Introduction:
This is Part 2 in a three part series of my thoughts on the Church and it's fear of getting involved in political matters and controversial secular ideas like global warming to name one. Why should they get involved with topics seemingly irrelevant to the Christian religion? Because these ideas and the policies that go with them threaten our Freedoms and Liberties. The Freedoms and Liberties our Founders built into our government came from principles in the Bible. If the Church will not defend these Freedoms and Liberties from the basis of the Bible, who will? The Church must engage in the public discussion of controversial secular ideas. This article got so long that I decided to divide it up into three parts that I will post everyday for three days.
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The principles of the Bible guided our Founders when they formed our government. Principles of Freedom, Liberty, individual responsibility, and the Ten Commandments(the rule of law). Their Christian faith was not confined to church activities, it drove their public service and guided their hands as they designed our form government.
“It cannot be emphasized too clearly and too often that this nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religion, but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.” -Patrick Henry, May 1765 Speech to the House of Burgesses
Noah Webster understood well that a government that protects freedom long term can only come from Christian principles:
Let it be impressed on your mind that God commands you to choose for rulers just men who will rule in the fear of God [Exodus 18:21]. . . . If the citizens neglect their duty and place unprincipled men in office, the government will soon be corrupted . . . If our government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the Divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws. [Noah Webster, The History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie and Peck, 1832), pp. 336-337, 49]
“All the miseries and 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.” [Noah Webster. History. p. 339]
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." -John Adams, October 11, 1798
Sources:
http://www.eadshome.com/QuotesoftheFounders.htm
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca
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