FHE Lessons on the Constitution published by LDS Church

[creator]

Family Home Evening Lessons for the Bicentennial of the Constitution

Published in 1987, by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to commemorate the Bicentennial of the Constitution.

Family Home Evening Lessons for the Bicentennial of the Constitution

Our Dear Brothers and Sisters:

On September 17, 1987, we commemorate the two-hundredth birthday of the signing of the United States Constitution. The group of inspired men assembled for that convention produced the document that the Prophet
Joseph Smith referred to as “a glorious standard” and “a heavenly banner.”

In commemoration of this important event, we are providing this booklet, which contains three family home evening lessons, activity ideas, and a copy of the Constitution. We encourage you to prepare and teach each lesson prayerfully so that family members may feel the divine significance of the Constitution in their minds and hearts.

Faithfully, your brethren,
The First Presidency
(Ezra Taft Benson, Gordon B. Hinckley, Thomas S. Monson)

Click here to download a PDF version (14-pages) of the “Family Home Evening Lessons for the Bicentennial of the Constitution” (to save, right click and choose ’save as’)

[ConDef]

Thanks!

[susieq]

I remember this. Still have my copy around here somewhere.

[creator]

I was only 6 years old at the time, but I also still have my copy! (Actually the copy I have is one I purchased online a few years ago)

[MasterOfNone]

Thank you - I was just looking for this online and could not find it!

[dougwalters]

Aaaaah! I JUST bought this off eBay! Thanks though, I think it'll be nice to have a hard copy and a PDF version to share with folks. What a neat tool to use, I'm so glad to see that the Church produced something like this.

[lundbaek]

This series of lessons will be a boon to an acquaintance of mine who, with support of his bishop, is putting together a series of lessons on the Constitution and freedom to be presented probably on 5th Sundays during this year. He needed something that the Church published in order to give some more legitimacy to the program.

[dougwalters]

FYI to anyone interested...

I will be presenting the 1987 FHE Lesson material during an Elders Quorum Fireside in the near future...just got the approval notice from the Bishopric. I had hoped to spread the material out over the course of a few different firesides, but if this one can garner enough attention maybe it will spread to other wards. We'll see. I'm also going to try to invite everyone out to a study group, for people who want to know more than what I can cover in an hour and a half or two hours.

Couldn't have done it without you guys though! Thanks for finding and posting the FHE lesson material. I found a copy on eBay, cost me $7 but at least now I have an original copy to use too.

[ChelC]

I don't personally remember this at all, but have heard of it. Thanks for doing this Brian! I've saved it to my homeschool file.

[TonyOlsen]

Thanks!

[ChelC]

Bumping this to remind parents to use this material for Independence day and/or Constitution Day.

[lundbaek]

This year the 4th of July falls on a Fast and Testimony Sunday. I would like to take that occasion to read the following testimony by President Wilford Woodruff given in the April 1898 Church General Conference. I keep it taped in the inside back cover of my Triple Combination.

"I am going to bear my testimony to this assembly, if I never do it again in my life, that those men who laid the foundation of this American government and signed the Declaration of Independence were the best spirits the God of heaven could find on the face of the earth. They were choice spirits, not wicked men. General Washington and all the men that laboured for the purpose were inspired of the Lord. Another thing I am going to say here, because I have a right to say it. Every one of those men that signed the Declaration of Independence, with General George Washington, called upon me, as an Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, in the Temple at St. George, two consecutive nights, and demanded at my hands that I should go forth and attend to the ordinances of the House of God for them. Would those spirits have called upon me, as an elder in Israel, to perform that work if they had not been noble before God?"

And on another occasion President Woodruff stated: "I went straightway into the baptismal font and called upon Brother McAllister to baptize me for the signers of the Declaration of Independence, and fifty other eminent men. Those spirits came there clearly with divine permission - evidence that this work of salvation goes forward on both sides of the veil."

If I can testify of anything more in relation to this, it would be that it is part of our Latter-day Saint theology that the Declaration of Independence, which we celebrate today, was inspired by the Lord, that its principles are in harmony with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and that its principles were encoded in the Constitution of the United States, which Latter-day Saints have been commanded to honour.

I do, however, have some misgivings about doing this. I'll see how I feel when the time comes.

[ChelC]

This site has posted some additional activities for children to go along with this:
http://www.latter-dayhomeschooling.com/ ... -thee.html

Hope someone can use it!