| Harvard Law School’s primary founder, Joseph Story [1779-1845] was an associate justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1812 to 1845. His 3-volume treatise titled Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, published in 1833, was regarded as the cornerstone of early American jurisprudence and established him as “one of the most renowned constitutional scholars in American history and arguably the greatest scholar ever to serve on the Supreme Court.”1 The phenomenal Story was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court at age 32 by James Madison [1751-1836], the fourth President of the United States, popularly acclaimed as the Father of the Constitution for his pivotal role in drafting and promoting the Constitution and Bill of Rights. As the youngest person in American history to have been nominated to the high court, Joseph Story remains one of the most significant figures in constitutional history. By the time Justice Story turned 65 in 1844, he was established as one of the most successful American authors of the first half of the 19th century. His estimated earnings of $10,000 a year from book royalties were in addition to his $4,500 salary as Associate Justice.2 Known for his strong religious beliefs, Justice Story’s biblical worldview influenced his deliberations on law and justice and was prominently reflected in his writings and speeches. Story’s faith was intertwined with his understanding of law, as he frequently debated the moral and religious dimensions of legal principles and beliefs. The moral order, he advised, represented the legal system’s essential underpinning and jurisprudential outlook’s hallmark. In his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, he maintained that “The whole power over the subject of religion is left exclusively to the State governments, to be acted upon according to their sense of justice and the State Constitutions.” The American Founders established limited government with God-given inalienable rights, individualism, full republicanism, separation of powers, and an educated and virtuous citizenry as the mainstays of freedom and liberty.3 As John Daniel Davidson, senior editor at The Federalist, puts it: “America is the creation of a Christian worldview founded upon religious claims that rely on those claims for coherence.”4 The following facts leave no doubt that America was established as a Christian nation: • Before debarking the Mayflower in 1620, the American Founders wrote of their mission “for the glory of God and advancements of the Christian faith.” • Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, and Maryland established a Christian nation in their charters and constitutions over the first 150 years. goo.gl/cBw4Xh • Founder Fisher Ames [1758-1808], the co-author of the First Amendment, identified the Bible as the principal component of public education. In 1789, he wrote that the Bible should be “the principal text in our schools.” • Of America’s first 108 established colleges, all but two were distinctly Christian. • Religion and morality were considered so crucial to freedom that in 1787 the Northwest Ordinance was passed, requiring all new states entering the Union to have education systems emphasizing the teaching of both religion and morality as critical components to sustainable freedom. In 1790, the French Revolution and its so-called godless Age of Enlightenment ominously began infiltrating America’s colleges and centers of learning. With its deceptive and fictitious guiding principles of Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité [liberty, equality, fraternity], secularism began its apocalyptic and hostile takeover of America’s once-great Christian institutions. Shortly after that, public education and the institutions of higher learning became the centers of forceful pursuit of change as secularists began to tear down America’s Christian civilization through the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified. This amendment granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and primarily aimed to protect the rights of freed slaves. Yet, less than 100 years later, the amendment became the catalyst for removing both the Bible and prayer from public education. In 2015, to top it all off, the amendment meant to protect the rights of freed slaves, led to the aberrant inception of gender and marriage equality. Described as the most liberal court in U.S. history, the Warren Court formed the Supreme Court of the United States from 1953 to 1969. It’s interesting to note how old the nine Justices were in 1962 as the attack of American Christendom and its once Biblically based culture came to a climax: • Chief Justice Earl Warren, 1891-1974, was 71 years old at the time. • Hugo L. Black, 1886-1971, 76 years old. • William O. Douglas, 1898-1980, 64 years old. • Thomas C. Clark, 1899-1977, 63 years old. • John M. Harlan II, 1899-1971, 63 years old. • William J. Brennan Jr., 1906-1997, 56 years old. • Potter Stewart, 1915-1985, 47 years old. • Byron White, 1917-2002, 45 years old. • Arthur Goldberg, 1908-1990, 54 years old. |
All this demonstrating the glowing success of godless secularism’s strategic and tactical advance on America from the late 18th century onward. In the 21st century, idolatry seems to have become our nation’s core purpose.
Dr. Jim Garlow [born 1947] earned his doctorate in history at Drew University, his Master of Theology and Master of Divinity degrees from Princeton Theological Seminary and Asbury Theological Seminary, respectively, and was awarded bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Southern Nazarene University.
A couple of years ago, we featured Dr. Garlow’s 3-minute video titled I’m not political, I’m Biblical; it’s worth watching again. vimeo.com/690656596
Last week Dr. Garlow posted on Facebook: “I heard Jim Caviezel speak tonight. What he shared was as strong as any sermon I have ever heard in my entire life. Holy Spirit conviction filled the massive ballroom. God was there! He sometimes stopped in silence. No one moved. He shed a few tears. So did the crowd. The most powerful, reverent, God-fearing talk ever. He understands exactly where our nation is. And he rightly raised the question, in a moment of righteous anger, ‘Where are the pastors and priests?!!!!! Why aren’t they standing?!!!!’”
Gideons and Rahabs have entered the public square.
David Lane
American Renewal Project
1. firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/joseph-story/
2. Rotunda & Nowak, “Introduction” to Story’s Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States.
3. The Founder’s Bible.
4. thefederalist.com/2024/07/10/americas-conflicts-are-not-primarily-political-or-ideological-but-religious/
