To: E. Charters who wrote (18819 ) 12/2/2004 9:14:42 PM From: Solon Read Replies (1) | Respond to HA! HA! MR. Charters!secular principles! CREATED law...it was based on "WE, THE PEOPLE"--and there was not one single solitary reference to anyone or anything HIGHER than "WE THE PEOPLE"!where all religious beliefs were equally acceptable, and where no religious beliefs were germain to Government. CASE CLOSED! ED BUCKNER, PH.D. This can hardly be an accidental omission, and the opponents of the Constitution during the ratification process made much of its godless nature. What we should remind our "Christian-nation" friends is that the framers had many documents to model their work on, including many state constitutions—remember that Independence came by 1781 but the U.S. Constitution was not written until 1787—and all of those state charters plus many from other cultures explicitly invoked God. Most were specifically Christian, some were explicitly Protestant, and some, like Massachusetts, established a specific church (the Congregationalists, descendants more or less of the Pilgrims) as the state church. If you lived in Massachusetts before 1833 you were required by law and the state constitution to support the Calvinistic Congregationalists. The Articles of Confederation, which the Constitution replaced, referred to God, and six of the states had "multiple establishments"—arrangements where government supported all religions or at least all Protestant Christian sects, without favoring any. In this context it is clear that the framers knew they were breaking precedent by ignoring God and religion, other than carefully declaring that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." This was perhaps more revolutionary than the 1776 rebellion, but the godless Constitution was ratified and is still our fundamental governing document. It is certainly not a Christian document, though neither is it an anti-Christian document."
