Dear Mr. President;

As we celebrate the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of our nation on July 4, 1976, we as citizens of our beloved country and servants of Jesus Christ and His church according to the Reformed or Calvinistic faith take this means to convey to you, and through you to the nation, our sense of profound gratitude to our faithful God and Father for the rich blessings He has showered on our land in these two hundred years. We have surely been a highly favored land, enjoying a freedom and material well-being that are unparalleled in human history. We have been completely free to worship God according to the dictates of conscience and to congregate without fear of interference in the exercise of that worship our nation has shown a jealous concern for the civil liberties of all its citizens, regardless of race or color or national origin, and for this too we can only thank God most earnestly.

In this testimony we would respectfully draw your attention, Mr. President, to the significant role that the faith we profess played in the making of our great republic. Our history is eloquent with the faith that calls men to glorify God in all things, the faith that requires a life of loving obedience of God in the redeeming Christ and so furnishes the spiritual discipline for a stable and orderly civic life. We call your attention to the following facts in our history.

1. The Mayflower Compact, formulated by our Pilgrim fathers in 1620, has been called “the birth certificate of American democracy.” In it our fathers spoke thus:

In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten . . . for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith . . . do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God, and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together in a civil body politic . . .

2. Harvard College was founded in 1636, and one of the first rules the college set forth for its students was this:

Let every Student be plainly instructed, and Earnestly pressed to consider well, and maine end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life, John 17:3, and therefore to lay Christ in the bottome, as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning.

3. In the year 1642 and 1647 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts passed two laws which “represent the foundations upon which American state public-school systems have been built,” as one recognized authority has stated. These laws called upon parents to establish schools in which their children might be taught “to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the country.” 4. In the year 1701 the college now known as Yale University was founded. The following language comes from the beginning of the minutes of the first meeting of its Board of Trustees (called Collegiate Undertakers):

Whereas it was the glorious publick design of our blessed fathers in their removal from Europe into these parts of America, both to plant, and under ye divine blessing propagate in this wilderness, the blesse Reformed, Protestant Religion in ye purity of its Order and Worship, not onely to their posterity but also to ye barbarous natives . . .

5. Columbia University (founded in 1754 as King’s College) was promoted by an advertisement in a New York newspaper with these words—

The chief thing aimed at in this college is, to teach and engage the children to know God in Jesus Christ, and to love and serve him, in all Sobriety, Godliness, and Righteousness of Life, with a perfect Heart, and willing Mind.

    6. The Declaration of Independence, whose signing we celebrate in this Bicentennial year, contains language that reflects the deep religious sensibilities of the signatories, as the following quotations reveal:

– men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights”

– appeal was made to “the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions”

– they spoke of a “firm reliance on the protection of divine providence.”

7. The United States Constitution, supreme law of the land since 1788, was soon amended by the addition of the “Bill of Rights,” in force since 1791. The very first matter of concern in this crucially important part of the constitution was the “free exercise” of religion. 8. The celebrated Northwest Ordinance of 1787 established the Northwest Territory, which included the present states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. The third article of the Ordinance declared as follows:

Religion, morality and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged.

9. All of our coins and paper money carry a simple confession of our nation’s basic faith, IN GOD WE TRUST.

10. In 1954 the words UNDER GOD were added to the pledge of allegiance to our flag, which speaks of “one nation UNDER GOD, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

These are just some of the indications that can be cited to show how religious faith molded the character of our nation and its institutions. The precious freedom that has been the hallmark of our national life from the beginning has always been seen as solidly anchored in this living faith, as eloquently expressed in the song AMERICA, written by a Christian minister in 1832—

Our fathers’ God, to Thee Author of liberty, To Thee we sing: Long may our land be bright with freedom‘s holy light; Protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King!

In this Bicentennial year we would respectfully call upon you, Mr. President, as the head of our great nation, to reflect on this precious spiritual heritage that had so much to do with the molding of our national life and character, and to use your high office to call our nation to solemn and grateful reflection on this heritage.

Our reason for laying this concern before you is not purely ceremonial, being then only a gesture befitting this year of remembrance. Behind this testimony is a keen and deep concern for the spiritual and moral quality of our national life. We witness an erosion of the foundations of our national life and character that is as obvious as it is distressing.

Our concern can be highlighted by reference to something written in 1948 by one of America’s leading thinkers. Writing in the Atlantic Monthly of September of that year, W. T. Stace of Princeton pointed out that modern man has rejected the religious basis of morals, although historically religion has been the basis of all moral systems that have significantly claimed the allegiance of men. As man is searching for a new basis of morals, the thinker‘s grim appraisal sounds the alarm: “Meanwhile disaster is overtaking us.”

Mr. President, we believe the disaster is upon us. Only the blind can fail to see it. Public life and public  education have become secularized, with God and religion banished from a meaningful place in the affairs of men. How completely shocked the founding fathers would be to see prayer banished from the schools. To them this would be unthinkable. For many people God is dead. Some openly say so. Others avoid saying so openly, but God has no truly meaningful place in their lives. For others, religion is a purely private affair. And then there are many for whom religion has to do almost exclusively with personal salvation, with important social and civic responsibilities neglected.

God is “the overflowing fountain of all good,” a great confession of the Christian church declares. When God is not honored, when God and His worship do not engage the hearts and minds of people, when God’s holy laws are not obeyed in love through His redeeming grace in Christ, then the good disappears more and more from life. This is apparent on every hand. Our nation‘s crime rate climbs frighteningly higher each year, out of all proportion to the population growth rate. There is terror in the streets and people barricade themselves in their homes for fear of intruders who may strike by day or by night. Thousands of unborn babes are dumped into garbage cans or flushed down the sewer, with judicial sanction and professional implementation. And the nation‘s conscience seems hardly touched by this horrendous carnage. That very special and beautiful creation of God, the sex function, with its high potential for the enrichment and refinement of life, has been removed from its sacred and moral context, and so has become something depersonalized and cheap, an object of public display, something to be indulged in wantonly and irresponsibly.

When men do not trust in God‘s providential cure and do not honor His laws, their lives are governed by a combination of anxiety and grasping greed that has all sorts of harmful effects on personal and social life and on the economy. When men do not bow before the sovereign rule of God, they will recognize no final authority beyond the imperatives of their own will and desire. And so our society has come to esteem individual rights with a religious fervor, hut it neglects to honor those necessary accompanying moral obligations that make rights valid and truly viable. Furthermore, our society and our economy are harassed by the always mounting demands of people who seem unable to practice any self-restraint. For so many the service they are able to render is secondary to the return they would exact. Even in the practice of our most noble professions greed has reared its ugly head to a disturbing degree.

The decadence of our national life and character is apparent also from the frequency with which we are told of the betrayal of trust by public officials. Watergate with all its unseemly revelations is now part of our legacy, hut Watergate was not a single dark episode that can neatly be laid in its niche in time. It was rather a glaring symptom of a society that has lost its moral base, a society that has lost its God. There is something painfully pertinent in the comment of one citizen who silenced a number of self-righteous critics of the Watergate offenders with this thrust, “What makes us American people think we deserve honest politicians?” Indeed, this disappearance of moral tone from every area of our nation‘s life –business, politics, the professions, entertainment, social mores—can stir only sorrow and regret at this time of national remembrance.

Mr. President, in the good providence of God you are the head of this great nation at this significant point in its history. May God grant you grace to discharge your office effectively to the blessing of the land. We are fully persuaded that divine blessing can come to the land in the years ahead only if there is the spiritual and moral character that is essential to greatness and strength. That necessary moral character comes from the practice of sound religion. It is wholly imperative that there be a revival of sound religion if the land we love is to prosper and its precious freedom maintained.

We respectfully urge you, Mr. President, to use the instruments at your disposal within the constitutional framework of your office to promote interest in and regard for the principles of sound religion. It is in God that “we live, and move and have our being.” That leaching is valid today as it was when St. Paul first spoke those words to the sophisticated people of Athens centuries ago (Acts 17:28). May you and all of us help America rediscover its God in this year of remembrance and thus rediscover the true secret of its greatness and strength and freedom.

In the name of God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

A.D. 1976 and U.S.A. 200

To the above BICENTENNIAL TESTIMONY we, members of the board of the NATIONAL PRESBYTERIAN AND REFORMED FELLOWSHIP, hereby append our signatures—

Rev. Edward Heerema, Bradenton, Fla. Rev. Charles E. McGowan, Decatur, Ga. Rev. Leon F. Wardell, Norfolk. Va. Rev. James M. Boice, Th.D., Philadelphia, Pa. Rev. Arthur Broadwick, Pittsburgh, Pa. Rev. Frank N. Kik, Wichita, Kan. Rev. Charles W. Krahe, Wyckoff, N.J. Rev. Russell E. Horton, Lansing, III. Rev. Robert G. Rayburn, Th.D., D.D., St. Louis, Mo. Rev. John H. White, Beaver Falls, Pa. Rev. Donald J. McNair, St. Louis, Mo. Rec. G. Aiken Taylor, Ph.D., Asheville, N.C. Rev. Roger S. Greenway, Th.D., Grand Rapids, Mi. Robert S. Trieble, Atty., Ballston Spa, N.Y. Rev. Bruce C. Stewart, D.O., Pittsburgh, Pa.