Posted by
ValiantForTruth on Wednesday, September 01, 2010 11:13:56 AM
“It is the American conception of itself as a people that keeps it loyal to the Constitution. The Constitution, absent our cultural fidelity to it, might as well be the rules for a role-playing game.” –Jonah Goldberg
Re: http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2010/09/01/glenn_becks_ecumenical_moment/
Least we make the Constitution into an idol and become idolaters, should we not consider the origins and meaning of constitutionalism?
Secularism must divorce the Constitution from its religious heritage. With its reliance on man and his radical naturalism, it has declared that ‘God is dead’, freeing man from the bounds of divine law.
So what is the effect of this on a Constitution that appeals to the authority of the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God? The secularist undermines the authority of the Constitution and begins to exchange its reliance on divine law to that of autonomous wisdom.
They enjoy the fruits of constitutionalism, but just as their science has no answer for the existence of scientific law, they have no answer for morals, ethics, law and knowledge other than the limits of their own mind of which they have no answer for its existence. Therefore, their allegiance to the Constitution is subject to revisionism, having separated it from its original authority that gives it a reference to the absolute.
The demeaning of America that we see today started with the demeaning of the Pilgrim and Puritan Fathers that brought the Protestant Reformation to New England; a Reformation that was continued in the Great Awakening. Maintaining America’s religious heritage is essential for the maintaining of constitutionalism. Due to the curse of original sin, men must be governed by law that limits the extents of man’s depravity to rule over other men and deprive them of their liberty as image bearers. For the rule of law to continue there must be consensus in the equity of law. This comes from an open Bible and a knowledge of the self-revealed God.
This is the heritage that separates America from other nations. This is the heritage that gave us constitutionalism. Secularism had no part in it, nor will it help maintain it. Secularism is what makes an idol of the Constitution. An idol always becomes a perversion of the original because it is a symbol rather than the substance. God willing, let us return to the substance.