How did our country get its name?
The word “America” is derived from the name of an Italian merchant and traveler, Amerigo Vespucci of Florence (1454-1512). The Latinized form of his name is Americus Vespucius. He was skilled in astronomy and navigation, and explored the New World at the end of the 15th century and in the early 16th century.

Christopher Columbus is credited with discovering the New World in 1492 in the name of the King of Spain. (Previously he had approached King Henry VII of England for financial aid in undertaking a westward voyage in search of India, but Henry turned him down.) Columbus made three other westward voyages—in 1495, 1498 and 1502. Convinced he had had sailed to Asia and found a new way to the old world, he called the islands the Indies.

After Columbus’s initial success, France, England and Portugal realized its importance and quickly joined in the exploration, competing for territory and resources. In 1497 Henry commissioned John Cabot, who sailed to Labrador or Cape Breton—the exact site is uncertain—and claimed what is now the east coast of the United States in the name of the king of England. The first French explorers in the New World are unknown, but by 1504 Cape Breton had been named; it is the oldest French place- name in North America.

In 1497, Vespucci went as one of the pilots on a voyage to the northern coast of South America; the expedition was authorized by the King of Spain. In 1501, Vespucci sailed from Lisbon in a Portuguese fleet of three ships to Brazil and skirted the coast as far south as the La Plata River. He made a third expedition to the southern continent and in 1504 wrote letters giving an account of what he had seen in the novus mundus, the “new world,” as he called it to distinguish it from the Old World. He declared that he had found a continent in the south “more populous and full of animals than our Europe or Asia or Africa and even more temperate and pleasant than any other region known to us.”
Vespucci’s account found its way into print in 1504 at Augsburg, Germany. It was the first published narrative of any discovery of the mainland.

The account went through many editions; the 1505 edition, published in Strassburg, mentioned Vespucci on its title page as having discovered a new “Southern Land.” This is the first instance hinting at the continental nature of the new discovery, as separate from Asia.

Vespucci’s voyages were of great importance because they proved the existence of a new continent. They showed that South America was not part of the Indies discovered by Columbus, who had insisted he had found a new way to the old world. He therefore failed to realize the true situation. Previously, some geographers had suspected there was a great southern continent; they called it the “Fourth Part,” with Europe, Asia and Africa being the three known parts of the world. Vespucci’s voyages confirmed the existence of this Fourth Part; they also secured Brazil for the Portuguese crown and resulted in giving the name “America” to the Western Hemisphere.

Even though our Founders wisely separated church and state in the Constitution,  they did not separate God and state.  How could they?  The Declaration of Independence—our founding document—has four references to deity (Creator, nature’s God, Supreme Judge of the world, Divine Providence) which collectively make clear that our Founders saw God as the mighty author of our existence and the moral authority for our laws.

We have a secular government but a religious society.  Our government makes no religious test of civic officials but nevertheless requires moral behavior of them, using moral standards arising from religious traditions, especially the Ten Commandments of Judeo-Christianity which became the basis of English—and hence American—civil law.  God and nation are one.

However, the Creator whom we recognize as the fountainhead of American government and society is not the exclusive property of any denomination.  The First Amendment prohibits any denomination from becoming the established, official religion of America; likewise it prohibits government from interfering with religious freedom and thereby allows We the People to have full public expression of religion according to one’s conscience. 

Moreover, the First Amendment’s clause prohibiting an establishment of religion applied to the federal government, not the states.  It clearly says “Congress [not the states] shall make no law…”  It was publicly understood and acknowledged that the Constitution was intended to govern the federal government itself, not the people.  The states were to be left alone to govern themselves as they saw fit.

Why not the states?  Many of them already had establishments of religion.  At the time of the War for Independence, Massachusetts had a state church, Puritanism (or Calvinism).  Connecticut’s official religion was Congregationalism.  Rhode Island’s established church was Baptist.  Pennsylvania’s was Quakerism.  Maryland’s was Roman Catholicism.  Virginia’s was the Anglican Church of England (which, after the war, became the Episcopal Church of America).  

In fact, most of the thirteen states at one time had their own official churches/establishments of religion and five of the thirteen had their own at the time the First Amendment was ratified.  When James Madison was writing the Constitution, no mention of a guarantee of religious liberty was at first included because he feared that states such as Massachusetts and Virginia, with their strong state churches, would otherwise not accept the Constitution.  However, he was persuaded to include the “no religious test” clause of Article VI.  The Bill of Rights, Amendment I, which he later supported, provided the final corrective to the situation.  The last of the state religions was disestablished in 1833.  Thy were disestablished not by the Supreme Court but by the states’ own free will.  The states voluntarily gave up their establishments of religion in the name of freedom of conscience.

(To be continued)

President Calvin Coolidge’s defense of the Declaration of Independence provides the perfect commentary about the universal and absolute truths on which America is founded.

If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth and their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule [by] the people.  Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary. 

Of all political documents in history, only the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution offer a seamless theory and practice of enlightened government.  Collectively, they address all levels of our existence.  Think of it as a pyramid such as the one on the Great Seal of the United States, with the Eye of Providence above the pyramid representing the nation.

First and foremost, our founding documents recognize God, the Spirit of Liberty, as the source of all life, all liberty, all rights and all good.  That is the Eye of Providence above the pyramid.  

Next, in the Declaration of Independence, they enunciate the basic principles of liberty descending from God to be applied in the body politic.  That is the top of the pyramid.

Then, in the Constitution, they articulate the architecture of liberty, which describes how our federal government is constructed, and in the Bill of Rights they enumerate the inalienable rights of each individual citizen.  That is the middle of the pyramid.  Those architectural plans make secure the blessings of liberty as they establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. 

Last of all, they demand and encourage elected officials and civil servants of integrity, calling on them to enact and enforce laws, policies and practices of liberty, which are the base of the pyramid. 

At every level of human activity, from the physical through the mental to the spiritual, from the individual through the local, state and federal government, they declare God as the divine basis and governor of our existence, individually and collectively.  We Americans should thank God for the blessings we have:  personal, political, economic and social freedom, the right to self-determination of our lives and the opportunity to lawfully pursue happiness as we define it for ourselves, rather than being forced into abject, slavish service to a totalitarian state run by despots claiming to be divinely guided.  We should express that gratitude through lives which serve—not rule—others, from the nuclear family to the human family.  

We should also gratefully honor those who went before us—often in great hardship, suffering and bloodshed—to build and defend a haven for us in the wilderness of man’s longstanding inhumanity to man.  

Last of all, we should be vigilant, active citizens who work to preserve the blessings of liberty so they may be passed on to our posterity and the boundaries of our haven may be peacefully enlarged to encompass all humanity.  We should do all that in recognition that the blessings of liberty come to us from our Creator, Nature’s God, Divine Providence, the Supreme Judge of the world who is, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “the common Father of us all.”

America—love it and live it!

And what is the foremost ideal, principle or value of America?  The very first one mentioned in The Bill of Rights, the very first amendment to the Constitution:  freedom of religion.

That is unique in history.  That is a radically new form of theocracy—both new and better.  It is fundamental for the future of freedom—your freedom.  It empowers people rather than suppresses them.  It is an advancement in establishing a God-centered society beyond even that which our Pilgrim forefathers intended, which was a theocracy, a Holy Commonweal of the elect.  Understanding the magnificence of our Founders’ achievement is critical for the future of freedom here.   

The Pilgrims were separatists; they separated from England in order to set up a society in which God, not the King, was head of state.   “No king but God,” they said.  Yet for all the debt of gratitude we owe our Pilgrim forefathers, we must not overlook the fact that their theocracy was a decidedly narrow, restrictive one, and intolerant of divergent religious beliefs.  In fact, in the case of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, it was oppressive enough to send Roger Williams into the Rhode Island wilderness—fleeing at night for his life—to establish a colony more hospitable to religious freedom for all.  (Williams described the religiously pluralistic society he sought as one in which “all men may walk as their consciences persuade them, everyone in the name of his God.”)   He named his religious haven Providence, and the term Divine Providence would become widely used throughout the thirteen colonies.  It also became one of the four references to deity in the Declaration of Independence

So understanding the magnificence of our Founders’ achievement—a theocracy based on freedom of religion and freedom of conscience for all individuals, including even those who deny the existence of God—is also critical for the future of freedom around the globe.

Although our Founders separated church and state, they did not separate God and state.  How could they?  The Declaration makes clear that from our beginning we have been, as our Pledge of Allegiance states, “one Nation under God.”

What follows from that theory of government is the marvelous liberty of America in which, while holding God central to it, people can worship, speak, assemble, write, travel, work, marry and live as they wish—in short, pursue happiness as they wish—so long as they do not violate another’s right to do likewise.  

Yes, that marvelous liberty has been abused by some citizens.  And yes, because liberty carries inherent responsibility, it requires a conscience, a sense of civic duty and a sense of respect for public decorum—in short, voluntary compliance—to live properly in accordance with our national ideals, principles and values.  As Thomas Jefferson said, the qualifications for self-government are not innate; they are the result of habit and long training.  But without that spiritual foundation asserting your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and without the constitutional protection guaranteeing your freedom, your sovereignty and your rights… well, renounce your American citizenship, move to a theocracy such as Talibanistan and find out for yourself what follows.

(To be concluded)