Posted on 04/08/2005 4:59:33 PM PDT by tutstar
Why Judges Must Promote a Christian America
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ! For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship. —Patrick Henry
American courts today appear to have forgotten our Founders’ deep roots in the Bible. This judicial amnesia could have severe consequences for our nation. Whether America thrives or flounders in the 21st Century could primarily depend upon who wins the battle for the courts in this generation. Will it be those judges who remember our Biblical roots or those who want to replace them with secular substitutes?
For 150 years after the Declaration of Independence proclaimed America’s freedom from England, our leaders universally recognized the Biblical foundations that undergirded our nation’s legal system. President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated the slaves after the Civil War, still rightly understood in the mid-19th Century that God alone was the grantor of America’s rights. He understood that the Almighty had given these rights to every person in all times and in all places, including those African slaves who had been brought to America against their will. By the close of the 19th Century, however, America’s leading jurists had set themselves on another course—one that was intended to deny the hand of God in this nation’s legal system.
Prior to 1900, American lawyers all studied the law using a book by William Blackstone called Commentaries on English Common Law. The first 140 pages of this book outlined the Biblical principles that controlled both British and American common law. America’s Founders used Blackstone’s principles to undergird a new legal system in their emerging nation. In fact, Blackstone’s four-volume Commentaries, published a decade before the Declaration of Independence in 1776, became more popular in America than in England. America was a blank slate for formulating a new legal system based entirely on the principles of the Bible.
After 1900, legal trendsetters like Christopher Columbus Langdell at the new Harvard Law School began to deliberately substitute evolutionary legal principles for the fixed, immutable and unchanging laws of God that were previously the basis of American jurisprudence. Charles Darwin published his earth-shattering book promoting evolution, The Origin of Species, in 1859. The biology principles outlined in that book almost immediately began to infiltrate other areas of learning. One of these areas was the law, where some jurists had already been looking for a way to eliminate God from the legal equation.
When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws.
EXODUS 18:16
One of the surest measures of a man are the words by which he lives. Patrick Henry, one of the Founding Fathers, understood the clear need for a Biblical Foundation to establish firm footing for a fledgling republic. His passion for liberty is unrivaled in America's history. Less than a hundred years after Henry's death, however, Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. brought a worldview to the U.S. Supreme Court that rejected the Founder's belief in a Biblical basis for law...and life.
By the 1870s, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. began to see the solution to an American legal system without God in the evolutionary principles of Charles Darwin. Holmes, who was considered a great legal philosopher and jurist, boldly announced in the 1870s that there was no “brooding omnipresence in the sky” (i.e. God) that mankind was obligated to be subordinate to in the legal arena. Holmes’ ideas were heralded by other legal thinkers of that day as new, modern, theories destined to leave behind the religious underpinnings of the past, which these jurists believed were holding back progress in the nation.
By the beginning of the 20th Century, elite new law schools like Harvard were undermining the authority of God in the law. Legal educators eagerly abandoned the Biblical principles memorialized in the Declaration of Independence, enshrined in the Constitution, and taught in Blackstone’s Commentaries.
Lawyers began attending law schools that ignored Blackstone and taught a far-reaching, progressive legal theory of case precedents that permitted the law to evolve, expand, and grow in whatever shape these jurists desired.
This was the beginning of judicial tyranny in America. Judges no longer saw themselves as subordinate to God’s law, but began to believe they could alter the law in any way they thought would be best for society.
After this deliberate judicial move away from God, American jurisprudence coasted for half a century on the collective Biblical memory of the past. But, by the 1960s, American elitists in education and in other academic fields began to join these evolutionary, anti-God legal philosophers. Since then, the God of the Bible that guided and inspired the Founders and American jurists for nearly two centuries has been gradually pushed out of America’s legal system.
HOW DO WE KNOW THESE THINGS?
It is clear from an objective reading of our founding documents that the language of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence, of James Madison in the Constitution, and of the original constitutions of all thirteen colonies prior to 1776 mirrored the language used by William Blackstone. His Commentaries were published in the 1760s, just in time for the American experiment in freedom. These Commentaries sold more copies in America than in England, where the law was already moving away from these Biblical moorings.
Blackstone’s Commentaries outlined the development of English common law, which began as far back as 1000 A.D. When Jesus did not return at the first millennium as many expected, the church had to reorient itself toward discovering how societies could best live together in this world. Medieval thinkers began formulating a political and legal system for the long haul, first using canon (church) law and then developing common (civil) law from that religious legal base.
These deeply religious thinkers recognized that the Bible contains a double revelation of God—a revelation of faith to guide us in our relationship to God, and also a revelation of morals to guide us in our relationship to others in society. This legal compilation of God’s fixed, uniform, and universal moral laws governing all societies in all times and in all places occurred over a period of several hundred years. It was this civic or common law that Blackstone finally wrote down in his Commentaries, complete with Scripture references on almost every page. And it was this book that inspired America’s Founders and educated every generation of lawyers and judges in America for its first 150 years.
WHAT WERE THE BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES THAT UNDERGIRDED AMERICA'S FOUNDING?
First and foremost, Blackstone, the Founders, and all early American lawyers and judges recognized that God had created humanity for Himself. Therefore, all people were entirely dependent, not only on the physical laws of the universe, but also on equally applicable moral laws. God’s moral laws are as immutable and fixed as the laws of gravity and physics, said Blackstone.
Following these moral laws in society, Blackstone said, was essential for the happiness of citizens. This was the basis for the “pursuit of happiness” language in the Declaration of Independence. All citizens had also been given life (personal security) and liberty (personal freedom) as part of the image of God bestowed upon Adam and Eve, but clouded by sin at the Fall. If sin had not entered the world, Blackstone noted, Adam and Eve could have discerned the moral laws (natural law) of the universe in the same way that scientists can discover the physical laws set in motion by God. But because sin entered the world in the Fall, God was obligated to supplement His natural law (referred to as “the law of Nature” in the Declaration of Independence) with an additional written revelation in the Bible (“the law of . . . Nature’s God” in the Declaration).
Thus equipped with a conscience (though fallen) and with the written Bible, citizens can discern the moral principles of government that best lead to the happiness of all human societies. The “pursuit of happiness” enshrined in the Declaration of Independence was a phrase recognizing that mankind’s happiness depends on a right understanding and implementation in society of the fixed, immutable, and unchanging moral laws of God. No law enacted by man, Blackstone said, is legitimate unless it reflects the moral law of God revealed in the Bible. That is the primary reason, for instance, why murder, adultery, theft, and lying are wrong. These basic principles are found in the Ten Commandments—the basis for both Biblical faith and American law.
All governments, Blackstone said, must be grounded in God’s moral revelation in order to function properly. Therefore, all societies must be based on God’s foundational principle of families, beginning with one man and one woman united for life. That Biblical revelation is the real reason why homosexual marriage is wrong for all societies. It is also the primary reason why today’s homosexual advocates and many judges who support this movement are so intent on simultaneously undermining the Biblical basis for law in America through an invented legal principle of “separation of church and state,” which was first imposed on America in a 1947 United States Supreme Court decision. Abraham Lincoln campaigned for the Presidency on the premise that the moral law of God and the inherent equality of man invalidated the Supreme Court's decision to uphold slavery in the Dred Scott case. His stand for Biblical morality as the foundation of law ultimately led to passage of the 14th Amendment in 1866, designed to grant citizenship to and protect the civil liberties of recently freed slaves.
The Supreme Court’s support of abortion in 1973 is illegitimate for the same reason. Supreme Court justices do not have the authority to contradict God’s moral code and call it law. The erroneous legal reasoning in Roe v. Wade, as well as in other recent Supreme Court rulings on homosexuality and other moral issues, is merely the logical conclusion of an evolving secular legal philosophy that began heading down the wrong road in 1872 when Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. first declared the death of God in the legal world.
The Founders declared the principle of equality in the Declaration of Independence, based on the God who created us all. Abraham Lincoln still recognized America’s foundation in the moral law of God when he declared in his 1859 Presidential campaign that slavery and the Supreme Court’s decision upholding it in the Dred Scott case were not law because they contradicted the moral law of God. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed after the Civil War, recognized that all men, whatever their ethnicity, truly are imbued with the image of God and are, therefore, all guaranteed the rights of life (personal security), liberty (to perform their duties to God) and the pursuit of happiness (the freedom to conform to God’s laws which was recognized as the only path to true happiness). Some legal commentators have noted that the third inalienable right (the pursuit of happiness) also involves the right to own property, another foundational right recognized in the constitutions of all the original thirteen colonies. In no case, however, did the pursuit of happiness ever imply the licentiousness that characterizes its understanding in modern American law.
William Blackstone and America’s Founders recognized that these three rights (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) are inalienable because they are part of the image of God, which is given to everyone at Creation. Therefore, like the legal concept of inalienable property, citizens are not able to sell, give away, or otherwise divest themselves of these rights. These rights are a foundational part of what it means to be a human being created in the image of God. These rights are merely recognized, not bestowed, by government.
Today, American jurists have begun to adopt a modern European legal concept which argues that the rights of citizens are not bestowed by God, but are given by the state. But if our rights are given by the state, they are not inalienable because the state can then also take them away. This is witnessed by the legalization of abortion in which the state has purported to take away the inalienable right to life of tiny humans created in the image of God, who are, for the moment, hidden from view in their mother’s wombs. Blackstone correctly argued that no law of society is a valid law if it contradicts the moral laws of God. That is the only legitimate basis on which to oppose the legalization of abortion, of euthanasia, or of gay marriage. The moral law of God was the foundation for all American law in both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
It is absolutely amazing to consider how strange this basic American legal philosophy now sounds in a nation where every citizen is considered “free” to live in any sort of licentious manner. But Blackstone and America’s Founders believed that all rights and all freedoms must be based on the recognition of every citizen’s individual duty owed to the Creator God. Every American freedom granted in the Declaration of Independence was originally recognized by the Founders as arising from a corresponding individually owed duty to God.
Every man created by God is duty bound to subordinate himself to God in society. America was founded specifically to protect and defend the right of every citizen to carry out his duty to God as each sees fit. Included in man’s duties to God are the moral duties that men owe to one another when they choose to live together in societies. But the Founders never envisioned the protection of rights such as alleged “rights” to pornography or sexual license that are not grounded in God’s moral laws. On the other hand, the Founders did envision the protection of the religious expression of every individual in America. Faith is a free gift of God to be received or rejected individually. In America, therefore, even Buddhists, Muslims, and atheists are protected in exercising their own faith or lack of faith. But the basis of the freedom that even non-Christians enjoy in America is the Biblical Creator God who does not force faith on anyone. If America as a society does not continue to honor and acknowledge God, all religious rights will eventually disappear along with our rights to life, liberty and happiness.
One of the most important legal principles expounded by Blackstone was that law may only be imposed on an inferior by a superior. The King was not a superior, but was equal to the citizens and inferior to God. God is the only superior able to impose moral laws on mankind. That imposition is primarily what many modern citizens and jurists are seeking to avoid today under our “new” American law.
Blackstone acknowledged that there are some areas in the law where God has not clearly given moral principles to follow. One example would be whether to set the speed limit at 50 or 60 miles per hour. Blackstone calls these morally neutral laws “municipal law,” areas where citizens are free to decide the law for themselves. However, in areas where God has clearly set down moral laws, such as in the prohibition of murder and theft, any laws imposed by governments or judges that are contrary to these moral laws of God are illegitimate.
That is the Biblical basis upon which America was founded. It is a heritage we barely remember in 21st Century America, but which we urgently need to acknowledge and reclaim if we intend to protect and maintain our unique and free nation and our precious system of government and law.
Modern judicial tyranny sets itself up against the laws of God and seeks to organize society by its own rules. We must return our legal system to Godly principles if we expect our nation to endure for another 250 years. We must oppose judicial tyranny and support judges who respect God’s law and who seek to preserve the moral laws of God incorporated by our Founders into the legal fabric of our nation. It is only when we resubmit our nation to God’s moral laws that freedom can be protected for all our citizens and our nation can continue to be the America we have all known and loved.
ping
I loved this article. All except for this part,
"President Abraham Lincoln, who emancipated the slaves after the Civil War, still rightly understood in the mid-19th Century that God alone was the grantor of America’s rights."
No HE DIDN'T!
Just wanted to tell you I loved this article.
Actually, I agree with that line. But I agree with you that it isn't likely to win any converts.
""First and foremost, Blackstone, the Founders, and all early American lawyers and judges recognized that God had created humanity for Himself. Therefore, all people were entirely dependent, not only on the physical laws of the universe, but also on equally applicable moral laws. God’s moral laws are as immutable and fixed as the laws of gravity and physics, said Blackstone.""
I wish I had a nickel for every time I've been told that "all laws are based on morality", and than amorality, or moral neutrality, is immoral.
Really? I'd be interested in seeing a quote of that part of the Constitution.
OK, but you got to admire his attempts to twist Christian doctrine into the Declaration of Independence:
"But because sin entered the world in the Fall, God was obligated to supplement His natural law (referred to as “the law of Nature” in the Declaration of Independence) with an additional written revelation in the Bible (“the law of . . . Nature’s God” in the Declaration).
It's best for people arguing from his position to avoid bringing up "Nature's God" altogether. The only founding document mentioning God meant Gaia, not Jehovah.
There is a clear difference between moral crimes that hurt us emotionally and moral crimes that violate us or our property.
Evolution does not recognize God as creator of life.
T'ain't happening anytime soon.
Evolution as a theory also doesn't put God aside as creator of life. It merely says that life changes. Not that it springs from nowhere. ;)
What law gives the Supremes authority to contradict God's moral law?
Yes, certainly. Adultery is still a criminal offense in some states.
I liked it too, actually got the newsletter in the mail today so thought I'd check if it was online! Gotta love the internet and broadband! 8^)
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