'We Forgot' God

The wicked shall be turned into hell, and all the nations that forget God. (Ps. 9.17)

William Edgar, "The National Confessional Position," in Gary Scott Smith, ed., God and Politics: Four View on the Reformation of Civil Government (Theonomy, Principled Pluralism, Christian America, National Confessionalism), p. 184:

The effort to make the Founding Fathers appear as militant secularists, like their French contemporaries, is a distortion of history. When today's secular elites intone the First Amendment and rant about the wall of separation between church and state, so as to bludgeon Christians into public silence, they attribute a modern mentality to the architects of the Constitution, which they did not have. In fact, most of the Founding Fathers were indifferent to Jesus Christ (itself a terrible sin).

The Constitutional Convention never voted on Benjamin Franklin's motion to begin each day's deliberation with prayer....When asked why the Constitution did not mention God, Alexander Hamilton reportedly replied that the Framers had forgotten to.7

7 Mark A. Noll, The Search for Christian America (Westchester, Ill.: Crossway, 1983), p. 107.

Proceedings of the Fifth National Reform Convention, to Aid in Maintaining the Christian Features of the American Government, and Securing a Religious Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, Held in Pittsburg, February 4, 5, 1874, p. 41:

Dr. John Rodgers [1727-1811], 1788.

This eminent chaplain of the Revolution, observing with regret the omission of all acknowledgment of God from the Constitution, inquired of Alexander Hamilton, on his return from the convention in New York, how that body could fail to incorporate in the Constitution a suitable recognition of the Almighty. The well-known reply was, "Indeed, Doctor, we forgot it." -- Duffield's "God of our Fathers," p. 15.