(Note: All quotations from America’s founding documents presented in this essay are copied directly from transcripts available at the website of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.)

Introduction

Here are the years in which America’s founding documents each became effective:

• 1776 – The Declaration of Independence
• 1788 – The Constitution
• 1791 – The Bill of Rights

It is acceptable to list the Bill of Rights separately, although, technically speaking, it is actually part of the Constitution – being its first ten amendments. The amendments that follow the first ten deal with a variety of issues, so those first ten stand as a unique set. Nonetheless, because the Bill of Rights “amends” the Constitution, it is also acceptable to say that there are only two key founding documents for the United States of America: the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

There were other documents relevant to our nation’s founding. For example, The Federalist Papers. This was a set of 85 essays published in newspapers during 1787 and 1788 while the Constitution was being written, debated, and discussed. They were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay for the purpose of explaining and defending how the new government would function. What distinguishes the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution from all other American documents of that period (including The Federalist Papers) was that these two texts officially sanctioned the new country and were signed by representatives of all 13 of the original states. Therefore, these two documents stand together and above all other documents written during that era.

The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution don’t just stand together – they also fit together, each complementing the other. They are fraternal, not identical, twins. Therefore, it’s important to understand the differences between them.

• The Declaration of Independence came first, and the Constitution was based upon it.
• The Declaration of Independence explains why the nation exists, and the Constitution describes how it should be governed.
• The Declaration of Independence is the nation’s “birth certificate” and thus not subject to change, whereas the Constitution was written with a mechanism for change built into it – that is, the process by which it was to be amended when changing circumstances required.

Our nation’s founders were crystal clear in their understanding of the purpose of each of these two documents. The Declaration of Independence stated the rationale for separation from Great Britain. That rationale took time to work out among the colonies, but once it was agreed upon, there would be no revisionist history in the future that should be allowed to change it. The Constitution, however, because it specified how the country was to be governed, would need to be changed over time. The founders understood that they could not foresee all the challenges that the future would bring to America; therefore, they embedded within the Constitution a mechanism for amending it. Then they immediately used this mechanism by ratifying the first ten amendments that we call the Bill of Rights.

The founders did not make the Constitution easy to change, but they did make it possible to change. Not so with the Declaration of Independence. The founders were wise builders. The foundation, once set, must remain. You can remodel a building sitting upon a solid foundation when and as necessary, but you don’t want to be digging up the foundation.

It was this relationship between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution that gave Abraham Lincoln the light he needed to hold the nation together when it just about came apart in the Civil War. The Declaration said “all men are created equal.” Therefore, the Constitution had to be changed to explicitly disallow slavery.

My purpose in writing about God in America’s founding documents has not been to claim that everything in them can be understood as flowing from God, Jesus, and the Bible. That would be way too broad a claim, and it wouldn’t be accurate. America’s founders looked to various sources for their ideas – including nonreligious Enlightenment thinkers. For example, modern scholars of the founding period have produced stacks of books tracing ideas they find in America’s founding documents to philosophers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes. I have no argument with such connections.

My claim is a more narrow, but extremely important, one, especially for our age, which is that the population of the United States of America at its founding was predominantly religious – that religion consisting of various expressions of Christianity. As a result, the American mind at the time of its founding was to a significant degree a biblical mind. Locke and Hobbes can be inferred from the writings, but God gets explicit and meaningful mention in them. Anyone can see that by simply examining these documents…which is what we shall now do.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 1 of 8

The Declaration of Independence – much to the frustration of American secularists today – is not a secular document. Not in the least. It begins…

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…“*

In the opening paragraph – the very first sentence – of this declaration is the claim that it is authorized by “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” The secularist may not like it – but there it is.

Therefore, to discuss the Declaration of Independence or the United States of America without reference to God is to take those subjects out of their context.

The fundamental premise of the Declaration of Independence is that God and His laws are what allow such a declaration to be made. No God, no basis for declaring independence!

America’s founders are proclaiming loud and clear that it is “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” that “entitle them” to establish the United States of America. No secular rationale for the separation from Great Britain is given.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 2 of 8

This time, let’s focus just on the second half of the phrase we focused on last time.

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…“*

The underlined phrase won’t allow a secular interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. Attempting to cope, secularists like to focus on the fact that the founders of our country were not uniformly religious – that they did not all regard God, Jesus, and the Bible in exactly the same way. And indeed they did not. However, 56 of them agreed to the wording of the Declaration of Independence and signed their names to it – risking their lives in the process.

Some founders may have wanted to say more about God in the Declaration of Independence than what it says; some less. Our concern is with what the text actually does say because that identifies the God upon whom they solemnly agreed. They had sufficient time to think before they signed their names.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 3 of 8

I’ll now add the remaining clause of the opening paragraph:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.“*

What the rest of the sentence, and especially the underlined portion, shows is that the founders thought that the assertion of their divine right – that is, their right granted by God Himself – to do what they were doing, was not only sufficient justification for the parties involved, but for all mankind as well!

In other words, America’s founders wanted the whole world to understand through this document that they were grounding their decision for national independence in God and His laws.

The God of the Declaration of Independence was thus a reality recognized not just in America, but around the world.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 4 of 8

This is still the first paragraph, but with different parts underlined:

“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.“*

The American founders knew that some nations might object to the founders’ decision to separate from Great Britain – Great Britain, for one. For this reason, the Declaration goes to great lengths to offer reasons for the separation – so much so, that the litany of complaints against King George III takes up two-thirds of the document and makes for tedious 21st-century reading. The founders were asserting that George was a tyrant and they took pains to be explicit about his tyrannical behavior lest any nation think they had insufficient cause for the separation.

The grounding of their decision in God, however, required no explanation or justification at all. Everyone who read the Declaration of Independence knew which God the Americans were talking about.

The God of the Declaration of Independence needed no introduction to the company of nations into which America was entering.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 5 of 8

We now move on to the second paragraph of the “birth certificate” of the United States of America. Remember that our goal is to understand the God that this document speaks of and how the documents signers viewed Him.

“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…”*

In this passage, God is identified as the “Creator” who “created.” Thus the God being referenced in the Declaration of Independence is the God who created all of nature including us – “us” being human beings. That is, the God being invoked in this document is not the God of America but rather the God of all nations – of the whole world and everything in it.

The reasons for independence were not self-evident to other nations, and that’s why those reasons were spelled out in great detail. However, that God has created all men, and with certain rights at that, was deemed to be “self-evident” to all the nations of the world at that time.

It is impossible to understand The Declaration of Independence in secular terms. It was written from a nation that believed in God…to nations that believed in God…about things that God does and that He allows nations to do.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 6 of 8

Having covered references to God in the beginning of the Declaration, we will now move to the end of the document. Recall that the vast middle of this writing consists of extensive details about the problems with King George’s rule that provoked the colonists to separate and declare independence. It is not necessary to our purpose to examine this vast middle of the text. Here then is how the founders conclude the document, calling once again on the God they invoked in the beginning.

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States…”*

Having referred to Him as “God” and “Creator” in the beginning, the founders now close by referring to Him as “the Supreme Judge of the world.” And having established that the rationale for their independence was rooted in His laws, they call upon Him at the end to judge their motives – making the Declaration of Independence, among other things, a prayer!

The founders obviously believed in a God who knew their hearts and would take into consideration their degree of sincerity and faithfulness as He governed the nations.

This document is a secularist’s nightmare.

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 7 of 8

We come now to the final sentence of the Declaration – the one right before the 56 individual signatures representing the 13 new United States.

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”*

Secular Americans will say that it’s inappropriate in this day of multiculturalism and religious pluralism for Americans to talk about God in this way. They think it’s out of bounds for Americans to say publicly that “the protection of divine Providence” is available to us – much less to place “a firm reliance” on it. Yet this is exactly what the founders of our country did!

When it was time to conclude the Declaration of Independence and put themselves in the bullseye of the world’s most powerful nation of the time, the American founders called upon God to protect those things they held most dear: “our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.” In other words, when it counted most, these 56 Americans – on behalf of their 2.5 million countrymen – counted most on God.

(Oh, and did you notice that it was “sacred” honor that concerned them, not “human” honor?)

The God of the Declaration of Independence – Part 8 of 8

We have read the relevant portions of the Declaration of Independence and seen firsthand that no honest secularist can deny the religious tone of this document. Among the words of the Declaration, we found these:

“…the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle…”

“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…”

“…appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do…solemnly publish and declare…”

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

People can study and argue about whether this founder or that one was more informed by the Enlightenment or the Protestant Reformation or some other school of thought. But what matters most are these words they wrote, signed, and published to the world…including to us, their posterity. And these words unmistakably speak of the God of the Bible. Everyone knew that at the time; it’s a shame everyone doesn’t know it now. That’s why it would be so good to get more people to read it.

There are four strategic paragraphs in the Declaration – the first two and the last two. Everything in between consists of the new nation’s long list of grievances against their former king. The four quotes you see above are spread across those four paragraphs – one in each one of those four paragraphs, each phrase strategically situated in each strategic paragraph.

The founders gave us a country that separated church from state…but not God from state. On the contrary, they emphatically declared God to be essential to the nation’s existence. No honest reader of this document could miss that point. A secularist might fervently wish that these statements were not present in the text and that the founders’ signatures did not follow them – but there they all are.

The God of the Constitution – Part 1 of 6

The Constitution doesn’t make as much explicit mention of God as does the Declaration of Independence, but it doesn’t need to. This is because the Constitution is based upon the Declaration of Independence and is therefore an extension of it. The two fit together like hand in glove.

Here’s how the Constitution begins:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”*

The expression “the Blessings of Liberty” is, of course, an allusion to God – obviously, the same one referenced in the Declaration of Independence. Not only are blessings the province of God, He is the only party who could span the innumerable generations implied by “posterity.”

This phrase, positioned where it is in this opening sentence, is a summarizing purpose of the purposes listed before it – an umbrella purpose.

Therefore, the Constitution begins where the Declaration of Independence left off – in a religious, not a secular, way.

The God of the Constitution – Part 2 of 6

There are three places in the Constitution where a requirement for an “Oath or Affirmation”* is stated. This is, of course, an implied reference to God since an oath invokes God as witness to a promise and its execution.

• Article I, Section 3 requires that the Senate, when trying an impeachment, must be “on Oath or Affirmation.”
• Article II, Section 1 specifies the “Oath or Affirmation” that the president must take before assuming office.
• Article VI states that all officers of the government – legislative, executive, judicial and regardless of whether federal or state – “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution…”

Note carefully that third bullet point. All government officers of all three branches of government at both the federal and state levels were bound to support the Constitution by “oath or affirmation.”

The primary reason that an “affirmation” was allowed in place of an oath was that some strains of Christianity (such as the Quakers) interpreted Jesus’ mention of oaths in the Sermon on the Mount as a prohibition against them; therefore, such believers wanted to be able to affirm before God that they were telling the truth without having to swear to it. Thus God was in view for both the “oath” and the “affirmation.” This accommodation for certain believers did not originate in colonial America but had been inherited from England. Modern secularists often assume that “affirmation” is a secular version of an oath, but that’s false assumption. If anything, the Quakers were more zealously religious than other Christian denominations and were willing to willing to endure scorn by being, at least in their minds, more scrupulous about obeying Jesus than other Christians.

The framers of the Constitution were obviously not seeking to establish a secular government. On the contrary, they wanted all of the government’s agents – from the president on down – to be accountable to God, and not just the people, for the faithful discharge of their duties.

Historian Daniel Dreisbach puts it this way:

The Constitution’s oath requirements…entailed a profoundly religious act…Moral philosophers and constitutional architects in the founding era and well into the nineteenth century typically defined an oath as a solemn appeal to the Supreme Being for the truth of what is said, by a person who believes in the existence of a Supreme Being, and in a future state of rewards and punishments, according to that form which will bind his conscience most.

Reading the Bible with the Founding Fathers by Daniel L. Dreisbach, Oxford University Press, 2017, page 46

Obviously, the framers of the Constitution constructed a government in which God was made a party to every government officer’s service. I wonder how many of them think of it that way today. I wonder also how secularists think they could attain the same level of accountability for government officers that such a requirement produces. The framers of the Constitution were obviously seeking to make every single employee of the government into a deputy of God – making any dereliction of duty far more serious than it might otherwise be.

The God of the Constitution – Part 3 of 6

The governmentwide requirement for all its officers to take an “Oath or Affirmation” is easy to overlook in the Constitution, but the profound importance of its being there should not be underestimated. While the literal wording of the option opens the door for a modern secularist to become an officer of the government, the expectation when the Constitution was written was that all government officers would be God-fearing men. For, as we have seen, both the “Oath” and the “Affirmation” were understood to be taken in the sight of God.

Regarding the president’s “Oath or Affirmation,” specifically, the Constitution says…

“Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:—”I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” (Article II, Section 1, paragraph 8)

This is the only place that an “Oath or Affirmation” is spelled out in the Constitution; as such, it became a model for the other offices of government.

Nothing in the Constitution requires that a Bible be involved but the first president set the example of putting his hand on one that is still widely followed today. In setting this example, he was merely continuing the practice that was common in colonial America because it had been common in England before that. In other words, the Constitution didn’t have to explicitly mention the Bible because its use in taking an oath was widely understood.

The point of all this is not that atheists or agnostics or Bible skeptics should be denied the right to hold government office; rather, it is that secularists are wrong to say that the framers wanted our government officials to enter government service, and discharge their duties, without any regard for God. On the contrary, the idea was that every officer of the government was accountable not just to his superiors in the government, not just accountable to the people of the country, but accountable also to God Almighty. This oath/affirmation requirement was a logical fulfillment of the Constitution’s stated purpose to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.”

The God of the Constitution – Part 4 of 6

In the Constitution’s third and last mention of “Oath and Affirmation,” it adds a prohibition against any “religious Test.”

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”* (Article VI, paragraph 3, underlining added)

The word “Affirmation” as an option to “Oath” combined with opposition to any “religious Test” would seem to be constitutional provisions made to order for modern secular sensibilities, albeit secularists do still have the inconvenience of that word “Oath” (implying God) leading the way. Viewed in its proper historical context, however, the “no religious Test” reference, like the “Affirmation” reference, actually was included to protect believers, not unbelievers.

As “Affirmation” was added as an option to “Oath” to accommodate the theological views that some Christians held about oaths, so the prohibition against “religious tests” was an accommodation to diverse Christian views – not secular views. Some of the 13 states imposed religious tests – such as required membership in a particular Christian denomination or requiring that the officeholder not be a member of some other Christian denomination. The prohibition against such religious tests applied only to federal offices, but a 1961 Supreme Court decision (Torcaso v Watkins) based on the First and Fourteenth Amendments effectively extended the prohibition to state offices. The point for us is that the ban on religious tests original Constitution was to allow diversity of Christian practice – not demand secular practice.

The diversity of Christian practice that this “no religious test” provision was intended to insure was part of America’s determination to avoid having a “Church of America” as there had been a Church of England. Slightly over half of the 13 colonies each had their own established church, and all 13 had some form of state-supported religion (Source: ProCon Britannica.org), but the founders agreed that there was to be no established church for the nation as a whole. Clearly, it was freedom of religion they were granting, not freedom from religion. The full tide of secularism we now see, including an increasing militancy against religion, is something the founders never saw coming and certainly never sought to foster.

The God of the Constitution – Part 5 of 6

Here are the final words of the Constitution; they come just before the signatures.

“done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of September in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independance of the United States of America the Twelfth In witness whereof We have hereunto subscribed our Names,

Because the Declaration of Independence was dated July 4th, 1776 and the Constitution was dated September 17th, 1787, it is clear why it says above that it was the “Twelfth” year of “the Independance of the United States of America.” That is, you can count backward from September 1787 and know that it takes 12 years to get to July 1776, which was, of course, the date of the Declaration of Independence. Thus did the framers explicitly connect the Constitution with the Declaration of Independence.

Who then was the “Lord” to whom they were counting backward 1,787 years to connect themselves to…and why do they refer to Him as “our”? I’ll leave you to ruminate on these two questions…except to say that they do not imply secular answers.

The God of the Constitution – Part 6 of 6

We have read the relevant portions of the U. S. Constitution and seen firsthand that it was written and understood in a religious – not a secular – context. Let’s review.

Strategically placed in the preamble to the Constitution we found these words:

…in Order to…secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…

In three different Articles (I, II, and VI) of the Constitution, the last applying to all officers of the government both federal and state, we find the requirement of an…

…Oath or Affirmation…

Affixed to the universal requirement applying to all government officers, we find this stipulation:

…no religious Test…

We noted that both the option of an affirmation and the prohibition against religious tests were accommodations to the scruples of certain Christian sects. The founders did not want a Church of America as there had been a Church of England. What they wanted was Christian pluralism – the ability for citizens to freely worship according to the dictates of their individual consciences. This was the very attraction that drew so many of them from their homeland across the Atlantic Ocean to an otherwise forbidding location.

The framers then concluded the provisions of the Constitution and prepared to add their signatures with a solemn reference to the birth of the nation and to the time their Lord had walked the earth:

…in the Year of our Lord…

As with the Declaration of Independence, reading the Constitution demonstrates how secular modern America has become, how far we have strayed from the faith of our fathers.

This is not to say that the first American citizens were all devout Christians. It is to say that it was undoubtedly a religious – not a secular – culture. To be more precise, you could even substitute for the word “religious” any of the following words:

• biblical
• Christian
• Judeo-Christian

In no case can the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution be reasonably interpreted as written for a secular republic.

God in the Bill of Rights – Part 1 of 3

As the text of the U.S. Constitution began circulating among the various states, calls arose for it to be accompanied by a clear statement of individual rights that the new government would guarantee. Precedents for this sort of list included the Magna Carta, the English Bill of Rights, and the Virginia Declaration of Rights. It was decided that ten critical liberties would be added to the Constitution as its first ten amendments. Here was the first in that list:

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Let’s think about this. The new nation feels compelled to explicitly state the most important rights that its citizens will enjoy. Their list is going to be ten items long, and they put religion in the very first item. And of the other topics addressed in that first amendment – freedom of speech, of the press, and of the right to peaceably assemble and petition – freedom of religion comes first. What more could they have done to indicate the importance they attached to religion?

With the first generation of American citizens giving such a prominent place to religion in a list of its chief concerns, are we to believe they wanted their posterity to have a society as secular as ours? Would they not be shocked and horrified that so many Americans today prefer escape from religion rather than embrace of religion – even to the point that religious Americans are forced to practice their religion privately so as not to disturb the thoroughly secular public square?

God in the Bill of Rights – Part 2 of 3

Having seen religion in its proper context – which is first in the Bill of Rights – let us examine precisely what is being said about it.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof…

In Europe, each nation having an official church had led to all sorts of sectarian wars – conflicts that caused persecuted worshipers to flee Europe seeking freedom of worship in the New World. Nevertheless, a majority of the 13 colonies had an established church.

• For Virginia, New York, Maryland, North Carolina, and South Carolina, the state church was Anglican/Church of England – in other words, the same as the motherland.
• For Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, it was the Congregational Church.
• For Delaware, Rhode Island, Georgia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, there was no official church for the state.

The First Amendment had no restraining effect on the eight official state churches identified above. However, one by one over time, these states ended their officially-designated churches, the last one being New Hampshire in 1877. (Source: ProCon Britannica.org)

Of course, there were Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, Quakers, and other denominations large and small sprinkled throughout the 13 colonies, and even the five colonies without an official church still supported religion in various ways. The United States of America was not just predominately a Christian nation at its founding, but a predominately Protestant nation.

It was obviously that there were too many different Protestant denominations active in Colonial America for there to be an agreed upon national church. Therefore, the founders decided, there would be no “Church of America” as there had been, and still is, a “Church of England.” Nor would the president of the United States be the head of such a church as the king of England was head of the church of England. The colonies wanted freedom from politically tyranny so it was only fitting that in forming the Constitution of the new nation that freedom from religious tyranny was in order as well.

The second clause of the First Amendment is an extension of the first. Just as there would be no official Christian denomination for the new country, neither would its lawmaking body be allowed to pass a single law restricting religious practice. Without the second clause, the government could gradually worm its way around the first by establishing a single denominational point of view one law at a time. The founders were nailing the door shut on the idea that the federal government should have any say in religious matters.

Secularists have managed to turn these principles on their head. These days, the federal government has all kinds of say over religious matters. It is a veritable tyrant on the subject – outlawing prayer in public schools, deciding what sort of Nativity scenes are or aren’t acceptable on government property, ruling on when citizens can and cannot follow religious conscience (as in the cases of wedding cake baking and wedding flower arranging), and much, much more. These are the very federal government activities that the First Amendment was designed prohibit. What was meant to protect religious people is in our time used to protect people who are not religious. This is getting the Bill of Rights completely backwards…analogous to saying “up is down” or “east is west.”

That first generation of Americans prized the freedom of religion they had gained by leaving England. They did not want that freedom restricted in any way. Having a national church would have restricted it, but not to the degree that secularism is now restricting it. The words of the First Amendment are clear about the religious freedom our nation’s founders wanted for themselves and their posterity.

God in the Bill of Rights – Part 3 of 3

There are yet a few more things that must be said about God in the Bill of Rights. Let’s look one more time at the First Amendment in its totality.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.*

First, notice the other subjects with which “religion” is associated: “free speech,” “freedom of the press,” and “the right to assemble.” Should the first of those four subjects be considered any less American than the other three? Positioned together as they are in this first element of the Bill of Rights, were not these four ideals considered quintessentially American at the time of the country’s founding? Otherwise, they would not have met with public approval when presented this way.

Second, if you were to read Amendments II through X – that is, the balance of the Bill of Rights – you would see these four freedoms as a unique set. They provide the foundation for the remaining nine. They are the atmosphere – the oxygen – which the other rights breathe and live by.

Third, consider how few Americans these days must read the Bill of Rights. These ten amendments to the Constitution are probably not even taught in school. People hear this or that phrase quoted in public media but they’re not really familiar with how the Bill of Rights reads – either in its letter or its spirit.

If modern Americans were more familiar with the First Amendment, one of their great curiosities would be “Why are we not more religious?” Or, if they’re opposed to becoming more religious, they might think “How can these ideas be of much use to us today?” That’s my whole point: America was not founded to be secular. It was never envisioned to become secular. It’s not reasonable to think that it ever could be secular unless its structure was changed because, as you have seen, reference to God is inherent in the structure of this nation and its government as originally defined. If America becomes secular, it becomes something fundamentally different than it was founded to be.

Conclusion

You have seen firsthand that it’s not possible to read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) carefully and honestly without recognizing that religion was a much stronger force in 18th-century America than it is in 21st-century America. And, as you have seen, that’s putting it mildly. It would be more precise to say that America’s founders saw themselves building their nation in the sight of God, fearful of His judgments and hopeful of His blessings. Considering all the provisions that we read, you could even go so far as to say that God was seen as the mortar that could hold the bricks together and make America an enduring house.

None of this is to say that Americans didn’t have a wide variety of religious opinions. There were many different denominations of Christianity that had thrived in the colonies…and new ones were being created. There were Jews here, too. But there weren’t many atheists. And the term agnostic had not even been coined yet. As for the founders themselves, they, too, could be plotted across a spectrum of religious views. However, as with the general population, most were biblically oriented, though sectarian distinctions prevailed and piety could vary widely. Americans did not hold their religious views to a uniform standard…but that was the main point: America was a place of religious freedom!

The power of secularism in modern America has been growing in strength especially since the 1962 Supreme Court decision against prayer in school. The Communist scare and nuclear threat of the 1950’s had led to “under God” being added to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” being added to the currency, so the 1962 court decision clearly was a pivotal moment because things have been going against religious interests in public life ever since. Even the Religious Freedom Restoration Act movement at the federal and state levels was only a short-lived recovery of some religious rights. Practitioners of religion have been losing ground at an increasing rate.

The most pressing national question at the moment is whether a nation and government designed to support religious interests can survive a predominantly secular citizenry. The purpose of this essay has not been to resolve that question but rather to clarify a precondition for resolving it. That clarification is to prove through the reading of its founding documents that America and its government were designed for religion, not secularism. If you have any doubts about that, you can go back and read them again.

Addendum

The following short essay – referencing the views of John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington – supplements the longer essay above. 

Three Founders on God’s Involvement with America

1. John Adams on the Role of God in America’s Founding Documents

There is nothing in America’s chief founding documents – The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) – that seeks to protect secular people. If anything, these founding documents seem completely unaware of secular people. All the protections specified have a religious people in view. The good news for modern secularists is that religious people will tolerate them. The bad news for modern religious people is that secularists are intolerant of religious people – and increasingly so as secular people have achieved more and more power in our society.

Secular Americans routinely ignore The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. These secularists do, however, often give lip service to those documents, as in accusing their political opponents of “precipitating a Constitutional crisis” over this or that issue. How do secularists get away with such hypocrisy? The ignorance of so many Americans – especially younger ones – about what the founding documents actually say.

(My last statement was not an indictment of the young. On the contrary, it’s an indictment of their elders who taught them so little about what the founding documents actually say. Because of this ignorance, those errant elders could go on to claim that the founding documents say things they do not say – with the younger people not knowledgeable enough to call their elders on it. I’ve just described the modern American college or university.)

Modern secular Americans are very much like the 1st-century Pharisees that Jesus faced. The Pharisees promoted the Law of Moses but had workarounds that exempted them from following it, plus new commandments of their their own making for others to follow, but that they attributed to God. Thus these Pharisees ruled on their own authority through their man-made commandments all while claiming the backing of God. Modern secularists do the same thing; that is, they claim to be acting consistent with the Constitution but it’s only general ignorance about the Constitution and Declaration that allows secularists to get away with making their claims among the general population.

Modern secularists have twisted the separation of church and state into the separation of God and state – thus seeking to make secular every aspect of public life. Yet neither the Declaration of Independence nor the Constitution were designed to support this kind of secular society.

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

– John Adams, second president of the United States, to the military in 1798

A modern American secularist is – by definition – opposed to America’s founding documents because those documents foster religion. He may not admit it, but if you try to take him to the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution so that the two of you can read together the relevant provisions, he will avoid the encounter.

Keep your eye on secularists and see that they will continue to move farther and farther away from America’s founding documents. And the farther away they get, the faster they will keep moving. They are practically untethered from those documents already. Lip service to the texts is all the secularists will give. Just like the Pharisees.

2. Benjamin Franklin on the Role of God in America’s Founding Documents

At its founding, America was a thoroughly biblical culture. We cannot return to the founding ideals of America without returning to that biblical context. The quote below from Benjamin Franklin – who was one of the founders not known for his piety – shows how even the less spiritual men of that age were far more spiritually-minded than most Americans today.

We cannot expect that America’s founding documents – such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – which were written in a Judeo-Christian context can be properly understood and valued in a secular context such as we have today. Therefore, we need to become as biblically literate as they were if we want to understand the documents the way they understood them. That will take considerable time.

Consider how spiritually-minded a relatively non-spiritually-minded American spoke in the late 18th century. Benjamin Franklin addressed the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia on June 28, 1787 and made a motion calling for prayer as follows:

Mr. President:

The small progress we have made after 4 or five weeks close attendance & continual reasonings with each other — our different sentiments on almost every question, several of the last producing as many noes as ays, is methinks a melancholy proof of the imperfection of the Human Understanding. We indeed seem to feel our own want of political wisdom, since we have been running about in search of it. We have gone back to ancient history for models of Government, and examined the different forms of those Republics which having been formed with the seeds of their own dissolution now no longer exist. And we have viewed Modern States all round Europe, but find none of their Constitutions suitable to our circumstances.

In this situation of this Assembly, groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? In the beginning of the Contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need his assistance?

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. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that “except the Lord build the House they labour in vain that build it.” I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better than the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by Human Wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest.

I therefore beg leave to move — that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service —

Source: Records of Constitutional Convention from the notes of James Madison

Given how little progress on the Constitution had been made to this point in the Convention, and the Constitution that they ultimately produced and signed, there should be little doubt that God made the difference. We can rightly say that the United States Constitution was birthed in an atmosphere of dependence on God.

3. George Washington on the Role of God in America’s Founding

The following paragraph is an excerpt from Washington’s farewell letter as commander to his troops after the conclusion of the American Revolution but before he took on the role of president. According to historian Daniel Dreisbach, Washington “identified the ‘light of Revelation’ – by which he meant the Bible – as the most important factor contributing to the remarkable confluence producing the American nation.” (I have underlined the relevant section below.)

The foundation of our Empire was not laid in the gloomy age of Ignorance and Superstition, but at an Epocha when the rights of mankind were better understood and more clearly defined, than at any former period, the researches of the human mind, after social happiness, have been carried to a great extent, the Treasures of knowledge, acquired by the labours of Philosophers, Sages and Legislatures, through a long succession of years, are laid open for our use, and their collected wisdom may be happily applied in the Establishment of our forms of Government; the free cultivation of Letters, the unbounded extension of Commerce, the progressive refinement of Manners, the growing liberality of sentiment, and above all, the pure and benign light of Revelation, have had ameliorating influence on mankind and increased the blessings of Society. At this auspicious period, the United States came into existence as a Nation, and if their Citizens should not be completely free and happy, the fault will be intirely their own.

Full Text of George Washington’s Circular Letter of Farewell to the Army, June 8, 1783 at the Library of Congress website; and for the Dreisbach quote, see Bible by Daniel L. Dreisbach, D.Phil., J.D., Professor, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, American University

Daniel Dreisbach is one of many historians who have taken note of Washington’s faith and its practical relevance to America’s founding. George Tsakiridis of South Dakota State University in George Washington and Religion wrote, “Notably, Washington did see God as guiding the creation of the United States.”

Further to the point, consider this excerpt from George Washington’s Farewell Address.

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

– excerpt of George Washington’s Farewell Address (1796), delivered on the occasion of marking his completion of two full terms as president of the United States.

Like the other American founders, George Washington’s theological perspective does not fit neatly into 21st-century doctrinal boxes. However, that he was a religious man, that his religion was rooted in the Bible, and that, in this regard, he was a typical American of his day cannot be denied and should not be overlooked by anyone who wants to have an accurate understanding of the ideals that shaped the founding of the United States of America.

Conclusion

These quotes from Adams, Franklin, and Washington are but a sample of many, many more that exist in colonial and early American literature – more quotes from these three and from many other founders. All the extant literature from that era testifies against the secular culture that is increasing being imposed on American life. If modern Americans want to live in a secular culture, that is their choice no matter how foolish and ill-advised it might be. But they should not be allowed to claim that this is what the founders wanted.