Joseph Story (Supreme Court Justice)
“Probably at the time of the adoption of the constitution and of the amendment to it, now under consideration [First Amendment establishment of religion clause], 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. An attempt to level all religions, and to make it a matter of state policy to hold all in utter indifference, would have created universal disapprobation, if not universal indignation.”
Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States 1865
There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying at its foundations. . . . I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society.
Dr. Benjamin Rush (Signer of the Declaration of Independence)
We profess to be republicans, and yet we neglect the only means of establishing and perpetuating our republican forms of government, that is, the universal education of our youth in the principles of Christianity by the means of the Bible. For this Divine Book, above all others, favors that equality among mankind, that respect for just laws, and those sober and frugal virtues, which constitute the soul of republicanism.
Pennsylvania Supreme Court
Updegraph v.Commonwealth,1824.
No free government now exists in the world, unless where Christianity is acknowledged, and is the religion of the country.
President Thomas Jefferson
No nation has ever existed or been governed without religion. Nor can be. The Christian religion is the best religion that has been given to man and I, as Chief Magistrate of this nation, am bound to give it the sanction of my example.
The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of mankind.
John Marshall (Founding Father and U. S. Supreme Court Chief Justice)
[W]ith us, Christianity and religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people our institutions did not presuppose Christianity and did not often refer to it and exhibit relations with it.
United States Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary (March 27, 1854)
In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity: that, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions. That was the religion of the founders of the republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants. There is a great and very prevalent error on this subject in the opinion that those who organized this Government did not legislate on religion.
Patrick Henry
It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. For this very reason peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.