If we take the good pastor at his word, this means that the institution of slavery, already well-established within the colonies at the time of the Constitution’s ratification, would have been an integral part of this “Christian social order” he praises so highly. I want to know just what precisely is so “Christian” about the buying and selling of human beings and of the forced separation of masses of people from their families and homelands?
Later in the same article, he is quoted as saying, “Jesus is the only hope for your soul. Jesus is the only hope for this nation’s soul. Our Founding Fathers knew this, and so they established a constitutional government based on absolute principles rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ.”
Again, taking the good pastor at his word, if Christianity was so big on personal dignity, individual freedom and the principle of government by consent of the governed, then not only America, but all of Europe should have been awash in democratic and representative republics of every variant for centuries, but this is not so. Pastor Kern’s own words hint at the truth: “Absolute principles rooted and grounded in Jesus Christ” have been seized upon and used as a cover for every manner of absolutist rule by divine right, from the emperor Constantine to fascist Italy.
The U.S. Constitution represents a break from that tradition of absolutist rule, albeit an incomplete one at the time of its inception, and it remains an incomplete document today.
I believe that the men who founded this country wanted its Constitution to be an open document, open to re-interpretation and amendment from time to time, because it is in the nature of the universe that things change, nothing is static, and they didn’t want this representative republic to be static, either.
—Glen Garcia
Edmond
This article appears in Mar 9-15, 2011.