John Fea and the secularists are at it again

The secular media uses John Fea as one of their spokesholes to spread distortions of the founding. Here is the link to his blog, The Way of Improvement Leads Home. His book, the cover shown on the front page, which I have previously read, is hideous. The first page has an historical error, distorting the meaning of the passage (The treaty of Tripoli). Unfortunately for Fea, the man who signed the treaty called us a Christian nation; proving Fea's context is wrong. Almost every page of his book has an error or distorts the founding in some way. The book is a shoddy piece of work. This other jacked up blog carries the same distortions.

This link links to another post where Fea attempts to undermine an evangelical pastor, even though the pastor is correct about the framers allowing pastors to run for office, since there was no modern separation of church and state. Fea is attacking the pastor with a useless strawman argument.

Here is Fea's first comment, "In fact, only a few states had religious establishments after the American Revolution (I am thinking here of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and, in a less official capacity, South Carolina)." 

According to secularists, to mention Christianity in a state constitution would violate separation doctrine, so Fea doesn't understand it anyway. Christianity is listed in the state constitutions and with official authority:

The States all formed Christianity as their religion and the context of the first amendment is the states:

Constitution of the State of North Carolina (1776), stated: There shall be no establishment of any one religious church or denomination in this State in preference to any other. Article XXXII That no person who shall deny the being of God, or the truth of the Protestant religion, or the divine authority of the Old or New Testaments, or who shall hold religious principles incompatible with the freedom and safety of the State, shall be capable of holding any office or place of trust or profit in the civil department within this State. (until 1876)

Constitution of the State of Maryland (August 14, 1776), stated: Article XXXV That no other test or qualification ought to be required, on admission to any office of trust or profit, than such oath of support and fidelity to this State and such oath of office, as shall be directed by this Convention, or the Legislature of this State, and a declaration of a belief in the Christian religion.” That, as it is the duty of every man to worship God is such a manner as he thinks most acceptable to him; all persons professing the Christian religion, are equally entitled to protection in their religious liberty; wherefore no person ought by any law to be molested… on account of his religious practice; unless, under the color [pretense] of religion, any man shall disturb the good order, peace or safety of the State, or shall infringe the laws of morality… yet the Legislature may, in their discretion, lay a general and equal tax, for the support of the Christian religion. (until 1851) [pp.420-421]

Constitution of the State of New Hampshire (1784,1792), required senators and representatives to be of the: Protestant religion. (in force until 1877)The Constitution stipulated: Article I, Section VI. And every denomination of Christians demeaning themselves quietly, and as good citizens of the state, shall be equally under the protection of the laws. And no subordination of any one sect of denomination to another, shall ever be established by law. [p.469]

The Constitution of the State of Delaware (until 1792) stated: Article XXII Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust… shall… make and subscribe the following declaration, to wit:“I, _______, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed forevermore; I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.” [p.203]

The Constitution of the State of Connecticut (until 1818), contained the wording: The People of this State… by the Providence of God… hath the sole and exclusive right of governing themselves as a free, sovereign, and independent State… and forasmuch as the free fruition of such liberties and privileges as humanity, civility, and Christianity call for, as is due to every man in his place and proportion… hath ever been, and will be the tranquility and stability of Churches and Commonwealth; and the denial thereof, the disturbances, if not the ruin of both. [p.179]

NEW YORK 1777 (until 1821) That all such parts of the said common law, and all such of the said statutes and acts aforesaid, or parts thereof, as may be construed to establish or maintain any particular denomination of Christians or their ministers, or concern the allegiance heretofore yielded to, and the supremacy, sovereignty, government, or prerogatives claimed or exercised by, the King of Great Britain and his predecessors, over the colony of New York and its inhabitants, or are repugnant to this constitution, be, and they hereby are, abrogated and rejected.

NEW JERSEY 1776 (until 1844) XIX. That there shall be no establishment of any one religious sect in this Province, in preference to another; and that no Protestant inhabitant of this Colony shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil right, merely on account of his religious principles; but that all persons, professing a belief in the faith of any Protestant sect, who shall demean themselves peaceably under the government, as hereby established, shall be capable of being elected into any office of profit or trust, or being a member of either branch of the Legislature, and shall fully and freely enjoy every privilege and immunity, enjoyed by others their fellow subjects.

How is this not official? The rights listed are from the laws of nature and natures God. The Christian philosophers spread rights of conscience, property et al from only one place; the bible. Freedom of conscience is from Jehovah:

“Whilst we assert for ourselves a freedom to embrace, to profess, and to observe, the religion which we believe to be of Divine origin, we cannot deny an equal freedom to those whose minds have not yet yielded to the evidence which has convinced us.  If this freedom be abused, it is an offence against God, not against man." 
--James Madison, memorial and remonstrance

Fea writes more drivel, "The Bible would have influenced their construction, even though it's never mentioned,' he says. 'But as a historian, I need a smoking gun. Maybe they left it out because they deliberately wanted to leave it out.'""

Christianity was so intertwined with colonial life, they didn't need to quote chapter and verse. Our entire legal system is based on the bible:

"Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law, which is divine."
--James Wilson Wilson, Bird, The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, L. L. D., vol. 1, Lorenzo Press, Philadelphia, 1804, pg 105.

Secularists are ignorant of our Christian foundation. The framers quoted Christian philosophers such as: Grotius, Puffendorf, Rutherford, Calvin (Federalist 10), Blackstone and Montesquieu. Same as not needing white history month, but every other race needs their own month.

Here is more:

"how could the "official religion of America" (whatever that means) be found in the individual colonies or states?"  I am confused."

Of course you are confused. Only a fool doesn't see the context of the bill of rights must be the same as the states, given almost all the same men drafted and ratified both. The official religion of the nation is the official religion of the states, besides the fact the framers spoke to the entire nation saying we were a Christian nation, including the father of the constitution:

"If the public homage of a people can ever be worthy the favorable regard of the Holy and Omniscient Being to whom it is addressed, it must be that in which those who join in it are guided only by their free choice, by the impulse of their hearts and the dictates of their consciences; and such a spectacle must be interesting to all Christian nations as proving that religion, that gift of Heaven for the good of man, freed from all coercive edicts, from that unhallowed connection with the powers of this world which corrupts religion into an instrument or an usurper of the policy of the state...Upon these principles and with these views the good people of the United States are invited, in conformity with the resolution aforesaid, to dedicate the day above named to the religious solemnities therein recommended. [bold face mine]
--Given at Washington, this 23d day of July, A. D. 1813.[seal.] JAMES MADISON 

Moreover, the 2nd president and one of two people who signed the bill of rights said we were a Christian nation. 

I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect. [bold face mine]

--John Adams, The man who signed the Treaty of Tripoli, Inaugural Address, In the City of Philadelphia, Saturday, March 4, 1797. 

Was John Adams confused? This also proves nature's God was Jehovah as Adams helped draft the DOI.

Only people like Fea would fail to see all the evidence and fail to understand nature's God is not Jehovah when the framers prayed to Jesus Christ immediately after ratifying it:

"[W]ith their sincere acknowledgments and offerings, they may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance; that it may please him graciously to afford his blessings on the governments of these states respectively, and prosper the public council of the whole; to inspire our commanders both by land and sea, and all under them, with that wisdom and fortitude which may render them fit instruments, under the providence of Almighty God.
--Continental Congress, November 1, 1777. National Thanksgiving Day Proclamation; as printed in the Journals of Congress. 

In fact, the principles under the articles are the same as now, so the context of religion never changed:

We have seen that in the new government, as in the old, the general powers are limited; and that the States, in all unenumerated cases, are left in the enjoyment of their sovereign and independent jurisdiction. The truth is, that the great principles of the Constitution proposed by the convention may be considered less as absolutely new, than as the expansion of principles which are found in the articles of Confederation.

--Federalist #40

What of the first chief justice saying religion refers to Christianity?

No person, I believe, questions the importance of religion to the happiness of man even during his existence in this world. The American population is entirely Christian; and with us Christianity and religion are identical. 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. [bold face mine]

--Chief Justice John Marshall to Jasper Adams, May 9th, 1833.

Was the Chief Justice confused?

Even Virginia established Christianity as their religion:

Well aware that Almighty God hath created the mind free; that all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burdens, or by civil incapacitations, tend only to beget habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of our religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do; that the impious presumption of legislators and rulers, civil as well as ecclesiastical, who, being themselves but fallible and uninspired, have assumed dominion over the faith of others, setting up their own opinions and modes of thinking as the only true and infallible, and as such endeavoring to impose them on others, hath established and maintained false religions over the greatest part of the world, and through all time; that to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical [Christian assessment bill]. [bold face mine]

--VA Act for Religious Freedom

The States didn't want clergy running for office in order to build up their faith again, like Patrick Henry believed, which was the reason for the assessment bill. Fea's rationale on this issue is wrong as usual.

More from Fea, "It's hard to make the same argument if you're studying Virginia or Pennsylvania or the Carolinas or Georgia," Fea says. "We've taken that New England model and extrapolated from it over the last 200 or 300 years into some kind of view of the nation as a whole."

If Fea knew his craft, he never would have said the above. Here is Georgia:

CHRISTIANITY will be extended by the execution of this design; since, the good discipline established by the Society, will reform the manners of those miserable objects, who shall be by them subsisted; and the example of a whole Colony, who shall behave in a just, moral, and religious manner, will contribute greatly towards the conversion of the Indians, and taking off the prejudices received from the profligate lives of such who have scarce any thing of Christianity but the name.

---James Oglethorpe, Founding Vision for Georgia (1733).

d'Tocqueville also disagrees with Fea:

In was in the English colonies… better known as the states of New England, that the two or three main principles now forming the basic social theory of the United States were combined. New England principles spread first to the neighboring states and then…to those more distant, finally penetrating everywhere… Their influence now extends beyond its limits over the whole American world…”

--Alex d’Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, ch. 2.

Virginia and the Carolinas were the same, the former more orthodox.

Fea's confusion leads him to this comment, "I would argue that Anglicanism and other forms of Christianity never came to define the culture of 17th-century Virginia in the way that Puritanism defined the culture of 17th-century Massachusetts Bay or Plymouth."

What does this straw man statement have to do with our Christian nation? He's so deceptive, he tries to bring in culture as if its not Christian or moral enough and downplay the facts. 

Here's some more:

"Was the Continental Congress influenced by covenant theology?  Maybe.  But good historians are divided over whether this theology influenced the delegates who did not hail from New England.  I would argue that it did not."

The idea of abdication in the doi is that the king violated his covenant of protection to the people, therefore forfeited his authority to rule. This is called covenant theology found in the Declaration of Independence. Were the new jersey delegates, Witherspoon and Stockton from Puritan New England? Or Livingston from New York? Or Rush, Morton, Wilson and Clymer from Pennsylvania? Or Rodney, Read and McKean from Delaware? Or Francis Lightfoot Lee, Braxton, R.H.Lee, Harrison and Nelson from Virginia? 

Here's the Father of the Revolution directly refuting Fea:

The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. Here no man proclaims his birth or wealth as a title to honorable distinction, or to sanctify ignorance and vice with the name of hereditary authority. He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public. This is the only line of distinction drawn by nature.

--Samuel Adams, An ORATION Delivered at the State-House, In PHILADELPHIA, To A Very Numerous AUDIENCE; On THURSDAY the 1st of AUGUST 1776.

The Calvinist Adams was not speaking of a secular compact.
God help all those who spread junk about the founding.