Jedediah Morse (1761-1826), was a pioneer American educator and geographer, called the "Father of American Geography."  He was also the father of Samuel F.B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph and "Morse Code."

Having taught in the New Haven schools for several years, Jedediah Morse compiled his notes and published them in his highly successful work in 1784, entitled Geography Made Easy.

In 1799, Jedediah Morse stated:

"To the kindly influence of Christianity we owe that degree of civil freedom, and political and social happiness which mankind now enjoys.  In proportion as the genuine effects of Christianity are diminished in any nation, either through unbelief, or the corruption of its doctrines, or the neglect of its institutions; in the same proportion will the people of that nation recede from the blessings of genuine freedom, and approximate the miseries of complete despotism.

"All efforts to destroy the foundations of our holy religion, ultimately tend to the subversion also of our political freedom and happiness.

"Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them." ¹

¹ April 25, 1799, in Jedediah Morse's Election Sermon given at Charleston, Mass., taken from an original in the Evans collection compiled by the American Antiquarian Society.  David Barton, The Myth of Separation (Aledo, TX: WallBuilder Press, 1991), p. 128.  Verna M. Hall, Christian History of the United States of America (San Francisco, CA: Foundation for America Christian Education, 1975), pp. v, 145.  Peter Marshall and David Manuel, The Glory of America (Bloomington, MN: Garborg's Heart 'N Home, Inc., 1991), 4.25, 8.5.