America at 250: The Importance of Christianity in Shaping the Founding
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, it is worthwhile to discuss the profound influence that Christianity played in the founding of the American nation. As Barbara J. Elliott has noted: “The American founders believed that freedom must be linked to faith, or freedom would fail. They were convinced that a free nation can function well only if its citizens live by the fruits of faith.”[i] Elliott adds: “The American founders were certain that religion is indispensable for freedom. Without virtue, freedom cannot be sustained. And faith is necessary to foster virtue.”[ii] John Adams, who was a major force in convincing the Continental Congress to sever ties with England and to declare independence, put it this way: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”[iii] In a letter to Benjamin Rush, Adams added that “Religion and virtue are the only foundations, not only of republicanism and of all free government, but of social felicity under all government and in all the combinations of human society.[iv]
There can be no doubt that faith in God was deeply ingrained in the American mind at the time of the founding. Thirteen years after the Declaration, George Washington emphasized providence in his Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789, stating:
Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor-- and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness. . .
Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be-- That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks--for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation--for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war--for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed--for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national One now lately instituted.[v]
Charles W. Dunn, Emeritus Professor at Regent University, chronicled numerous examples of the primacy of the Chrisitan faith in shaping American institutions of government. Below, I offer five examples from Dunn’s work:
· The citizens of Exeter, New Hampshire, in their compact of 1629, wrote: “In the name of Christ and in the sight of God, we combine ourselves together to erect and set up among us such government as shall be, to our best discerning, agreeable to the will of God.”[vi]
· In 1638, the people of Connecticut organized into a Confederation “to gather to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus, which we now profess.”[vii]
· The Great Law of Pennsylvania of 1689 proclaimed: “Whereas the glory of Almighty God and the good of mankind is the reason and the end of government. . . therefore government itself is a venerable ordinance of God.”[viii]
· The Pennsylvania oath of office for legislators in 1776 stated: “I do believe in one God, the creator and governor of the universe, the rewarder of the good and the punisher of the wicked. And I do acknowledge the scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”[ix]
· Similar to Pennsylvania’s oath, the Delaware oath of office in 1776 stated: “I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.”[x]
The devotion to Christian principles carried over into the drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The first paragraph of the Declaration states:
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 phrase “Laws of Nature” in the Declaration refers to divine law. As John Locke put it in his Second Treatise on Government which was a major influence on Jefferson, the primary author of the Declaration: “Thus the law of nature stands as an eternal rule of all men, legislators as well as others. The rules they make must be conformable … to the will of God.”[xi]
The Second Paragraph of the Declaration of Independence states:
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—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it. . .
This paragraph, Dunn notes, derives, in part, from William Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone wrote: “As man depends upon his Maker for everything it is necessary that he should at all points conform to his maker’s will.”[xii] Blackstone added that the law of nature, is “expressly declared to be by God himself.” The Declaration, Dunn suggests, holds that man’s rights come not from man (or government) but from God, and that they are unchangeable: That is why these truths are “self evident”—that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with “inalienable rights.”[xiii] These ideas were ingrained in the American mind long before the Declaration of Independence was written.
Eighty-seven years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln reaffirmed the right to liberty and equality in his speech honoring the dead after the battle of Gettysburg. Lincoln eloquently stated that “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that All Men are Created Equal.”[xiv] Lincoln concluded his address by noting “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that a government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”[xv]
Calvin Coolidge Commemorates the Declaration 100 Years Ago
One hundred years ago this week, President Calvin Coolidge emphasized that the religious spirit of the American people is “the spring that watered” the founding principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence.[xvi] Nathaniel Urban notes that Coolidge’s message is clear: “If the people forsake the Scriptures, their connection to the Declaration of Independence will be broken,” and the principles outlined in the document will “whiter and die.”[xvii] President Coolidge warned of a “pagan materialism,” that will occur “if the religious habits of the people fall by the wayside, or worse still, if the children of the next generation are not raised in the faith.”[xviii] Coolidge, Urban notes, “declares rightly, that the ‘things of the spirit come first,’ that the future of the country lies in the Christian faith.”[xix] Coolidge continued his speech emphasizing the permanence of the Declaration of Independence:
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed {by God} with their inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.[xx]
Later in his speech, Coolidge turned to a discussion of God and providence.
It is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. . .It is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say "The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven."[xxi]
Nathaniel Urban adds that “The presence of God in the Declaration is not a coincidence. It is very much intentional.”[xxii]
Coolidge notes that it was not just the creation of a new nation that makes the Declaration of Independence memorable, it is the articulation of principles of equality, liberty, and inalienable rights that make the document immortal. As Coolidge puts it:
There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity. It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.[xxiii]
Nathaniel Urban observes that “The religious spirit of the American people of 1776 remains essential to the life of the Republic” 250 years later.[xxiv] In spite of steadily declining church attendance and a disturbing decline in the number of Americans who believe in God, Urban remains optimistic, writing: “We Americans of 2026 avow that the United States was, is, and continues to be shaped by Christianity.”[xxv] Amen to that.
1. Barbara J. Elliott, “Faith and the American Founding,” The Imaginative Conservative, June 13, 2026
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] John Adams, Address to the Military, October 11, 1798, quoted in Matther Spalding, editor, The Founders’ Almanac (Washington, D.C., The Heritage Foundation, 2002), p. 191.
[iv] John Adams to Benjamin Rush, August 28, 1811, quoted in Spalding, ed., The Founders’ Almanac, p. 190.
[v] Transcript for President George Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation from October 3, 1789.
Thanksgiving Proclamation of 1789 | George Washington's Mount Vernon
[vi] Quoted in Charles W. Dunn, The Scarlet Thread of Scandal: Morality and the American Presidency (Lanham, Boulder, New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers , Inc. 2000), p. 27.
[vii] Ibid., p. 27.
[viii] Ibid., p. 27.
[ix] Ibid., pp. 27-28.
[x] Ibid., p. 28.
[xi] Ibid., p. 20.
[xii] Ibid.
[xiii] Ibid., pp. 20-21.
[xiv] Abraham Lincoln Online, Speeches & Writings, Gettysburg Address: The Gettysburg Address by Abraham Lincoln
[xv] Ibid.
[xvi] Nathaniel Urban, “Calvin Coolidge, Christianity, and the American Founding,” The Imaginative Conservative, May 22, 2026. Calvin Coolidge, Christianity, & the American Founding ~ The Imaginative Conservative
[xvii] Ibid.
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Ibid.
[xx] Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Calvin Coolidge, July 5, 1926, The Miller Center, Presidential Speeches: July 5, 1926: Declaration of Independence Anniversary Commemoration | Miller Center
[xxi] Ibid.
[xxii] Nathaniel Urban, “Calvin Coolidge, Christianity, and the American Founding.”
[xxiii] Speech on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Miller Center
[xxiv] Urban, “Calvin Coolidge, Christianity and the American founding.”
[xxv] Ibid.
Phillip Henderson, Ph.D., University of Michigan, taught at the Catholic University of America for 31 years before retiring as Associate Professor in the Department of Politics.
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