10 Truths About America's Christian Heritage

Coral Ridge Ministries
Dr. D. James Kennedy, Founder

From the 10 Truths Series
TRUTH # 10 - The Courts Have Declared We Are A Christian Nation

The Anti-Defamation League, a staunchly secularist organization, found in a nationwide survey that 64 percent of America’s adults now believe that “religion is under attack” in our country.

The following two decisions certainly support that view. Consider the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1980, which concluded:
If the posted copies of the Ten Commandments are to have any effect at all, it will be to induce the school children to read, meditate upon, perhaps to venerate and obey, the Commandments…. [This] is not a permissible state objective.

Even more anti-Christian is the wording of the decision handed down in the 2002 case against Judge Roy Moore in the U.S. District Court in Alabama. The district judge, Myron Thompson, wrote, The state may not acknowledge the sovereignty of the Judeo-Christian God and attribute to that God our religious freedom.

The Founding Fathers would be utterly astonished by these statements. John Jay, our nation’s first Supreme Court chief justice, declared, “The most effectual means of securing the continuance of our civil and religious liberties is always to remember with reverence and gratitude the Source from which they flow.” He is also known for saying that, “Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation, to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

“We Are a Christian People”
The modern move toward secularism is a relatively new trajectory for America’s courts. For most of our history, the courts have affirmed our nation’s Christian heritage. They did not even shy away from labeling America a “Christian nation.” As the Supreme Court concluded in an 1892 decision, “We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.” And again in 1931 in U.S. v. McIntosh, the High Court stated,
We are a Christian people, according to one another the equal right of religious freedom and acknowledge with reverence the duty of obedience to the will of God.

America’s early courts understood the genius of America’s founding—professing that the rights and responsibilities of all Americans were received not from government, but from their Creator. James Wilson, one of the six original justices appointed by President George Washington to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court, surely understood the intentions of the nation’s Founding Fathers. He was a signer of both the U.S. Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. In a lecture on law, Wilson declared:
Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law, which is divine…. Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants. Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.

For the early courts, it was inconceivable to imagine an America divorced from the influence of the Christian faith. As John Marshall, America’s longest serving chief justice (1801-1835), once explained:
The American population is entirely Christian, and with us, Christianity and religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and express relations with it.

This was the prevailing tone of jurisprudence for more than 150 years, as our nation’s courts held firm to the Founders’ beliefs in God and the Christian faith.

Christianity Is the “Established Religion”
The same beliefs have also dominated the views of the state’s courts. As early as 1799, the state courts were declaring that Christianity is the “established religion,” and that within that religion all denominations have equal place. The Maryland Supreme Court decreed:
By our form of government, the Christian religion is the established religion; and all sects and denominations of Christians are placed on the same equal footing and are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty.”

Interestingly, Maryland was originally established as a haven for Roman Catholics coming to the New World, and for some time they predominated in holding political offices.

State supreme courts have also asserted that America’s citizens follow the Christian moral code. In 1811, the New York Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for blaspheming the name of Christ, explaining that:
Christianity in its enlarged sense, as a religion revealed and taught in the Bible, is part and parcel of the law of the land…. We are a Christian people and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.

Later, in 1861, the New York Supreme Court ruled that America is a Christian society. This fact is everywhere prominent in all our civil and political history, and has been, from the first, recognized and acted upon by the people, as well as by constitutional conventions, by legislatures and by courts of justice.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court investigated whether Christianity was incorporated into its state law in an 1824 case. The Court concluded affirmatively, stating:
Christianity, general Christianity, is and always has been a part of the common law…. [It] is irrefragably proved that the laws and institutions of this state are built on the foundation of reverence for Christianity.

Our Laws Rest on Christian Principles
One of the clearest acknowledgements of our country’s Christian heritage by the U.S. Supreme Court came in the case of the United States v. Church of the Holy Trinity (1892), which was cited earlier in this chapter. The Court offered its unanimous conclusion after an exhaustive study of our nation’s historical records:
No purpose of action against religion can be imputed to any legislation, state or national, because this is a religious people. This is historically true. From the discovery of this continent to the present hour, there is a single voice making this affirmation…. These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation. We are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity.

Earlier, in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors (1844) the U.S. Supreme Court had unanimously upheld the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s Updegraph decision, stating that “the laws and institutions of this state are built on the foundation of reverence for Christianity.” In this same decision the High Court labeled America “a Christian country,” stating that “Christianity … is not to be maliciously and openly reviled and blasphemed against, to the annoyance of believers or the injury of the public.” The Supreme Court has not only acknowledged our Christian heritage, it has used principles of biblical law in drawing its conclusions. For example, in the late 1800s, when polygamy was spreading through the Western states, the U.S. Supreme Court argued, “Bigamy and polygamy are crimes by the laws of all civilized and Christian countries” (Davis v. Beason, 1889).

“We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.” —Zorach v. Clauson, 1954

This trend continued into the twentieth century as the Court issued strong statements affirming our allegiance to the God of the Bible in such cases as United States v. McIntosh (1931), which was cited earlier. As late as 1954, in the case of Zorach v. Clauson, the U.S. Supreme Court declared, “We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being.”

In order to promote their secular view of America’s history, secularists and atheists must deny history and the overarching harmony of thought that dominated the courts for America’s first 150 years. If America is to preserve its liberty for future generations, our courts must not abandon the Christian foundation of our country nor the legal system that was built upon it.