Founding Fathers

Michael Parenti's " Super Patriotism" points outs that when the lines between political and religious beliefs become blurred, nonbelievers run the risk of being labeled "un -American."

President Eisenhower observed; "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of Life."

Reagan in his 1987 State of the Union message, casts his eyes upward and proclaimed that our nation pays homage "to Him", and could not have been created without divine guidance." God, it seems has become our Founding Father.

History teachers might want to emphasize statements by our founding fathers before the Bible replaces the Constitution and Bill of Rights; and they are required to teach the ultimate in ancient history ; creationism.

In fact, Jefferson lamented: "the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world."

George Washington maintained, "every man should be free to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience."

James Madison wrote, "Religious bondage shackles and dehabilitates the mind, and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect."

Delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 left the deity very much out of the picture, even refusing to follow Ben Franklin's suggestion that their daily sessions be opened with a prayer for divine guidance.

Edmund Randolph the Virginia delegate to the Convention, hoped that the absence of religious qualification "will prevent the establishment of any sect in prejudice to the rest and will forever oppose all attempts to infringe religious liberty."

Article VI reads, "no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

The First amendment, which states; "Congress shall make no law respecting and establishment or religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..."