least a believer in God. The United States Constitution totally leaves all of that out. An atheist can hold office, a Muslim, anybody can hold office. Now as a kingdom Christian, I'm not saying that's a bad thing the way the Constitution was written in that sense.
I'm just saying the framers of the U.S. Constitution deliberately wrote God out of the Constitution. I mean, they had to go against the precedent of all of these previous state constitutions, as well as the colonial charters that nearly all make reference to God as well. The men of the Constitution were definitely not setting up a Christian nation. They make that crystal clear.
And whereas all of the state constitutions make reference to God, and sometimes even to Christianity, there is no reference to God whatsoever in the United States Constitution. Totally left out. And again, this wasn't an accident like, well, it was understood, because all of these other documents, including the Articles of Confederation and the Declaration of Independence, they all make mention to God, or at least the Supreme Governor of the Universe, or something like that.
I mean, to take a deliberate step that we don't even want to mention God in the Constitution, that was something quite new. In fact, this was quite a revolutionary thing, a shocking thing. And certainly in the history of Western Europe and the Western nations, this was a total break from everything that had preceded it. And so it was obviously a calculated, purposeful decision. Now let's look at the First Amendment. It was passed in 1791, just a few years after the Constitution.
And this is what it says, the First Amendment, " Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances. " So that's all it says. And yet they had before them, again, all of these state constitutions that had spelled out what they were talking about when they talked about establishment of religion.
That term establishment is used in perhaps the majority of the state constitutions, but they don't just stop there. They go on to say what we mean by establishment, that we don't want this religious sect to have preference over this other religious sect. They did not mean that we are an officially atheistic state, that we do not want the word " God " mentioned in our government, or in our schools, or anything like that. They make it clear what they're talking about.
And likewise, concerning prohibiting the free exercise of religion, they make it clear what they mean by that, although that takes a little less clarification. But certainly an establishment of religion, that is extremely ambiguous. Being an attorney myself, one of the things they taught us in law school, and one of the things I've learned through the years of experience, is that when you are drafting a document, whether it is a contract or a deed or a will, you must be specific.
You don't use general ambiguous terms, because they're always going to cause conflict later on, and people will often end up in court as a result of it. I mean, if any lawyer that I knew drew up a document like that, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, I would think, " What a shoddy lawyer. What a poor way to draft a document. " Because obviously, the question is, what does that mean?
I mean, the men who drew up the state constitutions, they knew how to explain what they meant when they started talking about establishment of religion. They spelled it out, so there would be no room for doubt later on. But the framers of the Constitution, or at least of the Bill of Rights, just made it short and ambiguous.
And as a result of that, now we can have these absurd rulings that to mention God in public school is unconstitutional, to pray in public school is unconstitutional, to allow Christians to meet and study the Bible has sometimes been ruled unconstitutional, to hang the Ten Commandments in a courthouse. That's unconstitutional. I mean, it goes on and on. And while I think the Supreme Court holds the blame for these absurd interpretations, I certainly don't think the founding fathers intended that.
In fact, I think we can be certain they did not. But they made it possible by writing such an ambiguous First Amendment, no law respecting an establishment of religion. That's been used to mean that government can in no way help or aid religion. And the result has been a government that is often very anti-religious and particularly anti-Christian. I mean, I can contrast this with, for example, the laws in Honduras.
For the last 10 years, I've been going down there twice a year and gotten to know a bit about the country. And there, you have to pray in public school. The law requires you to. There's freedom of religion in Honduras. The Catholic Church is not the state church. Evangelicals can, you know, have free practice of their religion in almost every kind of sect or little church that you can think of.
But you would never have this happen there, at least not under their Constitution, because their Constitution talks about God, and their government actually actively supports religion. It sees it as a good thing, as a blessing to society. One of the first things that comes to my mind when I read the United States Constitution is what happened? I mean, just 11 years earlier, you had everybody mentioning God in their documents, in their constitutions, Declaration of Independence, things like that.
So how could he have been totally written out of the United States Constitution? I don't have all the answers, but it does appear that there was an enormous spiritual decline during the course of the American Revolution and in the years after it. Why was there such a spiritual decline? Again, we don't know all the reasons, but we do know from records that are available that church attendance dropped dramatically during the American Revolution. Soldiers were away from home.
There were no revival meetings, things like that. And of course, it's hard to talk about brotherly love when you're slaughtering one another. And the American Revolution caused some very strange allies to be made. I mean, you had men like Samuel Adams, who was a very outspoken professing Christian, and Ethan Allen, on the same side, who was very outspoken against Christianity.
You had men who normally attended church every Sunday and would have definitely called himself a Christian, working side by side with someone like Thomas Paine, who was a deist. He definitely believed in God, but certainly not in Christianity. And so when your brother becomes the person who holds the same political view as you, and your enemy becomes somebody who holds a different political view, regardless of their religious beliefs, well then you've now made religion the second most important thing in your life.
It's like Jesus said, you cannot serve two masters, and why it doesn't work to try to have a Christian government. Because sooner or later, one of the masters is going to conflict with the other, and you're going to have to make a choice between the two. And the choice the revolutionaries made was our allies, our brothers, our people who want to overthrow British rule, not people who attend the same church as we do, or hold to the same spiritual convictions as we do.
Another thing that brought about spiritual decline is that the loyalists, the ones that were called Tories in our history books in school, the ones who did not want to break from England, tended to be stable church-going conservative families. And that's not true in every instance, but it's a general rule. And so with the American Revolution, of course, these people aren't attending church because you know they might get arrested and killed by other members of that church who supported the revolution.
And then after the American Revolution, most of them shipped out of the United States. They went up to Canada, or some of them to England and other places. So you lost a big chunk of the conservative part of the population and of the more traditional churchgoers. Now those are just some of the reasons. I don't know all of the reasons why there was a spiritual decline, but it appears to be quite certain that there was. I'll give you another example to bring that out to you.
When the Continental Congress was meeting, this was the Congress that passed the Declaration of Independence and basically governed the 13 colonies as far as a federal government during the American Revolution. Now, the Continental Congress, they had an appointed chaplain, and they began every session with prayers.
Now that doesn't mean that what they were doing was in harmony with God's teachings, but at least they were acknowledging God, and they realized that there was a need to rely upon Him for what they were doing to be blessed by God. But again, just 11 years later, and you had some of the very same men meeting at the Constitutional Convention. They had no chaplain, and they offered no prayers. That's an enormously striking contrast between what had happened just 11 years before.
Well, one of the delegates at the Constitutional Convention, after a couple weeks of wrangling about things, he made a public plea to George Washington, who was the chairman of that convention, that they begin every day with prayer. Do you have any guess who that person was? Well, I can't blame you if you don't guess correctly, because I would not have. It was actually Benjamin Franklin.
I want to read to you the little speech that he gave to the men there at the Constitutional Convention and specifically addressed to George Washington. And this has been recorded in the minutes of the Constitutional Convention. It's there for anyone to inspect. This was on Thursday, June 28th, 1787, recorded by James Madison. And here is what Benjamin Franklin said, as recorded. Dr. Franklin, Mr.
President, the small progress we have made after four or five weeks of close attendance and continual debating with each other our different sentiments on almost every question. Several of the last producing as many nays as ayes. Is, I think, a melancholy proof of the imperfection of human understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own lack of political wisdom since we have been running about in search of it.
We have gone back to ancient history for models of government and examined the different forms of those republics which having been formed with seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed modern states all around Europe, but find none of their constitution suitable to our circumstances.
In this situation of this assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the father of lights to illuminate our understandings. In the beginning of the war with Great Britain, when we were aware of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for divine protection. Our prayers sir were heard, and they were graciously answered.
All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence, we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national happiness. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance? 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? We have been assured, sir, in the sacred writings, that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain those that build it. I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.
We shall be divided by our little partial local interests, our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and byword down to the future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter, from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing governments by human wisdom, and leave it to chance, war, and conquest.
I therefore beg leave to move that hereafter prayers imploring the assistance of heaven and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the clergy of this city be requested to officiate in that service. Quite a moving speech. And I would have guessed after such a speech that everyone would have kind of hung their heads in shame and all of them said, " Yeah, let's start opening our services with prayer.
" But that's not what happened. George Washington did not support this motion made by Benjamin Franklin, and there were just three or four people who voted for it. As Benjamin Franklin later wrote in his own memories, the convention thought prayer was unnecessary except three or four persons. I'm kind of curious why George Washington didn't want prayers to be held or a chaplain appointed. As we've looked at in the previous message, George Washington was not a Christian as most evangelicals use that word.
He attended a Christian church with some regularity. He certainly believed in God, and he certainly wasn't anti-religious. But the fact that he didn't even want prayer there at the convention tells a lot about him. Hopefully by now it's clear to you that the men who wrote the U.S. Constitution and led this nation after the Revolution definitely were not trying to establish a Christian nation.
If there's any doubt in your mind on that, I'd like to read to you an excerpt from one of the early treaties of the United States. This was during George Washington's second term in office, and this treaty was made with Tripoli. It starts off Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bay and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary. Now the word bay there is spelled B-E-Y, and it means the governor of the country.
Okay, Article 1 starts off, " There is a firm and perpetual peace and friendship between the United States of America and the Bay and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary, made by the free consent of both parties and guaranteed by the most potent Bay and Regency of Algiers.
Article 11 is what we're interested in, and it says this: " As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion, as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility of Muslims, and as the said states never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Muhammadan nation.
It is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries. It's quite a statement, isn't it? That the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion. So like I say, if you're holding on to that myth that these men were trying to set up a Christian nation if such were possible, which it isn't, but the facts show they weren't even trying to do that.
And that treaty was ratified by the United States Senate. So although back during the years of the American Revolution and the years before that, the colony and then the independent states were set up as Christian colonies or Christian states if such a thing were possible.
That definitely was not true when it came time to set up the national government, that they purposely left out God and they purposely left out Christianity and made it clear that there would be no test on your religious beliefs to hold public office. And after the United States Constitution was ratified, it seems to have affected then the individual states. Or maybe the people in those states were already moving in that direction. I'm not sure which came before the other.
All I know is that the state constitutions began to be amended, and Georgia and Delaware, they amended theirs to expressly forbid any religious tests. Pennsylvania didn't take out religious tests, but it did extend its tests to allow Jews as well as Christians to hold office. In fact, every state changed except South Carolina, which left its Constitution the way it was until well into the 1800s.
And then the new states that joined the Union invariably followed the example of the United States Constitution, and there were no religious tests and nothing overtly to promote or even bless or acknowledge the Christian religion. Does this mean then that the secular humanists are right about the Constitution and that the Christian patriots and organizations and schools like Bob Jones University are wrong? Well, I think the truth is that both sides are wrong and neither side is being very honest.
It certainly is dishonest to present the United States as a Christian country when we look at the evidence that I've shown you. Now, just like you can go and proof text the Bible, you can do that with history as well. You can go and grab this statement made by someone here and this speech given here and this letter here and say, " See, these were all Christians and they were setting up a Christian government.
" But at the same time, the secular humanists and the liberal part of the United States today, they're not being honest either. To begin with, none of those men at the Constitutional Convention foresaw the future effects or the future ways that the document they were drawing up would be interpreted. No doubt there were men there who were anti-religious, anti-Christian, and wanted a government where God would be totally left out of the picture.
But I don't think that's what most of the delegates there were intending. Obviously, they weren't intending to create or establish a Christian nation, and they did make a conscious decision to even leave out any mention of God or Christianity. But you have to remember that what they were drawing up was a document for the federal government. The First Amendment says Congress shall not pass any law for the establishment of religion or abridging the free exercise thereof.
See, that didn't take away those powers from the states. I mean, those men were obviously aware that in various states, there were religious tests to hold office. And there was some form of establishment that in some states, taxes helped to pay the salaries of ministers or to build church buildings, that Christianity was the favored religion and understood to be the religion of the majority. The United States Constitution didn't change any of that. The Constitution was only putting limits on the federal government.
And yet those men, like I say, were very clear they wanted no religious tests to hold office in the federal government, that even if you were an atheist, that was fine. And most states eventually followed that example.
And I'm sure that no one at the Constitutional Convention dreamed that someday the Supreme Court would say that it's illegal to have the Ten Commandments posted in a court building, or you can't have a nativity scene on public property, or the government can in no way do anything that would provide assistance to churches or bring God into the classroom at school. I mean, that's not what was remotely on their minds. And again, as I said, at that point in time, these restrictions were only on the federal government.
The states had the power to even say you can't vote unless you're a Christian or that, if they chose to do so. There was no limit on them. Now, what changed everything was the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment, the first section, which is the one that we're concerned with, says, " All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States. Nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Now, the entire purpose of that amendment was to undo slavery. I mean, the 13th Amendment abolished slavery. And this was to undo the practice in most of the slave states that made blacks non-citizens.
So it's saying everybody that is born or naturalized in the United States and subject to its jurisdiction is a United States citizen, and you're also a citizen of the state in which you were born. So you can't take blacks and say you're not citizens. And you can't take property from them or anyone else without due process of law, nor deny equal protection, that is, treat whites one way, blacks another, et cetera. That was the purpose of the law.
Now, as I said about the First Amendment, I think they could have been much more specific. They did have a specific thing in mind, and instead they wrote it in somewhat general terms. And so it's that provision that was dealing with slavery and discrimination against blacks that the Supreme Court has taken and then said any of these things that the federal government can't do under the Constitution, such as establishment of religion and all of that, the states can't do that either.
Now that's not what those people had in mind who drafted the 14th Amendment. That's not what the people had in mind who voted to ratify the 14th Amendment. But the Supreme Court has taken that and said it means all of these things. So they're saying not only can the federal government not do anything to help religion, which I don't think was the intention anyway in the original Constitution, but they're saying a state can't do it either, or a city, or anything that's public.
I mean, it is a total twisting of the intent of the Constitution. And so the secular humanists and liberals, they're not being honest either. They're putting interpretations that were never intended and certainly are not the will of the majority of Americans. But none of this would have happened if the framers of the Constitution had at least acknowledged God or been more specific about what they meant on there should be no establishment of religion. Now, how should we look at all of this as kingdom Christians?
We recognize there's no such thing as a Christian government, that the jointer of church and state was not something good for Christianity. It brought about some good effects in society, in the public society and for government. There's no doubt about that. And yet it brought about horrible corruption into the church. These two kingdoms need to be kept separate. It is impossible to have a Christian government.
However, every earthly government should acknowledge the existence of God and acknowledge that their right to rule comes from Him. You look in the Old Testament, you had rulers who were not Jews. They were not worshippers of the true God. Men like Cyrus the Persian, Darius the Mede, Artaxerxes, rulers like that. And yet they took steps to protect God's people, to bless God's people, to acknowledge that the God of the Jews was either a genuine God or the genuine God.
And so I think it's a good thing for the governments of this world to acknowledge God, to acknowledge that there is a duty on the part of everybody to serve Him, and to acknowledge that their power comes from God. It's a terrible shame when a country like that of the United States takes that totally out of their Constitution. Well, this concludes the 14 messages on the myth of Christian America. Let's briefly review the things we've learned through this series of messages.
First, we've seen how the early Christians stayed completely separate from the governments of this world. They understood what has been called the doctrine of the two kingdoms. That is, the kingdom of God can never be united with the kingdoms of this world. It's impossible to have a Christian nation, because the kingdom of God is comprised of those who bear the fruit of the kingdom. So it will never be limited to or superimposed on any particular government of this earth.
We saw how the Reformers couldn't grasp this fact and that they persecuted the Anabaptist and other Christians who understood the two kingdoms ' doctrine. Those kingdom Christians realized that we are called to live by the teachings of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, and that no earthly government in the present age can be run by Jesus ' teachings.
We saw how the Quakers in Pennsylvania tried to set up such a government, one that would be run by the teachings on the Sermon on the Mount, and that when the American Revolution broke out, the revolutionists simply bypassed them and took over the government of Pennsylvania. We also saw how many of the tenets of Calvinism affected the belief system of some of the first settlers in America, like the pilgrims and Puritans.
We've seen that taking up arms and overthrowing the government over the issue of taxes was in direct contradiction to Jesus ' teaching. Furthermore, we've seen how the revolutionists persecuted the kingdom Christians in Pennsylvania and other states during the revolution. We've taken a look at the faith of the Founding Fathers, and we saw that they represented quite a mixture of spiritual views. There were, quote, " conventional Christians " like Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton.
There were unitarians and fence sitters like John Adams and Benjamin Franklin. And then there were anti-Christian deists like Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine. We looked at George Washington and saw that he's rather difficult to classify, but there certainly is no evidence that he had any kind of personal, vibrant love faith relationship with Jesus Christ.
Finally, we saw how the delegates at the Constitutional Convention, which was headed up by George Washington, purposefully left any reference to God out of the United States Constitution, and that they even rejected the proposal from Benjamin Franklin that they begin their sessions with prayer. In conclusion, America is not a Christian nation. No country on earth ever has been, nor can be.
However, America certainly owes its existence in much of its ethos and institutions to devout professing Christians of the conventional kind. So secular Americans should appreciate the significant contribution that these professing Christians made to this country. And while the Founding Fathers were not trying to create a Christian nation, neither were they trying to create an anti-Christian country. Sadly, however, that is what the United States of America is rapidly becoming today.