American Minute

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"One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind," stated Neil Armstrong, JULY 20, 1969, as he became the first man to walk on the moon. He, along with Colonel Aldrin, had landed their lunar module, the "Eagle," and spent a total of 21 hours and 37 minutes on the moon's surface, before redocking with the command ship "Columbia." Addressing a joint session of Congress, September 16, 1969, Commander Neil Armstrong stated: "To those of you who have advocated looking high we owe our sincere gratitude, for you have granted us the opportunity to see some of the grandest views of the Creator." Years later, April 21, 1972, Astronauts Charles Duke and John Young explored the rugged highlands of the moon's Descartes region during the Apollo 16 mission. On June 22, 1996, in Lila Cockrell Theatre, San Antonio, Texas, during a Prayer Rally at the State Republican Convention, Astronaut Charles Duke stated: "I used to say I could live ten thousand years and never have an experience as thrilling as walking on the moon. But the excitement and satisfaction of that walk doesn't begin to compare with my walk with Jesus, a walk that lasts forever."

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The Monkey Trial ended JULY 21, 1925, as John Scopes, a Tennessee High school biology teacher was fined for teaching a theory of origins called evolution. William Jennings Bryan, a three time Democrat Presidential candidate, was the prosecuting attorney arguing against evolution. Bryan objected to a tooth being presented as proof of humans evolving from apes. Later the tooth was found to be that of an extinct pig. William Jennings Bryan was a Colonel in the Spanish-American War, a U.S. Representative and Secretary of State under President Wilson. He edited the Omaha World Herald and founded The Commoner newspaper. Dying just 5 days after the trial, William Jennings Bryan's statue is in the U.S. Capitol's Statuary Hall. He gave over 600 public speeches during his Presidential campaigns, one of his favorites being "The Prince of Peace." William Jennings Bryan stated: "I am interested in the science of government but I am more interested in religion...I enjoy making a political speech...but I would rather speak on religion than on politics. I commenced speaking on the stump when I was only twenty, but I commenced speaking in the church six years earlier-and I shall be in the church even after I am out of politics."

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"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on," wrote poet Carl Sandburg, who died JULY 22, 1967. A son of Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad, Sandburg left school after 8th grade, borrowed his father's railroad pass and traveled as a hobo. He volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran's bill. Carl Sandburg wrote children's fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag. In 1926, he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln-The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize. In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln's birthday. In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote: "All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write. At sixty-five I began my first novel...It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine...I might paraphrase: 'If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.'" Carl Sandburg wrote: "I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair...I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God."

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Roger Sherman was the only person to sign all four of America's founding documents: the Articles of Association-1774, Declaration of Independence-1776, Articles of Confederation-1777, and U.S. Constitution-1787. At age 19, Roger Sherman's father died and he supported his family as a shoe cobbler. He helped two younger brothers attend college and become clergymen. Roger Sherman was a surveyor and merchant, but when a neighbor needed legal advice, he studied to help, only to be inspired to be a lawyer. Roger Sherman was elected a state senator, a judge and a delegate to the Continental Congress. He helped draft the Declaration of Independence and gave instructions to an embassy to Canada: "That all civil rights and the right to hold office were to be extended to persons of any Christian denomination." Roger Sherman made 138 speeches at the Constitutional Convention, and in the first session of Congress, thought a First Amendment unnecessary, as religion was under each States' jurisdiction. Elected a U.S. Senator at age 70, Roger Sherman died JULY 23, 1793. Inscribed on his tomb is: "He ever adorned the profession of Christianity which he made in youth and...died in the prospect of a blessed immortality."

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Tennessee's Constitutional Convention composed its State Constitution in 1796. The U.S. Congress accepted it and President George Washington signed the bill admitting Tennessee as the 16th State on June 1, 1796. The Tennessee Constitution, Article XI, Section III, stated: "All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences." Though Article XI, Section IV, stated: "No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this State," Article VIII, Section II, stated: "No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State." After the Civil War, Tennessee was the first State readmitted to the Union on JULY 24, 1866. President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to former Confederates on September 7, 1867: "Every person who shall seek to avail himself of this proclamation shall take the following oath...'I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support...the Constitution of the United States...So help me God.'"

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Ulysses S. Grant was commissioned JULY 25, 1866, as General of the Army, the first to hold that rank. His Civil War victories resulted in his election as the 18th U.S. President. In his First Annual Message, December 6, 1869, President Grant wrote: "The Society of Friends...succeeded in living in peace with the Indians in the early settlement of Pennsylvania...These considerations induced me to give the management of a few reservations of Indians to them." In his 2nd Annual Message, December 5, 1870, President Grant wrote: "Religious denominations as had established missionaries among the Indians...are expected to watch over them and aid them...to Christianize and civilize the Indians, and to train him in the arts of peace." To Congress, January 1, 1871, President Grant wrote: "Indians of the country should be encouraged...to adopt our form of government, and it is highly desirable that they become self-sustaining, self-relying, Christianized, and civilized." In his 3rd Annual Message, December 4, 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant wrote: "I recommend liberal appropriations to carry out the Indian peace policy, not only because it is humane and Christianlike...but because it is right."

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On JULY 26, 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first U.S. Postmaster General, a position he held prior to the Revolution under the British Crown. He established a volunteer fire department, a circulating public library, an insurance company, a city police force, a night watch and a militia. He set up the lighting of city streets and coined the electrical terms "positive" and "negative." On June 28, 1787, as Governor of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin hosted the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he moved: "That henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning." Franklin wrote April 17, 1787: "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters." Benjamin Franklin wrote his own epitaph: "THE BODY of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN - Printer. Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding, Lies here, food for worms; Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more, In a new, And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By The AUTHOR."

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"FREEDOM IS NOT FREE" is the inscription on the Korean War Memorial in Washington, D.C. The Korean War ended JULY 27, 1953, with the armistice signed at Panmunjom. Begun three years earlier as a UN "police" action, the outnumber U.S. troops fought courageously against the Communist Chinese and North Korean troops, who were supplied with arms and MIG fighters from the Soviet Union. With temperatures sometimes forty degrees below zero, and Washington politicians limiting the use of air power against the Communists, there were nearly 140,000 American casualties in the defense of the Pusan Perimeter and Taego; in the landing at Inchon and the freeing of Seoul; in the capture of Pyongyang; in the Yalu River where nearly a million Communist Chinese soldiers invaded; in the Battles of Changjin Reservoir, Old Baldy, White Horse Mountain, Heartbreak Ridge, Pork Chop Hill, T-Bone Hill, and Siberia Hill. First Lady Mamie Geneva Doud Eisenhower stated in a conversation at the Doud home regarding their son John, who was serving in Korea: "He has a mission to fulfill and God will see to it that nothing will happen to him till he fulfills it."

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The 14th Amendment was adopted JULY 28, 1868, because southern States, though forced to end slavery by the 13th Amendment, did not grant citizenship to freed slaves. Black Codes were passed requiring freed slaves to be "apprenticed" to "employers" and punished any who left. Illinois Republican Congressman John Farnsworth said March 31, 1871: "The reason for the adoption [of the 14th Amendment]...was because of...discriminating...legislation of those States...by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class." Republican John Bingham of Ohio, who introduced the 14th Amendment, said: "I repel the suggestion...that the Amendment will...take away from any State any right that belongs to it." After the Amendment was ratified, though, Federal judges did just as Thomas Jefferson had warned Mr. Hammond in 1821: "The germ of dissolution of our...government is in...the federal judiciary...working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow...until all shall be usurped from the States." Thus the 14th Amendment, written to give rights to freed slaves, became used by Federal Courts to take other rights, eventually religion, away from States' jurisdiction.

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Alexis de Tocqueville was born JULY 29, 1805. A French social scientist who traveled the United States in 1831, he wrote in Democracy in America: "Religion in America...must be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of it...This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or a party, but it belongs to the whole nation." De Tocqueville stated: "The sects that exist in the United States are innumerable. They all differ in respect to the worship which is due to the Creator; but they all agree in respect to the duties which are due from man to man. Each sect adores the Deity in its own peculiar manner, but all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God...Moreover, all the sects of the United States are comprised within the great unity of Christianity, and Christian morality is everywhere the same." De Tocqueville added: "There is no country in the whole world where the Christian religion retains a greater influence than in America...and nothing better demonstrates how useful it is to man, since the country where it now has the widest sway is both the most enlightened and the freest."

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King Charles II gave him land in America in payment of a debt owed to his father. As he had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for being a Quaker, he invited persecuted Christians of Europe to join his colony of religious toleration. Soon Quakers, Mennonites, Pietists, Amish, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Reformed, Moravians, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Dunkers (German Baptist), Brethren, Schwenckfelders, French Huguenots, Catholics and even Jews joined his "holy experiment." His name was William Penn, and he died JULY 30, 1718. His first city, named Philadelphia, meaning "Brotherly Love," allowed the only English-speaking Catholic Church in the world in 1733. Philadelphia's first synagogue was built in 1782. The Charter granted March 4, 1681, stated: "Whereas our trusty and well beloved subject, William Penn, Esquire, son and heir of Sir William Penn, deceased, out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English Empire...and also to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the Love of Civil Societe and Christian religion, hath humbly besought leave of us to transport an ample colony unto a certain country hereinafter describe in the parts of America not yet cultivated and planted."

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On his third voyage, Columbus sailed south along the west coast of Africa and was caught in the doldrums, a notorious condition of no winds and intense heat. After drifting aimlessly for eight days, the winds returned, but now they were running low on water. Columbus promised to name the first new land he discovered after the Trinity. On JULY 31, 1498, he sighted an island off the coast of Venezuela having three peaks, which he named Trinidad. There they obtained fresh water and in the process were the first Europeans to see South America. Booker T. Washington referred to a similar story at the Atlanta Exposition, September 18, 1895: "A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal, 'Water, water; we die of thirst!' The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back, 'Cast down your bucket where you are.'...The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket, and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River." Booker T. Washington concluded: "I would say 'Cast down your bucket where you are'...making friends of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded."

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"There she blows!" cried the lookout, sighting Moby Dick. Captain Ahab and his chief mate Starbuck sailed the seas to capture this great white whale. But as fate would have it, when the harpoon struck, the rope flew out entangling Ahab, pulling him under. This classic was written by Herman Melville, born AUGUST 1, 1819. Grandson of a Boston Tea Party Indian, Melville's father died when he was 12. Raised by a mother who inspired his imagination with biblical stories, Herman Melville shipped out as a cabin boy on a whaling ship and later sailed the South Seas with the Navy. He fell among Typee cannibals in the Marquesas Islands. Rescued, he wrote in an account: "These disclosures will...lead to...ultimate benefit to the cause of Christianity in the Sandwich Islands." In his classic novel, Moby Dick, Herman Melville wrote: "With this sin of disobedience... Jonah flouts at God...He thinks that a ship made by men will carry him into countries where God does not reign." In 1983, The U.S. District Court stated in Crockett v. Sorenson: "Better known works which rely on allusions from the Bible include Milton's Paradise Lost...Shakespeare...and Melville's Moby Dick...Secular education...demands that the student have a good knowledge of the Bible."

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Navy torpedo boat PT 109 was rammed AUGUST 2, 1943, by a Japanese destroyer and sunk. The commander sustained permanent back injuries yet helped survivors swim miles to shore, which unfortunately was behind enemy lines in the Solomon Islands. After a daring rescue, he was awarded the Medal of heroism. Though one of his brothers was killed in the war, he went on to become a Congressman, Senator, and the 35th U.S. President. His name was John F. Kennedy, who stated in his Inaugural Address: "Let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God's work must truly be our own." In the White House Rose Garden, November 21, 1961, John F. Kennedy said: "When we all - regardless of our particular religious convictions - draw our guidance and inspiration, and really, in a sense, moral direction, from the same general area, the Bible, the Old and the New Testaments, we have every reason to believe that our various religious denominations should live together in the closest harmony." Kennedy concluded: "The basic presumption of the moral law, the existence of God, man's relationship to Him - there is generally consensus on those questions."

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"There are but 155 years left...at which time...the world will come to an end," wrote Christopher Columbus in his book Libro de Las Profecias, composed in 1502 between his 3rd and 4th voyages. "The sign which convinces me that our Lord is hastening the end of the world is the preaching of the Gospel recently in so many lands." Though his predictions were off, Columbus revealed his motivation for setting sail on his first voyage AUGUST 3, 1492, with the Nina, Pinta and the Santa Maria: "I spent seven years in your royal Court arguing the case with so many persons of such authority and learned in all the arts, and in the end they concluded that all was idle nonsense...yet the outcome will be the fulfillment of what our Redeemer Jesus Christ said...that...all that was written by him and by the prophets to be fulfilled." Columbus continued: "The Holy Scriptures testify...that this world will come to an end...St. Augustine says that the end of this world will occur in the seventh millennium following the Creation." Columbus ended: "I have already said that for the execution of the enterprise of the Indies, neither reason, nor mathematics, nor world maps were profitable to me; rather the prophecy of Isaiah was fulfilled."