COMMENTARY: Hardly a `Godless Constitution’

c. 2005 Religion News Service (UNDATED) The U.S. Supreme Court split the difference in June when it ruled that a Texas Ten Commandments exhibit is constitutional but two Kentucky Decalogue displays are not. “Historical” displays, those graced with age, are fine, it seems, but “religious” displays, those graced by pastors, are not. This most un-Solomonic […]

c. 2005 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) The U.S. Supreme Court split the difference in June when it ruled that a Texas Ten Commandments exhibit is constitutional but two Kentucky Decalogue displays are not. “Historical” displays, those graced with age, are fine, it seems, but “religious” displays, those graced by pastors, are not.

This most un-Solomonic solution demonstrates again why the plain text of the Constitution is the court’s only escape from the embarrassment and ridicule that so justly arise from its wandering and “brain-spun” jurisprudence.


The 10 operative words in the First Amendment could not be more clear: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” It’s hard to see how a Ten Commandments display, which is not a law, not a religion, and surely not an establishment of religion, violates that 10-word limitation.

While the court desperately needs to re-examine the words of the Constitution, it would also help if it would acquaint itself with the facts of the American founding.

The Constitution is the product of a profoundly Christian ethos and a 167-year tradition of Christian constitution-making that dates to the Mayflower Compact, which begins, “In the name of God. Amen.” The Founders would be amazed today to see our nation, founded in large part for the purpose of religious freedom, morphing into a country where the acknowledgment of God is forced from the public square.

It is true _ and secular critics delight in saying so _ that “God” is not mentioned in the Constitution. Some, for that reason, label it our “Godless Constitution.” But that glib and superficial assessment ignores a great deal. It misses, for example, the fact that the Constitution recognizes the Christian Sabbath and closes with a date reference indicating it was done “in the year of our Lord,” 1787.

It also ignores the careful research of the late scholar M.E. Bradford, who documented that at least 50, perhaps 52, of the Constitution’s 55 signers were orthodox Christian believers. Only three could reliably be called non-Christians, and the evidence for the other two is inconclusive.

Research conducted by professors Donald Lutz and Charles Hyneman illustrates why the Bible could be called our founding document. Their exhaustive review of American political literature published between 1760 and 1805 _ some 15,000 items _ found that 34 percent of all direct quotations were from the Bible. The most quoted source was not philosophers like Locke, Montesquieu or Voltaire, but the Bible.

To Lutz, author of the book “The Origins of American Constitutionalism,” the Constitution is the product of a tradition that can be traced to Colonial charters and is modeled on the biblical idea of covenant _ a solemn agreement between God and man. The colonists “didn’t come over with John Locke in hand,” Lutz told a producer for the upcoming TV special “One Nation Under God,” which I will host. “They came over with the Bible in hand.”


Peter Marshall, an expert on America’s spiritual heritage, agrees. “The Constitution of the United States has a path of descent that you can trace directly back to Puritan New England,” he states in the documentary. This constitutional bloodline is most prominent in the 1639 Fundamental Orders of Connecticut. The first complete constitution written on American soil, this document was heavily influenced by a sermon from Puritan minister Thomas Hooker. George Washington, who served as president of the Constitutional Convention, ordered that every delegate have a copy of Connecticut’s Constitution. He did so, said Marshall, “because it was so powerfully done, so rooted in Holy Scripture.”

God is not foreign to our founding. To the contrary, the acknowledgment of God is everywhere present in our history and nowhere prohibited in our Constitution. No matter what some modern judges may declare, historically, America was and always will be “one nation under God.”

(D. James Kennedy is president of Coral Ridge Ministries, pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and host of the documentary “One Nation Under God,” which airs on PAX TV Aug. 4 at 8 p.m. EST. For listings, go to http://www.crm.tv.)

KRE/PH END KENNEDY

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