Saturday, July 07, 2007

1776-Style Theocracy

On July 3, 1776, every state in America was a Christian Theocracy.

On September 21, 1776, every state in America was a Christian Theocracy, including Delaware, whose state constitution, adopted on the previous day, required in Article 22:

Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust . . . shall . . . make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit: "I ________, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, Blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scripture of the Old and New Testaments to be given by divine inspiration."
The Constitution of 1787 did not change anything. The states remained Christian Theocracies, loosely united by a very libertarian and federally insignificant national government, hardly the centralized Leviathan and focal point of all political thought, as in our day. James Wilson, who later became a Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, joined Thomas Mifflin in signing the U.S. Constitution, including Article VI, yet returned home to Pennsylvania to help draft the state constitution in 1790, which required that each member of the legislature,
before he takes his seat, shall make and subscribe the following declaration, viz, "I do believe in one God, the Creator and Governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked, and I do acknowledge the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by Divine Inspiration."
After George Read, Richard Bassett, and John Dickinson signed a federal Constitution which forbad any "religious test" (Article VI), they likewise returned to their home state and drafted Delaware's constitution, which, without contradicting their work in Philadelphia, retained the provision of Article 22 above.

After signing the Federal Constitution, William Blount returned to Tennessee and helped create the 1796 Tennessee Constitution, a document which makes perfect sense to a Christian Theocrat, but is internally self-contradictory by ACLU standards:
Art. VIII, Sec. II. No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.
Art. XI, Sec. IV, That no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this state.
Before the Revolution, only members of the Church of England could hold office. After the Revolution, any Christian of any denomination could hold office, without taking a "religious test."

The ACLU and the US Supreme Court do not like "Theocracy." This means they do not like America, which was a Christian Theocracy, a land of Liberty Under God. The word "Theocracy" means "ruled by God." It has nothing to do with rule by priests or rule by churches. A nation whose official motto is "In God We Trust" is, by definition, a Theocracy.

The ACLU and the US Supreme Court deny that the U.S. government has a duty to acknowledge God. They claim that the Constitution ended the Christian/Theocratic character of America by making our government "secular" (that is, a-theistic). Now, we are told, the government can neither "endorse" nor "promote" belief in God. We now have a "wall of separation" between "church" (that is, God) and government. Notre Dame Law Professor Charles Rice has pointed out that this is a "false neutrality" which would
logically prevent an assertion by any government official, whether President or school teacher, that the Declaration of Independence — the first of the Organic Laws of the United States printed at the head of the United States Code — is in fact true when it asserts that men are endowed "by their Creator" with certain unalienable rights and when it affirms "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God," a "Supreme Judge of the world" and "Divine Providence."
According to the judicial standards now being enforced by the Supreme Court, the Declaration of Independence -- because it endorses and promotes belief in God -- is a blueprint for Theocracy.

No comments: