Gary Demar And "america's Heritage" - Unsuccessful Effort To Link Christianity And The Constitution

Gary DeMar's "America's Heritage" fails to establish any connection between Christianity and the U.S

. Constitution. This is a 2002 production of Coral Ridge Ministries.

A Christian Constitution?

The fundamental question is posed in the Introduction, "America's Christian Heritage: Fact or Fiction?" The foregone conclusion is "fact," and the book presents the usual assortment of quotes from various Presidents and Supreme Court Justices as evidence. This line of indirect testimony continues throughout the book. Plaques and inscriptions in Washington D.C., the Christian founding of various colleges, and official national days of prayer are presented as evidence.

The author then rightly observes that almost all of the colonial constitutions are Biblical in nature. From this he concludes that the Constitution of 1787 is also a Christian document. The rightness of this conclusion is very much open to question.

Gary DeMar presents the two shopworn internal arguments in defense of his thesis. One is the phrase "year of our Lord" in the subscription clause at the end of the Constitution. Another is the exception of Sunday from the 10 days in which the President must sign or veto a bill. In the lexicon of Informal Logic these are known as trivial arguments.

The Biblical Standard

Before we can determine if Gary DeMar has proven that the U S Constitution is a Christian document we must first define what we mean by "Christian nation." Some would deny such a thing even exists, so we must first demonstrate its existence from the Bible. Does the Bible provide such a definition? Without it we will find ourselves chasing every rabbit trail that crosses our path and getting nowhere.

In all His dealings with Israel God insists that the nation maintain its covenant relation with Him by means of an oath to obey His law. Continually Israel returns to an act of formal, oath-bound commitment to God, often written, to renew the broken covenant.

The nations were to imitate Israel in her oath-bound commitment to the law of God in their courts of law (Dt. 4). This is what defines a nation as "Christian." Without this oath no nation can claim to be a Christian nation, even though it may be trying to enact some desirable laws.

Among the many Biblical examples, Nehemiah 9:38 is very instructive: "...We are making an agreement in writing; and on the sealed document are the names of our leaders..." There is nothing like this commitment to rule by the law of God in the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, we are driven to the conclusion that Gary DeMar has failed to make his case.

Do Christian colleges constitute a national oath to God? No. Does the phrase "year of our Lord" constitute a national oath to God? No. Does excluding Sunday from the 10-day window to sign or veto a bill constitute a national oath to God? No. Does any of the evidence presented in America's Heritage constitute a national oath to God? No.

Gary DeMar dazzles us with a lot of "smoke and mirrors" which divert our attention from the one essential thing. He sets it up with a rhetorical question in Chapter 3: "If the constitutional framers could get a glimpse of America today, would they have rethought their decision only to make passing reference to the lordship of Jesus Christ?"

The answer: "We will never know. But when all the testimony is in, it is an undeniable truth that Christianity served as the foundation for the political edifice we know as America." Here Gary DeMar admits that the Constitution left out the one essential ingredient for a Christian government -- the lordship of Jesus Christ. However, In the next breath he claims that America is a Christian nation anyway. The conclusion does not follow from the premise.

by: Oliver Woods.

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