Supreme Ruler of the Universe
The Sovereign Ruler of Nations
The Supreme Being
Which means that a full twenty percent of all the state preambles do not even use commonly written Christian language to define their deity. In fact only one preamble -- Virginia -- even uses the word "Christian" and even then it only mentions the need to "practice Christian Forbearance."
All of these references and even Almighty God are benign enough that they could be referring to any divine being. They could even be referring to Allah; a suggestion that I'm virtually positive the author of this email would be appalled to hear. Given the religious population make-up of the states when these preambles were being written it would have been very easy to officially sanction Christianity at that time. With that said it's perfectly clear to me that the collective preamble authors were specifically avoiding doing just that by being respectful of the common religious belief of the state citizens but also non-committal to that belief.
The important point here is that all these preambles do is make collectively agreed upon statements to the authors beliefs in the existence of an almighty being but they do not sanction any one expression of or belief system in that being.
My personal favorite preambles are from Delaware:
"Through Divine Goodness all men have, by nature, the rights of worshipping and serving their Creator according to the dictates of their consciences."
and New Hampshire:
"Every individual has a natural and unalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience."
These two statements actually leave it all open to the individual to decide what God is and how to worship him/her/it, they basically hit square on the head the intentions of the founders of this nation. Had all of the states been as enlightened in writing their preambles as Delaware and New Hampshire maybe there would be less of a national debate on this issue then there is today. But since the debate is raging I am thankful for institutions such as the ACLU that continue to fight for the rights for all Americans to worship as they choose.
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