Consider the Source

Seiquincentennial. Now that we're a few days past America’s 250th birthday, I’ve actually learned to say semiquincentennial.

But the most remarkable thing about Ame is not the seven-syllable word. It’s the astounding spiritual and governmental heritage left by the men who pledged  “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor” to establish the United States of America.

Today there is endless debate about Christianity’s role in America’s founding. But history speaks best through those who made it. So, let’s hear from the Founders themselves.

If we want to understand what the Founders believed about faith and government, there is no better place to begin than with their own words and actions.

Professors at the University of Houston said, “If we can go back and see the source of the Founders’ ideas, we will know where those ideas came from.”

So they took a thousand documents created by the Founding Fathers. Thirty-four percent of all their political quotations came from their single most cited source—the Bible.

Let’s look at the words and actions of men who formed our nation, founded our government, signed the Declaration, and wrote the Constitution. 

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Benjamin Franklin

Signer of the Declaration of Independence, diplomat, inventor, and elder statesman of the Constitutional Convention

Franklin rose during a deadlock at the Constitutional Convention and urged the delegates to begin each day’s proceedings with prayer led by “clergy.” 

“I have lived, Sir, a long time; and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men.”

“We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that ‘except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it.’... without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel.”

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John Adams

Second President, First Vice President, the Father of Independence, helped secure passage of the Declaration of Independence

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

“The general principles on which the Fathers achieved independence were… the general principles of Christianity.”

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Samuel Adams

Father of the American Revolution, “The Patriarch of Liberty," Fourth Governor of Massachusetts, Delegate to the Continental Congress

“Just and true Liberty, equal and impartial Liberty, in Matters spiritual and temporal, is a Thing that all Men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable Laws of God and Nature.”

“The Rights of the Colonists as Christians, may be best understood by reading—and carefully studying—the Institutes of the great Lawgiver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.”

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The Continental Congress

America’s governing body during and after the Revolutionary War

• Officially approved and recommended the first English Bible printed in America.

• Opened its sessions with prayer and appointed military chaplains.

• Declared national days of fasting, prayer, and thanksgiving.

  
  

From the colonial era through 1815, more than 1,400 official government proclamations called Americans to prayer, fasting, thanksgiving, and humiliation before God. 

Not from churches. Not from pastors. From governors, legislatures, the Continental Congress, presidents, and governors—like John Hancock.

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John Hancock

President of the Continental Congress, First and Third Governor of Massachusetts

Hancock issued 22 proclamations calling the Commonwealth to days of fasting and prayer.

“…that we may… confess our manifold sins unto God; implore His pardon and forgiveness through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour…”

“…that the spiritual kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be continually increasing, until the whole earth shall be filled with His glory.”

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Thomas Jefferson

Primary Author of the Declaration of Independence, Third President, Governor of Virginia, Founder of the University of Virginia

“The God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God?”

“Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.” 

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Patrick Henry

Five-time Governor of Virginia, Voice of the Revolution, helped inspire the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

“Being a Christian… is a character which I prize far above all this world has or can boast.” 

“This is all the inheritance I can give my dear family. The religion of Christ will give them one which will make them rich indeed.”

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John Jay

First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, President of the Continental Congress, Second Governor of New York, Father of American Jurisprudence

“It is the duty… of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers.”

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Noah Webster 

Father of American Scholarship and Education, Author of the Definitive American Dictionary

“The moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis of all our civil constitutions and laws.”

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Roger Sherman

The only signer of all four founding documents, member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence.

In both his personal confession of faith and the public documents he helped shape, Sherman affirmed:

“I believe that repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ, and regeneration by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to salvation.”

“As the happiness of a People, and the good Order of Civil Society, essentially depend upon Piety, Religion and Morality, it is the Duty of the Civil Authority to provide for the Support and Encouragement thereof.” 

“We hold sacred the rights of conscience, and… promise… the free and undisturbed exercise of their religion… and that all civil rights… be extended to persons of any Christian denomination.” 

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Benjamin Rush

Signer of the Declaration of Independence, the Father of American Medicine, and a passionate advocate for biblical faith as the foundation of education, virtue, and liberty.

 “The great enemy of the salvation of man has done more mischief by persuading mankind that the Bible ought not to be read in schools than by any of his other devices.” 

“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in RELIGION. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty; and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”

“The Gospel of Jesus Christ prescribes the wisest rules for just conduct in every situation of life.”

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These men who founded this nation openly acknowledged God, quoted Scripture, proclaimed days of prayer, and believed that biblical faith and public virtue were indispensable to the preservation of liberty.

They believed biblical faith and public virtue were essential to the preservation of the government they established. 

The Declaration of Independence repeatedly acknowledges Nature’s God, the Creator, the Supreme Judge of the World, and Divine Providence. These are not passing references. They present our rights and liberties as gifts from God rather than grants from government.

It is difficult to argue that the Founders intended to remove God from public life when the nation’s birth certificate itself repeatedly acknowledges Him as the source and foundation of freedom.

That freedom was secured by the Treaty of Paris, which officially ended the Revolutionary War. Before the names of kings, diplomats, or nations appear, the document opens—in its largest print—with these words: “In the Name of the most Holy and undivided Trinity.”

May our dedication to the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, shape our private lives, our families, our churches, our communities, and every area of civic life as we celebrate 250 years as “one nation under God.”