“All nations that have ever existed have been founded upon some theistic or anti-theistic principle. If we know our history, we know that America was a nation founded upon Christ and His Word.” - Rev. D. James Kennedy (from a sermon at Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida).
So said one of my true heroes of the faith, the Christian patriot, Rev. D. James Kennedy (1930-2007). I’ve always believed this to be true, and at one time the majority of Americans also believed it. Not too many years ago (2007) it was reported by the First Amendment Center that “65% of Americans believed that the nation’s Founders intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation”, and that “55% of Americans believed that the U.S. Constitution established a Christian nation.” I suspect that those percentages are lower today. Were these Americans seventeen years ago correct in their assumptions, or had they been misled by centuries of misinformation? Some groups among us, groups with questionable and suspicious and anti-Christian agendas, believe that to be so. Or they want you to believe their deliberate disinformation.
Some of these anti-Christian groups, boldly proclaiming their own version of “history”, have long claimed that our nation was created from its beginning as a basically secular land. For example, here are some claims from some of these groups that are leading proponents of secularism:
“Many fanatics are working vigorously to turn America into a Christian nation…. America has never been a Christian nation”
Freedom From Religion Foundation
“Our Founders knew that mixing religion and government only caused civil strife, inequality, and very often violence in pluralistic societies.”
Americans United For The Separation Of Church And State
“The Founding Fathers… rarely practiced Christian orthodoxy…. They understood the dangers of religion”
Early American Review
As much as I generally despise the racist and globalist President Woodrow Wilson for the damage he perpetrated upon our nation, he was correct when he said:
“A nation which does not remember what it was yesterday, does not know what it is today, nor what it is trying to do. We are trying to do a futile thing if we do not know where we came from or what we have been about…. America was born a Christian nation. America was born to exemplify that devotion to the elements of righteousness which are derived from the revelations of Holy Scripture.”
Well, it’s difficult to state the truth more plainly than that. I find it hard to reconcile what these anti-Christian groups proclaim as their “gospel” when the truth about America’s founding principles, as incomplete as they were and as imperfect as we who have lived under those principles have always been, is all around us in our history. That Americans didn’t always live up to those precious Christian truths in our past does not nullify them—it merely condemns those who turned a blind eye to them or gave only half-hearted “lip service” to them.
Several years ago I got a wonderful small book from D. James Kennedy Ministries titled: Ten Truths About America’s Christian Heritage, written by Sam Kastensmidt (published 2008 by D.James Kennedy Ministries). It contains ten historical statements, or “truths” that, according to its author, authenticate the claims of Christians and patriots that, indeed, America was originally founded based on Scriptural teachings—NOT as a “theocracy”, thankfully, or even as a fully “Christian” nation, as such (there has never been one of those), but a nation founded by mostly God-fearing Christian men (influenced by God-fearing and Christian women, I’m sure, and including some patriots of the Jewish Faith) who based their founding principles on what were admittedly compromises in their beliefs, but based on the assurances that what they had codified for themselves and their posterity was “honoring” to the basic doctrines of Christianity and incorporated certain rights that were understood by all at that time to have come from our Creator God and NOT from any government.
Some pompous and uninformed “scholars” have claimed that there is no mention of God in either our Declaration of Independence or in our 1787 Constitution. As I have written in this great journal of truth in the past, that is totally uninformed balderdash. But this article is about “truths” that point to the inescapable conclusion that indeed, America’s founding was not only based on Christian principles but was “breathed on” by our Creator God right from our beginnings. I’ll not be able to discuss all ten “truths” in this article, but using Mr. Kastensmidt’s list and paraphrasing his thoughts with mine, perhaps you’ll come to the same conclusions.
TRUTH #1; AMERICA WAS BEGUN AS A CHURCH RELOCATION PROJECT.
I doubt that most Americans, as historically illiterate as they have been purposely made to be over recent decades, courtesy of the “Institutes of Induced Ignorance” (i.e. government schools) in which they’ve been “mal-educated”, know much about what really motivated Christopher Columbus to explore and “discover” North America and the Caribbean Islands. According to that great explorer and faithful Christian, Columbus’ main goal was not to seek fame and riches, but as he wrote in his book, “Book of Prophecies”, he claimed that his main motivation for undertaking his voyages of discovery was “the fact that the Gospel must still be preached to so many lands….(T)his is what convinces me.”
Later, Queen Isabella claimed that Columbus was trying “to bear the light of Christ west to the heathen undiscovered lands.” We all used to be taught that the first uncharted island he came upon was named not after himself or his sovereigns who financed his voyage, but he called it “San Salvador”, i.e. “Holy Savior”.
Later, in 1608, other explorers and colonists established Jamestown, in what is now Virginia. History has recorded that the first thing they did was to raise a large wooden cross right on the beach and claim the new land for Jesus Christ. The very first Charter of Virginia stated the reason for establishing Jamestown was for the “propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.” Whether or not these colonists and their financial backers truly planned to pursue that noble goal is debatable, for their relations with the Native People soon deteriorated and turned violent. But their original intentions to share the Gospel with those living in darkness were noble.
And who can forget the bravery and dedication and sacrifices of the Plymouth Pilgrims, who began a Christian settlement on the bleak and freezing shores of New England (which was referred to as “Virginia” at that time) in 1620, “…for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian faith”. That truly was a “church relocation project”, because a portion of the “Separatists” (which, after having “separated” themselves from the corrupt Church of England, is what they called themselves) from Pastor John Robinson’s church in Leiden, Holland boarded an old freighter named “Mayflower” in England, and sailed into history, establishing by covenants the concept of “self government under Christ alone”, the early foreshadowing of our Constitutional Republic.
Ten years later, in 1630, a larger band of non-Separatist Puritans followed their Pilgrim brethren to the wilderness of North America and established a colony at Boston in what is now Massachusetts. As their governor, John Winthrop, proclaimed in a sermon during their voyage:
“For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us, so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work…and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and…we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God.”
TRUTH #2: THE FOUNDERS RECOGNIZED GOD AS THE SOURCE OF LIBERTY AND LAW.
One of my favorite historical figures from the 20th century is Reverend Peter Marshall (1902-1949), (i.e. “A Man Called Peter”, from a book by that title written by his wife, Catherine), a Scottish immigrant who became the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate from 1946 until his untimely early death in 1949. He was an acknowledged authority on the spiritual heritage of his adopted nation, the U.S. He often reminded his American countrymen: “The Constitution of the U.S. has a path of descent that you can trace directly back to Puritan New England.”
The Puritans of Boston and the Pilgrims of Plymouth both set up a social order governed by law. The Puritans are usually credited with establishing the first political constitution in the colonies in 1639. It was called the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, although I contend that the Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact of 1620 was the forerunner of our present-day constitutions. Be that as it may, George Washington thought so highly of the “Fundamental Orders of Connecticut” that he ordered every delegate at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to be provided a copy.
The Preamble of this document reads as follows:
“The Word of God required that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent Government established according to God.” The F.O.C. expressly mandated that all representatives of the government had to rule according to whatever laws had been established, and if these were lacking, then the colonies had to govern themselves “according to the Rule of the Word of God.” That document’s First Article affirmed: “The Scriptures do hold forth a perfect rule for the direction and government of all men in all duties which they are to perform to God and men.”
As Kastensmidt claimed (p. 20):
“The Puritan concept of law placed liberty under the guidance of the God of Scripture. Our Founders repeatedly asserted that this philosophy alone could guard the sovereign rights of the citizenry from the whims of a tyrannical government. John Dickinson, a signer of the Constitution from Delaware, stated:
“Kings or parliaments could not give the rights essential to happiness…. We claim them from a higher source—from the King of Kings, and Lord of all the Earth. They are not annexed to us by parchment and seals. They are created in us by the decrees of Providence, which establish the laws of our nature.”
I assume that most American patriots are aware of that portion of our nation’s “Birth Certificate”, our Declaration of Independence, wherein it says: “…all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” At the time that Jefferson wrote those words of truth all of America’s Founders knew and believed that the concept of “liberty” was surely the gift of our Creator God. Today’s Americans find themselves living, however, in the reality of what Jefferson and his associates feared, that “skeptics and governing officials would attempt to usurp the role of God as the Author of Liberty.”
Jefferson reminded us: “God who gave us life gave us liberty. 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 of the Gift of God?” If we are honest with ourselves, we know the true answer to Jefferson’s question. Are Americans today suffering the scourge of the collectivist/Marxist attacks on our freedoms and our increasingly ignored Constitution because we have denied that our erstwhile freedoms were the gift of our Creator God? I fear that is the case. Even George Washington, in his First Inaugural Address, reminded his fellow Americans: “(T)he propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained.” If you discount George Washington’s warnings, then who will you believe?
TRUTH #3: CHRISTIAN ZEAL FUELED THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.
Now we’re going to start going into the “weeds of controversy”—i.e. that it was a “dramatic stirring of spiritual vitality that gave rise to the colonists’ zeal for political liberty”, said Kastensmidt (p. 25). He was referring to a period in colonial history, from about 1730 to 1770, known as “The Great Awakening”. It was a time of great “spiritual resurgence” that Benjamin Franklin wrote about in his autobiography:
“It was wonderful to see the change soon made in the manners of our inhabitants. From being thoughtless or indifferent about religion, it seemed as if all the world were growing religious, so that one could not walk through the town in an evening without hearing psalms sung in different families of every street.”
President John Adams, who lived through these dramatic times, voiced similar observations:
“The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the mind and hearts of the people and (the) change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations…. This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American revolution.”
Sad to say, some scoffing secularists, and even some Christian churches, and their pastors/preachers/ministers, have disagreed that “spiritual” enthusiasm was a huge catalyst in precipitating the first American Revolution, or that it was “proper”—i.e. in “God’s Will”—for the British colonists to break away from the “over lordship” of the British sovereign, King George 111, and was a violation of the admonitions in Romans 13. I’ve long disagreed with that, to my mind, erroneous teaching. A portion of the British colonists disagreed also.
In the year 1774, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress published these words: “Resistance to tyranny becomes the Christian and social duty of each individual.” That Congress also informed the people of Massachusetts that they should “continue steadfast, and with a proper sense of your dependence on God, nobly defend those rights which heaven gave, and no man ought to take from us.”
We all know (I hope) that the very next year, in March of 1775, in St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, the great orator Patrick Henry galvanized the backbones of his countrymen, proclaiming to them and to his posterity (US):
“Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power: Three millions of people, armed in the Holy cause of Liberty…are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us….Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death.”
I’ve stood in St. John’s Church, on the spot whereupon Henry stood as he said those words of power. It was a humbling experience as I heard Henry’s “reinactor” recite those burning words from our past one Sunday afternoon in July of 2003. Kastensmidt hammered down on those colonial beliefs, when he stated (pp. 27-28):
“This “holy cause of liberty” led Edmund Burke, a member of the British Parliament, to warn that the Christian zeal of the Americans (British colonists at that time) would never abide under tyrannical rule. Burke urged Parliament to avoid war, noting that the colonists could never be subdued. ‘The people are Protestants’, he explained, ‘and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion. This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty, but built upon it’.” During those same debates in the British Parliament, “Sir Richard Sutton read a letter from a Crown-appointed governor in New England, which warned, ‘If you ask an American, who is his master? He will tell you he has none, nor any governor, but Jesus Christ’”, wrote Kastensmidt (p. 28).
To end this Part 1 of these articles, I’d like to quote from one of the patriots who has long been one of my “revolutionary heroes”, a real and sincere “man of God” who was a patriot also, and bravely proclaimed his zeal. His name was John Witherspoon, and he was an ordained minister—a pastor from New Jersey. He urged the Continental Congress to declare for independence from Great Britain. Eventually, there in the Pennsylvania State House (now called Independence Hall) in Philadelphia, in a room in which I’ve stood two different times, Reverend Witherspoon SIGNED the Declaration of Independence, for a few weeks earlier he had proclaimed:
“It is in the man of piety and inward principle, that we may expect to find the uncorrupted patriot, the useful citizen, and the invincible soldier. God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable….” He lived his beliefs and acted accordingly. Would that Americans today find the courage to do likewise!
