The U.S. Supreme Court has held that when a politician takes his oath to "support the Constitution," he not only swears to uphold that document, but
all the founding charters of our country, which together are called the "organic law."[1]
The "Organic Law" is the fundamental law of the State, its constitutive principles. It is the legal foundation upon which all statutes and decisions are
to be grounded. In West's edition of the U.S. Code, the section on "The Organic Laws of the United States of America" contains such
documents as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Northwest Ordinance of 1787.[2]
- Black's Law Dictionary, Rev. 4th Ed.
- ORGANIC LAW - The fundamental law, or constitution, of a state or nation, written or unwritten; that law or system of
laws or principles which defines and establishes the organization of its government.
St. Louis v. Dorr, 145 Mo. 466, 46 S.W. 976, 42 L.R.A. 686, 86
Am.St. Rep. 575
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Please take this informal survey!
Fill in the blanks:
_____[1]_______, ______[2]______, and _____[3]_______ being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, _________[4]___________
shall forever be encouraged.
Here is a sample answer:
- baseball
- apple pie
- Chevrolet
- spreading the wealth
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 is a part of America's "organic law," along with the Declaration of
Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The Northwest Ordinance was the blueprint for state constitutions. When a territory sought
admission to the United States, Congress ordered that they produce a constitution which was consistent with the Declaration of Independence and the Northwest
Ordinance. (see below for examples)
Article III of the Northwest Ordinance requires:
Religion, morality, and knowledge
being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and
the means of education shall forever be encouraged. The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians; their lands and property shall
never be taken from them without their consent . . . .[3]
Notice, please, that "religion" and "morality" are not to be kept "separate" from government,
but "good government and the happiness of mankind" are necessarily dependent upon "religion" and "morality" (and the
Framers of this ordinance were not Muslim, Hindu, or adherents of the religion of Secular Humanism; when
they said "religion" they meant "Christianity").
The Organic Law of America not only recognizes our dependence on and duty towards God, but specifies where we should learn about our Creator (religion), the rights
with which He has endowed us, and our duties toward Him and our fellow man (morality). The Christian Religion and Christian morality were to be taught in public
schools. Read what the Founders said.
Even though Justice Douglas concurred in Engel v. Vitale, which removed Christianity from public
schools in the early 1960's, he was honest enough to admit that
Religion was once deemed to be a function of the public school system. The Northwest Ordinance, which antedated the First Amendment, provided in Article
III that "Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever
be encouraged."
You've heard the saying, "The end doesn't justify the means."
In the Northwest Ordinance, the "end" is religion and morality,
and the "means" are public schools. The Founding Fathers believed that the end required the means, that public schools served the
purpose of advancing religion.
One of the most important parts of America's "Organic Law" is the principle that we are a nation "under God."
By consistently voting to strengthen federal control of education, our current Congressman has violated his oath of office, by choking God out of the public schools
in our neighborhood.
The Northwest Ordinance is one of the nation's "organic laws," along with the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. Justice
Douglas says this Ordinance "antedated the First Amendment," by which he hopes to make us think that it came long before some great revolution of thought
embodied in the First Amendment. The Ordinance was approved by the House on July 21, 1789, and by the Senate on Aug 4, 1789. This was the same Congress that was
simultaneously framing the religion clauses of the First Amendment. And for decades after the Bill of Rights was passed, this Ordinance was extended by Congress to
new states admitted to the Union. For example,
When the Ohio territory applied for statehood in 1802, Congress framed an "enabling act" which required that Ohio form its state
government in a manner "not repugnant to the [Northwest] Ordinance." As a result, Ohio's constitution declared:
[R]eligion, morality, and knowledge, being essentially necessary to the good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of instruction shall
forever be encouraged by legislative provision.
When Mississippi applied for statehood in 1817, Congress required that its government be formed in a manner "not repugnant to the principles of the
Ordinance." Hence, Mississippi's constitution declared:
Religion, morality, and knowledge, being necessary to good government, the preservation of liberty and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of
education shall forever be encouraged in this State.
The Constitutions of Missouri, Arkansas, Kansas (1858), Nebraska (1875), and many other territorial papers and state constitutions make clear that government had a
duty to promote Christianity. The Northwest Ordinance was signed by President Washington on Aug 7, 1789.
"History must judge whether it was the Father of his Country in 1789, or a majority of the Court today, which has strayed from the meaning of the [First
Amendment]." (Justice Rehnquist in Wallace v. Jaffree.)
- U.S. Supreme Court, Holy Trinity Church v. United States
- There is no dissonance in these declarations. There is a universal language pervading them all, having one meaning. They affirm and reaffirm that this is a
religious nation. These are not individual sayings, declarations of private persons. They are organic utterances. They speak the voice of the entire
people.
- These and many other matters which might be noticed, add a volume of unofficial declarations to the mass of organic utterances that this
is a Christian nation.
-
- In PUBLIC CITIZEN v. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, 491 U.S. 440 (1989), JUSTICE KENNEDY,
with whom THE CHIEF JUSTICE and JUSTICE O'CONNOR join, concurring in the judgment,
wrote:
- The Church of the Holy Trinity entered into a contract with an alien residing in England to come to the United States to serve as the director and pastor of the
church. Notwithstanding the fact that this agreement fell within the plain language of the statute, which was conceded to be the case, see ibid., the Court
overrode the plain language, drawing instead on the background and purposes of the statute to conclude that Congress did not intend its broad prohibition to cover
the importation of Christian ministers. The central support for the Court's ultimate conclusion that Congress did not intend the law to cover Christian
ministers is its lengthy review of the "mass of organic utterances" establishing that "this is a Christian nation," and which were
taken to prove that it could not "be believed that a Congress of the United States intended to make it a misdemeanor for a church of this country to contract
for the services of a Christian minister residing in another nation." Id., at 471.
-
- Justice David Brewer, The United States: A Christian Nation (1905)
- Justice Brewer pointed out that his claim (that America is a "Christian nation") reached into the "organic law" of the nation, and every
State in the union, thus putting it on the firmest of legal authority. The claim that America is a Christian nation is in "the domain of official action and
recognition," not mere "individual acceptance." (p 27 in 1996 reprint).
(1) Cole v. Richardson, 405 U.S. 676 at 682, 92 S.Ct. 1332 at 1336, 31 L.Ed.2d 593 (1972), citing Ohlson v. Phillips,
304 F.Supp. 1152 (Colo. 1969).
(2) 1 U.S.C.A 17-23 (West, 1988). The Ordinance was originally approved while the nation was still under the Articles of Confederation, but was
repassed by Congress while it was formulating the First Amendment so that it would remain in effect under the new Form of Government. Annals of the Congress of the
United States, Wash.
D.C.: Gales & Seaton, vol. 1, pp. 56 (Senate), 660 (House). [Return to text]
(3) Northwest Ordinance, Sec. 14, Art. III, 1 U.S.C.A 21. (West, 1988). Schools were required by the federal government to teach religion in
those states admitted into the Union under the Northwest Ordinance. The constitutions of states admitted as late as 1875 (Nebraska) contained almost identical
language, requiring the teaching of Christianity in the public schools. Commended by the U.S. Supreme Court in Church of the Holy Trinity v. U.S., 143 U.S.
457, 469. See discussion in Barton, Myth, p. 37-39.