Open letter to President Obama (Part 705)

President Obama c/o The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President,

I know that you receive 20,000 letters a day and that you actually read 10 of them every day. I really do respect you for trying to get a pulse on what is going on out here.

There have been many articles written by evangelicals like me who fear that our founding fathers would not recognize our country today because secular humanism has rid our nation of spiritual roots. I am deeply troubled by the secular agenda of those who are at war with religion in our public life.

Lillian Kwon quoted somebody that I respect a lot  in her article, “Christianity losing out to Secular Humanism?” :

“Most of the founding fathers of this nation … built the worldview of this nation on the authority of the Word of God,” Ken Ham said. “Because of that, there have been reminders in this culture concerning God’s Word, the God of creation.”

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Debating the Founding Fathers with Ark Times Bloggers Part 1

I have gone back and forth and back and forth with many liberals on the Arkansas Times Blog on many issues such as abortion, human rights, welfare, poverty, gun control  and issues dealing with popular culture , but the issue of the founding fathers’ views on religion got one of the biggest responses.

It is true that 29 of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had degrees with Bible Colleges or Seminaries and these men we know were God-fearing Protestants. This means they had a biblical view of man with an understanding of our sin nature and this led them to come up with a limited government with many checks and balances. They had a strong belief in the afterlife and in future punishments and rewards. They also encouraged Christianity and were not hostile to religion. However, they did not set up a Christian Theocracy but wanted freedom of religion.

People really are losing their faith in big government and they want more liberty back. It seems to me we have to get back to the founding  principles that made our country great.  We also need to realize that a big government will encourage waste and corruption. The recent scandals in our government have proved my point. In fact, the jokes President Obama made at Ohio State about possibly auditing them are not so funny now that reality shows how the IRS was acting more like a monster out of control.  Here is a clip discussing the founders and what their religious views were.

David Barton: Declaration and Constitution Are Based Entirely On The Bible

Here is some comments from our debate on the Arkansas Times Blog in July of 2013:

Max Brantley has cited an article that claims that John Adams said, “The government of the United States is in no sense founded on the Christian religion.”
This is a quote from the 1797 Treaty of Tripoli. David Barton gives the context of that statement here:
http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesartic…

Then Barton shows what some Jewish leaders think about the founding of our country here: https://thedailyhatch.org/2012/08/17/presid…

The Supreme Court has expressed what they think about that over the years:

https://thedailyhatch.org/2012/08/16/presid…
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The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were. . . . the general principles of Christianity.

JOHN ADAMS The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1856), Vol. X, pp. 45-46, to Thomas Jefferson on June 28, 1813
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“No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.”

THOMAS JEFFERSON, Hutson, Religion, p. 96, quoting from a handwritten history in possession of the Library of Congress, “Washington Parish, Washington City,” by Rev. Ethan Allen.

The blogger using the username “YassariaMinderbinder came back and pointed out that the last quote I used was actually just a three hand account and could not be considered reliable and here is my response::

YossarianMinderbinder thanks for the correction. I will not use that quote again. Here is a post I did on the importance of using primary documents:

https://thedailyhatch.org/2012/07/12/misquo…

Here are some others from Jefferson that I liked:

The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.63

The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.64

I am a Christian in the only sense in which He wished anyone to be: sincerely attached to His doctrines in preference to all others.65

I am a real Christian – that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus Christ.66

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References:
63. Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Bergh, editor (Washington, D. C.: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Assoc., 1904), Vol. XV, p. 383, to Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse on June 26, 1822. (Return)

64. Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Alberty Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XII, p. 315, to James Fishback, September 27, 1809. (Return)

65. Thomas Jefferson, Memoir, Correspondence, and Miscellanies from the Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson Randolph, editor (Boston: Grey & Bowen, 1830), Vol. III, p. 506, to Benjamin Rush, April 21, 1803. (Return)

66. Thomas Jefferson, The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Albert Ellery Bergh, editor (Washington, D.C.: The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Association, 1904), Vol. XIV, p. 385, to Charles Thomson on January 9, 1816.

 

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