LETTERS: CHRISTIAN VALUES MAKE A DIFFERENCE

To the editor:

Has Christianity been oppressive? Has the Christian religion preached standards that restricted people's freedom to live and enjoy life?

On the other hand, did the sexual revolution of the 1960s bring freedom to people or did it bring an explosion of sexually transmitted diseases, Aids and unwanted pregnancies leading to millions of abortions?

Did the law promoting easy divorce bring freedom to women or did it bring a great increase in one parent homes? Children growing up in fatherless homes, are much more likely to drop out of school, get involved in crime, drugs and suicide.

Did the Supreme Court ruling forbidding prayer in school and removing the Ten Commandments and the Bible from school bring a better atmosphere to learn? Or did it bring discipline problems, violence, drugs and children dropping out of school?

I want to give you some quotations about what our Founding Fathers and other patriots have said.

President Gerald Ford said on Dec. 5, 1974: "Without God there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and most basic expression of Americanism. Thus the Founding Fathers of America saw it, and thus with God's help it will continue to be."

Benjamin Franklin Morris, one of the Founders said: "The state must rest upon the basis of religion, and it must preserve this basis, or itself must fall. But the support which religion gives to the state will obviously cease the moment religion loses its hold on the popular mind. This is a Christian nation, first in name, and secondly because of the many and mighty elements of pure Christianity which have given it character and shaped its destiny from the beginning."

Daniel Webster, another of the Founders, declared Dec. 22, 1820: "Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, the believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits ... Whatever makes men good Christians, makes then good citizens."

Neoma Counts

Farmington