Psalm 135:13 Your name, O Lord, endures forever; your fame, O Lord, is known to every generation. In my American Literature class we are studying the Declaration of Independence, and I read an interesting comment about why God is mentioned 9 times in the preamble section alone. It’s not about religion (well, maybe partly about religion, but the writers were rationalists and some were deists). It’s about power and corruption. If our rights are given to us by humans they are subject to the corruption and greed that often comes with power (absolute power corrupts absolutely). If our rights are given to us by God, then no one but God can take them away, thus limiting the power of government. So, when people try to remove God from things like the Pledge of Allegiance (one nation under God) then in essence they’re not removing God from government, they’re actually removing the obstacle between them and power. By taking the right to give inalienable “natural” rights (like the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) out of God’s hands and putting it in man’s hands, they suddenly gain the power to limit those rights for whomever they choose. The crux of the Declaration was that the God-given, natural rights of the colonists were being infringed upon by the king. But if our rights are no longer God-given but rather man-given, then it becomes much easier for man to take those rights away if it’s convenient for him. We go back to the problem from which the colonists were declaring their independence. So, God in the Declaration isn’t so much about religion as it is about power and control. Are our lives given and controlled by a higher power? Or are they given and controlled by government, courts, and politicians? Kind of a scary thought, huh?