Starr-y Eyed

Saturday evening, I had the opportunity to meet Judge Kenneth Starr (Independent Counsel of the Clinton Impeachment fame) and hear him speak at a lecture. Judge Starr offered his thoughts on the role of God in historical American documents and with our Founding Fathers, as well as the importance of the Pledge of Allegiance.

It is obvious that God is found throughout American’s founding documents and His name was spoken from the lips of our founding fathers. The Declaration of Independence states that man was created by a Creator – Someone interested in His creation. The Constitution, Article 7 closes with “in the year of our Lord.” The Bill of Rights begins with what the founding fathers felt was the most important – the freedom of religion – even before speech, press, etc. At Gettysburg, Lincoln declared “one nation under God.” And later, in 1954 President Eisenhower echoed Lincoln’s words by placing that very phrase into the Pledge of Allegiance.

Interestingly, a Los Angeles atheist wants that phrase removed because it allegedly violates his young daughter’s rights and asserts that there should be a separation of church and state and that “forcing children to say the phrase “under God” violates that separation. The girl’s mother, on the other hand, is a christian and her feelings are quite opposite of his. She wants her daughter to have the freedom to say those words and coime into an understanding of the history and tradition of the meaning behind them.

The argument over “the separation of church and state” is a joke. People use that argument any time that God is mentioned in the public forum. They have twisted it’s meaning to being unrecognizable. The original reason behind that statement was that the government could not establish a church – as was done in England. This is why our forefathers and mothers came to America in the first place – for the freedom to have the right to believe whatever they wanted without government oppression.

We need to celebrate our traditions and our past. We can’t pretend that God is not found in historical documents, written all over the walls of our public buildings, and set in stone monuments. God was very obviously present in the founding of America. That is an inescapable fact. So just as I must accept a person’s right not to believe in God, they must also respect my right to my heritage and my belief in God.