Perhaps it’s time for an ‘appeal to providence’

SBT Editor
We need another court ruling in America – one that recognizes once and for all that religious beliefs were a key element in the foundation of this nation and in the formation of its legal principles.
I, like most of you, I presume, was dumfounded when the radio newsman reported on the June 26 ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in San Francisco, forbidding the public recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools. I couldn’t have heard that right, I said to myself. When I realized what I had heard was correct, I asked myself, “What’s next?”
What’s next, should the ruling stand – and legal experts say it won’t, logically would be the abolishment of the Declaration of Independence and all other government documents that mention or allude to a supreme being. (Gee, if we throw out the Declaration of Independence, does that mean we’re all suddenly British?) The Declaration, after all, mentions God four times. Among those is the statement that the rights we enjoy are rights endowed by God.
A turning point in my view of the world came during the nomination hearings of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas was ridiculed by the left for stating a belief in natural law. I found that odd, because the Fathers of this country – who were quite radical – clearly established natural law to be the foundation of American law and of the American view of the world. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights …” – those “unalienable rights” being natural law.
Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on Virginia, wrote in 1782: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath?”
Never mind all that, Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Alfred Goodwin appears to have said in the court’s ruling. Goodwin contended that allowing the pledge to be recited in public schools with its “one nation under God” line would be as objectionable as if the line were to be one nation under Jesus, Vishnu, Zeus or no god.
Hmm, I don’t see any mention of Jesus, Vishnu or Zeus in this nation’s founding documents.
Granted, Jefferson and others of such stature were not comfortable with organized religion and could be described as Deists rather than as Christians. Jefferson’s writings include appeals to the generic rather than the specific in the area, suggesting that religious liberty required that government not be specific in support of any religion.
But he and the other Founders were working from a Christian background and perspective. There are some who would say that the line “one nation under God” is merely ceremonial and has no true meaning. But, given that Christian background. the line does have meaning.
There may be those who object to those principles and the incumbent recognition of God, but there can be no denial of the place of religious thought and ideals in the founding of this nation. That would clearly be revisionist history, because this nation was founded, like it or not, “under God.”
Interestingly, the Declaration of Independence concludes with an appeal to the “Supreme Judge of the world” and with a note of “a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence.”
Maybe we need to do a little more relying on that Divine Providence.
July 5, 2002 Small Business Times, Milwaukee