Christianity and the Constitution by Eidsmoe

EvanCalvin · #1 20th November 2003, 07:44 AM

Has anyone read Christianity and the Constitution by Eidsmoe?

What a great book!!!

wow · #2 21st November 2003, 11:04 AM

EvanCalvin · #3 22nd November 2003, 02:12 AM

Wow,

I've always wondered about that....it just doesn't seem to have any Scriptural precedent. God's Law always seems to condemn false religions, not encourage and protect them. I think John would side with you on this though, but I'm not there.

wow · #4 22nd November 2003, 09:50 AM

EvanCalvin · #5 22nd November 2003, 12:17 PM

I don't see it that way. I see our rights coming from God, not through our allowing false religions to exsist. By not allowing the koran to be taught in our public schools does not mean that therefore God's Word should not be taught in public schools.

ACT 5:29 Then Peter and the other apostles answered and said, We ought to obey God rather than men.

Obeying God is a higher law in and of itself, pagan's and false religions have no such appeal. Just because God is blessing Christians doesn't mean He has to or is blessing others. He is not tied down by our "equal opportuinty" laws. If He makes a nation a Christian nation then we have no obligation to turn it over to pagan's in the interest of "fairness." As a matter of fact it seems just the opposite, it seems as if we have a duty to keep it Christian.

No?

wow · #6 22nd November 2003, 03:54 PM

EvanCalvin · #7 23rd November 2003, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by wow

I do respectfully beg to differ with some of your statements:
(1) I do not see that God has given me "rights." He created me, blessed me and has given to me all that I have including my new life in Him.

Wow, I think this is our main difference of agreement.

I believe that our founders properly understood and applied the culmination of 2000 years of Christian political thought which actually dates back to the Hebrew Republic. That is all rights and liberties come from God and governments are established only to protect these rights, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence.

“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; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government….”

The term “unalienable rights” was drawn from the English Common Law of property. When people own land or other kinds of property, they may sell it, give it away, rent or lease it, or transfer it to others. In Common Law, to sell or transfer one’s rights to property was to “alienate” them (Blackstone, Commentaries).

Unalienable rights are rights that are so essential to our identity as humans that no one can sell them or give them away without denying one’s own personhood. They are higher than ordinary property rights. Ordinary rights can be bartered, sold, or traded. Unalienable rights cannot. The creator endows people with these unalienable rights, attaching them to human nature. Since unalienable rights are part of the definition of humanity, to take them away is to attack humanity itself.

Unalienable rights were God’s gift to humanity at creation. Jefferson and his colleagues inherited this idea from Christianity.

“When the Patriot leaders were pressed to make an axiomatic case for freedom, they routinely did so on a religious basis…Sam Adams and James Otis, for example, put it that, ‘the right of freedom being the gift of God almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift.’ John Adams likewise contended that human freedom was founded in the ordinance of the Creator…John Dickinson, for instance, said of American freedoms: ‘We claim them from a higher source, from the King of Kings and Lord of all the earth.’…Hamilton’s version was ‘The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among parchments and musty records. They are written…by the Hand of Divinity…The Supreme Being…invested [mankind] with an inviolable right to personal liberty.’ Jay asserted that ‘we are…entitled by the bounty of an indulgent Creator to freedom.” (Medford Stanton Evans, The Theme is Freedom, 1994).

A secondary key point is governments are instituted to protect rights given to us by God. Therefore, the reason for their existence is because of God!

It took centuries to learn that these rights given to us by God were “self-evident” because it had to be made self-evident. That “making” was the legacy of Western Christendom.

The beautiful practicality of this concept is, "If God giveth our rights, only God can taketh away." But, "If State giveth our rights, the State can taketh away." Then tyranny!

wow · #8 23rd November 2003, 11:41 AM

EvanCalvin · #9 24th November 2003, 09:18 AM

Originally Posted by wow

I see you can quote secular documents. But you don't need to quote them to me. Really. I've read and studied them at length. In addition to being licensed to practice law, I have significant training in American history and political science. I took at least 18 hours of classes in law school from John Eidsmoe - including a class on Constitutional Law and one on First Amendment issues. And I once spent about a year researching the legal history of abortion which involved, in part, reading and studying the impact of English common law cases that predate America by several hundred years. And I have a graduate degree in Christian education.
Can you reference SCRIPTURE to show me that Christians, unlike Christ, are to have a political agenda? That Christians are to institute a theocracy? Can you show me anything in the New Testament where Christians are encouraged to be nationalists?
America is not and never was the New Jerusalem. Get over it.

Wow,

I know I have much to learn from you, and I really appreciate this correspondence. I can't tell you how tired I am of the shallow Christian thinking of the "American church" that I have experienced over the past 40 years. It's so refreshing to correspond with a thinking Christian.

I'm sorry, I was assuming that you were reading my posts on this exact subject in another room. I obviously shouldn't have assumed that...how would you know they were even there? Please see my original thread in "Politics" under the heading "America a Model of the Hebrew Republic." I have also provided numerous quotes from our founders in "Politics"--"America's forgotten truths."

I believe America was founded modeling God's design of government as described in detail in Scripture. You will see these posts are extremely long but of all people that I would love to hear from on these, it is you. So if you have time to read them and will give me your thoughts I would love to hear from you.

Thx,

Calvin

wow · #10 6th December 2003, 02:40 PM