Foundations from the past

As Westerners steeped in a Christian worldview, America’s Founding Fathers understood that Almighty God ruled over the ebb and flow of human struggle, catastrophe, and triumph.

Broadly speaking, they believed that God’s will for governments, cultures, and civilizations was visible both in Scripture and in the natural world fashioned by His hand.

It was to this latter revelation that the founders referred when they used the term natural law, an idea firmly entrenched in their view of the world – especially politics.

In the opening paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson declared that both “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” were what entitled the nations of the earth to a “separate and equal station.”

On behalf of the American colonies, Jefferson was arguing that people had a right to govern themselves because God had built such a principle into the world He had made.

Then followed the second paragraph of the Declaration and one of the most breathtaking statements in human history:

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.

According to natural law, Jefferson and the other founders believed such a statement to be objectively true – just as true as the laws of science. The God revealed in Scripture made a world that exhibited His will in a true and meaningful way.

A disinterested “watchmaker”

Modern secularists have denied the existence of natural law and argued that the founders did not see God as being particularly connected to the Christian Deity.

While most of the architects of America were orthodox Christians, secularists frequently insist that most of the founders were “Deists.” In classical Enlightenment thought, Deism held that the Creator was like the proverbial “watchmaker” who fashioned a timepiece, wound it, and then allowed it to run as designed without further involvement.

It is true that there was a strain of anticlerical, rationalistic religious belief among a small segment of the founders. However, this smaller group of Deists held views that were closer to a Christian worldview than secularists will admit.

In fact, two of the most prominent among the supposed Deists were Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. While both rejected important Christian doctrines, they believed God was, in fact, actively involved in human affairs.

Franklin famously addressed the Constitutional Convention of 1787 when it became so mired in confusion and rancor that paralysis set in, threatening the entire enterprise. He chastised the delegates, asking why they had not thought to seek God for wisdom, reminding them that God had heard their prayers for assistance during the Revolutionary War. God was, Franklin insisted, a “powerful friend” who acted on behalf of the colonies in their struggle against the British. (See p. 35.)

“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,” he said.

Franklin followed this with an appeal to Scripture – which he called “the sacred writings” – and then quoted from Psalm 127:1, “Except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it.”

Whatever else might be said of Benjamin Franklin, the God he believed in was not a disinterested “watchmaker.”

In the case of Jefferson as well, he wrote in 1784 of his fear of divine judgment whenever men violated God’s will. In Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson said:

And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that His justice cannot sleep for ever.

Such thoughts do not manifest belief in a God who pays no attention to what men and women do.

A law written on the heart

Thus, the founders believed God created the world, ruled over it, and judged its inhabitants. Human beings lived in a divinely ordered world; it was necessary for them to understand the natural law and heed it if they were to be blessed in their earthly endeavors.

These are thoroughly Christian ideas. The apostle Paul declared that – through the natural world – even the pagans could comprehend the existence of Almighty God, understanding “His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature” (Romans 1:20).

God hints at this reality in Jeremiah 18:1-10, when He says through the prophet that sometimes a pagan nation might turn from its evil and be pleasing to Him. If that happened, He would “relent concerning the calamity [He] planned to bring on it” (v. 8). At other times, a pagan nation might do evil in God’s sight by not obeying His voice,” and thus receive judgment rather than blessing (v. 10).

How can one conceive of a pagan nation turning from its evil or obeying God’s voice when such people did not have the direct revelation of His laws or commandments?

Certainly, such a reversal might result from the preaching of a prophet like Jonah, who explicitly commanded repentance in the streets of pagan Nineveh. The people there heeded the call and subsequently saw judgment averted.

Yet Paul says in Romans 2 that there is often something else at work. There are pagans “who do not have the Law [but] do instinctively the things of the Law” (v. 14). The word translated “instinctively” is a Greek word referring to the natural order of the world – and the reasonableness of acting in accordance with it. These men and women “show the work of the Law written in their hearts” (v. 15)

Of course, it is important to note that heeding natural law is never portrayed in Scripture as being sufficient to save a single soul. However, ignoring or despising it is certainly enough to condemn a person, for Paul says in Romans 1 that God’s visibility in nature is so clear that “they are without excuse” (v. 20).

In other words, if these pagans clearly saw God in nature yet suppressed “the truth in unrighteousness,” then the wrath of God would be “revealed from heaven against all ungodliness” (Romans 1:18).

A necessary foundation

As orthodox Christians, the majority of America’s founders knew there was only one thing that could save souls – the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Moreover, they clearly understood that Christianity was the necessary foundation for a successful national endeavor in granting and preserving liberty for the American people.

Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration, echoed a sentiment stated many times by the founders: “Without morals, a republic cannot subsist any length of time.”

Why did so many founders believe this? Because to be successful, at the very least, a society must be orderly. Such order can come from an overbearing government, but then the people are not free. If the people are to have liberty, the necessary order must come from the self-control of a moral populace.

Therefore, Robert Winthrop, a member of Congress from 1840-1851 and the 18th speaker of the House of Representatives, declared – in stark terms – the importance of Christianity to the fate of the American republic: “Men, in a word, must necessarily be controlled either by a power within them or by a power without them; either by the Word of God or by the strong arm of man; either by the Bible or by the bayonet.”

A signer of the Constitution, James McHenry, asserted that without the Scriptures as the foundation of morality, all other sources for virtue would fail.

“In vain, without the Bible,” he said, “we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions.”

Current tribulations in America bear out the wisdom of that statement. For while the number of laws grows, public morality dissipates like dust. Increasingly, those concerned are forced to protect foundational institutions from the powers of darkness that assault them. The people are increasingly unrestrained by morality because the source of it – the Holy Bible – has been rejected.

The further America ventures away from Christianity, the more the approaching winds of national collapse are felt.

Samuel Adams, organizer of the Sons of Liberty and hero of the Revolutionary War, explained: “While the people are virtuous, they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.”

Forward to the past

The way back to national rejuvenation is clear. The United States of America can only be saved by a return to Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. Even in the earliest years of our country’s founding, the brilliant men who designed the blueprint for our republic were humble enough to comprehend this.

The first National Day of Thanksgiving, proclaimed by the Continental Congress in 1777, called Americans to acknowledge the blessings of heaven and to consecrate themselves to the service of Almighty God. It also called on the people to confess their sins to God and to humbly ask Him to forgive them “through the Merits of Jesus Christ.”

When President John Adams issued a proclamation of fasting and prayer in 1798, it was in recognition of the fact that “social happiness can not exist, nor the blessings of a free government be enjoyed,” apart from the “blessing of Almighty God.” In turn, such blessing could only be obtained through humility, repentance, and prayer, asking God to pardon the offenses of the people “through the Redeemer of the World.”

Finally, this extraordinary proclamation asked the gathered “congregations” of the people to ask God, “by his Holy Spirit,” to incline the hearts of the people to reform their lives in accordance with His laws.

This was not a relativistic religious proclamation “to whom it may concern” or “to an Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). This was an exhortation to the people to cry out to God the Father through Jesus Christ.

As the proclamation issued by Adams wound down to its conclusion, he affirmed that part of the purpose of the time of prayer and fasting was to request of God “that our country may be protected from all the dangers which threaten it; that our civil and religious privileges may be preserved inviolate, and perpetuated to the latest generations.”

May the prayers uttered by that God-fearing generation remain, even at this moment, before the throne of Almighty God; that He might, indeed, preserve this nation even “to the latest generations.”

Otherwise, as Jedidiah Morse, the “Father of American Geography,” said in 1799, “Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”