In 1892, Associate Supreme Court Justice David Josiah Brewer wrote a unanimous court opinion declaring ... "This is a Christian nation." "I insist that Christianity has been so wrought into the history of this Republic, so identified with its growth and prosperity, has been and is so dear to the hearts of the great body of our citizens, that it ought not be spoken of contemptuously or treated with ridicule," he wrote. Justice Brewer served on the U.S. Supreme Court for 20 years and became known for his relentless exhortation of Christians to perform their moral, religious and citizenship duties to the nation. Yet today, Justice Brewer's words are lost on a secularized society whose citizens recoil from the notion that America's laws should come from a religious conscience. When is the last time anyone in America heard of a legislator offering a law because of his or her Christian beliefs? We are a Christian nation because the people in America are decidedly Christian. Still, our laws, institutions and policies are quickly becoming unchristian, mainly because Christians have been committing political suicide for nearly a century. Blame it on Supreme Court rulings, media bashings, secular education or weak churches; Christians in America routinely censor themselves out of fear of violating some fictitious "separation of Church and State" standard. As Christians we should neither be embarrassed nor cowardly in projecting our faith into the laws of the nation. Christian laws and principles are the foundational concrete upon which the American justice system and guiding doctrines were founded. Whether the United States is a Christian nation matters only if Christians have dominance in America-over its government, social institutions, media, education, social networks, businesses, entertainment, policies, goals and justice system. If Christians are merely spectators, their overwhelming numbers do not matter. They will be merely spectators at a football game, outnumbering the players but unable to make the rules or determine an outcome that will affect not only the teams, but the spectators as well. Christians must ask themselves: Why should we allow the unbelieving, the Jesus-haters, those who mock Christianity, to rule over our lives? They cannot, unless we allow them to. We still have the ball. We have the numbers. But we need to rise up from our seats and perform our Christian duty to America.
Author Biography:
About the Author: David Brewer was born in Smyrna, Turkey, to missionary parents on June 20, 1837. Over the next 15 years Brewer's father traveled from town to town, as well as to larger cities, advocating Christ, prison reform and the end of slavery. His son, David, quickly adopted his father's passion for all these causes and included some of his own, such as women's suffrage and an enhanced role for women in all professions. He authored one of the first judicial opinions upholding the right of African-American citizens to vote in a general election. Justice Brewer was far from an ultra-conservative, but it was probably correct to describe him, as author Andy Schmookler wrote in the Daily Kos, as "one of the most unabashedly religious justices to ever serve." Brewer once stated, "I glory in the fact that my father was an old-line abolitionist, and one thing which he instilled into my youthful soul was the conviction that liberty, personal and political, is the God-given right of every individual, and I expect to live and die in that faith." Brewer graduated from Yale and received his law degree from Albany Law School in the spring of 1858. In the same year he departed for Kansas. He was elected judge of the county probate court, and in 1865 was elected judge of the first judicial district court of Kansas. Eventually he would be elected to three six-year terms on the Kansas Supreme Court. In 1884 President Chester Alan Arthur, America's 21st president, appointed him to the Eighth Circuit Appeals Court. Five years later, after the resignation of Supreme Court Justice Stanley Matthews due to a sudden illness, President Benjamin Harrison nominated Brewer to the U.S. Supreme Court. After 20 years on the High Court, Justice Brewer had gained a reputation for limiting the power of government. He rejected what today is called the "nanny state," and advocated a narrow interpretation of police power. Brewer believed strongly that the character of America was a reflection of its people. "You cannot disassociate the character of the nation and that of its citizens," Brewer said during a lecture at Yale on "American Citizenship." In 1905 he gave a series of speeches on "America: A Christian Nation," to the students at Haverford College, which eventually were compiled into this book. Justice Brewer died in 1910. He is buried in a cemetery in Leavenworth, a town that has also named an elementary school after him.
