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FOURTH OF JULY

When you celebrate the Fourth of July this year, take time to remember that this country was founded as a secular, not a religious government. Its founders carefully worded the Declaration of Independence, Constitution and Bill of Rights so as to make sure church and state were separated. Some may believe it is a Christian government, as was decreed by the British King. But we have no King with divine rights as there was in England in the 1600s.

This country was founded by American Indians and European settlers. The English wanted taxation without representation and to dictate from the pulpit of the Church of England. When our representative democracy was being formed, Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin, and others proposed they model the new government into something along the lines of the Iroquois Confederacy of Nations, which had been functioning as a democratic government for hundreds of years.

Only the Iroquois had a system that seemed to meet most of their demands. So it is not a surprise that on June 11, 1776, while the question of independence was being debated, the Iroquois chiefs were invited to the meeting of the Continental Congress.

The original United States representative democracy drew much inspiration from this Confederacy of Nations that has been practiced by the Six Nations for over 800 hundred years. The Constitution of the Five Nations has close parallels to our Executive, Legislative and Judiciary branches of government.

Dating back to 1142, the Iroquois Confederacy was one of the oldest continuously functioning democracies on earth. The League was a powerful political entity long before the first European settlers made contact early in the 1500s.

The white settlers were Americanized by the Indian culture. They adopted methods, lifestyles, artifacts, and ideas from them, often in order to survive. Indians in America provided half the modern world's food crops, many herbal medicines, clothing, transportation pathways and modes, crafts, health methods, words and names of places plus ideas of government combining ideals of rugged individuality and concern for the common welfare.

It was minister, Roger Williams, who said, "No civil state or country can be truly called Christian, although Christians be in it." He established true religious freedom for the first time in America in Providence, Rhode Island in 1636. Our American Revolution brought us not only independence from England but also freedom of religion. Let's keep it that way!

Learn more about this author, Linda Schreiber.
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