Posted on 06/28/2002 10:34:43 PM PDT by Nightshift
Is there any reference to God in the US Constitution?
I have watched many news shows lately and have heard many say that God is not mentioned in the Constitution. However, I have found a reference to God that these people have overlooked or just plain ignored.
Below is the last paragraph of the Constitution prior to being signed.
Done in convention by the unanimous consent of the states present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven and of the independence of the United States of America the twelfth. In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,
From what I see, the signers of this Constitution recognize the exsitance of God. If they (the signers) wanted to keep God out why didn't they just write; the seventeenth day of September in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven or the seventeenth day of September in the twelfth year of the independence of the United States of America.
I would like to hear comments on this
AD stands for Anno Domini or Year of our Lord referring to the year of Christ’s birth. BC stands for Before Christ. CE is a recent term devised to fit with to solve the year 0 problem. It refers to Common Era and is used in place of A.D. BCE refers to Before Common Era.
Many different calendars have been used since man began tracking time. Most start with some epoch event or person. The use of BC and AD for numbering calendar years was invented by Dionysius Exiguus in 525 AD. His purpose was to determine the correct date for Easter under the direction of Pope St. John I.
Prior to this time, one method for determining Easter was based on a 532 year calendar cycle stemming from the Alexandrian era. Other methods were also used which led to the confusion. Dionysius was asked to determine a method for calculating Easter that would then be used by the entire church.
Dionysius did not want to perpetuate the name of Alexander, the Great Persecutor. He decided to start his 532 year cycle from the year associated with the foundation of Rome. At that time Christ’s birth was supposed to have occurred immediately preceding the year of the founding of Rome. Today, based on historical evidence relating to Herod and astronomical evidence relating to eclipses and star novas, most historians believe Christ was actually born a few years earlier.
Dionysius named the years relating to his cycle, BC for Before Christ which starts with year 1 and AD for Anno Domini, the year of Our Lord referring to the year of Christ’s birth. This is also a year 1. There is no year 0. That’s the reason purists insists the 21st century actually begins January 1, 2001. (for example the first year began in 1 AD and ended the beginning of 2 AD so the first year of the 21st century begins in 2001 AD and ends with the beginning of 2002 AD)
It took about 400 years for the dating system devised by Dionysius to reach common usage. In combination with the Julian Calendar system which determines the beginning of months and years this continued until 1582 AD. The number of each year is based on Dionysius numbering system.
The need for the introduction of the Gregorian Calendar came about because a year is not exactly 365 days long. It is actually 365 and a quarter days long. As a result, after centuries of use, the beginning of the year and the months associated with the various seasons were completely out of synch.
The Gregorian Calendar was introduced in the Catholic parts of Europe in 1582 A.D. by Pope Gregory XIII (then the religious leader of the Roman Catholic faith) as an improvement upon the Julian Calendar to keep the average length of the calendar year better in line with the seasons.
The rules, months, and days of the Gregorian calendar are the same as those of the Julian Calendar, except for the leap year rules. In the Gregorian calendar, a year is a leap year if the year number is evenly divisible by 4, but not if the year number is evenly divisible by 100, and this last exception must not be applied if the year number is evenly divisible by 400. For example, 1600 and 2000 are leap years, but 1700, 1800, and 1900 are not.
The legal code of the United States does not specify an official national calendar. Use of the Gregorian calendar in the United States is a result of an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1751, which specified use of the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies. However, its adoption in the United Kingdom and other countries was fraught with confusion, controversy, and even violence. It also had a deeper cultural impact through the disruption of traditional festivals and calendrical practices.
The widespread use of the Gregorian calendar and the use of BC and AD throughout the world came about thanks to the colonization practices of Europe and economic pressures of a world-wide economy led by Europe and the United States. This is gradually changing as more and more academic writers prefer the use of CE rather than AD.
Any calendar system needs a calibrating event; a zero. We could call this year the year 57 if we based our calendar on the end of WWII, for example.
The choice of event shouldn't be arbitrary, lest the calendar become trivial. The birth of Jesus is significant enough, I suppose. :)
It certainly reflects upon the culture of the day. Their heritage was Christian, if their government was not.
Sunday commemorates the day of Christ's resurection, which is the day AFTER the sabbath (which is Saturday).
So was the declaration of independence as they stated the twelfth year.
Those men were men of great integrity and principle. If they had thought that their signature on the Constitution could reasonably be taken as an acceptance by them of what they did not in fact believe, they would have refused to sign the document.
This idea you have, that the usage of a boilerplate phrase that mentions "Our Lord," necessarily implies full acceptance of all the connotations and assumptions that anyone might be able to deduce by dishonestly focusing on the literal meaning of the phrase, while ignoring the normative meaning of the phrase in its sociocultural context, is simply absurd.
The existence of the phrase "In the Year of the Lord" in the English language proves that the speakers of English have a society and culture that has been influenced by the Christian religion. That is all it proves.
Even if all the signers of the Constutition believed in God (and in the same God, for monotheism does not imply agreement about the nature or identity of the one God, nor about the identity or content of his revelation(s) to mankind), such a fact would have no relevance to the proper interpretation of the First Ammendment, nor would it have any bearing on the merits of whether or not it was Constitutional to have a law that requires government employees to lead school children in a recital of the 1954 version of the Pledge of Allegiance.
Let me see if I read this right.
Our society and culture was influenced by a religion and that the composition of the declaration of independence and the constitution were also influenced by this same religion. Did I read this right? Not trying to be nasty, just to understand your view.
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