Flag Day fell on Sunday this year. In the church I attended today, there were lots of red, white, and blue ties on display. The choir sang a beautiful arrangement of America the Beautiful. And as the closing hymn, the congregation sang The Star-Spangled Banner – all three verses. (It actually has four, but there were only three in the hymnal.) As the organist played the introduction, the congregation spontaneously stood. I did the best I could around the large lump that had somehow appeared in my throat.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about President Obama’s statement in Turkey that we were no longer just a Christian nation, and many have questioned whether we have ever been a Christian nation, since the Constitution forbids Congress to pass any law regarding the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. But there is absolutely no question about the faith of the founding fathers and their views on how that faith affected the operation of our nation.
Consider these words from John Adams: “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.”
And consider also the words of Benjamin Franklin to the Constitutional Convention of 1787: “In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? 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 rise 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: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.”
Unfortunately, freedom of religion has somehow degenerated into freedom from religion, and no one seems to be willing to draw a line anywhere between right and wrong, good and evil. Moral judgments aren’t allowed anymore, it seems, particularly in terms of judging someone else’s behavior. Yet, oddly, we also bemoan the results that years of moral relativism have had on our culture. Here's just one example. In an article published yesterday by Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria, writing about the causes of our current economic situation, said:
“Most of what happened over the past decade across the world was legal. Bankers did what they were allowed to do under the law. Politicians did what they thought the system asked of them. Bureaucrats were not exchanging cash for favors. But very few people acted responsibly, honorably or nobly (the very word sounds odd today). This might sound like a small point, but it is not. No system—capitalism, socialism, whatever—can work without a sense of ethics and values at its core. No matter what reforms we put in place, without common sense, judgment and an ethical standard, they will prove inadequate. We will never know where the next bubble will form, what the next innovations will look like and where excesses will build up. But we can ask that people steer themselves and their institutions with a greater reliance on a moral compass.”
Really? What moral compass will we ask that they rely on? To what will we appeal if there is no objective standard of right and wrong? Where will that “ethical standard” come from, if, as Franklin suggested, we have “now forgotten that powerful friend?”
The Founders had that moral compass. They knew what their ethical standards were founded upon. And it is reflected in the writings they left for posterity. In closing, consider the final verse penned by Francis Scott Key in 1814:
“Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: 'In God is our trust.'
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!”
Thanks for listening.
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