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Thursday, October 06, 2005

The Bible is the only way!

Consider the words of John Adams—signer of the Declaration of Independence, two-time Vice-President under George Washington, and second President of the United States—written in 1756: “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited.... What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be” (1854, 2:6-7, emp. added).

And in a letter to Thomas Jefferson on Christmas day, 1813, he wrote: “I have examined all [religions]...and the result is that the Bible is the best Book in the world” (1854, 10:85, emp. added). Patriot Patrick Henry declared: “[The Bible] is a book worth more than all the other books that were ever printed” (as quoted in Wirt, 1818, p. 402, emp. added). The first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, John Jay, affirmed in a letter in 1784: “The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next” (1980, 2:709, emp. added). Noah Webster noted: “The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good and the best corrector of all that is evil in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of man” (1833, p. v, emp. added). U.S. Supreme Court justice Joseph Story, a Father of American Jurisprudence, insisted: “The Bible itself [is] the common inheritance, not merely of Christendom, but of the world” (1854, p. 259, emp. added). What do such statements imply about these Founders’ opinion of the Quran?

Observe further that every President of the United States, beginning with George Washington, has been sworn into office by placing his hand on—not the Quran—but the Bible (see “Joint Congressional...,” 2005 and “Bibles and Scriptures...,” 2005).

So what should be done? Should Muslims be allowed to use the Quran in court? Won’t they be more likely to tell the truth? Perhaps. But here is the bottom line: The fact that this issue has even arisen is evidence of the dilution of America’s Christian heritage, and the infiltration of alien ideologies that are destructive to the American way of life. The Founders believed these non-Christian religions to be bogus and detrimental to the Republic which they established. To permit the use of the Quran in court would be to afford it a measure of credibility, creating the impression that Islam is simply one religion among many that merits acknowledgment, legal and/or societal respect, and equal status with Christianity. The Founders never would have countenanced such a consideration. A “Father of American Jurisprudence,” New York State Supreme Court Chief Justice James Kent, in The People v. Ruggles in 1811, summarized the national attitude toward Islam that existed from the inception of the country:

Nor are we bound, by any expressions in the constitution, as some have strangely supposed, either not to punish at all, or to punish indiscriminately the like attacks upon the religion of Mahomet or of the Grand Lama; and for this plain reason, that the case assumes that we are a Christian people, and the morality of the country is deeply engrafted upon Christianity, and not upon the doctrines or worship of those imposters (8 Johns 290, emp. added). Dave Miller