Religion and America: A Matter Of Record

Of the logic and reasoning that went into the strange combination of rulings on the Ten Commandments issued by the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday, much has already been, and will, no doubt, continue to be written. But perhaps what should be taken note of, at least more than it has been, is the fact that the mindset that has led to the ballooning number of cases of this nature in recent years is a relatively new one.

If one didn’t know any better, he might think that the desire on the part of some, and the acceptance on the part of most, Americans for religious displays on public property was a relatively new phenomenon. But they are not. The “mixing of religion and government,” as the militant secularists who are behind such lawsuits seem to understand it, goes back to the earliest days of the republic when such notables as Thomas Jefferson – who coined the phrase “Separation of Church and State” – and James Madison – the principal architect of the Constitution that such displays supposedly violate – both took part in church services conducted within the Capitol Building in Washington.

Throughout the history of the republic, the American people have seen fit to acknowledge the prominent role that religious beliefs played in motivating the settlement of this continent as well as the development of the American government – matters of historical record.

Indeed the founders themselves acknowledged that the government they had created could not long endure absent some Higher Authority prompting a certain level of self-governance on the part of the citizenry. In other words, as John Adams put it, “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

In this light, such displays that remind Americans from whence the nation’s ideas of what is right and just come could almost be viewed as a civic service to all citizens – by encouraging behavior that promotes the continued stability of American society and culture, and prevents the need for coercive action on the part of government to force accepted standards of behavior. Certainly that is how the founders would have viewed them.

Rather than the displays themselves, what actually is a relatively new phenomenon is the desire on the part of some to eradicate such displays from the public square. Witness the case arising from a Ten Commandments monument in Texas – that had stood for forty years before being contested – that was argued in the Supreme Court Building – that has had its own various and sundry “Ten Commandments Monuments” on display since its construction seventy-three years ago.

There are facts about any nation and culture that, whether they be good or ill, are simply part of the historical record in the development of that nation’s culture and heritage. And while it is true that many Americans choose not to embrace the Judeo-Christian heritage that is embodied by the Ten Commandments, the fact remains that, as Jonah Goldberg has noted, they are the seed stock of American law and culture as it has traditionally been understood, regardless of their association with religion.

One would have to look long and hard to find a quote from George Washington on how the Wiccan faith serves to promote good government, or from Benjamin Rush on the need for reliance on Islamic wisdom in the development of good citizens. Or even from Charles Pinckney on the value of Humanist wisdom in civilized societies. But such quotes simply aren’t there, because these faiths were simply not the driving forces in the development of the United States as it has traditionally been known.

If the anti-religious left truly wants to argue in favor of changing America into their vision of a strictly secularist society – and it would involve changing America – that is certainly their right. But it would help their credibility if they would stop trying to make their argument from the governing document that was written by men who would surely oppose them at every turn, where they alive today.