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Vail Daily letter: Sunday settles it

Jim Taylor
Vail, CO, Colorado

In response to Henry Bornsteins’ commentary “Founders weren’t Christian”: The state constitution of Delaware, 1776, in Article 22, stated: “Every person, who shall be chosen a member of either house or appointed to any office or place of trust shall make and subscribe the following declaration “I, do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ, His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, Blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”

The state constitutions of Pennsylvania and Maryland were similar.

The state constitution of South Carolina, 1778, Article 38, stated: “That all persons and religious societies, who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshiped shall be freely tolerated. That all denominations of Christians in this state, demeaning themselves peaceably and faithfully, shall enjoy equal religious and civil privilege.”



The state constitutions of New Jersey, North Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont all agreed with South Carolina’s constitution.

Of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787, 28 were Episcopalians, 8 Presbyterians, 7 Congregationalists, 2 Lutherans, 2 Dutch Reformed, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, 3 deists and 1 whose religious preference is unknown to historians. This means that about 5.5 percent of the delegates were deists. This percentage holds true for the rest of our Founding Fathers — 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence and 90 members of the first Congress in 1789.

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In article 1, Section 7, Paragraph 2, of the U.S. Constitution, it states that the president shall have 10 days to consider a bill, “Sundays excepted.”

In 1853, a Senate Judiciary Committee report commented on the “Sundays excepted” provision by saying this: “The executive departments, the public establishments, are all closed on Sundays; on that day neither House of Congress sits.” Here is a recognition by law, and by universal usage, not only of a sabbath, but of the Christian sabbath, in exclusion of the Jewish or Mohammedan sabbath.

The recognition of the Christian sabbath (by the Constitution) is complete and perfect.

Jim Taylor

Eagle


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