By Ray Simmons

I don’t think most Americans realize that the Declaration of Independence is a separate document created before the Constitution but is considered, in a sense, to be part of the Constitution, to be its basis. The two documents were not signed by the same people, but both were signed by individuals representing all thirteen colonies and there is some overlap. The Declaration has been said to be the soul of the Constitution and to be the basis for our separation from British Law to natural law, which gives to man freedoms of Life, Liberty and Property, which government cannot take away.

“It is significant that the founding fathers regarded religion as being so important that when they passed the Bill of Rights, religious liberty was the very first right they safeguarded—even ahead of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.”Listening to some comments these days one might think they gave us freedom from religion.

I understand that today’s public school history books hardly touch on George Washington, the Father of our Country. My seventh grade history book has over 100 pages discussing him and his generalship in the Revolutionary War. I suspect our current school histories similarly omit the other Founding Fathers. Several years ago I visited an American Art Museum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama that must have had a dozen portraits of Washington because the museum owner considered him the greatest American in history. There are many stories about Washington that are obviously exaggerated, but his leadership certainly was not. The story I like best is the one where he was engaged in a battle with American Indians concentrating on killing him. Finally the Indians said, in effect, aim elsewhere, he’s un-killable. After the battle he had several bullet holes in his clothing. True or not? I sincerely believe he had God’s protection. Providence was creating a nation. Virtually any biography you will find of Washington will emphasize his prayer life and his godly approach.

I’ll not delve into Thomas Jefferson, everybody knows he wrote the Declaration of Independence, that he had slaves, that he had a relationship with one of them, that he probably was not a Christian and that he wanted to separate the church and the state2. They might not know that he founded a university and that he wrote his own copy of the Bible.

And there’s no use discussing Ben Franklin, he was just an old man who chased women, proved lightning to be electricity, founded the University of Pennsylvania and when the congress writing the Constitution seemed to have gotten stuck and were going nowhere, suggested they try praying about it. And the story goes that seemed to be the key.

One doesn’t hear a lot about John Adams. He was the second President (1797-1801) and was regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most significant statesmen of the revolutionary period. He was trained for the ministry but eventually chose law as a profession. His family could trace its lineage to a first generation of Puritan settlers. Because he was so often away from home, he and his wife, Abigail Smith, wrote many letters to each other. These letters were later discovered and put into book form for public consumption. Adams wrote “A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law” justifying his opposition to the Stamp Act. He defended Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration and called for a decisive break with Great Britain. He nominated George Washington to serve as Commander of the Continental Army. He spent much time studying the European systems of government, seeking to find and remedy their errors that we might produce a more stabilized and sustainable approach.

James Madison is another one of the Founders who also became President, number 4, and who we don’t hear a lot about these days. He served (2 terms) from 1809-1817. He sponsored the first 10 amendments to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. He also served as Secretary of State under Jefferson during the Louisiana Purchase from France. He attended Princeton University, finishing the four year study in two years. Overwork produced an early illness that hinted at an early death, but he overcame the problem before being elected to Virginia’s 1776 Revolutionary Convention. He was physically a small man, about five feet four inches at roughly 100 pounds, but a mental giant. He became a strict constructionist of the congressional power to appropriate for the general welfare and denied the existence of implied power to establish a national bank to aid the Treasury. In 1794 he married a widow, Dolly Payne Todd, a vivacious Quaker who was 17 years his junior. This paragraph is a highly condensed version of his ventures and visions.

Let’s leave former Presidents and consider some plain old citizenry: Thomas Paine was an English-born American political activist, philosopher, political theorist, and revolutionary. One of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he authored the two most influential pamphlets at the start of the American Revolution and inspired the patriots in 1776 to declare independence from Great Britain. Born and raised in England, his early manhood appears to have been very troubled and uncertain, but he was writing some political pamphlets before moving to America. In 1774 he was introduced to Ben Franklin who suggested that he emigrate to British Colonial America. He arrived in Philadelphia on November 30, 1774. He eventually got into the publishing business with a Philadelphia magazine and boosted it readership greatly. He began urging colonists to break with Britain and emphasizing reasons for such a break. His pamphlet, “Common Sense” took-off and became, one might say, the talk of the States. Wikipedia has a great write-up on him and his work, where the essence of this paragraph came from.

Let me pick up some commentary from my seventh grade History Book.3 “From the very beginning the colonists were interested in education… as the various religious denominations grew… each wanted the rights to instruct its children in its own religious beliefs… there was great emphasis on teaching young people to read so they could learn the catechism and study the Bible… many schools sprang up for the teaching of reading, writing, and religious doctrines. The colleges founded in colonial times, like the lower schools, were nearly all religious in their purpose. The training of clergymen was their first task. The Puritans had their Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth. The followers of the Church of England had their King’s College, now Columbia, in New York and William and Mary in Virginia. The College of New Jersey, now Princeton, was under Presbyterian management; Queen’s College, now Rutgers, was Dutch reformed.”  When real history is taught, the Truth of Jesus Christ will be taught.   

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1. .Page 20 God & Caesar John Eidsmoe
2. Of course he didn’t want to separate Church & State, that’s just the lie we have been sold.
3. “America Yesterday and today” (pages 20-21) by Roy E. Nichols, William C. Bagley and Charles A. Beard
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