By Al Benson Jr. On August 14, 2011 at 4:38 PM
by Al Benson Jr.
As much talk as there has been about the Constitution being a "Christian" document it is hard to get around the fact that God is not even mentioned in the body of it. Presbyterian theologian John Henley Thornwell noted this when he wrote The Relation of the State to Christ. Thornwell observed that: "The fundamental error of our fathers was, that they accepted a partial for a complete statement of the truth. They saw clearly the human side--that popular governments are the offspring of popular will, and that rulers, as the servants and not the masters of their subjects, are properly responsible to them. They failed to apprehend the Divine side--that all just government is the ordinance of God, and that magistrates are His ministers who must answer to Him for the execution of their trust. The consequence of this failure, and of exclusive attention to a single aspect of the case, was to invest the people with a species of supremacy as insulting to God as it was injurious to them." Only God is truly sovereign, and, in a limited way, He shares some authority with men, that they might be enabled to do His will, but the final authority is still His, not theirs.
Gary North, writing in Moses and Pharaoh (Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, Texas) in 1985 noted that to deny God as sovereign leaves man in charge, but which man? Who represents the people? Who will declare the law? That is the struggle of our nation and has resulted in millions of deaths (abortion) and economic confiscation and control on a rate that would have made ancient dictatorships look like tax havens. The Constitution was the rejection of the rule of God for the rule of man.
Richard Anthony, writing on http:ecclesia.org said: "Henry Abbot recognized the danger of this, "...if there be no religious test required, pagans, deists, and Mahometans might obtain office among us, and that the senators and representatives might all be pagan." (Gary North, Political Polytheism, Institute for Christian Economics, Tyler, Texas, 1989) It seems that Mr. Abbot spoke these sentiments at North Carolina's ratifying convention.
So we have no religious test, according to the Constitution, for anyone to have to pass before assuming a political office--and look what we have in office today. There are many in national offices today that are outright pagans, although they would decline to be identified as such, but their personal actions and the type of legislation they introduce, support, and promote plainly gives them away, except to most evangelical Christians who seem incapable of telling the difference. And we presently have a man in the White House that it is anybody's guess as to what or who he really is--Muslim probably, though he claims to have converted to Christianity. But, looking at the legislation he supports and what he is opposed to one hardly gets the feeling that he ever walked the sawdust trail. He is at least a Marxist and who knows what else, and he is a willing talking head for those who, behind the scenes, really run the country. They fill him full of leftist rhetoric and he spouts it to the American people just like Old Faithful!
Anthony continued: "The states approved, for whatever reason, of a document at odds with their own constitutions, which for a time, they were able to retain. 'In the historical context of the era, the 'religious test' cannot be understood as referring to anything other than the Christian oaths required by the state constitutions" (Greg Loren Durand, The Constitution: America's Covenantel Apostasy).
The mood changes with the Confederate States of America Constitution. Where the United States Constitution did not mention God, the Confederate Constitution does. In fact the preamble to the Confederate Constitution plainly states: "We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a permanent and federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity--invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God--do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America." It's not perfect, but it's a big step in the right direction.
Benjamin Morgan Palmer, minister of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans labeled this "A truly Christian patriot's prayer." Palmer noted the "perilous atheism" of the U.S. Constitution, stating that its framers had been too much influenced by "freethinking" and an "infidel spirit."
Jefferson Davis, as President of the Confederacy, maintained that the Confederacy and the constitution it adopted, was the real successor to the U.S. Constitution, which the North had undermined. Unfortunately, Davis did not realize that it had been undermined at the beginning. So, although the Confederate Constitution was modeled on the 1787 United States one, changes and improvement were made. The Confederate framers saw some of the problems with the United States Constitution and tried to remove them.
In our day of escalating postal rates with reduced services, a notable change was in the structure of the Confederate Postal Service. The Confederate Constitution noted that the Confederate government would "...establish post offices and post routes; but the expenses of the Post Office Department after the first day of March in the year of our Lord eighteen hundred and sixty three, shall be paid out of its own revenues." In other words, after that date, the Confederate government would no longer pay for the postal service. It had to pay its own way. What a novel concept that would be in this country today.
The Confederate Constitution also provided for what we today call a line item veto, where the president could approve parts of a bill submitted to him and disapprove of other parts in the same bill. The Confederate Constitution also dealt with "cost over-runs" on government projects contracted out to independent contractors. It wouldn't pay for them. So if a contractor wanted to make a profit on a job then he needed to finish it on time. How many millions in taxpayer money have, over the years, been spent on cost over-runs in this country--in many cases with the politicians and the contractor splitting the "cost over-run" and pocketing it while the taxpayers get stiffed.
For those that wish to do some serious reading about the Confederate Constitution I would recommend that you get Marshall DeRosa's book The Confederate Constitution of 1861 published by the University of Missouri Press back in 1991. You can probably find it on Amazon.com