“True religion affords to government its surest support.” George Washington
“Announced in the scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord.” Abraham Lincoln
Today is President’s Day and this is what these great presidents said about the Bible and Christianity. They were not afraid to announce, support and uplift God, the Bible and Christianity. These astounding leaders who transformed American life both had a deep faith in God and an understanding of the Bible as the guiding tool of their lives. They understood that America’s greatness was directly related to her reliance and trust in God. Without him, they knew that the American experiment of democracy could and would never work.
After Washington’s inauguration in 1782 in NYC, he immediately with all of Congress went to St Paul’s Chapel to pray to ask God to bless the new president and this nation. The church is still there with Washington’s bench where he worshipped. Go see it. It will inspire you. It was so important to Congress that this prayer gathering would happen that they voted unanimously beforehand to go do this. You can read this in the congressional record. This same George Washington established the chaplaincy for the army during the Revolutionary War. Washington believed that God’s favor was so important during the war that he told his troops that they must stop fighting on Sunday so that there could be church services led by chaplains for those who wanted to participate.
Lincoln loved God’s word and could quote parts of it. He put God’s word in some of his speeches. He agonized in prayer over the Civil War and asked God to spare all Americans judgement for the grave injustice of slavery. Lincoln established Thanksgiving as a national holiday for all Americans to thank God for this nation and as a day of repentance. His wife, after his assassination, said that he was a tremendously godly man and Christian.
In today’s world, these great men would be criticized for their public statements of faith in God and for their godly religious actions as president. It would be claimed that they were in violation of “the separation of church and state” in the Constitution.
Funny, the people who wrote the Constitution, participated in choosing Washington after the Revolution to be president and they probably attended the church service at St Paul’s Chapel with him. They didn’t seem to mind.
The idea of the separation of church and state was written in the Constitution so that the government would not establish a state religion that everyone had to adhere to like in England from where most of them came. It was because of the persecution by the Church of England of the Pilgrims, Catholics and others that the original settlers came to the America. The Founding Fathers did not want to perpetrate what they had experienced by state religion.
Washington and Lincoln are the leaders that we celebrate today. Godly men who loved God and his word. May we follow in their footsteps as patriots and sons and daughters of God.