American Government and Christianity - America's Christian Roots

Probe Ministries ^ | 2004 | Kerby Anderson

[Tailgunner Joe]

John Adams was the second president of the United States. He saw the need for religious values to provide the moral base line for society. He stated in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.{1}

In fact, John Adams wasn't the only founding father to talk about the importance of religious values. Consider this statement from George Washington during his Farewell Address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.{2}

Two hundred years after the establishment of the Plymouth colony in 1620, Americans gathered at that site to celebrate its bicentennial. Daniel Webster was the speaker at this 1820 celebration. He reminded those in attendance of this nation's origins:

Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary.{3}

Religion, and especially the Christian religion, was an important foundation to this republic.

Christian Character

It is clear that the framers of this new government believed that the people should elect and support leaders with character and integrity. George Washington expressed this in his Farewell Address when he said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports."

Benjamin Rush talked about the religious foundation of the republic that demanded virtuous leadership. He said that, "the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."{4}

He went on to explain that

A Christian cannot fail of being a republican . . . for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self- denial, and brotherly kindness which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy. . . . A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teaches him that no man "liveth to himself." And lastly a Christian cannot fail of being wholly inoffensive, for his religion teaches him in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.{5}

Daniel Webster understood the importance of religion, and especially the Christian religion, in this form of government. In his famous Plymouth Rock speech of 1820 he said,

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. . . .Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.{6}

John Jay was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and became America's first Supreme Court Justice. He also served as the president of the American Bible Society. He understood the relationship between government and Christian values. He said, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."{7}

William Penn writing the Frame of Government for his new colony said, "Government, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad."{8}

The founders believed that good character was vital to the health of the nation.

New Man

Historian C. Gregg Singer traces the line of influence from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century in his book, A Theological Interpretation of American History. He says,

Whether we look at the Puritans and their fellow colonists of the seventeenth century, or their descendants of the eighteenth century, or those who framed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we see that their political programs were the rather clear reflection of a consciously held political philosophy, and that the various political philosophies which emerged among the American people were intimately related to the theological developments which were taking place. . . . A Christian world and life view furnished the basis for this early political thought which guided the American people for nearly two centuries and whose crowning lay in the writing of the Constitution of 1787.{9}

Actually, the line of influence extends back even further. Historian Arnold Toynbee, for example, has written that the American Revolution was made possible by American Protestantism. Page Smith, writing in the Religious Origins of the American Revolution, cites the influence of the Protestant Reformation. He believes that

The Protestant Reformation produced a new kind of consciousness and a new kind of man. The English Colonies in America, in turn, produced a new unique strain of that consciousness. It thus follows that it is impossible to understand the intellectual and moral forces behind the American Revolution without understanding the role that Protestant Christianity played in shaping the ideals, principles and institutions of colonial America.{10}

Smith argues that the American Revolution "started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg." It received "its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and much of its social theory from the Puritan Revolution of 1640-1660.{11}

Most people before the Reformation belonged to classes and social groups which set the boundaries of their worlds and established their identities. The Reformation, according to Smith, changed these perceptions. Luther and Calvin, in a sense, created a re- formed individual in a re-formed world.

Key to this is the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer where each person is "responsible directly to God for his or her own spiritual state.... The individuals who formed the new congregations established their own churches, chose their own ministers, and managed their own affairs without reference to an ecclesiastical hierarchy."{12}

These re-formed individuals began to change their world including their view of government and authority.

Declaration of Independence

Let's look at the Christian influence on the Declaration of Independence. Historian Page Smith points out that Thomas Jefferson was not only influenced by secular philosophers, but was also influenced by the Protestant Reformation. He says,

Jefferson and other secular-minded Americans subscribed to certain propositions about law and authority that had their roots in the Protestant Reformation. It is a scholarly common-place to point out how much Jefferson (and his fellow delegates to the Continental Congress) were influenced by Locke. Without disputing this we would simply add that an older and deeper influence -- John Calvin -- was of more profound importance.{13}

Another important influence was William Blackstone. Jefferson drew heavily on the writings of this highly respected jurist. In fact, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England were among Jefferson's most favorite books.

In his section on the "Nature of Laws in General," Blackstone wrote, "as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker's will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature."{14}

In addition to the law of nature, the other source of law is from divine revelation. "The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures." According to Blackstone, all human laws depended either upon the law of nature or upon the law of revelation found in the Bible: "Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws."{15}

Samuel Adams argues in "The Rights of the Colonists" that they had certain rights. "Among the natural Rights of the Colonists are these: First, a Right to Life; second, to Liberty; third, to Property; . . . and in the case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent."{16} This concept of natural rights also found its way into the Declaration of Independence and provided the justification for the American Revolution.

The Declaration was a bold document, but not a radical one. The colonists did not break with England for "light and transient causes." They were mindful that they should be "in subjection to governing authorities" which "are established by God" (Rom. 13:1). Yet when they suffered from a "long train of abuses and usurpations," they believed that "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish [the existing government] and to institute a new government."

Constitution

The Christian influence on the Declaration is clear. What about the Constitution?

James Madison was the chief architect of the Constitution as well as one of the authors of the Federalist Papers. It is important to note that as a youth, he studied under a Scottish Presbyterian, Donald Robertson. Madison gave the credit to Robertson for "all that I have been in life."{17} Later he was trained in theology at Princeton under the Reverend John Witherspoon. Scholars believe that Witherspoon's Calvinism (which emphasized the fallen nature of man) was an important source for Madison's political ideas.{18}

The Constitution was a contract between the people and had its origins in American history a century earlier:

One of the obvious by-products [of the Reformation] was the notion of a contract entered into by two people or by the members of a community amongst themselves that needed no legal sanctions to make it binding. This concept of the Reformers made possible the formation of contractuals or, as the Puritans called them, "covenanted" groups formed by individuals who signed a covenant or agreement to found a community. The most famous of these covenants was the Mayflower Compact. In it the Pilgrims formed a "civil body politic," and promised to obey the laws their own government might pass. In short, the individual Pilgrim invented on the spot a new community, one that would be ruled by laws of its making.{19}

Historian Page Smith believes, "The Federal Constitution was in this sense a monument to the reformed consciousness. This new sense of time as potentiality was a vital element in the new consciousness that was to make a revolution and, what was a good deal more difficult, form a new nation."{20}

Preaching and teaching within the churches provided the justification for the revolution and the establishment of a new nation. Alice Baldwin, writing in The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, says,

The teachings of the New England ministers provide one line of unbroken descent. For two generations and more New Englanders had . . . been taught that these rights were sacred and came from God and that to preserve them they had a legal right of resistance and, if necessary a right to . . . alter and abolish governments and by common consent establish new ones.{21}

Christian ideas were important in the founding of this republic and the framing of our American governmental institutions. And I believe they are equally important in the maintenance of that republic.

Notes

1. John Adams, October 11, 1798, in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams - Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustration (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1854), Vol. IX, 228-229.
2. George Washington, Farewell Address (September 19, 1796). Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army. To the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination.
3. Daniel Webster, December 22, 1820. The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. I, 48.
4. Benjamin Rush, "Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic," Early American Imprints. Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia: Thomas and Samuel F. Bradford, 1798), 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Webster, The Works of Daniel Webster, 22ff.
7. John Jay, October 12, 1816, in The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, ed., (New York: G.P Putnam & Sons, 1893; reprinted NY: Burt Franklin, 1970), Vol. IV, 393.
8. William Penn, April 25, 1682, in the preface of his Frame of Government of Pennsylvania. A Collection of Charters and Other Public Acts Relating to the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1740), 10-12.
9. C. Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation of American History (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1964), 284-5.
10. Page Smith, Religious Origins of the American Revolution (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 1.
11. Ibid, 2.
12. Ibid., 3.
13. Ibid, 185.
14. William Blackstone, "Of the Nature of Laws in General," Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 1, Section II.
15. Ibid.
16. Samuel Adams, "The Rights of the Colonists" (Boston, 1772), The Annals of America, Vol. II, 217.
17. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), 94.
18. James H. Smylie, "Madison and Witherspoon: Theological Roots of American Political Thought," American Presbyterians, 112.
19. Smith, Religious Origins, 3.
20. Ibid., 4
21. Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 1928), 169.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The Founders were Christians, this is a Christian Nation which has a form of government based on and rooted in Christianity.

I would suspect that John Adams probably had evangelical extremists and zealots such as yourself in mind

The bigoted hatred for particular denominations of Christians spewing out of "philosopher kings" like you is why the Founders disdained atheists and those who would seek to use the apparatus of the government to restrict freedom of public religious worship.

I see no reason to give out medicine for the dead.

You are the one who is spiritually dead and your disgusting hatred of religious freedom has borne bitter fruit.

[malakhi]

Nonsense. Preventing the A.C.L.U. from expressing its view(s) is censorship. Preventing it from having a voice in public policy means ensuring its ideology does not influence public policy. No comparison.

The ACLU should not be allowed to petition the government the same as any other citizen or citizen's group?

[Long Cut]

Let's see...

"The Founders were Christians, this is a Christian Nation which has a form of government based on and rooted in Christianity."

Repeat assertion as if fact, in ignorance of contrary evidence...check.

"The bigoted hatred for particular denominations of Christians spewing out of "philosopher kings" like you is why the Founders disdained atheists and those who would seek to use the apparatus of the government to restrict freedom of public religious worship."

Personal attacks, playing "victim" card, repeat unfounded assertions, rail about "atheists"...check

"You are the one who is spiritually dead and your disgusting hatred of religious freedom has borne bitter fruit."

Repeat and strengthen personal attacks, create strawman, and toss about slander after being well-countered...check.

Yep, it's the real Joe, alright.

Joe, if you don't want anyone to disagree with you, you should really post this sort of nonsense over in the religion forums. You'll likely find a few more back-patters over there than here.

Your mistake is in thinking that we somehow can't read the Constitution as written.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Repeat assertion as if fact, in ignorance of contrary evidence

What evidence? You haven't posted any evidence at all to support your assertions as fact.

Your posts are all worthless ignorance.

[Tailgunner Joe]

You play the victim persecuted by the Talibornagain Christian "zealots" you conjure up in your fevered drunken delusions.

[NCPAC]

Don't you just love it when certain members (not all) of a denomination of the most dominant religion in the nation play the victim card? It destroys any and all measure of credibility they may have.

[Tailgunner Joe]

You wise scholars are the ones whining like girls about the Christian Right taking away your rights, shredding the Constitution and replacing it with Theocracy.

You are like chicken littles warning everyone of the Christian threat while we're in the middle of a massive struggle with islamic jihad. It's hard for anyone to take your crying wolf seriously.

[risk]

If it did then we must ban God from our money and our pledge, ban Christmas and Thanksgiving as National Holy Days, smash the crosses off the war memorials, and smash the statue of Moses holding the Ten Commandments on the Supreme Court.

You're affirming the consequent. The narrow views offered by televangelist thought leaders and their ACLU arch enemies try to box our thought into a highly restrictive world of either/or. You argue, much as does the ACLU, that if America can't be an establishment of Christianity, then vestiges of our Christian culture must be expunged.

However, we can show that is a false premise. Christian and other religious symbols, even when displayed by themselves, need not be considered exclusive promotion of one religion or another. Sometimes a cross is just a cross. What it means in the minds of the perennially offended should have no bearing on our desires to remind ourselves of our cultural traditions. We should put the onus on the accuser (e.g. the ACLU) to prove that such displays of religiosity are forms of establishment. Sometimes it's impossible to show otherwise. But as with the Cima Road cross in the Mojave desert, the accuser should come under intense scrutiny. What is his agenda? For whom is he acting? How is the symbol to which he has drawn the court's attention truly a message of establishment? If we had judges with the intellectual strength to block attempts to change our culture through law, there would rarely be a situation where the ACLU and its analogs could get a word in edgewise.

Because so many people have bought into the notion of either/or, we end up with judges who can't see the forest for the trees. With your 700 Club filter on the facts, you would argue that they are revising our laws with judicial activism. What is more often the case is our ever more narrow interpretations of law as a defense against the "oppressed" and the "victim." This is about victimization worship, not secularization, and it is all due to our culture's hypersensitivity to being offended. We should more often than not ask ourselves why we should care at all. For example, What does it matter that a man who drives through the Mojave desert once every three years finds a lonely cross offensive? His personal concerns should be outweighed by the interests of others, who have historic, family, and religious interests in maintaining the memorial. After all, it is not a symbol of oppression to most Americans. Yet weak-kneed judges, who have bought into the same illogical rules of either/or that you have, put an impossible amount of weight on this manipulative figure's personal desires.

If you think we can solve the problems described above by declaring America to be legally Christian, you're sadly mistaken. Certain Christians who also like to be offended will then have the power to go around being affronted by all manner of secular trivia, and the courts will again be filled with suits against Halloween, popular music, written material, websites, pagan celebrations of the vernal equinox.

If you only get your news from the 700 Club or NewsMax, then every challenge to Judeo-Christian symbolism could appear to be an affront to your beliefs. But they have an agenda, and it's to gain political power for themselves, as well as access to your wallet. I'd hazard a guess that they're well into yours. But the backlash against a zealotry to establish a Christian nation by law only makes it harder for us to have a balanced view of our culture. You are well aware of the unconstitutional religious tests that are sometimes applied to our public officials. There wouldn't be any widespread support for such tests if the public weren't worried about the occasional demagogue who stands for a "Re-Christianizing" of America by law, either in secret or in the open.

The unintended consequences of what you propose would be sweeping. The religious civil wars of our European past are just one indication of the strife your ambitions would bring us. That strife, in the minds of our Founding Fathers, could be avoided by requiring government to stay out of the realm of religion. Strife between Catholics and Protestants was raging in Ireland at the time of our Revolution. At that time, Penal Laws were established, blocking land ownership and voting rights to Irish Catholics by the Imperialist Anglican invaders. Our Founding Fathers had history and current events to demonstrate to them that a very real crisis of religious strife had to be averted in America. Furthermore, they knew they would have to handle Jews and Muslims, as well as Hindus, Deists, atheists, agnostics, and pantheists.

Their solution was to bolt the first amendment into our Constitution with a proscription to official religion. And it has worked. Over time, our expectations of its meaning has changed, but it means exactly the same thing today that it did then: the government has absolutely no power to demonstrate a preference for one religious sect or another. Advocating religious establishment is an unintelligent solution to a problem that with just a little more discipline of thought can be solved without modifying the original intent of the Constitution, which (and on this we agree) was never intended to suppress religious sentiment or public expression of faith.

[Tailgunner Joe]

You're affirming the consequent.

Indeed. The scenarios I have listed are the logical consequence of the interpretation of Separation as forbidding the government from endorsing a particular religious viewpoint. It does no such thing but in fact only forbids the government from establishing a certain denomination as the state church.

The government can direct prayers in school just as they can in Congress and on Thanksgiving. It can display the Ten Commandments, just as it can have crosses on public-owned graveyards, and it can proclaim the supremacy of God just as it does on the one dollar bill.

You argue, much as does the ACLU, that if America can't be an establishment of Christianity, then vestiges of our Christian culture must be expunged.

No I don't. You have falsely ascribed this position to me. That is why I asked you not to speak for me.

America is not an "establishment" of a religion, Christian or otherwise. The form of government of this Christian Nation is one based on biblical Christian principles as enshrined in British Common Law.

Christian and other religious symbols, even when displayed by themselves, need not be considered exclusive promotion of one religion or another.

They are Christian symbols and it is an absurd legal fiction to say that they are not, but this contradiction is necessary if the judicial tyrants are to claim that they don't violate the separation of God from government.

The enemies of the Churches and the State are working on the pledge right now. If they can ban Lincoln's Under God from the pledge then surely the money is next. The ACLU commies have to boil the frog slowly if they are going to ever deprive Christians of their freedom.

People such as yourself facilitate this.

If you think we can solve the problems described above by declaring America to be legally Christian, you're sadly mistaken.

I don't have to, because it already is.

If you only get your news from the 700 Club or NewsMax, then every challenge to Judeo-Christian symbolism could appear to be an affront to your beliefs. But they have an agenda, and it's to gain political power for themselves, as well as access to your wallet. I'd hazard a guess that they're well into yours.

I have to say, your view point seems like it was filtered through atheist sites like infidels.org and marxists.org.

But the backlash against a zealotry to establish a Christian nation by law only makes it harder for us to have a balanced view of our culture.

What you describe as zealotry is in fact a backlash against the federal judicial tyranny, who through a specious interpretation of the law made the government the enemy of religion exactly as the Founders feared. We are not trying to alter this nation into something it never was, we are only trying to take back the rights that dirty liberal Democrat scum took away from us and we will get them back.

You are well aware of the unconstitutional religious tests that are sometimes applied to our public officials.

When Pro-death penalty judges start whining that Republican are putting a religious test on them by keeping them off the bench, I will have no sympathy for them.

There wouldn't be any widespread support for such tests if the public weren't worried about the occasional demagogue who stands for a "Re-Christianizing" of America by law, either in secret or in the open.

Exactly. You make the ACLU agenda possible. Only by believing the propaganda of the ACLU could someone come to have such an irrational fear of Christians and their role in this Nation under God. I will return to you the favor you did me when you gave me the benefit of the doubt that I was deceived by the wicked running-dog Kapitalist televangelists. You are an ACLU dupe.

[risk]

These ideas are much older than the ACLU. Just because the ACLU abuses them, doesn't make your abuse of the Constitution any better.

[Tailgunner Joe]

My assertions are supported by Supreme Court decisions, legal opinions and the intent of the Founders. You yourself admit that your interpretation is the result of changed expectations of the meaning of the First Amendment. If you want to agree with the ACLU that any preference or promotion of religion violate the Wall of Separation, just don't claim that you are following the Founders who did not hold this definition of Separation at all.

[risk]

Thank you, TGJ. Your arguments clearly demonstrate why we need a first amendment. It's definitely worth defending. If I thought President Bush agreed with you, I would discourage anyone I could to vote against him. I'm confident that he can keep his Christianity a private matter, however. It's clear that you can't.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Bush says God chose him to lead his nation - I feel like God wants me to run for President. I can't explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. Something is going to happen... I know it won't be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.

President Bush's First Executive Order, Praise God - Today, I seek God's guidance and His blessings on our land and all our people. Knowing that I cannot succeed in this task without the favor of God and the prayers of the people, I ask all Americans to join with me in prayer and thanksgiving. NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim January 21, 2001, a National Day of Prayer and Thanksgiving and call upon the citizens of our Nation to gather together in homes and places of worship to pray alone and together and offer thanksgiving to God for all the blessings of this great and good land.

[Long Cut]

Yep. It's also interesting to watch them degenerate into the personal attacks and wild slander. Of course, it also follows that they completely wave away all the counterevidence presented as if it did not exist, ad nauseum repeat the unfounded assertions, and go off on rants about the ACLU and Hugo Black...which no one raised but themselves.

What's REALLY funny is that, in this foaming-at-the-mouth flailing, they think they've won, instead of revealing themselves bankrupt of all rationality on these matters.

Pages and pages of quote salads (but no actual Constitutional cites, and all contradicted by OTHER quotes) still cannot place into the Constitution words that were never there, nor bring about some religio-socialist government. I've said it before, but it's true...those inclined to force their will and ways on others will never stop in their fantasizing of implementing it, even in a freee country like ours.

The unbelievable hatred shown of other people, simply for being of a different faith structure, and the willingness to attack them with the power of government, gives the lie to their claims of righteoussness on this issue.

They still cannot run from the basic facts: That they want the government to force others to recognize their beliefs as superior, and that the Constitution expressly forbids this.

All the rest is simply rationalization and wishing.

[jimt]

You're conveniently ignoring my first point - when it was moved to insert the words "Our Lord, Jesus Christ" after the word "Creator" in the Declaration, the founding fathers voted it down.

[Tailgunner Joe]

I have posted sourced information which refutes the "Pages and pages of quote salads" from marxists.org which are meant to mislead the reader about the religious beliefs of the Founders and the role of religion in our form of government.

You have posted nothing at all except "personal attacks and wild slander."

[Long Cut]

"You play the victim persecuted by the Talibornagain Christian "zealots" you conjure up in your fevered drunken delusions."

"Your posts are all worthless ignorance."

"You are the one who is spiritually dead and your disgusting hatred of religious freedom has borne bitter fruit."

Your words. Then you post this:

" You have posted nothing at all except "personal attacks and wild slander."

Pot, meet kettle.

Hadit2here's posts were quite a good refutation of yours, as were Risk's. The problem with all such "salads" is that one can post almost ANY quote of such well-written and written about men to support anything. However, the document they wrote which forms the basis of our laws is thew final arbiter...and it doesn't support your views.

I can only assume that your resorts to the attacks and victimology in the face of this is a tacit admission of that point. Others might disagree, of course, but they can read the entirety of the posts and come to their own conclusions.

[jimt]

I think you've summed it up nicely.

[Long Cut]

Comes with practice. TJ posts these excursions into Constitutional wishful thinking regularly, and is just as regularly refuted. On cue, he then goes into his "You're all marxists/anti-Christian bigots/blahblah/repeat assertions/claim victory" mode when he runs out of ideas.

You can almost set your watch by it. However, it is important to point out on such threads that not all conservatives, or even a majority, support the establishment of a religious state in America.

[Tailgunner Joe]

I never denied making personal attacks. I simply pointed out that you have made nothing but personal attacks.

Hadit2here's posts were quite a good refutation of yours, as were Risk's.

Your's sure weren't.

TJ posts these excursions into Constitutional wishful thinking regularly, and is just as regularly refuted.

Not by you. You see, I don't have to refute your posts with facts because you don't present facts. All you do is insult and smear so all you are worth is insults in return.