My outlook may be deceptive or wrong, but intellectuals can correct my notions. Before coming to the great nation, I was under the strong feeling that the USA is a Christian country just because of the missionary and connected charity activities they do globally.
Instead, it nurtured my earlier misunderstanding when I read, “The First Amendment reads that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The first part of that requirement (the Establishment Clause) means that there should be no official state church and that government should be prohibited from entangling itself in religious matters without a religiously neutral reason. Government shouldn’t take sides in support of one religion over another or generally favor the spiritual over the nonreligious.(Religion and Government Seperation: American Humanity Association:Good without a God).
But on the other hand, recent deliberations among certain Senators and media add more misconceptions to my vivid thoughts. For example, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) loves Jesus Christ and America. And that is why influential leftists want to marginalize him and destroy his influence. Recently, they unleashed a vicious attack labeling him a “dangerous” Christian nationalist.
The Washington Post, in a significant “hit piece” on Senator Hawley on July 8th, acknowledges that the quotes and other quotes Hawley posted are accurate. But then the Post wrote that these quotes “promote a historical argument popular among purveyors of Christian nationalism that the United States was founded as a Christian country.”
What were Senator Hawley’s “allegations”? He remarked, on social media, early American heroes who linked the founding of the United States to Christianity. Yes, you read that correctly. Here are some of the quotes that have caused the firestorm.
“Is it not that the Declaration of Independence first organized the social compact on the foundation of the Redeemer’s mission on earth? That it laid the cornerstone of human government upon the first precepts of Christianity.” -John Quincy Adams, 1837, 6th President of the United States
“I have heretofore argued to show that the Christian religion, its general principles, must ever be regarded among us as the foundation of civil society.” -Daniel Webster
The Post refers to a speech Hawley delivered to a conservative conference in 2022 titled “Biblical Revolution.” The senator is quoted as saying, “We are a revolutionary nation precisely because we are the heirs of the revolution of the Bible.” He later adds, “Without the Bible, there is no modernity. Without the Bible, there is no America.”
These quotes by John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, and Senator Hawley are factual statements. Most Americans would have embraced these ideas and expressed similar sentiments in any decade throughout American history.
But in recent years, a powerful campaign has been launched to erase the key role Christianity played in inspiring the American Revolution and our founding documents and the role Christians, including pastors, played in winning the Revolutionary War. Neo-Marxists and radical secularists see this history as an impediment to their plans to turn America into a socialist state where the government is God. (Courtesy:JDFI)
Senator Hawley seems to be speaking the truth. Remember that America’s central idea is clearly written in Bold letters in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, where our founders stated that our liberty comes from God, our Creator.
