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The Case for God in the Public Square will explain the unique role faith and religion have had in the process that established a nation that would be aware of its dependence on God. It will reveal the Founder’s efforts to rise about religious factionalism with the intention of building a nation whose foundation were not “a religion” but rather, principles, "self-evident truths," rooted in God. It concludes with the proposal that the Founder’s “self evident truths” are not exclusive to one religion but are the immutable truths of God. As such, they can serve us today in a much more pluralistic America, in our quest to realize the ideal of “One Family Under God.”

Our title “The Case for God in the Public Square pertains to the present discussion in our society about the Founder’s intent with regard to the role of religion and its influence on the American. Did they intend to formulate a strictly secular system of government or did they recognize a vital, dynamic role for religion beyond the personal scope of individual faith?

A recent, well-publicized court case, illustrates the opposing positions about the Founder’s intent. In June of 2002 the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a 1954 act of Congress that inserted the phrase “under God” after the words “one nation.” The case had been filed against the United States, the U.S. Congress, California, two school districts and its officials by Michael Newdow, an atheist whose daughter attended public school in California. When Newdow was asked about the reason he filed suit, he said, “I believe in the Constitution. The Constitution says that government isn’t supposed to be infusing religion into our society, and so I asked to have that upheld.”

It fact, it was the rise of Marxism in the world that inspired Congress in an attempt to reassert our own spiritual heritage in repudiation of the God-denying trends. They did so, by legislative act, inserting the phrase “One Nation Under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance. The legislative history of the 1954 act stated that the hope was to “acknowledge the dependence of our people and our Government upon … the Creator … [and] deny the atheistic and materialistic concept of communism.”

When President Eisenhower signed the bill into law on “Flag Day” June 14, 1954, he said, “millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town … the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty.”

Today, there are two diametrically opposite views of what the founders intended. On the one side are people, such as David Greenberg, Professor of History and Media Studies-Rutgers University, who assert the opposite, “Not one major political figure summoned the courage to rebut the spurious claims that America’s founders wished to make God a part of public life.”

On the other side are those that believe a public confession of the Creator and a free-reign of religion in the public square was the founder’s vision of American society. “The only foundation for a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.” Benjamin Rush, signer of the Declaration of Independence and member of the Continental Congress.

Those who conclude that religion is a private matter, alone, without a public role, point to Thomas Jefferson’s letter to concerned Baptists in Danbury, Connecticut in which he wrote his famous phrase asserting “a wall of separation between church and state.”

However, how are we to assess the fact that Jefferson’s own policy as President was to use federal funds to build churches and to support Christian missionaries working among the Indians? Indeed, many of the founders, certainly Jefferson, stressed the private nature of religion, however there is scant evidence that they were declaring religion as private only. Their words and actions spoke otherwise.

In his article for the Heritage Foundation, "The Mythical “Wall of Separation”: How a Misused Metaphor Changed Church–State Law, Policy, and Discourse,” Daniel L. Dreisbach writes that the modern concept of a “high and impregnable” wall has taken us far past the intent of Jefferson’s wall.

“Whereas Jefferson’s wall expressly separated the institutions of church and Federal state, the modern Court’s wall, more expansively, separates religion and all civil government...”

Dreisback also cites Jefferson’s own policies as President would be assessed by the modern court to be in violation of the “high and impregnable” wall.

In fact, as Benjamin Rush cited, the principles of freedom emanate from the foundation of religion. Thus, to include spiritual principles within the category of "the Church," that is to be separated from "the State" is to, effectively, separate the State from the principles of freedom. A State severed from the principles of freedom is a State on the road toward tyranny. It is indicative of a society that lacks the moral clarity to distinguish the difference between liberty and licentiousness. It is a society whose secular, selfish individualism becomes its de facto State religion.

The “high and impregnable wall” today is effectively separating America from its moral and ethical base. It is the separation of America from its soul. A soulless America will lose its freedom.

If we cut-off from our spiritual principles, values become confused. We become a society in which no one can know with certainty what constitutes right and wrong. Without standards, we are a ship without a rudder; with a compass that is askew. America's present state of moral confusion is giving the world mixed signals. Such a nation is ripe, in desperation, to precipitously latch on to a false hope. If we are to lead the world we must do so as a nation with ethical and moral clarity.

In formulating the ideas of the nation, the founders had been influenced by a spectrum of thinking. They incorporated into a general Biblical faith perspective the accumulation of many eras of scholarship from Socrates, Plato and Aristotle of ancient Greece to the new ideas of the Enlightenment sweeping Europe. From the metaphysical of Augustine and Aquinas to the empirical of John Locke’s “Social Contract; from the deductive ideas of Descartes to the inductive ones of Hume; all seemed to converge in that one place and time. America was to be liberty's laboratory.

It is also true that the founders were concerned that a single religious institution not unduly influence the State to impede the religious freedom of citizens belonging to other religious bodies. Thus, the challenge at hand was to establish a society based on spiritual principles without giving undue advantage of one religious institution over another. We see this concern expressed by James Madison:

"Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects?"

The motive of the establishment clause in the Constitution is, then, to protect religion from the restrictions that could be imposed by government at the behest of a particular majority religious body. It was not, however, a sanction to restrict general religious influence in society. In fact, John Adams expressed a very clear view on the indelible link between the Constitution and a people of a faith perspective. In Adam's view they were made for each other:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

As the founders wrestled with this, they were drawn to the idea of "civil religion" put forth by Rousseau’s Social Contract in which he said:

"There is a profession of faith which is purely civil ... not strictly as religious dogmas but as expressions of social conscience without which it is impossible to be a good citizen" - The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

He is speaking of broad principles common to all faiths that form the cement that tie us together. This idea of cultural consensus was then articulated in our founding document that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights” and that we were to be guided by truths that were, therefore, immutable, as well as "self evident."

If you add to that, religious freedom, than you have a recipe for a vibrant, prosperous, moral, ethical society. That is the founding vision, the "founding spirit" of America.

The founder’s were nearly uniform on the idea that the nation and all its vital institutions were reliant on the principles of religion and a religious people to put those principles into practice. Patrick Henry’s words stand as a typical expression of that idea:

“No free government, or blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.”

America's founding is based on the assumption there is a God. They were attempting to establish a nation that would resonant with His Principles and that those principles would form the foundation for consensus on values, i.e. the “civil religion.” America's founding ideals are not, therefore, just political secular ones. They are also spiritual. For this reason there is hope for America to revive as a nation.

America’s hot flame of freedom and liberty is, presently, a flickering faint light ... the hard rains of secularism and individualism have been pouring down, further extinguishing its glow. Yet beneath the surface underneath the matted ash burns continually the hot coals of the eternal principles upon which the nation was founded. If we find them and lay fuel upon them, a new burning light will burst forth.

In order to accomplish that, we must understand the circumstances of this present day. The America of the 21st century, compared to the one of the 18th century, is far different in geography, population, types of religious faiths, technology and science and scope of economy. The world is vastly different than the world of the 18th century, as well. Since the 18th century in America:

Population has grown more than 17 thousand percent
Number of states/territories has quadrupled
Land area has grown 700 percent
Religious representation has grown from a handful of Christian denominations to more than 313 religions and denominations in the U.S. today.

Racial minorities have grown from a small number in the 1700s to more than 60 million today.Thus, the challenges today for building a consensus on values for such a diverse population are great. If America can succeed, the implications are great for the world. America can be a model of the ideal of One Family Under God and in so doing become, once again, that "shining city on a hill."

In many cases, the principles that the founders described as “Christian” were also present in many of the world’s religions. In that these principles are the immutable principles of God, those principles would then, naturally predate religion itself and is why, on various levels of clarity, all religions are able to perceive them.

We should stress that we are not suggesting each faith alter their sacred texts or water down that which makes them distinct. Each religion asserts a different path and believes its own is the truest path to God. This is the personal side of religious faith established by dogma, doctrines and sacred traditions. Building a consensus on values is not building a consensus on religious doctrine or an effort to create a unified faith. As Rousseau defined it "There is a profession of faith which is purely civil ... not strictly as religious dogmas but as expressions of social conscience without which it is impossible to be a good citizen" It is a consensus on values, rooted in faith principles, but whose focus is on guiding the behavior that is essential for a nation to maintain freedom, promote the general welfare and to endure.

In 18th century America, those truths were “self evident." Today they need to be clarified. Then we can achieve consensus on the values that will guide our public behavior. In this way, God expands from the territory of church, mosque or temple and finds a common home among us within the public square.