George Washington:
"It is impossible to govern rightly without God and the Bible."
John Quincy Adams:
Acknowledged from the beginning Americans, "Connected in one indissoluble band the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity."
James Madison, father of the US Constitution:
"We have staked the whole future of the American Civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future...upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."
Samuel Adams, revolutionary organizer:
"The right of freedom being a gift of God almighty, ...the rights of the colonists as Christians...may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver...which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament." (The Rights of Colonists, 1772.)
Daniel Webster, statesman:
"Finally, let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light and labored by its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions - civil, political, or literary. Let us cherish these sentiments, and extend this influence still more widely, in the full conviction that that is the happiest society which partakes in the highest degree of the mild and peaceful spirit of Christianity." (December 22, 1820 at Plymouth, Mass., in celebration of the Pilgrim landing at Plymouth Rock)
"Separation of Church and state was not a reaction against religion, but a reaction against the state; and it was not introduced by skeptics, but by Protestants largely for religious reasons. ...it hardly can be said that the separation of Church and state was a victory for secular ideas over religious intolerance, because it was clearly a victory for the Bible over human authority. ...The bishops, formerly responsible to the Roman authority, often served as an effective check on royal power. Now they were little more than a political arm of the state, used to stamp out religious dissent, which was seen as a threat to social order." (Benjamin Hart, historian)
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