American Minute

[Soldier4Christ]

He lost his first presidential race to John F. Kennedy by the smallest margin to that date. A Lieutenant Commander in the Navy during WWII, he was a Congressman, Senator, and Vice-President under Eisenhower. His name was Richard Milhous Nixon, born JANUARY 9, 1913. He was the 37th U.S. President before becoming the only one to resign. He ended the draft, established the EPA, was the first President to visit Red China, sent the first astronauts to the moon, whom he addressed via radio telephone, and began the Space Shuttle program. He appointed Supreme Court Justices Warren Burger, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell and William Rehnquist. In 1972 he was re-elected in one of the biggest landslides in history. A proponent of Civil Rights, President Nixon stated in his Inaugural Address, 1969: "No man can be fully free while his neighbor is not. To go forward at all is to go forward together. This means black and white together, as one nation, not two. The laws have caught up with our conscience. What remains is to give life to what is in the law: to ensure at last that as all are born equal in dignity before God, all are born equal in dignity before man."

[Soldier4Christ]

His daughter was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote the abolitionist novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin." His son was Henry Ward Beecher, a famous New York preacher known for denouncing slavery, government corruption, and for supporting women's suffrage. His name was Lyman Beecher and he died JANUARY 10, 1863. A renowned New England clergyman, Lyman Beecher was quoted in McGuffey's Eclectic Sixth Reader, 1907: "While most nations trace their origin to barbarians, the foundations of our nation were laid by civilized men, by Christians." In The Spirit of the Pilgrims, 1831, Lyman Beecher wrote: "The Government of God is the only government which will hold society against depravity within and temptation without." In his Plea for the West, 1835, Lyman Beecher wrote: "If this nation is, in the providence of God, destined to lead the way in the moral and political emancipation of the world, it is time she understood her high calling, and were harnessed for the work. For mighty causes, like floods from distant mountains, are rushing with accumulating power to their consummation of good or evil, and soon our character and destiny will be stereotyped forever."

[Soldier4Christ]

Grandson of Princeton president Jonathan Edwards, he could read at age 4 and entered Yale at 13. He was a chaplain in the Continental Army until his father died, when, as the eldest of 13, he worked the family farm to pay off debts. He was in Massachusetts' first State Legislature. This was Timothy Dwight, who was Yale's 4th president. In 22 years he created departments of chemistry, geology, law, medicine, and founded Andover Theological Seminary. He pioneered women's education, and was critical of slavery and encroachment on Indian lands. Originally a Puritan college, Yale students became enticed by France's deistic "cult of reason," which birthed the bloody French Revolution. Dwight answered their questions on faith and by his death, JANUARY 11, 1817, Yale had grown from 110 to 313 students, a third professing Christians and 30 entering ministry. Timothy Dwight wrote in 1798: "Religion and liberty are the meat and drink of the body politic. Withdraw one of them and it dies...Without religion we may possibly retain the freedom of savages, but not the freedom of New England...If our religion were gone, our state of society would perish with it and nothing would be left worth defending."

[Soldier4Christ]

"The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing." This famous quote was from British statesman Edmund Burke, who was born JANUARY 12, 1729. Considered the most influential orator in the House of Commons, Burke stands out in history, for, as a member of the British Parliament, he defended the rights of the American colonies and strongly opposed the slave trade. In "A Letter to a Member of the National Assembly," 1791, Edmund Burke wrote: "What is liberty without wisdom and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without restraint. Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good in preference to the flattery of knaves." Edmund Burke continued: "Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters."

[Soldier4Christ]

Educated at Oxford, James Oglethorpe joined the Austrian army at age 17 and helped free Belgrade from Muslim Turks. Returning to England, he unintentionally killed a man in a brawl and went to prison. Upon release, he followed his father's footsteps and served in Parliament. He opposed slavery and, as a result of a friend diying debtors' prison, decided to found a colony for debtors and religious refugees to start anew. He secured Georgia's Charter, named for King George II, and on JANUARY 13, 1733, his ship "Ann" arrived with 115 settlers. Minister Herbert Henry offered prayer at the ship's arrival. A year later, Salzburgers Protestant refugees from Austria arrived and settled the town of Ebenezer. More immigrants came, including Moravian missionaries, John Wesley, and his brother Charles, who was Oglethorpe's secretary. Georgia's Charter, 1732, stated: "There shall be a liberty of conscience allowed in the worship of God...and that all such persons, except papists, shall have a free excerise of their religion." Georgia's first State Constitution, 1777, required: "Representatives...shall be of the Protestant religion." Georgia's Constitution, 1877, stated: "Relying upon the protection and guidance of Almighty God...All men have the natural and inalienable right to worship God, each according to the dictates of his own conscience."

[Soldier4Christ]

Albert Schweitzer was born JANUARY 14, 1875, in a village in Alsace, Germany. A Lutheran pastor's son and acclaimed for playing the organ, he earned doctorates in philosophy and theology, was pastor of St. Nicholai's Church, principal of St. Thomas College, and professor at University of Strasbourg. Then, at age 30, he read a Paris Missionary Society article on the desperate need for physicians in Africa. To everyone's dismay, he enrolled in medical school and became a medical missionary, founding a hospital in the jungle village of Lambarene, Gabon, west central Africa. A friend of Albert Einstein, Albert Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize and used the prize money to build a leper colony. He visited the United States in 1949 and his daughter married an American doctor volunteering at the hospital. Overcoming innumerable difficulties, Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote: "One day, in my despair, I threw myself into a chair in the consulting room and groaned out: 'What a blockhead I was to come out here to doctor savages like these!' Whereupon his native assistant quietly remarked: 'Yes, Doctor, here on earth you are a great blockhead, but not in heaven.'"

[Soldier4Christ]

Martin Luther King, Jr. was born JANUARY 15, 1929. A minister like his father and grandfather, he pastored Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery and Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. He formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. On April 16, 1963, King wrote: "As the Apostle Paul carried the gospel of Jesus Christ...so am I compelled to carry the gospel...I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers...I stand in the middle of two opposing forces...One is a force of complacency...The other force is one of bitterness and hatred, and it comes perilously close to advocating violence. It is expressed in the various black nationalist groups...the largest being Elijah Muhammad's Muslim movement. Nourished by frustration over racial discrimination, this movement is made up of people who have lost faith in America...I have tried to stand between these two forces...for there is the more excellent way of love." Martin Luther King concluded: "One day the South will know that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were standing up for what is best in the American dream and for the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage."

[Soldier4Christ]

Jefferson's Article of Religious Freedom, which he commemorated on his tombstone, was passed JANUARY 16, 1786, in the Virginia Assembly. In it, Jefferson wrote: "Almighty God hath created the mind free, and...all attempts to influence it by temporal punishments...tend only to begat habits of hypocrisy and meanness, and are a departure from the plan of the Holy Author of religion, who being Lord both of body and mind, yet chose not to propagate it by coercions on either, as was in his Almighty power to do, but to extend it by its influence on reason alone." In his Second Inaugural Address, 1805, Jefferson wrote: "In matters of religion I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the General Government." In 1808, Jefferson wrote to Samuel Miller: "I consider the government of the United States as prohibited by the Constitution from intermeddling with religious institutions, their doctrines, discipline, or exercises...Every religious society has a right to determine for itself the times for these exercises, and the objects proper for them, according to their own particular tenets."

[Soldier4Christ]

Mel Gibson's movie "The Patriot" depicted the Battle of Cowpens, JANUARY 17, 1781, where American General Daniel Morgan had a line of militia fire into British General Cornwallis' and Colonel Tarleton's dragoons, regulars, Highlanders and loyalists. When the Americans retreated, the British pursued, only to be surprised by American Continentals waiting over the hill. In the confusion, the Americans killed 110 British and captured 830. Cornwallis regrouped and chased the Americans, arriving at the Catawba River just two hours after the Americans had crossed, but a storm made the river impassable. He nearly overtook them as they were getting out of the Yadkin River, but rain flooded the river. This happened again at the Dan River. British Commander Henry Clinton wrote: "Here the royal army was again stopped by a sudden rise of the waters, which had only just fallen (almost miraculously) to let the enemy over." In March of 1781, General Washington wrote to William Gordon: "We have...abundant reasons to thank Providence for its many favorable interpositions in our behalf. It has at times been my only dependence, for all other resources seemed to have failed us."

[Soldier4Christ]

One of the five greatest Senators in U.S. history, New Hampshire placed his statue in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. His career spanned almost four decades, serving as Secretary of State for Presidents William Harrison, John Tyler and Millard Fillmore. His name was Daniel Webster, born JANUARY 18, 1782. From a New Hampshire farm, he attended Dartmouth College and became the highest paid attorney of his day. He fought the slave trade, negotiated the Webster-Ashburton Treaty, setting the country's Northeast boundary, and when South Carolina threatened nullification, he stated: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!" Addressing the New York Historical Society, 1852, Daniel Webster stated: "If we and our posterity...live always in the fear of God and shall respect His Commandments...we may have the highest hopes of the future fortunes of our country....But if we...neglect religious instruction and authority; violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us and bury all our glory in profound obscurity."

[Soldier4Christ]

William Orville Douglas died JANUARY 19, 1980. He was a Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court for 36 years, after having taught law at Yale and Columbia University. In the 1952 case of Zorach v. Clauson, Justice Douglas wrote: "The First Amendment, however, does not say that in every and all respects there shall be a separation of Church and State...Otherwise the state and religion would be aliens to each other- hostile, suspicious, and even unfriendly...We are a religious people whose institutions presuppose a Supreme Being...When the state encourages religious instruction...it follows the best of our traditions. For it then respects the religious nature of our people and accommodates the public service to their spiritual needs. To hold that it may not would be to find in the Constitution a requirement that the government show a callous indifference to religious groups. That would be preferring those who believe in no religion over those who do believe." Justice William Douglas concluded: "We find no constitutional requirement which makes it necessary for government to be hostile to religion...We cannot read into the Bill of Rights such a philosophy of hostility to religion."

[Soldier4Christ]

The 20th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1933, changed the date of Presidential Inaugurations from March 4th to JANUARY 20th. Franklin Roosevelt stated in his Inaugural Address, 1945: "Almighty God has blessed our land." Harry S Truman, 1949: "We believe that all men are created equal because they are created in the image of God." Dwight Eisenhower, 1953: "This is the work that awaits us all, to be done with bravery, with charity, and with prayer to Almighty God." John F. Kennedy, 1961: "The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God." Lyndon B. Johnson, 1965: "The judgment of God is harshest on those who are most favored." Richard Nixon, 1969: "As all are born equal in dignity before God, all are born equal in dignity before man." Gerald Ford, 1974: "To do what is right as God gives me to see the right." Jimmy Carter, 1977: "'What does the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God.'" Ronald Reagan, 1981: "With God's help, we can and will resolve the problems which now confront us. And after all, why shouldn't we believe that? We are Americans."

[Soldier4Christ]

He produced epic films in Hollywood for almost five decades and started Paramount Pictures. His name was Cecil B. DeMille and he died JANUARY 21, 1959. His best-known films include: Samson and Delilah, The Ten Commandments and The Greatest Show on Earth, for which he won an Academy Award. At the opening of The Ten Commandments, 1956, Cecil B. DeMille stated: "Man has made 32 million laws since the Commandments were handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai...but he has never improved on God's law...They are the charter and guide of human liberty, for there can be no liberty without the law." President Harry S Truman stated in his address to the Attorney General's Conference, February 1950: "The fundamental basis of this nation's laws was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days." Truman concluded: "If we don't have a proper fundamental moral background, we will finally end up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except for the State."

[Soldier4Christ]

JANUARY 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decision in the case of Roe v. Wade allowed abortions in the first six months of pregnancy. 23 years later, Norma McCorvey, who was the "Jane Roe" in the Roe v. Wade suit, was interviewed by USA Today. She stated that once, while employed at a clinic when no one was in: "I went into the procedure room and laid down on the table...trying to imagine what it would be like having an abortion...I broke down and cried." On ABC's World News Tonight, Norma McCorvey said: "I think abortion's wrong. I think what I did with Roe v. Wade was wrong." On November 3, 2005, President Jimmy Carter stated to reporters at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Washington, DC, regarding his latest book, "Our Enduring Values-America's Moral Crisis": "I never have felt that any abortion should be committed-I think each abortion is the result of a series of errors...I've never been convinced, if you let me inject my Christianity into it, that Jesus Christ would approve abortion...I have always thought it was not in the mainstream of the American public to be extremely liberal on many issues." Jimmy Carter concluded: "I think our party's leaders-some of them-are overemphasizing the abortion issue."

[Soldier4Christ]

JANUARY 23, 1789, John Carroll founded Georgetown University. He was brother of Daniel Carroll, who signed the U.S. Constitution and gave the land where the Capitol is built. He was cousin to Charles Carroll, the wealthiest man in America and the Declaration's longest living signer. John's nephew Robert Brent, was Washington, DC's first mayor, reappointed by Jefferson and Madison. John Carroll, America's first Catholic bishop, founded the nation's first Catholic seminary and parochial school system. He persuaded Elizabeth Seton to start a girls school in Baltimore. In 1776, the Congress asked him to go with Ben Franklin to try to enlist Canada's support of the Revolution. His influence led several States to give Catholics equality. Bishop John Carroll wrote: "Freedom and independence, acquired by...the mingled blood of Protestant and Catholic fellow-citizens, should be equally enjoyed by all." President Washington wrote to John Carroll, March 1790: "Your fellow-citizens will not forget the patriotic part which you took in the accomplishment of their Revolution...May the members of your society in America, animated alone by the pure spirit of Christianity...enjoy every temporal and spiritual felicity."