A passion for God, politics

J. Michael Sharman
Published: August 4, 2008

On Aug. 5, 1776, just one month after the Declaration of Independence, Abigail Adams wrote to her husband, John: “I have attended publick worship constantly, except one day and a half ever since I have been in Town. I rejoice in a preacher who has some warmth, some energy, some feeling. Deliver me from your cold, phlegmatick preachers, politicians, friends, lovers and husbands.”

Can someone give Abigail an “amen, sister?” We should be passionate about our faith and about our constitutional rights, and we need those who stand in the pulpit or who hold political power to be at least as passionate about them as we are.

The Bible begins with the phrase, “In the beginning, God…” If the reader fully understands the impact of that phrase, then with the turning of each subsequent page the reader becomes more and more passionate about God’s love and the explosive power of the Bible.

The Bill of Rights was initially drafted by James Madison, who warned: “[A] watchful eye must be kept on ourselves lest, while we are building ideal monuments of renown and bliss here, we neglect to have our names enrolled in the annals of heaven.”

George Washington was, of course, the first president following the 1789 ratification of the Constitution. The Bill of Rights debates took place in the first two years of his administration. When he took the presidential oath, Washington asked for a Bible to be sworn in on and he added the words “so help me, God” to the oath. Neither the use of the Bible nor the oath to God are contained in the Constitution’s directions for a presidential inaugural, but Washington knew that fidelity to God was synonymous with faithfulness to the true intent of the Constitution.

Although Thomas Jefferson had no part in either drafting or debating the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, because he was in France during this entire period, a few of his words have been twisted and have become disproportionately important in constitutional law.

It may surprise a few appellate courts to know that Jefferson also wrote: “The doctrines of Jesus are simple, and tend all to the happiness of man.”  As to the application of God’s Word to our public lives, Jefferson said: “The practice of morality being necessary for the well being of society, He [God] has taken care to impress its precepts so indelibly on our hearts that they shall not be effaced by the subtleties of our brain. We all agree in the obligation of the moral principles of Jesus and nowhere will they be found delivered in greater purity than in His discourses.”

The freedoms we are most passionate about — our freedoms of religion, of speech, of press, of assembly and of petition — are all in the First Amendment to the Constitution, the very beginning of our Constitution’s Bill of Rights. If we understand and apply those rights correctly, everything else about our national life will tend to fall into place.

The final language of the First Amendment is simple and straightforward, unadulterated by unnecessary words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

Get a copy of the Constitution with its 27 amendments. Read it over at least once a year.

Take your Bible down off the shelf. Read some of it at least once a day. You will find yourself getting more and more passionate about your God and your nation. And like Abigail Adams, you will find yourself wanting to be delivered from any “cold, phlegmatick preachers [and] politicians” who aren’t.

J. Michael Sharman is an independent columnist who practices law in Culpeper. His column appears Tuesdays in the Star-Exponent.