Prodigal Nation

THE PRODIGAL NATION

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The Biblical story of the prodigal son, who demanded his inheritance from his father and left home, has frightening parallels to modern America. As the story unfolds, we see the prodigal wasting his inheritance through immoral living and ending up in poverty and disgrace. Are we not in rebellion against the Biblebased morality we inherited from our forefathers? Have we not rejected the “right way to do things” that lay at the heart of our family life, business life, political life, and every other area of American life? Have we not become a prodigal nation?

The prodigal son justified his rebellion by casting his father as the “bad guy.” In light of that, it makes sense that it has become popular in rebellious and prodigal America to trash the reputation of our country's “parents” — the Founding Fathers.

Basically, when the reputations of our nation's founders are trashed, the founding vision for America which God put in their hearts is lost as well. The Bible says, “without a vision, the people perish.”

The Pilgrims and Puritans, sons and daughters of the Calvinist branch of the Reformation, laid the spiritual foundations of America in terms of this vision: if a Biblebelieving people would take seriously both Commandments of Christ — not only to love God, but to love your neighbor as yourself — then a just society would be possible on earth. A society could be created where there would be liberty and justice for every person. From the beginning then, America was a divine experiment in representative selfgovernment: first to govern ourselves in obedience to God, and then to care for one another. The foundational idea was that America would be a reformed society that would continue to reform itself in the light of God's Word.

By the time of the Founding Fathers, that vision was still central in their thinking. Patrick Henry, one of the most committed Christians among them and author of the great “Give me liberty or give me death!” speech, once said: “It cannot be too often repeated, or too strongly emphasized, that America was not founded by religionists, nor on any religion, but by Christians, on the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

On August 1, 1776, Samuel Adams, “Father of the American Revolution” and a strong Christian, voiced the vision for all of them when, referring to their having recently voted for the Declaration of Independence, he said: “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come!”

In the Founding Fathers' day the Bible was so central to the education of children that almost all of them retained a Biblical worldview as adults. Even Thomas Jefferson, who as an older man rejected every doctrine of the Christian faith, mandated as President that every schoolchild in Washington, D.C. had to read the Bible and Watts' hymnal!

It flies in the face of the facts to accuse the Founding Fathers of wanting to secularize government. To the contrary, they could not conceive of public policy without the influence of the Christian faith. George Washington said “it is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible.” In October of 1789, President Washington wrote to the Dutch Reformed Synod: “While just government protects all in their religious rights, true religion affords to government its surest support.”

There is no shred of evidence, by the way, to support the slander that Washington was a philanderer. To the contrary, the evidence is all on the other side. Raised by a praying Christian mother, as a young man he developed a strong habit of prayer which he maintained throughout his life. There are a number of eyewitness accounts of people who observed him in prayer during the Continental Army's critical winter at Valley Forge. Washington's public speeches are laced with references to God and Christ, though usually couched in euphemisms such as “the Divine Author of our blessed Religion.” The most important word in his vocabulary was “honor.”

Our fourth president, James Madison, the chief architect of our Constitution and prime contributor to the First Amendment (which according to the Supreme Court is the source of the separation of Church and State), once said: “Religion is the basis and foundation of government.” No separation of Church and State there!

Speaking of the Constitution, we might not have had one had it not been for 81 yearold Ben Franklin's plea for prayer on June 28, 1787, in a hopelessly deadlocked convention:

In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine assistance. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor... And have we now forgotten that powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?

I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can arise without His aid?

We have been assured, Sir, in the Sacred Writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’ I firmly believe this, and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel...

Franklin went on to move that “henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this assembly every morning before we proceed to business...” Although his motion lost because someone pointed out that they had no money to pay a chaplain, they did adjourn for three days of prayer and preaching by local ministers. Reconvening on July 2, New Jersey delegate Jonathan Dayton reports that “every unfriendly feeling had been expelled, and a spirit of reconciliation had been cultivated.” The delegates quickly reached the compromise that gave us our Constitution. In a letter to Jefferson, James Madison called the results “a miracle.” This incident emphatically demonstrates the Founding Fathers' belief that prayer to the living God for His guidance was intended to be part and parcel of dealing with matters of government in this nation!

Peter Marshall is a Presbyterian minister, bestselling author, and the son of the late Dr. Peter Marshall (former Chaplain of the U.S. Senate) and author Catherine Marshall LeSourd. To learn more of his ministry or to order materials, call 18008793298.

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Prodigal Nation — Part II

by Rev. Peter Marshall

In the first article of this twopart series we began looking at the Founding Fathers’ assumption that the Bible and the Christian faith would always be involved in influencing matters of government and public policy.

Another event confirms this. On September 15, 1789, Congress passed the First Amendment to the Constitution. According to modern Supreme Court rulings, the First Amendment contains the supposed Separation of Church and State doctrine — which the justices have used to outlaw prayer and Bible reading in public schools, though in reality the amendment says nothing about either. On that same day, Congress also passed the Northwest Ordinance, which established the government for the future states North and West of the Ohio River. Article 3 of the Northwest Ordinance says: “Knowledge, morality, and religion being essential for the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education are to be forever encouraged.” It is ludicrous to suppose that the Founding Fathers intended the First Amendment to outlaw prayer and Bible reading in public schools, when on that same day they passed legislation intended to promote morality and religion in public schools!

Our second president, John Adams, revealed his understanding of the Constitution as a Biblicallybased document when he stated: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” In the Founding Fathers’ view, there was no hope for America’s survival if the people lost the basic moral and spiritual values upon which we were founded.

That is what Ben Franklin meant when he said “only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” His point is that if we cannot submit ourselves in obedience to God’s love, there will be no virtue in us, and we will end up tyrannizing our neighbor. If we are not under God’s authority, we will respect neither our neighbor’s rights nor his worth and value as someone who bears the image of God. There will be no freedom for any of us.

The legacy of the Founding Fathers’ vision for America is the Declaration of Independence, which reveals the Biblical roots of their perspective on American society. It is the only government document in world history which is actually a statement of faith, a national creed, and a “this we believe” announcement to the rest of the world in 1776 about the ideals on which our society would be based. Jefferson wrote: “We hold these truths to be selfevident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights.” The idea that all men are created equal comes not from Deist concepts, or Enlightenment philosophy, but from Genesis 1:27 (“And God created man in His own image”). How do we know that all men are created equal? Because all men bear the image of God, and therefore all men are of equal value to God.

We have often failed to live up to our stated ideals in the Declaration. To be sure, our treatment of American Indians and blacks in the last century leaves much for which we should repent. Despite our failures, we remain the only society founded on a determination to even attempt to live by these selfevident truths. That is why the Declaration of Independence is never finished: Americanism is defined as involving an ongoing attempt to continually reform ourselves in the light of these Biblebased standards.

That attempt requires the involvement of every Christian. The greatest evangelist of the 19th century, Charles Finney, put it bluntly when he stated:

The time has come for honest men to take consistent ground in politics, or the Lord will curse them. . . . God cannot sustain this free and blessed country, which we love and pray for, unless the Church will take right ground. Politics are a part of religion in a country such as this, and Christians must do their duty to the country as a part of their duty to God. God will bless or curse this country according to the course Christians take in politics.

This is why every Biblebelieving American must be involved in the current spiritual and moral civil war for the soul of America. The slaughter of our unborn babies is as blatant a rejection of the Godgiven inalienable right to life, as the enslavement of Negroes was a rejection of the Godgiven inalienable right to liberty.

That rejection brought the judgment of God on the nation in the form of our terrible Civil War. Nine years before the war began, Harriet Beecher Stowe warned Americans in the last pages of Uncle Tom’s Cabin:

A day of grace is yet held out to us. . . for not surer is the eternal law by which the millstone sinks in the ocean than the stronger law by which injustice and cruelty shall bring on nations the wrath of Almighty God.

Does not the holocaust of abortion and the rest of the corruption and decadence of American society make us as ripe for the judgment of God now as we were then?

The prodigal son repented of his immorality and went home with a very different view of his father. If Americans will repent, we will enable God to bring us back to our Biblical roots and experience a restoration of our historic love for and appreciation of the Founding Fathers and their vision for this country.

Restoring America begins with recapturing the original American vision of a just society, and becoming agents of healing — bringing our nation back to God and rebuilding our moral and spiritual foundations. God is recruiting a new Gideon’s Army of men and women that He can use to change America. Get involved. You can make a difference!