Were our Founders Christian?

By "Founders" I refer to those men who established (founded) the USA. America's founding docs are the Declaration and the Constitution. The majority of those who signed these docs (the Founders) were Christian (believers in Jesus as the Savior of mankind)... it's just a fact of history. No spin.

The first sentence of the D of I.... we're used to it, but it's a world-shaking document. Man is "created", he's individually valued, he's endowed with rights by God that nobody can take away, protecting those rights is the primary function of govt. This is NOT a secular document, and it's not any other religion but Christian.

Christians do NOT hold a copyright on these values. They resonate in every human heart, but Christianity made them part of our official civic life. Copyright implies something you want to protect and keep the benefits for yourself. Christians want to SHARE these values freely and abundantly!

The First Amendment is a Christian statement because it enshrines freedom of religion. This is the power and RADICALNESS of Christ...freedom to accept or reject. The Perfect God who gave us freedom, perfectly respects our freedom.

Man codified it into the greatest founding document of all time. Miraculous that men would actually rise above their base instincts to do so! This is not normal throughout human history....even in "Christian" nations. The King, Ruler, or Govt typically defined the religion of the nation.

By Christian Nation, I do NOT mean we adhere to the tenets of Christianity as institutionalized codes in our civic apparatus. This would NOT be Christian, as Christ separated the two.

Christianity is, rather, the water we swim in here in the West, so we don't even know we're wet. One doesn't have to profess the faith to have internalized the values. You and I likely grew up with and take for granted values such as the respect for individual rights and basic freedoms. Again, many don't profess Christianity yet hold these values dear, and assume they are universal.

It is not spiritual arrogance to trace these values back to Christianity's arrival in the Ancient World. It is just what happened. Individual life was not valued. Females were not equal. Slavery was normal. Class privilege was a fact of life. Legal codes varied depending on one's status.

Christ came along and turned all that upside down...and it was not anything else that did it. The Christians were considered a bizarre aberration from the norm. Christian values are now our norm, even as they are not personally professed as belief about salvation and the soul.

Organized religion has DEFINITELY caused a lot of bloodshed down through the centuries, with Christianity being a big part of that! Please don't forget that Christ came to destroy "organized religion", and to establish the New Covenant based on Grace...NOT religion!! Of course, man has corrupted that, but we keep being renewed by disobedience-birthed suffering. I have little use for organized religion. Please don't confuse the Gospel with "religion".

By "orthodox" I mean the basics of authentic Christianity: The Bible as divine revelation, Christ as the Son of God and Redeemer of mankind. I don't put my stock in some dogmatic man-created view of what God wants.

So lets bring this to life with a current issue facing America: Illegal Immigration.

We were all in some sense immigrants, yes. No argument there!

But... we came to a nation of laws, not of men. The immigration here worked because there was no one above the law. Everyone was equal before it (though of course corruption is part of the deal... damn humans!).

When we ignore laws and let law abiding people suffer and die, the blowback against the immigrants is heightened and more severe. People in Arizona, for example, are suffering and dying because laws on the books are not enforced. And then they are condemned for wanting to enforce the laws and thereby NOT suffer anymore! What??

Though we fall short in execution of the principles laid out in our founding documents, they still contain the promise of equality and freedom never before seen in the world. That promise has been unfolding, sporadically for sure... lots of dead bodies (native Americans, Blacks, Chinese, Irish, etc.) attest to that!

The "Promissory Note" that is our Constitution, however, is being cashed in. A lot of suffering has occurred at our hands as we ignored the promises, but that's not the fault of the promises...it's the human heart corrupting the good in promotion of the self.

More to come soon...