Happy Friday!

I’ll be traveling for the next week, and most of the month, so there won’t be many posts in August. I’ve really got to learn how to leverage AI to take over my blogging duties.

I will never forget where I was when I heard about the planes hitting the World Trade Center in New York. I had just logged in at the office and was talking with my boss when another associate said, “a plane just hit the World Trade Center.” I imagined a small plane like a Cessna. It wasn’t until a second plane hit that we knew something awful was happening.

That attack ended up killing nearly 3,000 people that day, most in the collapsed twin towers, including businessmen and business women, firefighters, police officers, medical personnel, and all those on the doomed flights. It is the single worst attack on the US homeland, ever.

I still, to this day, despise Osama bin Laden and his henchmen for what they did. I curse his name every September 11. As a Christian, I never gloated over his death because I believe that redemption is possible for everyone, no matter how evil they are. Plus, we’re told not to:

Do not gloat when your enemy falls;
    when they stumble, do not let your heart rejoice,
or the Lord will see and disapprove
    and turn his wrath away from them.
— Proverbs 24:17-18

But since that door was closed with OBL’s assassination, it is hard not to think that he deserves every ounce of hell he gets.

So it is with some irritation that I read that the rest of the planners of that attack 23 years ago—especially the mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed—have “negotiated” a plea agreement with the current administration.

This isn’t justice. Justice would have been standing them in front of a dirt embankment and shooting them after facing a military tribunal for the attack on our soil. I agree with John Hinderaker:

This is a slap in the face to not only those who survived the attack and to those who lost loved ones in the attack, but it’s also a slap in the face to all Americans. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. We don’t put up with that $#!+. But, as Hinderaker says, the “borderline anti-American Biden administration” is all about trashing our norms, not restoring them as he promised four years ago.

I strongly disagree with Hinderaker that they’re “borderline.” They’re all clearly anti-American as historic and traditional America is understood.

The plea deal is a tragic joke that isn’t funny. We live in an upside down world and it’s getting harder to believe it will improve any time soon.

But chin up. At least we can pretend, for now, that Trump will win and drain the swamp.

Have a good weekend, and a good week that follows.

This is the second installment of “Twenty Five Inconvenient Realities” which document twenty five facts that characterized our nation’s pursuit of Independence during the Revolutionary War.

Ours is a unique history because of the way we depended on God and based our approach to government on Biblical Absolutes.

While it can be a lively debate, it’s nevertheless an obvious truism that our nation’s beginnings were decidedly influenced by the Christian doctrine once you stand back and let the facts speak for themselves.

What follows is another five facts. You can read the remaining 15 by clicking here.

If you want to test your knowledge, click here to access the “Muscular Christianity Campus” and take the quiz!

Our national motto is derived from the third verse or our National Anthem:

Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserv’d us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: “In God is our trust”

Yet again another example of how many recognize that the “separation” of church and state doesn’t mean the elmination of the church and its influence on the state.

Thomas Jefferson’s orthodoxy wasn’t at all with what most would regard as doctrinally sound. While he believed that Jesus represented the greatest expositor of moral standards ever, Jefferson did not subscribe at all to His Deity.¹¹

In a letter to Thomas B. Parker in 1819, he said:

…my fundamental principle would be the reverse of Calvin’s, that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power.¹²

But while his convictions pertaining to the Gospel of Jesus Christ may have been questionable, he still saw religion as being a necessary component to the philosphical foundation a government had to be based on in order to define and defend an individual’s rights.

You see this in a letter he wrote to P.H. Wendover in 1813. Jefferson, referring to the discourses of a Mr. McCloud, says…

I feel my portion of indebtment to the reverend author for the distinguished learning, the logic and the eloquence with which has proved that religion, as well as reason, confirms that soundness of those principles on which our government has been founded and its rights asserted.¹³

In addition, while serving in the House of Burgesses, Thomas Jefferson worked alongside Patrick Henry and Richard Henry Lee to craft a resolution for the state of Virginia to set aside a day of fasting and prayer. He said…

We were under conviction of the necessity of arousing our people from the lethargy into which they had fallen as to passing events; and thought that the appointment of a day of general fasting and prayer would be most likely to call up and alarm their attention.¹⁴

Later, he wrote that the reaction was like a “shock of electricity…”

We returned home, and in our several counties invited the clergy to meet assemblies of the people on the 1st of June [actually at various times in June and July], to perform the ceremonies of the day, and to address to them discourses suited to the occasion. The people met generally, with anxiety and alarm in their countenances, and the effect of the day thro’ the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man and placing him erect and solidly on his centre.¹⁵

The bottom line is that Thomas Jefferson saw in Christianity a reliable and needed foundation that, while it could not be coerced, could nevertheless support a legitimate assertion of individual rights and justify a national pursuit of independence.

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson corresponded frequently after they had both retired from public life. In one particular letter, Adams and Jefferson were discussing a recent comment that had found its way into print that suggested that “Science and Morals are the great Pillars on which this Country has been raised to its present population, Opulence and prosperity, and these alone, can advance, Support and preserve it.”¹⁶

In his letter to Jefferson, Adams disagreed and he articulated his position in part by saying…

The general Principles, on which the Fathers Achieved Independence, were the only Principles in which, that beautiful Assembly of young Gentlemen could Unite, and these Principles only could be intended by them in their Address, or by me in my Answer. And what were these general Principles? I answer, the general Principles of Christianity, in which all those Sects were United…¹⁷

Among those that comprised the Second Continental Congress you had men that owned slaves and those that despised the slave trade. In addition, you had varying temperaments, vocations, as well as different philosophies when it came to loyalty to the crown.

Adams was part of the five-man team tasked with writing the “Declaration of Independence.” Whatever was getting ready to be sent to King George had to be both substantial and unanimous. But how do you unite a group of statesmen with such different backgrounds and perspectives given the risks that were involved?

As one who was there to witness it first hand, Adams could confidently say that it was because of the way each of the delegates could come together beneath the umbrella of their Christian faith that they were able to outline our country’s position with one voice.

Anytime your relationship with Christ becomes defined more by a routine and an institution as opposed to a personal rapport with your King, your perspective on yourself and the world around you suffers. You see yourself exclusively in terms of your circumstances and the Purpose, Peace and Power that flows from an intentional focus on God and His Truth is overshadowed by the thought of who you are as opposed to Whose you are (Is 43:1; Matt 10:30-31; Phil 2:13; Rev 20:15).

From 1735-1743, preachers like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards were able to profoundly impact the colonies by proclaiming the Gospel in a way that emphasized the personal aspect of an authentic relationship with Christ. As opposed to sacraments and religious gestures, ministers like Whitefield and Edwards directed their listeners to the Gospels where it could be readily seen that it was a personal decision to believe in the empty tomb that secured one’s salvation.

The basic themes of the Great Awakening included:

• All people are born sinners (Rom 3:23)
• Sin without salvation will send a person to hell (Eph 2:8-9)
• All people can be saved if they confess their sins to God, seek forgiveness and accept God’s grace (Rom 10:9-10)
• All people can have a direct and emotional connection with God (Gal 3:28)
• Religion shouldn’t be formal and institutionalized, but rather casual and personal (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6)¹⁸

While the essential doctrines being espoused may not have directly impacted the colonies’ collective dispostion towards Independence, between 1700 and 1740, an estimated 75-80 percent of Americans were actively attending churches which were, “…being built at a headlong pace.”¹⁹ This was a result of the Great Awakening and it was this ever growing constituency of believers that provided the material and philosophical support for the Revolution because of the way they were now rethinking the manner in which their rights were, in fact, guaranteed by God and not dispensed by a monarch.

This change in their perspective was due in a large part to the way in which Revolutionary War era ministers were endorsing America’s resistance to the crown as a biblically sanctioned cause. And  because you had such a large majority of colonists now attending worship services, the result was a unified group of patriots that were linking arms across those borders previously defined by state sanctioned churches and vivid denominational differences.

Dr. James Hutson from the Library of Congress explains…

The plain fact is that, had American clergymen of all denominations not assured their pious countrymen, from the beginning of the conflict with Britain, that the resistance movement was right in God’s sight and had His blessing, it could not have been sustained and independence would not been achieved. Here is the fundamental, the indispensable, contribution of religion and its spokesmen to the coming of the American Revolution.²⁰

While serving as President, he made a point of attending church every Sunday and he made available Federal Buildings and the Marine Band for worship services. Dr. James Hutson, in his book “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic,” states…

It is no exaggeration to say that, on Sundays in Washington during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the state became the church.²³

Today’s interpretation of the “separation of church and state” does not square at all with Jefferson’s allocation of state resources for expressly Christian worship services. In order for his adminstrative acts to not conflict with his letter to the Danbury Baptists, it is logically mandated to rethink the notion that the First Amendment refers to the elimination of all reference to Scripture as a basis for our laws and political philosophy.

The issue was not the Authority of the Word of God. Rather, the issue of the separation of church and state was whether or not the government could impose a uniform approach to the Throne of God. It was the way that different states and their sanctioned churches could tax their constituents and take from those monies a portion to support a specific denomination, or the manner in which certain states required you to be a member of a particular church in order to run for public office. This was the sort of politically mandated spirituality that permeated 18th century America. The “separation of church and state” had nothing to do with whether or not you could legally kill your child before it was born or if it was legally feasible to redefine the institution of marriage.

11) “Jefferson, Thomas and Religion”, “Encyclopedia Virginia EMA, Virginia Humanities”, https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/jefferson-thomas-and-religion/, accessed April 4, 2023

12) “Thomas Jefferson to Thomas B. Parker, 15 May 1819”, “National Archives Founders Online”, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-14-02-0292, accessed April 4, 2023

13) “The Complete Works of Thomas Jefferson, the Third US President”, Thomas Jefferson, edited by Henry Augustine Washington, DigiCat, 2022, https://books.google.com/books?id=MS-cEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT2921&lpg=PT2921&dq=%22Religion,+as+well+as+reason,+confirms+the+soundness+of+those+principles+on+which+our+government+has+been+founded+and+its+rights+asserted.%22&source=bl&ots=jvCeLSmjCd&sig=ACfU3U1-4FsCJ2Gwx8s2xkAUHIojqOIvSA&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwii0PWm2JD-AhXgmWoFHYOFCs0Q6AF6BAgnEAM#v=onepage&q=%22Religion%2C%20as%20well%20as%20reason%2C%20confirms%20the%20soundness%20of%20those%20principles%20on%20which%20our%20government%20has%20been%20founded%20and%20its%20rights%20asserted.%22&f=false, accessed April 4, 2023

14) “Resolution of the House of Burgesses Designating a Day of Fasting and Prayer, 24 May 1774”, “National Archives, Founders Online”, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0082, accessed April 4, 2023

15) “Thomas Jefferson and John Walker to the Inhabitants of the Parish of St. Anne, [before 23 July 1774]”, “National Archives, Founders Online”, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-01-02-0087, accessed April 4, 2023

16) “John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, 28 June 1813”, “Founders Online”, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0208, accessed February 13, 2023

17) Ibid

18) “Great Awakening”, https://www.history.com/topics/european-history/great-awakening, accessed April 5, 2023

19) “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic”, https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/religion/rel02.html, accessed April 5, 2023

20) “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic”, Dr. James H. Hutson, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998, p40

21) “Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People”, Jon Butler, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MS, London, England, 1990, p188

22) “Religion and the Founding of the American Republic”, Dr. James H. Hutson, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, 1998, p35

23) Ibid, p91

When you set out to write a devotional based on our nation’s history, there’s a temptation to try and word things in a way that’s similar to the style you might use when you’re trying to make a point…

When I first sat down with my buddy who would go on to encourge me to write “The American Devotional Series,” he gave me some good counsel by saying, “Don’t argue. Just let the content speak for itself.”

In the end, it’s so much more than just the debate surrounding the Separation of Church and State. The amount of content and documentation that exists which points definitively to a population that understood, not only what was at stake, but how important it was to be basing their stance on something more than a political philosophy…

It’s overwhelming and utterly compelling.

You don’t commit High Treason nor take up arms against your sovereign based on a mere complaint. Our cause was preached from behind pulpits and not just proclaimed in the public square.

However critics and academics want to dismiss the Revolutionary War as a secular enterprise, vaguely supported with no real principle or ideal behind it apart from a collective disdain for King George, the documents and the commentary coming from that time period from the people who lived it, tell a much different story.

Here’s a list of some “Inconvenient Realities” that reveal those who insist on a humanistic foundation for the Revolutionary War and the United States in general as people who don’t have a point as much as they have a resolve to ignore what’s true in order to validate a world where they are their own Absolute.

Enjoy!

The Separation of Church and State is a phrase often used by people who want to insist that Christianity had no real role in our nation’s founding – cerntainly nothing that had any significant influence on those that articulated our cause, created our Constitution and fought the battles that culminated in the surrender of Great Britain.

You see this in comments like what you see below from the “Freedom From Religion” website:

The Christian Right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States, as part of their campaign to force their religion on others who ask merely to be left alone. According to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers of this country were pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

Not true! The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.

You have to be very selective in the information you use to validate such a statement. At the same time, you have to be willfully oblivious to the specific references to God and Christ that punctuate the relevant events and documentation that established the United States.

Below is a brief yet potent list:

What qualified our statement to King George as a legitimate cause as opposed to a mere complaint is the way in which our Founders showed how his monarchy violated Divine Absolutes. However unjust or belligerent his adminstration may have been, it was the manner in which his rule restricted rights that were not his to dispense as much as they were God’s to guarantee – that is what gave our cause the Substance it needed to resonate as something that was True and not just preferred.

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.¹

That is the starting point. The rights we have are God-given and the governments that are established by men to ensure those rights, but…

…whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.²

We are founded on a Biblical Absolute and not a legal argument.

During the seven years we were at war with Great Britain, Congress proclaimed a National Day of Fasting, Prayer and Humiliation 16 different times. You can view an image of those proclamations as they are preserved in the Library of Congress as well as a readable transcription by clicking here.

The verbiage of these proclamations is not conducive to an all-inclusive dynamic as far as it being something that accommodates all faiths. Rather, it specifies Christ and a need to seek His Forgiveness and Direction.

For example, a portion of the Proclamation from March 20, 1781 reads as follows:

The United States in Congress assembled, therefore do earnestly recommend, that Thursday the third of May next, may be observed as a day of humiliation, fasting and prayer, that we may, with united hearts, confess and bewail our manifold sins and transgressions, and by sincere repentance and amendment of life, appease his righteous displeasure, and through the merits of our blessed Savior, obtain pardon and forgiveness:

There’s a couple of things that are worth noticing: First, the commitee that was tasked with drafting this proclamation included James Madison who many want to believe to be a Deist. Someone with that kind of spiritual temperment would not be advocating Christ as “our blessed Savior.”

Secondly, to characterize Congress as a humanistic enterprise that placed no priority on the Reality and the Necessity of Divine Intervention requires a willful disregard for the repeated directives that came from their collective pen that recommended an intentional timeframe dedictated to an intensely focused and humble posturing before Jesus Christ.

In 1854, James Meacham, the Representative from Vermont, delivered a report pertaining to an issue involving the First Amendment. At one point, he said this:

Down to the Revolution, every colony did sustain [the Christian] religion in some form. It was deemed peculiarly proper that the religion of liberty should be upheld by a free people. Had the people, during the Revolution, had a suspicion of any attempt to war against Christianity, that Revolution would have strangled in its cradle. At the time of the Constitution and the amendments, the universal sentiment was that Christianity should be encouraged, not any one sect. Any attempt to level and discard all religion would have been viewed with universal indignation.³

In the same report, Meacham concluded by saying:

In this age there can be no substitute for Christianity; that, in its general principles, is the great conservative element on which we must rely for the purity and permanence of free institutions. That was the religion of the founders of the Republic, and they expected it to remain the religion of their descendants.⁴

The first words of the Treaty that represented Great Britain’s surrender to America in 1783 were:

In the Name of the most Holy & undivided Trinity.⁵

The Liberty Bell was used to summon delegates to Pennslyvania Hall to discuss the matters of the day. Benjamin Franklin wrote to Catherine Ray in 1755, “Adieu, the Bell rings, and I must go among the Grave ones and talk Politicks.”⁶

It’s most famous tolling, however, was on July 8, 1776 when it was used to summon the townspeople to hear the public reading of the Declaration of Independence.⁷

Yet, up until that point, the bell wasn’t seen as an icon as much as it is today because of the way the text that’s inscribed on the bell was applied to the issue of slavery in 1844.

The inscription is Leviticus 25:10:

Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof. (Lev 25:10 [KJV])

William Lloyd Garrison, abolitionist and publisher of The Liberator, reprinted a poem written by H.R.H. Moore which represented the first documented use of the name, “The Liberty Bell.” Garrison saw it as an appropriate and effective way to combine the Biblical substance of the verse inscribed on the bell with the poetry of Moore which included the line, “Ring it, till the slave is free” and let the collective meaning serve as a rebuke against those who supported slavery.

In an article printed in Time Magazine, Dr Ben Carson tells of how when the body of Abraham Lincoln was laid in Independence Hall, he was placed in a manner where the Liberty Bell and the inscription was directly overhead. During the 20 hour public viewing, over 150,000 people paid their respects to the Great Emancipator.

In the article penned by Dr Carson, he concludes by saying:

Whether you’re black or white, Democrat or Republican, The Liberty Bell’s true story reminds Americans of all stripes that our nation’s history—and future—belongs to us all. It challenges us to tear down systems that hold us captive and honor the price great men and women have paid to cast and re-cast the American mold to form a more perfect union.⁸

The story of the Liberty Bell and the nation it represents possesses the profound and essential content that it does because of how it points to a Divine Absolute and not just a desired political climate.

On May 2, 1778, General Washington issued the following General Orders:

The Commander in Chief directs that divine Service be performed every Sunday at 11 o’clock in those Brigades to which there are Chaplains—those which have none to attend the places of worship nearest to them—It is expected that Officers of all Ranks will by their attendance set an Example to their men.

While we are zealously performing the duties of good Citizens and soldiers we certainly ought not to be inattentive to the higher duties of Religion—To the distinguished Character of Patriot, it should be our highest Glory to add the more distinguished Character of Christian—The signal Instances of providential Goodness which we have experienced and which have now almost crowned our labors with complete Success, demand from us in a peculiar manner the warmest returns of Gratitude & Piety to the Supreme Author of all Good.⁹

George Washington made frequent references to the Power and Goodness of God throughout his career as the Commanding General of the Continental Army as well as his time as Commander in Chief.

The fact that he made a point of ensuring that Christian worship services were held throughout the army he commanded and made it clear that he expected his officers to lead by example by being both present and engaged reveals the priority he placed on the acknowledgement of the “Supreme Author of all Good.”

While enduring the hardship and lethal challenges of the winter spent at Valley Forge, Washington directed his troops to set aside a day for thanksgiving and fasting. On December 18, 1777, Reverend Israel Evans delivered one of the sermons and Washington later wrote him to thank him. In that letter, he said:

…it will ever be the first wish of my heart to aid your pious endeavours to inculcate a due sense of the dependence we ought to place in that all-wise and powerful Being, on whom alone our success depends.¹⁰

1) “Declaration of Independence”, America’s Founding Documents, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript, accessed June 27, 2022

2) Ibid

3) “H. Rept. 33-124 – Chaplains in Congress and in the Army and Navy. March 27, 1854. Ordered to be printed, Committee on the Judiciary. March 27, 1854”, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/SERIALSET-00743_00_00-004-0124-0000/pdf/SERIALSET-00743_00_00-004-0124-0000.pdf, accessed April 1, 2023

4) Ibid (you can also see this report referenced on the online copy of the Congressional Record of the Proceedings and Debates of the 87th Congress in Volume 108 – Part 13 that covers the activity from August 20, 1962 to August 30, 1962. It’s on page 17597 and can be accessed by heading out to https://www.google.com/books/edition/Congressional_Record/dKHcR9moGwkC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=1854

5) “Treaty of Paris (1783)”, “Milestone Documents”, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/treaty-of-paris, accessed April 1, 2023

6) “National Park Service”, “The Liberty Bell”, https://www.nps.gov/inde/learn/historyculture/stories-libertybell.htm, accessed April 1, 2023

7) “Liberty Bell Tolls to Announce Declaration of Independence”, “History”, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/liberty-bell-tolls-to-announce-declaration-of-independence, accessed April 1, 2023

8) “Ben Carson: What You Don’t Know About The Liberty Bell”, Time Magazine, Dr. Ben Carson, August 24, 2016, https://time.com/4464934/ben-carson-liberty-bell-history/, accessed April 2, 2023

9) “General Orders, 2 May 1778, George Washington, “Founders Online”, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-15-02-0016, accessed March 7, 2023

10) “The Writings of George Washington, Volume V”, Jared Sparks, Russell, Odiorne and Metcalf & Hilliard, Gray and Company, Boston, 1834, https://books.google.com/books?id=UatV3YPhGVAC&pg=PA276&lpg=PA276&dq, accessed April 2, 2023