Dear Editor:
The daughter of immigrants who lived in different states learned American English sponsored by friend or family, got employment, married five years after arrival. One lifetime raised seven children and sponsored three others form their former country through the grace of God.
“We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord building the House they labour in vain that build it’… I therefore beg leave to move that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business…”
Ben Franklin
Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, 1787
“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded not by religionists but by Christians, not on religion but on the gospel of Jesus Christ. We shall not fight alone. God presides over the destinies of nations. The battle is not to the strong alone. Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, ALMIGHTY God! Give me liberty or give me death!”
Patrick Henry
Philadelphia Constitutional Convention, 1787
“The highest story of the American Revolution is this: it connected in one indissoluble bond the principles of civil government with the principles of Christianity.”
President John Adams
“Every thinking man, when he thinks, realizes that the teachings of the Bible are so interwoven and entwined with our whole civic and social life that it would be literally—I do not mean figuratively, but literally—impossible for us to figure what that loss would be if these teachings were removed. We would lose all the standards by which we now judge both public and private morals; all the standards towards which we, with more or less resolution, strive to raise ourselves.”
President Theodore Roosevelt
“The fundamental basis of this nations law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teaching we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don’t think we emphasize that enough these days.”
President Harry S. Truman
Gladys Jacobson Shelley
Cambridge
