Tim Wildmon
AFA president
November-December 2010 – On September 17, President Barack Obama spoke to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute’s 33rd Annual Award Gala. During his speech – reading from a teleprompter – he quoted from the Declaration of Independence. Here is what he said:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed with certain unalienable rights, life and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Obama omitted the words “by their Creator” from his speech. Why? Given the fact that he was using a teleprompter, I can only conclude that this was intentional. Either he, or his speechwriter, did not want to give credit to Almighty God. (Watch the video at youtube.com)
This kind of action would be in step with modern secular liberalism which is hostile to the Christian faith. It hates the historical fact that America’s founders revered and acknowledged God in so many ways that are indisputable, such as these words in the Declaration of Independence: “endowed by their Creator.”
I know, there are those who insist that our Founding Fathers were deists and not Christian. Deism is the belief that a universal supreme power exists, but that He does not intervene in the affairs of men. But endowing rights is intervening in the affairs of men. If God was so impersonal, why did the founders even mention Him at all? The fact is, the majority of founders belonged to one Christian denomination or another. And if deism was so popular, why did the Christian faith, and not deism, spread like wildfire across the new country and become the young nation’s dominant religion?
The best action Christians can take in response to the effort to expunge Christianity from the public debate is to both work and pray for changes in Washington, D.C. We need more men and women who, like our founders, understand that our unalienable rights are from God, rather than from man.
As we look around the world, one would have to be blind not to see the connection between Christianity and liberty, prosperity and charity. Is this just a coincidence? On November 1, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said this:
“Those forces (Nazism) hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy.”
Inscribed inside the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a similar thought from Thomas Jefferson:
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish a law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state and on a general plan.”
And is it a coincidence that the most Christian nation in the world has always been the most giving? Americans donate billions of dollars annually through both secular and religious organizations to help people suffering from poverty or who have been hit by natural disasters. Our military has liberated millions over our country’s history not because we wanted to conquer and control but because we wanted to free people from tyranny and then get home as quickly as possible. Thousands of American Christian missionaries are working around the globe every day to help people who are less fortunate. Why? This tradition of caring for our fellow man was not developed in a vacuum. It is rooted in the teachings of Jesus Christ that are found in the Holy Bible.
There are some historical revisionists who would like Americans to believe that Christianity was not a major influence on our founding. But the evidence is overwhelming. In fact, one of the more fascinating reads in this regard is a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1892 titled Holy Trinity vs. U.S. In the opinion the court cites example after example of Christianity’s indelible imprint on the soul of America. In the end, here is the conclusion they reached:
“These (examples) and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this is a Christian nation." 
