Iowa Pastor Kevin Johnson Preaches Christian Nationalist Pseudohistory
Kevin Johnson, pastor of the Boone Church of God of Prophecy in Boone, Iowa, tells his congregation that the Constitution is based on the Bible and Puritan sermons. This claim is pseudohistory.
The Christian Bible advocates for kings and lords.The Constitution of the United States of America rejects that tyrannical perspective in favor of a secular, humanist government of the people, by the people, for the people.
The history of American law is a history of the rejection of the Bible, not an embrace of it.
James Madison wrote in his letter To the Honorable the General Assembly of the
Commonwealth of Virginia
A Memorial and Remonstrance: “The Religion then of every man must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man; and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate. This right is in its nature an unalienable right. It is unalienable, because the opinions of men, depending only on the evidence contemplated by their own minds cannot follow the dictates of other men.”
Benjamin Franklin acknowledged that much of the basic structure of the US Constitution came from the Six Nation Confederacy of the Haudenosaunee. The United States Senate acknowledged the Iroquois as a significant source of the Constitution, writing that, “The original framers of the Constitution, including most notably, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, are known to have greatly admired the concepts, principles and governmental practices of the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy. Whereas the confederation of the original Thirteen Colonies into one republic was explicitly modeled upon the Iroquois Confederacy as were many of the democratic principles which were incorporated into the Constitution itself.”
Thomas Jefferson specifically refuted the idea that the Constitution should be regarded with reverence as a religion document in his letter to Henry Tompkinson, stating:
“Some men look at Constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them, like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment. I knew that age well: I belonged to it, and labored with it. It deserved well of it’s country. it was very like the present, but without the experience of the present: and 40 years of experience in government is worth a century of book-reading: and this they would say themselves, were they to rise from the dead. I am certainly not an advocate for frequent and untried changes in laws and constitutions. I think moderate imperfections had better be borne with; because when once known, we accommodate ourselves to them, and find practical means of correcting their ill effects. But I know also that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy, as civilised society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors. It is this preposterous idea which has lately deluged Europe in blood. their monarchs, instead of wisely yielding to the gradual changes of circumstances, of favoring progressive accomodation to progressive improvement, have clung to old abuses, intrenched themselves behind steady habits.”