As we look ahead to the January 17th super rally kicking off the Foundation's "One Nation Under God" project, I thought it might be opportune to post here at www.declaration.net an excerpt from our civics textbook, in which we discuss the relation of religion and liberty.

Here it is:

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RELIGION

"Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions...."

Men and women of our times will sometimes say that there is no public role for religion in American life. Belief in God or lack of it, they say, is merely a private matter; it makes, or ought to make, no difference to our public institutions. Ideological lobbies pushing this view, such as People for the American Way, cite the First Amendment and its interpretation by the Supreme Court in such matters as public school prayer and holiday displays to show that religion has no legitimate place in public life.

This was not the view of Americans at the time of the Declaration, or at the time when the religious liberty provisions of the First Amendment were adopted. As Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story put it a generation after the founding, "...piety, religion, and morality are intimately connected with the well-being of the state.... The promulgation of the great doctrines of religion...can never be a matter of indifference in any well-ordered community." And the Americans of those days were, on the whole, pious men. Most of them practiced a religion, generally some form of Protestant Christianity, and even those who did not recognized its crucial importance for the success of the democratic experiment.

In fact, the First Amendment to the Constitution was proposed as a way to encourage the influence of religious belief on people. In the House debates on its ratification, Daniel Carroll, a Roman Catholic from Maryland, said in passing, in his argument for adoption, that it was backed by "many sects." Madison, who held a stronger view in favor of the separation of church and state than did many of the other founders, took notice of the effects of the religious liberty established by the founding generation in 1819, by remarking with pleasure that "there has been an increase of religious instruction since the revolution."

By preventing the federal government from becoming identified with one religious sect, the First Amendment served two functions. It prevented people of differing religious beliefs from being persecuted by each other. It also prevented religion from becoming a slave of political power, an abuse that Madison called, "an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation." In Europe, where most countries had established religions, many people lost their faith when they saw Christianity serving tyranny and oppression. Indeed, some leading writers of the European "Enlightenment," including, in his later career, our own Thomas Paine, considered religious faith to be an enemy to freedom and knowledge.

But the early Americans knew from experience that strong religious faith was essential to free institutions. One reason for this view is obvious. Where men are free to do anything, they will always be tempted to use their power to commit injustice against others. In America, where the desire of the majority could always be made into law and enforced on others, the temptation to seize the property or liberty of the minority was always present. No king, no lord, existed to protect people from each other.

With such unlimited power, only the people could restrain themselves from injustice. Reverence for God and His laws taught Americans the limits within which they could use their unlimited power. American children were schooled in the Ten Commandments, and in the Gospel injunction, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Men whose consciences are formed according to religious precepts are more able to govern themselves wisely, and less likely to abuse their power.

The universal acceptance of religious moral teaching made it more possible for one man to trust the decency or justice of another. Washington made a similar point in his Farewell Address when he 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?" The solemnity of a religious oath, made with the hand on the Bible, makes a pious soul less likely to lie, to cheat, to break the Ten Commandments. Of course, Christianity did not keep men from treating one another unjustly, and gravely unjustly, too, as we have seen in the case of slavery. But the moral ideals implanted by faith in God were powerful helps in preventing, in hindering, and even in reversing grievous errors. Where is your money, your wife, your daughter, your life, and your own soul safer, at a rock concert, a Hollywood movie, a public street, on the one hand, or on the other, at worship in a church or synagogue? All are filled with sinners, but in the church and synagogue since you are more likely to be flanked by those who admit they are sinners and strive to be better--for they know "the just man sins seven times a day" (Proverbs 24:16)--so too are you likely to be better off.

What did Tocqueville find that made America successful as a republic? A people experienced in the responsibilities of property ownership and self-government. A people educated in the principles of law, government and justice. A people who elevated God's laws above their own desires. In short, a people worthy of freedom.

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There are two great issues intertwined in the current controversies about Judge Moore's and others' displaying the Ten Commandments in the public square--judicial usurpation, and the fundamental place of religion in American life. If we allow the one-man-rule of judical tyrants, we are not free. If we cease to honor and reverence the Author of liberty, we will not deserve freedom, nor will we long keep it.

I hope everyone who reads these words takes to heart his duty to think through these matters in the American tradition, and that many of you will come to Dallas, or others in the series of rallies that we will coordinate to help our fellow citizens save our heritage of ordered liberty.

I am confident that we can once again be "one nation, under God."