I don't think it's religion so much as a matter of spirituality.
I have a set of McGuffy's Eclectic Readers first published in 1879.
Most of the lessons pertain to values like perseverance and charity.
In the Fourth Reader (page 126), there is a chapter called The Creator.
It ends:
This great Being is God. He made all things, but He is more excellent than all that He has made. He is the Creator, they are his creatures. They may be beautiful, but He is Beauty. They may be strong, but He is Strength. They may be perfect, but He is Perfection.
This tenant wasn't only taught to children because it was Christian, or because it was the 'right' thing to do, but because it is LAW. 'That which you create, you have the right to control' is an old legal adage. The People are inherently superior to the government because WE created IT. We were supposed to control ourselves because restraint is a virtue. It's also why 'People' is capitalized in the preamble to the Constitution as well as the Declaration of Independence.
We hold these rules to be self-evident. Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights
Sound familiar?
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As long as government can get away with morphing 'establishment of religion' into 'separation of church and State' and refuses to acknowledge God and our Christian heritage, the only power it DOES have to acknowledge is whatever it decides it wants.
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Please don't think any of this means you have to be Christian. It just means the law can punish you for violating Commandments 6 to 10. Like the Founders, I believe a persons religion is a matter of personal choice.
The bosom of America is open to receive not only the Opulent and respectable Stranger, but the oppressed and persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment.
George Washington, Address to the Members of the Volunteer Association of Ireland, December 2, 1783
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But it does me no injury for my neighbour to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.
Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 17, 1782
What a great post, and reminder of how things were when I was a boy. Thanks.