December 25, 2010

God and the Republic

By Ron Hunnicutt

Progressives delight in proclaiming that God is not mentioned in the Constitution. But the Declaration of Independence does mention our Creator in the first two paragraphs along with the last. Our Declaration is the why of what our Founding Fathers did. The Constitution is the how. The Declaration is the foundation, and the Constitution is the structure or framework of our government. The Declaration is act one, and the Constitution is act two. Both acts make for a viable construct. Leave one or the other out, and the whole becomes incoherent.

What is the purpose of the Constitution? To set up a government that acknowledges our equality in God's eyes (and yes, the equality stops right there, except for the idea that all men should have equality before the law in a courtroom) and allows us to exercise our "unalienable rights," among other things. The Declaration states our independence from tyranny, and so the obvious need for the Constitution is at hand.

If progressives wish to discount our Declaration or discount God's presence in the Declaration, then the purpose of our very existence as a nation becomes somewhat confused. The Founders created a constitutional republic, but why? For what purpose? The Declaration gives the why and purpose. A part of the Founders' justification for declaring independence was that King George III "broke covenant" with the colonists for many reasons, and "covenant" is a sober biblical concept.

Just so that we are clear about all of these matters, most Christians do not advocate a theocracy, although progressives delight in announcing otherwise. It's just that the liberal construct of "separation of church and state" has mutated into state-enforced atheism. The First Amendment says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof[.]" It is about Congress! Not the people! It does not say that Christians cannot influence or be involved in government. It does not say that God has to be removed from anything government has its tentacles in. It does not say that the ACLU can remove a Christian symbol at will or with the threat of litigation. Progressives have used the ruse of "separation of church and state," which is not in the Constitution, to rabidly attack everything Christian. Christians should have as much influence in our culture and on our government as anyone else. Behind every law is some sort of value, and the source of that value is vital.

Now, here is another item of galactic importance in our Declaration. Here is what it says: that men are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights[.]" Those rights, "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," are from God Himself, not from governments or government leaders. So the Declaration is a most vital statement by the Founders. The importance of this cannot be overemphasized. To an atheist leader like Stalin, Lenin, Mao or Hitler, people have no God-given rights at all.

So now we are at a vital point: most of the time, when someone removes God from an equation, the result is confusion, dysfunction, and incoherency. Liberalism does this routinely and with reckless abandon. It is incoherent to suggest that abortion does not snuff out a life. It is incoherent to suggest that there is virtue in deficit spending. It is incoherent to suggest that there is no God, and Hitler just died and that's the end of it.

But for most progressives, that incoherence is preferable to the difficulty of having God in the equation. If God is in the equation, then maybe He has something to say about how I live and what I do. He might very well have some sort of claim on my very existence.

The Founding Fathers were an enlightened bunch, and they afforded God his proper place. In the beginning...