America has embraced a single Constitution for over 200 years. This is very unusual for any country in the world. Unfortunately, however, our political leaders today are really violating basic principles that are an inherent part of that Constitution. The result has been a massive recession and related issues that threaten to destroy the nation if it is not corrected.
Take some time to personally read the Constitution. It is an incredible document. Most of the phrases in the American Constitution and our Declaration of Independence (such as “unalienable rights”) did not come from the men that wrote the Constitution, but from the pastors of around 1760. The pastors included John Wise, Jonathan Mayhew (“no taxation without representation.”), and George Whitefield. The pastors wrote and published their sermons at that time, and these sermons are still available on the Internet or are published and available on Amazon. The sermons, in turn, were from the Bible. The concepts of John Locke (an earlier philosopher) were also very influential in the development of the Constitution.
Once the American Constitution was finished, these early leaders (some 250) helped the states put together their constitutions. These state constitutions were relatively short. I have gleanings from those constitutions (they are on the Internet). Almost all required the elected officials of the states to be “orthodox Christians” or they used some phrase like that. It wasn’t so much forcing politicians to be Christians, but rather for the politicians to be able to use the Bible as a moral and ethical reference standard. A pastor could not be an elected official, as then he would be paid by both the state and the church, and that would be wrong. Schools had to teach the Bible, and in one case where a Frenchman came over and started a school based on his own thing, the legal case went all the way to the Supreme Court and the Court ruled the school had to teach the Bible.
Of course, we are 180 degrees from that today and those original documents are suppressed in our public schools and no longer a part of American history courses in the schools. For example, those founders required an economic system based on “just weights”, as the Bible required of the Jews. We now have a virtual money system, with the paper dollar no longer representing any just weight. The bonds floated by the government recently make every dollar you have worth less. That is inflation, and is not morally just. The University of Houston is researching the quotes in the Constitution and how many came from what pastors.
Now shift your thoughts for a moment. A major paradigm shift is breaking across our planet in our lifetimes. From my perspective, this is only the third since the birth of Christ. The first was the shattering of the Jewish wineskins at the birth of the Church (The Body of Christ) as the Gospel moved beyond the Jewish view of a political kingdom. The second was the Protestant Reformation. The shift there was enabled not so much by the Gutenberg Press, but rather by the fact that the Bible was translated by Luther into the German language and they could read it for themselves. The Germans could now read that Salvation was by faith instead depending upon the priests to interpret the path to Salvation in terms of their interests using a Latin Bible the people could not read. This affected the political systems, art, music, architecture, and other aspects of the culture at that time. The Reformation began years before Luther with Wycliffe.
Today the paradigm shifts again. In America, those brilliant concepts shaped by our founders from the pastors (and thus from the Bible) have been twisted much like the priests did at the time of Luther. The economic system now uses virtual money manipulated by Wall Street – an immoral concept banned in the Constitution. There is now a discussion of using the Sharia (Muslim) law in our courts. Judges base decisions on previous decisions in courts, not on the Bible. Gays and lesbians are honored. There is very little political accountability or justice. Those original documents of the founders are no longer used in our schools to teach American history.
The Constitution gave the Federal government no control over the public schools. Some of the states (Texas is leading the way) are rising up and demanding control over their textbooks and teaching. The original documents showing what was really the intention of those founders are beginning to be read in our schools and our churches can teach these truths (mine does) through all twelve grades.
Just as the Protestant Reformation started with Luther’s German translation that anyone could read. (The Gutenberg Press was only a tool). In the same way, the availability of those early American documents on the Internet could well start another Awakening here. It’s call the Tea Party movement now, but it will be interesting to see what happens next. Some of that early history stuff is already beginning to creep into the school textbooks. If it’s not in a teacher’s textbook, the teacher can point the student to the Internet sites, such as the wikis for the early pastors. It’s the edge of another major paradigm shift. Also popular are people such as David Barton, who has researched much of this and authored books and DVDs on his results (http://www.wallbuilders.org).
Here’s a good dialog question for comments here: How can we restore the Constitutional mandate?
Tip: It’s good to read what contemporary writers (such a Dave Barton) say about the beliefs of those founders; but to get real answers you must dig and read the original documents by these people. For example, don’t just read the wiki about John Locke on the Internet. Read the wiki on Locke’s Two Treatises of Government. Then go to Project Gutenberg on the Internet and download the book or order it from Amazon ($12).