Joseph Story
Joseph Story (1779-1845) was in appointed by President James Madison to the U.S. Supreme Court. At age 32, having served one term in the U.S. House of Representatives, Story was the youngest justice ever to be appointed. In 1827, while a sitting Justice, he became Chairman of Harvard Law School and led the fledgling institution to become the world's most prestigious Law School. Story died in office after 34 years, but his writings, especially his Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States (1833), became the cornerstone of legal philosophy throughout the 19th Century. In the Court's unanimous 1844 opinion in Vidal v. Girard's Executors, Story affirmed what was universally acknowledged until late in the 20th Century, that America is a Christian nation. Story wrote:
The real object of the First Amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism (sic), or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which should be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostasy, heresy, and nonconformity had been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue... The Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship...
Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the [school] - its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? ...
Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? (see Text of Court Decision); also Dr. Kenyn Cureton, Lost Episodes in American History).
Well into the 20th Century our leaders called America a Christian nation. Today, they've removed the Bible from our schools. Bible-believing Americans must engage in extraordinary prayer and boldly stand for Jesus, righteousness and religious liberty!
Pulled from article written by:
Rev. Pierre Bynum
Chaplain & National Prayer Director
Email: [email protected]
Family Research Council
801 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-393-2100
Fax: 202-393-2134
Web: www.frc.org
The real object of the First Amendment was, not to countenance, much less to advance Mahometanism (sic), or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity; but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment, which should give to an hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government. It thus cut off the means of religious persecution, (the vice and pest of former ages,) and of the subversion of the rights of conscience in matters of religion, which had been trampled upon almost from the days of the Apostles to the present age. The history of the parent country had afforded the most solemn warnings and melancholy instructions on this head; and even New England, the land of the persecuted puritans, as well as other colonies, where the Church of England had maintained its superiority, would furnish out a chapter, as full of the darkest bigotry and intolerance, as any, which should be found to disgrace the pages of foreign annals. Apostasy, heresy, and nonconformity had been standard crimes for public appeals, to kindle the flames of persecution, and apologize for the most atrocious triumphs over innocence and virtue... The Catholic and the Protestant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and the Infidel, may sit down at the common table of the national councils, without any inquisition into their faith, or mode of worship...
Why may not the Bible, and especially the New Testament, without note or comment, be read and taught as a Divine Revelation in the [school] - its general precepts expounded, its evidences explained and its glorious principles of morality inculcated? ...
Where can the purest principles of morality be learned so clearly or so perfectly as from the New Testament? (see Text of Court Decision); also Dr. Kenyn Cureton, Lost Episodes in American History).
Well into the 20th Century our leaders called America a Christian nation. Today, they've removed the Bible from our schools. Bible-believing Americans must engage in extraordinary prayer and boldly stand for Jesus, righteousness and religious liberty!
Pulled from article written by:
Rev. Pierre Bynum
Chaplain & National Prayer Director
Email: [email protected]
Family Research Council
801 G Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Phone: 202-393-2100
Fax: 202-393-2134
Web: www.frc.org
