Last week, I detailed seven occasions in the past few months at which President Barack Obama omitted the words "by their Creator" from direct quotes of the Declaration of Independence: "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
Though you can read the actual quotes in detail in Part 1, let me briefly remind readers where and when they occurred:
--On Oct. 21 at a rally for Sen. Patty Murray in Seattle.
--On Oct. 18 at a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee dinner in Rockville, Md.
--On Oct. 17 at a reception for Gov. Ted Strickland in Chagrin Fall, Ohio.
--On Sept. 22 at a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee/DSCC dinner in New York.
--On Sept. 15 at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute's 33rd Annual Awards Gala in Washington.
--On Sept. 11 at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Va.
--On Sept. 10 at the president's news conference at the White House.
Those presidential omissions might seem justifiable to some, but it alarms me when omissions are exclusively divine and so easily exit and are excused by the United States' supreme leader.
Even at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where both the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were debated and drafted, divine omissions seem to be in vogue.
Recently, my pastor and the chaplain of my organizations, Todd DuBord, was on a tour of Independence Hall with David Barton, Jim Garlow and dozens of others. The National Park Service guide leading their group blurted out five unbelievable lies and distortions about our Founders' religious beliefs and history, with school-age children present, as well, in the room:
--"We have no record that George Washington ever attended church."
--While the NPS guide, physically hunched over, mimicked and mocked one carrying and swinging an oversize Bible in his hand, he said to the crowd: "Even if I said the Founders were Christians, how could we really know? Just because people carry a big ol' Bible in their hand, they can still be atheists!"
--"Most of these men owned slaves. How could good Christians do that?"
--"We know that Benjamin Franklin was a deist."
--"We don't really know for sure about their religion. It's open for interpretation. You'll have to do your own study on that."
To add insult to injury, this past week my chaplain received an unfortunate response letter about their grievous tour from Cynthia MacLeod, the superintendent of the Independence National Historical Park. She dodged culpability and refused to cast blame against the NPS guide, justifying that "each ranger leads a tour in his or her own way ... allowing visitors to draw their own conclusions." Really? Even if the ranger misleads and lies about our Founders? (You can read MacLeod's letter in its entirety at my chaplain's website, http://www.NationalTreasures.org.)
That's no way to teach more than 2 million annual guests who visit Independence Hall, including hundreds of thousands of schoolchildren being bused in from across the nation, ready and eager to learn about the accurate history of our republic and its Founders.
The truth is that if you want an accurate religious history of America, you no longer are going to get it from our president, our progressive society or secular schools, at least not without unbiased and trained teachers or the induction of a religious curriculum that hasn't tampered with and twisted history.
Remembering the role of religion in our republic is why I included an entire chapter on the subject (titled "From Here to Eternity") in my latest New York Times best-seller, "Black Belt Patriotism." It is also why my wife, Gena, and I are on the board of the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, which has a Bible-based curriculum that has been used in public schools -- on campus, during school hours, for credit -- for the past 15 years. The NCBCPS curriculum has been implemented in 2,075 public high schools. More than 370,000 students nationwide have taken this elective course to date.
We are proud to announce that the NCBCPS will have an electronic version of its curriculum available starting Dec. 15. It will include movies, videos and slides, in addition to its hardcover text, "The Bible in History and Literature," and also "The Teacher's Companion Guide."
The NCBCPS' curriculum is not the Bible curriculum in circulation that promotes UNESCO in its Bible textbook for students. Please make sure your district uses the Bible curriculum textbook titled "The Bible in History and Literature," by the National Council on Bible Curriculum in Public Schools. Don't accept counterfeits, if even under candy-coated biblical titles!
If you would like more information on the NCBCPS' curriculum or want help getting it into your local school district, go to http://www.BibleInSchools.net or call 336-272-8838. To date, 94 percent of the school boards approached with this Bible curriculum have voted to implement it.
Abraham Lincoln, our 16th president, was right: "The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next."
That is why, for the sake of our posterity and the preservation of truth in each of our own communities, we all need to accept this challenge by Ronald Reagan: "You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we will sentence them to take the first step into a thousand years of darkness. If we fail, at least let our children and our children's children say of us we justified our brief moment here. We did all that could be done."
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