The Creator and Preserver by David Barton

Let it simply be asked, “Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert?” George Washington

When the minds of the people in general are viciously disposed and unprincipled, and their conduct disorderly, a free government will be attended with greater confusions and evils more horrid than the wild, uncultivated state of nature. It can only be happy when the public principle and opinions are properly directed and their manners regulated. This is an influence beyond the reach of laws and punishments and can be claimed only by religion and education. Abraham Baldwin, Signer of the Constitution

The first point of justice consists in piety; nothing certainly being so great a debt upon us as to render to the Creator and Preserver those acknowledgments which are due to Him for our being and the hourly protection He affords us. Samuel Adams

All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible. Noah Webster

The Court had declared unconstitutional the very embodiment of a system which the Founders had embraced as the basis of civilized society. Justice Rehnquist summarized the illogical position taken by the Court:

The Establishment Clause does not require that the public sector be insulated from all things which may have a religious significance or origin. The words of Justice Jackson, concurring in McCollum v. Board of Education merit quotation at length: “I think it remains to be demonstrated whether it is possible, even if desirable, to comply with such demands as plaintiff’s completely to isolate and cast out of secular education all that some people may reasonably regard as religious instruction . The fact is that, for good or for ill, nearly everything in our culture worth transmitting, everything which gives meaning to life, is saturated with religious influences. One can hardly respect the system of education that would leave the student wholly ignorant of the currents of religious thought that move the world society for a part in which he is being prepared.”