John White Chadwick Quotes

The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Civil War - when I really think about them, they all seem about as likely as the parting of the Red Sea.

We, the people of the United States, devoutly acknowledging the supreme authority and just government of God in all the affairs of men and nations, and grateful to Him for our civil and religious liberty, and encouraged by the assurances of His Word, invoke His Guidance, as a Christian nation, according to His appointed way, through Jesus Christ, in order to form …

The passage of the 1st Amendment is the single most dramatic and significant turning point of a revolutionary transition to religious freedom.

The Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.

Messrs. Washington and Lincoln faced enormous difficulties, but they both gave their lives to make sure America survived.

The absence of God in the Constitution is an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate. Americans would “have every reason to tremble, lest the Governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than individuals, overturn from its foundation the fabric we have been rearing, and crush us atoms in the wreck.

It is a pretty fiction, and one that I would like to believe. The American founding is a complex story, and there were many Christians among the leaders in the seceding states. However, neither the leaders of the Revolution nor the principal authors of the Constitution were, for the most part, devout and orthodox Christians.

Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution, and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [i.e., the First Amendment], the general, if not the universal sentiment in America was, that Christianity ought to receive encouragement from the state, so far as was not incompatible with the private rights of conscience, and the freedom of religious worship.

Is it the duty of a deist to support that which he believes to be a cheat and imposition? Is it the duty of the Jew to support the religion of Jesus Christ, when he really believes that he was an imposter? Must the papist be forced to pay men for preaching down the supremacy of the pope, whom they are sure is the head of the church? Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of mathematics

If they wanted a Christian state, they could have done it. They were writing the rules. They could have put God in the rules.

I believe it is easier to change the Constitution than to change the word of the living God.

The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the general principles of Christianity. I will avow that I then believed, and now believe, that those general principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God.

We must never forget that this coutry was founded by men who came to these shores to worship God as they pleased. Catholics, Jews, and Protestants, all came here for this great purpose. They did not come here to do as they pleased - but to worship God as they pleased, and that is an important distinction.

Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first, the most basic, expression of Americanism. Thus, the founding fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help, it will continue to be.

From Samuel Adams to Patrick Henry to Benjamin Franklin to Alexander Hamilton, all the Founders intended religion to provide a moral anchor for our liberty in democracy.

The Founders believed that pluralism survived only within the concept of religious liberty espoused by American Christianity.

Are we a Christian nation now? It's doubtful. But did we start out as one? Without question.

If the Christians who were alive in the 1770s behaved and believed like the Christians of today, there wouldn't be an America as we know it.

From a constitutional standpoint, the religion of a candidate is supposed to make no difference. Even before the founding fathers dreamed up the First Amendment, they inserted a provision in the Constitution expressly prohibiting any religious test for office.

The United States of America was formed to honor the word of God.

George Washington sets the nation on its democratic path. Abraham Lincoln preserves it. Franklin Roosevelt sees the nation through depression and war.

Millions of Americans cannot tell you who lived at Mount Vernon or who wrote the Declaration of Independence - let alone the Emancipation Proclamation. But they know that to be 'a Benedict Arnold' is to be a traitor of the deepest dye - someone who coldly betrays not only a sacred cause but every moral scruple along the way.

The forefathers, including James Madison, felt very strongly that the duties that we owe to God were outside of government's prerogative, that government had no business interfering with the way we worship God.

The highest glory of the American Revolution was this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.

My mom was a history teacher, so I couldn't really avoid history when I was growing up. But we're very light on American history. We don't really have great opportunities to study both the Civil War and the Revolution.