Taking on Ark Times Bloggers on various issues Part Z “George Washington’s Farewell Speech and morality in government”(includes the film TRUTH AND HISTORY and editorial cartoon)

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. Here is another exchange I had with them a while back. My username at the Ark Times Blog is Saline Republican.

On the Arkansas Times Blog on 3-7-13 the person using the username “the outlier” wrote:

Saline, every author you cite in your anti-abortion, copy and paste screeds is a fundamentalist Christian. We ARE NOT a fundamentalist theocracy. Many Christians do not share your view that the bible is inerrant and literally true. Like Rapert, you don’t think they are “real” Christians.

Guess what! You and Rapert don’t get to decide that issue.

I replied:

Outlier, on what basis do you say that murder is wrong? The founding fathers made it clear that our rights to life and liberty came to us from the lawgiver which was the God that revealed himself in the Bible. Read George Washington’s Farewell Speech.
Here is an outline of some of points he made in that speech, but the way when he said “religion” in this speech he was talking about Christianity.

Religion and Morality.
Are “indispensable supports” for “political prosperity.”
Are the “firmest props of the duties of Men and Country.”
The oaths in our courts would be useless without “the sense of religious obligation.”
“And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.”
“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”
“Promote, then, as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge.”

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On the Arkansas Times Blog on 3-7-13 the person using the username “the outlier” commented:

“Read George Washington’s Falwell Speech.”—Saline

That is the mother lode of Freudian slips.

Next the person using the username “Perplexed” observed:
Without a doubt! The Arkansas ledge is hell-bent on creating a “Falwellian Society.” And I used the term “hell-bent” intentionally.

Arhogfan501 asserted:

How dare the Government require citizens to take responsibility for their sex lives! No one should have to endure the process of putting on a condom or popping a pill once a day!

Next thing you know, these liberals will be putting an abortion clinic next to the Food Court in that Tech Park they slapped us with last fall.

This is the beginning of the end for recreational abortion in Arkansas.

Songbird777 noted:

Babies have a right to live and not be chopped up for someone else’s convenience.

I commented:

Morality from religion is necessary for a government such as the founders set up in the USA. Don’t take my word for it but look at some of these comments from some of our founding fathers.

Joseph Story

Supreme Court Justice

Indeed, the right of a society or government to [participate] in matters of religion will hardly be contested by any persons who believe that piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well being of the state and indispensable to the administrations of civil justice. The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion—the being, and attributes, and providence of one Almighty God; the responsibility to Him for all our actions, founded upon moral accountability; a future state of rewards and punishments; the cultivation of all the personal, social, and benevolent virtues—these never can be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community. It is, indeed, difficult to conceive how any civilized society can well exist without them. (Source: Joseph Story, A Familiar Exposition of the Constitution of the United States (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1847), p. 260, §442.)

George Washington

“Father of Our Country”

While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support. (Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), Vol. XXX, p. 432 n., from his address to the Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church in North America, October 9, 1789.) Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of man and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric? (Source: George Washington, Address of George Washington, President of the United States . . . Preparatory to His Declination (Baltimore: George and Henry S. Keatinge), pp. 22-23. In his Farewell Address to the United States in 1796.) [T]he [federal] government . . . can never be in danger of degenerating into a monarchy, and oligarchy, an aristocracy, or any other despotic or oppressive form so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people. (Source: George Washington, The Writings of George Washington, John C. Fitzpatrick, editor (Washington: U. S. Government Printing Office, 1939), Vol. XXIX, p. 410. In a letter to Marquis De Lafayette, February 7, 1788.) * For the full text of Geo. Washington’s Farewell Address, click here.

Daniel Webster

Early American Jurist and Senator

[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity. (Source: Daniel Webster, The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, & Company, 1903), Vol. XIII, p. 492. From “The Dignity and Importance of History,” February 23, 1852.)

Noah Webster

Founding Educator

The most perfect maxims and examples for regulating your social conduct and domestic economy, as well as the best rules of morality and religion, are to be found in the Bible. . . . The moral principles and precepts found in the scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws. These principles and precepts have truth, immutable truth, for their foundation. . . . All the evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. . . . For instruction then in social, religious and civil duties resort to the scriptures for the best precepts. (Source: Noah Webster, History of the United States, “Advice to the Young” (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 338-340, par. 51, 53, 56.)

James Wilson

Signer of the Constitution

Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other. The divine law, as discovered by reason and the moral sense, forms an essential part of both. (Source: James Wilson, The Works of the Honourable James Wilson (Philadelphia: Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), Vol. I, p. 106.)

In the film series “WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE HUMAN RACE?” the arguments are presented  against abortion (Episode 1),  infanticide (Episode 2),   euthenasia (Episode 3), and then there is a discussion of the Christian versus Humanist worldview concerning the issue of “the basis for human dignity” in Episode 4 and then in the last episode a close look at the truth claims of the Bible.

I truly believe that many of the problems we have today in the USA are due to the advancement of humanism in the last few decades in our society. Ronald Reagan appointed the evangelical Dr. C. Everett Koop to the position of Surgeon General in his administration. He partnered with Dr. Francis Schaeffer in making the video below. It is very valuable information for Christians to have.  Actually I have included a video below that includes comments from him on this subject.

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Francis Schaeffer: “Whatever Happened to the Human Race” (Episode 5) TRUTH AND HISTORY

Published on Oct 7, 2012 by

________________

No one engaged a humanist society with the gospel better than Francis Schaeffer.

Compassionate Engagement: A Brief Survey of the Life of Francis Schaeffer, Part 1

By Derek Brown on January 5, 2012

Francis Schaeffer was one of the first well-known evangelicals in the twentieth century to promote Christian thinking about philosophy, art, culture, and other important areas of modern learning.   Prior to Schaeffer, evangelicals, beginning in the early to mid-20th century, had been, in large measure, guilty of shirking these kinds of intellectual pursuits and retreating into pietism, anti-intellecutalism, prophetic fanaticism, and separatism.

Schaeffer’s lasting legacy, however, is not found primarily in the soundness of his philosophical reasoning or the strength of his historical interpretations; some suggest his arguments here were sometimes lacking detail and far too simplistic.  Rather, Francis Schaeffer’s greatness should be centered in his enduring influence upon a Christian subculture that had determined cultural engagement was unworthy of its attention.  Barry Hankins, author of Francis Schaeffer and the Shaping of Evangelical America, interprets Schaeffer’s legacy succinctly: “Schaeffer was the most popular and influential American evangelical of his time in reshaping evangelical attitudes toward culture, helping to move evangelicals from separatism to engagement” (xv).

In the next few posts I will trace the life of Francis Schaeffer and the development of his thought, following him from his early days as a separatist pastor to his time in Europe and the subsequent opening of L’abri, ending with the latter part of his life as a Christian activist.  After this biographical sketch and a survey of a few of his most significant works, I will end with a brief concluding post on Schaeffer’s lasting legacy upon evangelicals and Evangelicalism.

This survey of Schaeffer’s life self-consciously omits discussion of Schaeffer’s involvement the inerrancy debate of the 1970s and early 1980s.  Although Schaeffer’s involvement with the issue of inerrancy is a significant aspect of his life, I focus here on his influence among evangelicals with regard to their intellectual engagement with wider culture. 

Next: Schaeffer’s Early Life and Pastoral Ministry

President Obama is a Christian man and he quotes the Bible. Here is a political cartoon of him quoting a scripture that is ironic given his abortion views and the fact that blacks used to be treated differently than whites many years ago. No longer are blacks considered as nonpersons as they were in Civil War times in the South, but now the unborn child is considered a nonperson today.

Related posts:

By Everette Hatcher III, on May 30, 2013 at 1:13 am, under Francis Schaeffer, Prolife. No Comments
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