Think back. If you attended public school in the last few decades, you probably remember being taught that America was founded by a lively assortment of slaveholding Christians, deists and free-thinkers who insisted on instituting a “constitutional separation of church and state.” Thomas Jefferson, you were reminded, had famously affirmed this “wall of separation” in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists.
You could be forgiven for inferring from all this “education” that, back in the good old days at least, government scrupulously kept religion at arms length. But that would be a truly deluded secularist fantasy. In reality, throughout the late 1700s – the era of the Revolutionary War and the subsequent adoption of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment – Christianity permeated America from top to bottom.
Chronological History of How God was Taken Out of Schools
Thomas Jefferson sends his ‘Wall of Separation’ Danbury Letter: Did He Intend to Separate Church and State?
Thomas Jefferson sent his 'wall of separation' letter to the Danbury Baptist Association to assure them that although the state offered them religious freedoms only “as favors granted, and not as inalienable rights,” that at least the national Congress could never make a law respecting an establishment of religion. The First Amendment, then, erected “a wall of separation between church and state.” In 1947 the Supreme ...
John Adams: “We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human Passions unbridled by morality and Religion…”
Quincy October 11, 1798 Gentlemen, I have received from Major General Hull and Brigadier General Walker your unanimous Address from Lexington, animated with a martial Spirit and expressed with a military Dignity, becoming your Characters and the memorable Plains, in which it was adopted. While our Country remains untainted with the Principles and manners, which are now producing desolation in so many Parts of the ...
President Washington Laid the Cornerstone for the U.S. Capitol Building which was First Used as a Church
Capitol Building Houses a Church Before Congress Before the United States Capitol was used by the Senate or House of Representatives, it was used as a church—or perhaps more accurately as churches. In his plans for America’s new capital, Peter L’Enfant chose Jenkins Hill as the site for the Capitol building, and on September 18, 1793, President Washington laid the cornerstone for the new Capitol. In June ...
Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation: America’s First Federal Thanksgiving
On October 3rd, 1789, following a resolution of Congress, President George Washington proclaimed Thursday the 26th of November 1789 a day of “public thanksgiving and prayer” devoted to “the service of that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be.” Reflecting American religious practice, Presidents and Congresses from the beginning of the republic ...
Dr. Benjamin Rush: “(Satan) never invented a more effectual means of extirpating Christianity… than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.”
Dr. Benjamin Rush to Jeremy Belknap, July 13, 1789: “The great enemy of the salvation of man, in my opinion, never invented a more effectual means of extirpating Christianity from the world than by persuading mankind that it was improper to read the Bible at schools.” Dr. Benjamin Rush wrote in “Essays, Literary, Moral, and Philosophical,” 1798: “I know there is an objection among many people ...
The Constitutional Convention Begins in Philadelphia on May 25th and Ends on Sept 17th with the Miracle of the Constitution
The Constitutional Convention takes place in Philadelphia and, by the account of many participants during the process, ends with a miracle of divine providence in the formation of the constitution that provided the American people with a people's government assuring their rights and freedom, with a balance of powers, and equal representation for all states. "Miracle at Philadelphia " is in fact a quote from a ...
Congress Proposes Purchase of 20,000 Bibles
In colonial America, Bibles had to be imported from Britain, as the British government strictly regulated the printing of religious materials. It was illegal to print Bibles in the English language without a license from the king. In 1589, Queen Elizabeth I had granted Christopher Barker the title of Royal Printer, with the exclusive “perpetual royal privilege” to print Bibles in England. His son, Robert Barker, ...
The Quebec Act: The Last of the Intolerable Acts
The Quebec Act was passed by the Parliament of Great Britain on June 22, 1774. The Quebec Act was designed to extend the boundaries of Quebec and guaranteed religious freedom to Catholic Canadians. The Quebec Act was considered one of the Intolerable Acts, a series of oppressive British Laws passed by the Parliament of Great Britain 1774. Four of the acts were specifically aimed at punishing the ...
Harvard College is Founded as a Religious School to Train Clergy in the Christian Faith
Only eighteen years after the Pilgrims landed in the New World, Harvard College, the first of the Ivy League schools, was established for the sake of educating the clergy and raising up a Christian academic institution to meet the needs of perpetuating the Christian faith. All of the Ivy League schools were established by Christians for the sake of advancing Christianity and meeting the academic needs ...
Rev. John Lothropp Arrives in Boston, Massachusetts
John Lathrop was born December 20, 1584 in Etton, Yorkshire, England. It is said the ancestral home of the Lathrop family is Lowthrope, England. He was baptized in Etton, Yorkshire England December 20, 1584 and died in Barnstable, Mass November 8, 1653. The name was sometimes written Lathrop, other times Lothrop and originated in the town of Lowthrope, England. John Lathrop was born in Yorkshire England. He ...
