Quotes from our Founders:
- “No King but King Jesus.”
– Battle Cry of the Revolutionary War, as per some sources - “Religion is the basis and foundation of government… We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind for self-government; upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God.”
– James Madison, President, Founding Father, and major contributor to US Constitution, 6/20/1785 - “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.”
– President John Adams stated in his address to the military on October 11, 1798 - 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!”
– Patrick Henry - “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty…of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”
– John Jay, first Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
Quotes from authors justifying the righteousness of choosing to exalt Jesus in preference to all others:
- “Love without power simply surrenders the world to power without love. How to make power express love, and love to humanize power, is the distinctive task of the church for the next hundred years.”
– Reinhold Niebuhr - If you do not surrender to Christ, you surrender to chaos.”
– E. Stanley Jones
Personal philosophy and observations:
by Thomas Lee Abshier, ND
- Law is the foundation upon which we build the structure of society. All Law is legislated morality.
- Rather than obscuring our moral bias and claiming to stand upon self-evident universal principles of justice, intellectual honesty demands disclosure of the moral system from which we propose our laws.
- You cannot call Jesus your Lord when you do not follow in His footsteps, obey his commands, and seek His guidance.
- There is life when living in the Spirit of the Biblical Law and death in its strict interpretation and enforcement. Well-intentioned legislators pass laws, hoping to create a better world. However, all attempts at external control will fail if society/culture’s heart has not embraced the Spirit of His Law.
- Judicial, legislative & executive decisions should reflect Biblical governing principles.
- The 1st Amendment establishment clause was a prohibition against the Congressional establishment of a Christian Denomination, not a prohibition against using Christian principles in establishing legislation, guiding justice, or administering law.