Thoughts on Independence Day, the Liberty Bell and Judeo-Christian Colonial America

When the subject of religion comes up these days, Conservatives and most others educated in the law, Constitution and American and European history point out the Judeo-Christian heritage of the Founding Fathers. At the same time, those amongst the secular progressive (SP) crowd use phrases like “separation of church and state” and claim the Fathers to be “deists” and not actual members of any Christian denomination or sect of Judaism.

Did you know the phrase “separation of church and state” cannot be found in the Constitution OR the Bill of Rights? Such concept and/or wording appeared in some of the private writings of the Founding Fathers and an occasional colonial state statute. The only thing in the Constitution even remotely brushing the concept is found in the First Amendment which states "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." What this means that the new federal government could not compel anyone to join any state-sponsored (or otherwise) religion such as their former Kings had done re the Church of England.

This Independence Day holiday, I think it indicative of the religious orientations of the American Colonies from which the Founding Fathers emerged, in that in 1752 the famous Liberty Bell was cast and inscribed around its top are the words “PROCLAIM LIBERTY THROUGHOUT ALL THE LAND UNTO ALL THE INHABITANTS THEREOF…. BY ORDER OF THE ASSEMBLY OF THE PROVINCE OF PENSYLVANIA FOR THE STATE HOUSE IN PHILAD.** [Philad. being an abbreviation for Philadelphia.]

This inscription is rather telling that the Colonies were made up of God-fearing people of a Judeo-Christian orientation. This is because that inscription comes from… the Old Testament – aka the Hebrew Bible - Leviticus 25:10 to be exact. Obviously these religious documents, common to both Christians and Jews alike, and the principles they convey to the world – so denied, vilified and discounted by those in today’s political left – were, in reality, important enough to the people in the American Colonies that they chose to cast into it a passage from Judeo-Christian Scripture to help embody the point of individual liberty and how precious it is.  

Food for thought this Independence Day….

*Liberty Bell photograph from Tony the Misfit at http://flickr.com/photos/22714323@N06/2432720887. It was reviewed on 22:15, 16 August 2010 (UTC) by FlickreviewR, who found it to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0, which is compatible with the Commons. It is, however, not the same license as specified on upload, which was the cc-by-sa-2.0, and it is unknown whether that license ever was valid.

**Wikipedia, (2 July 2012) Liberty Bell, Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Bell