Crank it Up!

It's Saturday! Get those brains working! Get 'em ready to tackle the problems of the day. Unless of course you're a Christian. Then it's not the brain, it's your faith. In fact there is a Proverb that says to "lean not on your own understanding..," which is interpreted to mean that you can's trust your own reasoning.

Ignatius Loyola is quoted as saying "We sacrifice the intellect to God."

Martin Luther is attributed the saying "Reason is the Devil's harlot, who can do nought but slander and harm whatever God says and does."

Loyola is also quoted as saying that if the church states that what is white is black, we believe that it's black. Now, the point is this. There is a lot of activity within Christianity to try and present America as a Christian nation. This is referred to by historians as revisionism. So let's review a few facts about America, keeping our abilities to reason intact and open.

After all, the God you believe in allegedly gave you that brain....

The Declaration of Independence recognizes the God of Nature. There is also a reference to a Supreme Judge, which was not in Jefferson's draft of the Declaration. The point is that there was in no way an attempt to say there was no God, rightly or wrongly so.

Yet when it came to the Constitution, eleven years later, there is no recognition of God in establishing the laws of this country, or in the governance of it. It states clearly, "We the people...."

It specifically states in Article 6, Section 3, there shall be no religious test for office. In other words, James Dobson claiming that Fred Thompson isn't Christian enough to be considered as President, is flatly an anti-Constitutional view point.

The Executive oath of office, in Article 2, Section 1, Clause 8, do not include the words, "so help me god." They simply state that the office holder will defend, protect, and preserve the Constitution.

And to reiterate what the Declaration of Independence recognized, in the First Amendment it states that Congress shall not establish an official religion, nor prohibit the exercise of any religion.

A decade later, in the Barbary Treaty, which Congress ratified and the President signed, there is a specific reference to the fact that America was in no way established on the Christian religion. That statement not only reasserts the trust in "We the people," it clearly denies the assertion that our Constitution was based on Judeo Chrisitan or biblical principles.


"In God We Trust" was added to the money of the United States in 1861, based on this letter to the then Secretary of the Treasury:

Dear Sir: You are about to submit your annual report to the Congress respecting the affairs of the national finances.

One fact touching our currency has hitherto been seriously overlooked. I mean the recognition of the Almighty God in some form on our coins.

You are probably a Christian. What if our Republic were not shattered beyond reconstruction? Would not the antiquaries of succeeding centuries rightly reason from our past that we were a heathen nation? What I propose is that instead of the goddess of liberty we shall have next inside the 13 stars a ring inscribed with the words PERPETUAL UNION; within the ring the allseeing eye, crowned with a halo; beneath this eye the American flag, bearing in its field stars equal to the number of the States united; in the folds of the bars the words GOD, LIBERTY, LAW.

This would make a beautiful coin, to which no possible citizen could object. This would relieve us from the ignominy of heathenism. This would place us openly under the Divine protection we have personally claimed. From my hearth I have felt our national shame in disowning God as not the least of our present national disaster.

He sounds a bit like Pat Robertson, and such reasoning is well, hardly reasoning. But this addition to our money was during a time in our country when both halves of the population declared God was on their side.

Two years later, after the Battle of Gettysburg, President Lincoln delivered a speech that went down in history. The two best known original drafts of that speech do not contain the phrase, "under God," and there is speculation that the same "increased religious sentiment" which prompted the redesigning of the currency was what prompted Lincoln to add the phrase to his speech.

Twenty nine years later Baptist minister Francis Bellamy penned the Pledge of Allegiance. It's original wording is this:


"I pledge allegiance to my Flag, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with equality, liberty and justice for all.'

As you can see, some things in the pledge have changed. Despite President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation which freed slaves, Mr. Bellamy was encouraged to drop the word "equality" since African Americans were now segregated, and women were also on society's D-list. There were both free, but had no rights they have today, and rarely saw justice.

The phrase "the flag of the United States of America" was added in 1924 over Bellamy's protests. In 1954, 23 years after Bellamy died, and during another period of "increased religious sentiment," and the time of McCarthyism, the Knights of Columbus campaigned to have the phrase "under God" added to the Pledge.

What we see from our money, our Pledge of Allegiance, and our Constitution is that this country was not established in any way to be Christian. It was meant to be secular to allow every religion the freedom to worship.

It is the revisionists who want to establish Christianity as a state religion that are responsible not only for the changes made to the original nature of our culture, but for gross dereliction in their duty to represent truth. In other words, they are lying.

Which doesn't mean that Christianity should be stamped out. Not that it doesn't deserve that fate. Christopher Hitchen's book god is Not Great states quite emphatically, with mostly good examples, that religion is responsible for much of the suffering and death on this planet. For the most part I agree with him. Yet I have a Constitution that allows for all people to practice their own beliefs.

However, when any religion begins to interfere with government of we the people, and establish themselves by the agency of bureaocracy, they have violated the nature of our rule of law, and the Constitution.

I would advocate that money be redesigned to go back to "e pluribus unum," in place of "In God We Trust." I advocate that we quote the pledge in it's original form, and teaching what it means. And I advocate that our government divest itself on any faith based operations.

Those are the facts, and you can look up the links. Educate yourself. Get your brain, and reasoning ability, in gear. Face our history, face your beliefs, and make sure they agree.

Those who don't are living a lie. And I think we all know where that leads.