“All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.” – John 1:3
The Preamble to the Declaration of Independence from July 4, 1776, says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
This begs the question, “Who is the God that is our Creator” from whom we derive our “unalienable rights”? Roughly 250 years ago, what was the intended meaning of those who penned these words? Were they thinking of Islam and the possibility that Allah is our Creator and the source of our rights as revealed in the Koran, like the current Islamic neighborhoods in Detroit operating apart from American laws? Were they thinking that our rights could be found in the Marxist curriculum of social science departments, drag queen story hours for kids at the local library, or on the protest signs at Black Lives Matter riots? Were they thinking that the God who gives laws and rights was, in fact, the pantheon of gods and goddesses found in Hinduism?
Admittedly, not all of our Founding Fathers were Christians. Some were deists, and others had religious commitments that are about as clear as fog. However, the role of Christianity as the dominant religious influence in American history is without question. From 1620, when the pilgrims landed, until 1837, virtually all American education was private and Christian. The pastors in the colonies were often the most educated men and led both the intellectual and spiritual lives of the people. In Puritan New England, the first schools (known as common schools) were distinctively Christian. Soon, tax monies were raised to support these schools, and the first public schools in the United States were Christian and remained that way for 217 years. In higher education, nearly every one of the first 123 American colleges and universities founded in the United States was of Christian origins, including Yale, William and Mary, Brown, Princeton, NYU, and Northwestern. Harvard was started by a donation of money and books by Rev. John Harvard and Dartmouth was founded to train missionaries to the Native Americans.
The inauguration of our first president, George Washington, included his getting on his knees to kiss the Bible before leading the Senate and House of Representatives to an Episcopal church for a two-hour worship service. At the very least, the Founding Fathers were greatly influenced by the Bible, even if they were not all Christians. In fact, 34 percent of all the Founding Fathers’ citations in books, pamphlets, articles, and other works were from the Bible. (1)
For those of us who live in America, we should humbly thank God every day that we do enjoy some freedoms that would not have otherwise been granted to us, apart from the influence of Jesus and Christianity on the framework of our nation. For example, in the United States, the fight against slavery was led, in large part, by Christians. This included President Abraham Lincoln, who is widely regarded as perhaps the most important American to fight against slavery and did so because of his Christian convictions. In the fight for civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a pastor who chose a nonviolent path based upon the example of Jesus Christ, and his base of support came largely from primarily black churches, where the struggle for freedom was preached about in the context of the Exodus story in the Old Testament.
The truth is that every person comes to their politics with their own preferences. Every religious person, along with atheists, agnostics, and deists, believes that their way of viewing the world helps inform their political beliefs. Why is it that the media is so hostile to the Christian faith and so reticent to denounce other faiths? Perhaps it is because many Christians are Republicans and, according to one survey, only 3.4% of journalists are Republicans. (2) No matter what, we need to be sure that our preferences don’t get in the way of the truth of God’s word.
Was there something from the United States’ religious history that you didn’t know before reading this devotional?
(2) Kennedy and Newcombe. What if Jesus Had Never Been Born?, 70.
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