For the first 150 years of America’s existence, no one
questioned the axiom America is a Christian nation. This did not
mean that everyone was a Christian or that the nation officially sanctioned any
denomination or religious sect. It meant, instead, that the nation’s laws and institutions were founded on
Christian principles and values. This fact was stated by the U. S.
Supreme Court in 1892 in the case of Church of the Holy Trinity vs The United States. After examining thousands of
historical documents, the nation’s highest Court unanimously declared,
There is no dissonance in
these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having
one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a religious nation . . ..
From the discovery of this continent to the present
hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation. These, and many other matters which might be
noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic
utterances that this is a Christian nation (Hyatt, 1726: The Year thatDefined America, 6-7).
The Christian mindset of America’s Founders was verified in a ten-year
project to discover where they got their ideas for America’s founding
documents. The study found that, by far, the single most cited authority in
their writings was the Bible. It is, therefore, not surprising that the first
English Bible printed in the United States contained a recommendation from the
U.S. Congress. Published in 1782 by Robert Aitken, the Congressional recommendation
reads in part,
Being satisfied from the above report, of his care and accuracy in the
execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United
States and hereby authorize him to publish this recommendation in the manner he
shall think proper (Hyatt, 5 Pillars of the American Republic, 15).
These facts, no doubt, provided a basis for a 1982 article in Newsweek
entitled “How the Bible Made America.” It contained
this insightful statement:
For centuries [the
Bible] has exerted an unrivaled influence on American culture, politics and social life. Now
historians are discovering that the Bible, perhaps even more than the Constitution,
is our founding document: the source of the powerful myth of the United States
as a special, sacred nation, a people called
by God to establish a model of society, a beacon to the world (Hyatt, 1726:The Year that Defined America, 7).
This reality of America being a Christian nation was expressed in American
culture by Bible reading and prayer being common occurrences in all kinds of
public settings. Until the 1960s, it was common for school days, school
activities, sporting events, city council meetings, and other public events to
open with prayer. Displays of Bible verses, crosses, and the Ten Commandments
were common on public property, including courtrooms. It was normal for a
baccalaureate sermon by a local pastor to be part of public-school graduation
exercises.
The Attack on
Public Displays of Faith
The nation was
shocked, therefore, when, in two Supreme Court rulings, Engel vs Vitale
(1962) and Abington School vs Schempp (1963)
the nation’s highest court banned school-sponsored prayer and Bible reading in
the public schools of America. This ruling was based on a contorted and novel interpretation of that part of the First Amendment
that reads, “Congress shall make no
law respecting an establishment of religion or hindering the free exercise
thereof.”
The plaintiffs in these suits argued that school-sponsored prayer
violated the so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment and
amounted to an establishment of religion by the federal government. A very
liberal court accepted this argument and opened the floodgates for
anti-Christian activism.
Since that time, lawsuits filed by atheist and secularist organizations
have resulted in the removal of crosses, Ten Commandment displays, and other
Christian expressions from public property. School children can no longer sing Joy
to the World or Silent Night at Christmas because of the Christian
content. As part of this crusade to
de-Christianize America, the secularists insist on calling a Christmas
Tree a Holiday Tree and referring to the Christmas Holiday as The
Winter Holiday.
Veterans groups
and military chaplains have been told they cannot pray in the Name of Jesus.
A high school coach was told he can no longer kneel to pray at the end of
football games, and a high school band in Mississippi was ordered by a judge to
remove How Great Thou Art from the repertoire of music that they play at
football games and other school events. On
April 6, 2009, President Barak Obama announced to a Turkish audience,
“America is not a Christian nation.” His audacious statement showed the extent
to which the crusade to de-Christianize America had arrived.
The Attack on
America’s Christian Heritage
Nations derive
their sense of identity from their history. If you want to destroy a culture,
you begin by rewriting and reinterpreting their history. This is what Karl Marx
was referring to when he said, “People without a heritage are easily persuaded.”
The attack on
America’s Christian culture is happening, not only in the attack on public
symbols of faith, but in the rewriting of American history textbooks that are
used in public schools and colleges. Students are now taught that the Pilgrims
came to America for monetary purposes and the Founders were a collection of
wealthy, evil, white slave-owners.
The educational
elite know that if they can control the narrative of America’s past, they can
also control her future. They know the truth of George Orwell’s statement, “Whoever
controls the past, controls the future.”
The 1726 Project
Recovering the
truth about America’s history for this generation is, therefore, critical. A few
years ago, Ronald M. Mann, Deputy Director of the Commission on the
Bicentennial of the United States Constitution, warned,
Unless the people of this nation take seriously the storm
flags waving, we are doomed to repeat
the past mistakes of those who refused to pay attention to history and end up
in the graveyard of fallen nations (Hyatt, 5 Pillars of the AmericanRepublic, 3).
Along those same
lines, Carl Sandburg, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, wrote,
When
a nation goes down, or a society perishes, one condition may always be found; they forgot where they came from. They
lost sight of what had brought them along (Hyatt, 1726: The Year that Defined America, 11).
Recovering our
Christian heritage for this generation is of utmost importance. This is why I
have written and just published 1726: The Year that Defined America. It
is also why I have launched the “1726 Project.” Beginning in 1726, a great spiritual tsunami
began that eventually engulfed all of Colonial America in a flood of religious
fervor.
This Great
Awakening, as it has been called, not only renewed the Christian vision of
the Pilgrims, it gave birth to an anti-slavery movement that eventually brought
about the end of slavery on this continent. It also had a direct bearing on the
founding of the United States of America. 1726 was, in fact, the year that
defined America. This is the heritage we must not allow to be lost or stolen.
This article was derived from Dr. Eddie Hyatt's latest book, 1726: The Year that Defined America, available from Amazon and his website at www.eddiehyatt.com. In this book, Dr. Hyatt documents how the Great Awakening in Colonial America had a direct bearing on both the founding of the United State and the ending of slavery on this continent. He has founded the “1726 Project” to spread this strategic and timely message across the land.
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