IV 
110TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. RES. 888 
Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Nation’s founding 
and subsequent history and expressing support for designation of the 
first week in May as ‘‘American Religious History Week’’ for the appre-
ciation of and education on America’s history of religious faith. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
DECEMBER 18, 2007 
Mr. FORBES (for himself, Mr. MCINTYRE, Mr. AKIN, Mr. BARRETT of South 
Carolina, Mr. CULBERSON, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. FEENEY, Mr. GINGREY, 
Mr. GOHMERT, Mr. HAYES, Mr. HENSARLING, Mr. HERGER, Mr. JONES 
of North Carolina, Mr. MCHENRY, Mrs. MUSGRAVE, Mr. PEARCE, Mr. 
PENCE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. 
WALBERG, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Mr. WOLF, and Mr. YOUNG 
of Florida) submitted the following resolution; which was referred to the 
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 
RESOLUTION 
Affirming the rich spiritual and religious history of our Na-
tion’s founding and subsequent history and expressing 
support for designation of the first week in May as 
‘‘American Religious History Week’’ for the appreciation 
of and education on America’s history of religious faith. 
Whereas religious faith was not only important in official 
American life during the periods of discovery, exploration, 
colonization, and growth but has also been acknowledged 
and incorporated into all 3 branches of American Federal 
government from their very beginning; 
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•HRES 888 IH 
Whereas the Supreme Court of the United States affirmed 
this self-evident fact in a unanimous ruling declaring 
‘‘This is a religious people . . . From the discovery of this 
continent to the present hour, there is a single voice mak-
ing this affirmation’’; 
Whereas political scientists have documented that the most 
frequently-cited source in the political period known as 
The Founding Era was the Bible; 
Whereas the first act of America’s first Congress in 1774 was 
to ask a minister to open with prayer and to lead Con-
gress in the reading of 4 chapters of the Bible; 
Whereas Congress regularly attended church and Divine serv-
ice together en masse; 
Whereas throughout the American Founding, Congress fre-
quently appropriated money for missionaries and for reli-
gious instruction, a practice that Congress repeated for 
decades after the passage of the Constitution and the 
First Amendment; 
Whereas in 1776, Congress approved the Declaration of Inde-
pendence with its 4 direct religious acknowledgments re-
ferring to God as the Creator (‘‘All people are endowed 
by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that 
among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happi-
ness’’), the Lawgiver (‘‘the laws of nature and nature’s 
God’’), the Judge (‘‘appealing to the Supreme Judge of 
the world’’), and the Protector (‘‘with a firm reliance on 
the protection of Divine Providence’’); 
Whereas upon approving the Declaration of Independence, 
John Adams declared that the Fourth of July ‘‘ought to 
be commemorated as the day of deliverance by solemn 
acts of devotion to God Almighty’’; 
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•HRES 888 IH 
Whereas 4 days after approving the Declaration, the Liberty 
Bell was rung; 
Whereas the Liberty Bell was named for the Biblical inscrip-
tion from Leviticus 25:10 emblazoned around it: ‘‘Pro-
claim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants 
thereof’’; 
Whereas in 1777, Congress, facing a National shortage of 
‘‘Bibles for our schools, and families, and for the public 
worship of God in our churches,’’ announced that they 
‘‘desired to have a Bible printed under their care & by 
their encouragement’’ and therefore ordered 20,000 cop-
ies of the Bible to be imported ‘‘into the different ports 
of the States of the Union’’; 
Whereas in 1782, Congress pursued a plan to print a Bible 
that would be ‘‘a neat edition of the Holy Scriptures for 
the use of schools’’ and therefore approved the produc-
tion of the first English language Bible printed in Amer-
ica that contained the congressional endorsement that 
‘‘the United States in Congress assembled . . . recommend 
this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United 
States’’; 
Whereas in 1782, Congress adopted (and has reaffirmed on 
numerous subsequent occasions) the National Seal with 
its Latin motto ‘‘Annuit Coeptis,’’ meaning ‘‘God has fa-
vored our undertakings,’’ along with the eye of Provi-
dence in a triangle over a pyramid, the eye and the motto 
‘‘allude to the many signal interpositions of Providence in 
favor of the American cause’’; 
Whereas the 1783 Treaty of Paris that officially endied the 
Revolution and established America as an independent 
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•HRES 888 IH 
begins with the appellation ‘‘In the name of the most 
holy and undivided Trinity’’; 
Whereas in 1787 at the Constitutional Convention in Phila-
delphia, Benjamin Franklin declared, ‘‘God governs in 
the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the 
ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire 
can rise without His aid? . . . Without His concurring aid, 
we shall succeed in this political building no better than 
the builders of Babel’’; 
Whereas the delegates to the Constitutional Convention con-
cluded their work by in effect placing a religious punctua-
tion mark at the end of the Constitution in the Attesta-
tion Clause, noting not only that they had completed the 
work with ‘‘the unanimous consent of the States present’’ 
but they had done so ‘‘in the Year of our Lord one thou-
sand seven hundred and eighty seven’’; 
Whereas James Madison declared that he saw the finished 
Constitution as a product of ‘‘the finger of that Almighty 
Hand which has been so frequently and signally extended 
to our relief in the critical stages of the Revolution,’’ and 
George Washington viewed it as ‘‘little short of a mir-
acle,’’ and Benjamin Franklin believed that its writing 
had been ‘‘influenced, guided, and governed by that om-
nipotent, omnipresent, and beneficent Ruler, in Whom all 
inferior spirits live, and move, and have their being’’; 
Whereas from 1787 to 1788, State conventions to ratify the 
United States Constitution not only began with prayer 
but even met in church buildings; 
Whereas in 1795 during construction of the Capitol, a prac-
tice was instituted whereby ‘‘public worship is now regu-
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