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The American Principle of Equality in the Declaration

October 24, 2023
The Founding

Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks by Samuel Jennings, 1792, Library Company of Philadelphia.

Introduction

One important principle that the American Founders recognized in the Declaration of Independence of 1776 when they formed the United States was the equality of man.  Equality is a state of being equal or the same.  Though differing in their abilities and traits, the Founders saw, men are equal in the eyes of God.[1]  The idea of man’s equality was largely influenced by the Bible and a God-oriented, Western worldview—as developed in the ancient, medieval, Reformation, modern Enlightenment, and early American periods.  With this view, the Founders asserted in the Declaration, “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.”  They also declared Americans’ right “to assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them.”[2]  The Founders greatly valued the idea of man’s equality because it was the philosophical basis for man’s natural rights of life and liberty and for government by consent.  Indeed, it was a guiding lamp for America’s government based on popular sovereignty or the people’s rule.  To be sure, the institution and practice of slavery that existed in early America from the 1600s to 1800s did not reflect the American ideal of equality as espoused in the Declaration.  Its violations of equality and rights became a moral problem that culminated in the American Civil War, as will be discussed later.  The Declaration’s principle of equality, however, ultimately led to equal rights and protections for all future Americans.

The Bible and God-oriented Western thought in many ways shaped the Founders’ understanding of man’s equality by revealing that all men are equal before God in distinct ways.  More specifically, the Bible reveals that man is equal in common origin, nature, dominion, moral condition, and moral responsibility.  On man’s common origin, Genesis 2:7, 21-22 teaches that God created mankind from one man, the first man, Adam:  “The Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.  …  Then the Lord made a woman from the rib he had taken out of the man.”[3]  The disciple Luke confirms in Acts 17:26, “He [God] has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth.”[4]  On man’s common nature and dominion, Genesis 1:26-28 says that God made man, unlike other creatures, in His image, and so man has a unique dignity and dominion on earth:  “‘Let us [God] make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule…over all the creatures.’”  On man’s common moral condition, Genesis 3 reveals man’s sinful state through the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.  The Apostle Paul in Romans 3:23 confirms man’s sinful condition, saying that “all fall short of the glory of God.”  On man’s common moral responsibility, God consequently gave man a moral sense or law of good and evil as shown in Genesis 3:22:  “God said, ‘The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil.’”  In Genesis 4:7, God instructs man to “do what is right” and avoid sin or, as Psalm 34:14 says, to “turn from evil and do good.”  Paul in Romans 2:14-15 confirms the moral law for mankind which is “written on their hearts.”  Founding-era Americans understood from these teachings how men are equal in God’s eyes, and they drew from them to support their view that men in civil society are equal under law and in rights.  Though other sources contributed to the American view of equality, this essay focuses primarily on the influence of the Bible and God-oriented Western thought on this principle.

The Ancient Israelites and Greco-Romans:  Man’s Common Moral Responsibility

The ancient Israelites from 1800s-100s BC and the ancient Greco-Romans from 700s BC-400s AD laid important groundwork for the Western idea of equality among men.  In particular, they believed that their people shared a common moral responsibility in being subject to moral law.

The ancient Israelites understood man’s common moral responsibility from the Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament of the Bible—authored between the fifteenth and first centuries BC.  The Israelites believed from Genesis 3 and 4 that all men are subject to God’s moral law.  They further saw from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy that all their people were also subject to certain God-given religious, ceremonial, and civil laws.  These laws applied to everyone.  In Deuteronomy 1:17, the prophet Moses tells the people, “You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great.”  With such beliefs about man’s common moral responsibility, the Israelites practiced Rule of Law in which all the people were subject to and treated equally under the same law.

The Greco-Romans understood man’s common moral responsibility apparently from nature and reason.  The Greeks believed, as philosopher Aristotle expressed in his 300s BC Treatise on Rhetoric, that all men have a “universal sense of right and wrong.”[5]  The Romans likewise believed, as statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero conveyed in his c50 BC Treatise on the Laws, that all men are subject to a moral law which they called the “Law of Nature” or “right reason” and recognized as “the common property of God and man.”[6]  The c170-228 AD Roman jurist Ulpian notably stated that “as far as concerns the natural law all men are equal.[7]  Applying this belief to civil law, the Roman’s first body of written laws for their Republic in 451 BC—the Twelve Tables—gave the same laws for all citizens regardless of class.  It stated that “laws of personal exception shall not be proposed.”[8]  Ultimately, the Roman concept of equality under law, including Ulpian’s statement on natural law, reappeared in Byzantine Roman Emperor Justinian I’s 529-565 AD Corpus Juris Civilis or Body of Civil Laws which became the basis of Roman law in the Christianized Eastern Roman Empire and in medieval Western Europe.[9]

The ancient Israelites and Greco-Romans recognized an equality among men in their common moral sense of and responsibility to a moral law—to a degree not often seen in other parts of the world at that time—based on the Bible, nature, and reason.  In accordance with these views, the Greco-Romans asserted that citizens—though differing in abilities and occupations—were equal under civil law and in rights including liberty.[10]  The Greeks, as Aristotle stated in his 350 BC Politics, held that “the rights and liberties of the many, are duly respected and impartially maintained.”[11]  The Romans, as Cicero affirmed in his 54-51 BC Commonwealth, believed that though men’s fortunes and faculties are not the same, “rights at least should be equal, among those who are citizens of the same republic.”[12]  Ulpian thus stated that “by natural law all were born free.”[13]  These views and practices influenced the Western idea of man as differing in many ways but equal under law and in rights.  “The most important classical element of equality,” says Scott Robinson in his 2020 essay Equality, “was its insistence that we are equal members of a community, or equally human, even if not equal in every capacity.”[14]

Medieval Christian Thought:  Man’s Common Nature

The teachings of the Bible and Judeo-Christian thought which spread through Roman civilization in the late ancient and medieval eras strengthened the Western view of man’s equality.  The Bible-based writings of influential Christian figures including Augustine, Pope Gregory I, and Thomas Aquinas supported man’s equality, most notably, in recognizing man’s common nature in being created in God’s image, with reason.

North African Christian bishop and theologian Augustine of Hippo, who lived from 354 to 430 AD, adapted ancient Greco-Roman classical thought to Judeo-Christian teaching and helped to make the Bible and Christianity known and understood in the formerly pagan Roman empire.  In his 426 AD City of God and c400 AD Confessions, Augustine explained from Genesis 1:26-28 man’s “similarity of nature” in being made “in that very image and likeness of Thee [God] (that is, [with] the power of reason and understanding) on account of which he [man] was set over all irrational creatures.”[15]  He further pointed out that while men have dominion over other animals, they are equal among other men, saying that God “did not intend that his rational creatures, who were made in His image, should have dominion over anything but the irrational creation, –not man over man, but man over the beasts.”[16]

Pope Gregory I was an influential Christian Bishop of Rome from 590-604 AD who initiated missions to Christianize the Germanic peoples and Anglo-Saxons of Europe.  In his 578-595 AD Exposition on the Morals of Job or Commentary on Job, Gregory, reflecting Augustine, affirmed man’s common nature as expressed in Genesis 1:26-28 and confirmed in Genesis 9:1-2:

All of us men are equal by nature….  …  [O]ur old fathers [in the Bible] are recorded to have been not so much kings of men, as shepherds of flocks.  When the Lord said to Noah and his sons [in Gen 9:1-2], Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the earth, He adds, And the fear and dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth.  He says not ‘be upon the men’….  Since man is by nature set over the irrational animals, but not over the rest of mankind, and therefore it is said to him that he should be feared by the beasts and not by men; because it is to swell with pride against nature, to desire to be feared by an equal.[17]

R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle noted in their 1903 History of Medieval Political Theory in the West that Gregory’s assertion here of man’s natural equality became well-known and was often cited in medieval literature.[18]

Italian churchman and theologian Thomas Aquinas of 1225-1274 AD was another important figure who influenced Western, Judeo-Christian thought in the Middle Ages and thereafter.  In his 1265-1274 AD Summa Theologica, Aquinas, like Augustine and Gregory, also upheld man’s common nature.  Aquinas similarly observed from Genesis 1:26-28 that “man is said to be after the image of God…according to his intelligence and reason” and thus “excels all animals.”[19]  Echoing Gregory, Aquinas asserted with this understanding that “by nature all men are equal.”[20]  While men rule over the animals, a man does not have natural dominion or rule over another man, he explained, since “one [human] soul is not set over another in the order of nature.”[21]

The Bible-based views of man’s common nature—of being made in God’s image, with reason—as emphasized by influential medieval Christian thinkers like Augustine, Gregory, and Aquinas, gave support to the Western idea of man’s equality under law and in rights.  Indeed, Aquinas asserted in his c1460 Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard that though men differ in traits, all men in a state of innocence are equal in rights including liberty:  “By nature all men are equal in liberty, but not in other endowments.  One man is not subordinate to another as though he were a utility.”[22]  Such views informed Western political thought during the Reformation, Enlightenment, and early American periods.

The Reformation Period:  Man’s Equal Standing and Common Dominion

The principle of man’s equality became more prominent during the period of the Protestant Reformation in Europe in the 1500s and 1600s.  For the Reformation’s teachings upheld the equal standing of Christian believers in the church and thus indirectly supported the idea of citizen equality in the civil state.  Also, separately, Catholic and Protestant Christian political reformers drew on the Bible-based idea of man’s common dominion on earth to directly argue for citizens’ equal rights, popular sovereignty, and government by consent in the civil state.

The Reformation was a Christian religious movement that sought reform of or separation from the Catholic Church which many thought had become heretical and corrupt at this time.  While Protestant religious reformers upheld man’s common nature, many questioned the authority and infallibility of the pope and church councils as well as the body and role of the clergy.  Their views of the church—of Christ as sole head and mediator of the church, Sola Scriptura, and the priesthood of all believers—promoted the equal standing of Christians in the church.

Firstly, Protestants upheld Christ as sole head and mediator of the church.  While Catholics believed from Matthew 16:13-19 that the Apostle Peter was the first pope or head of the church because Jesus gave to him exclusively “the keys of the kingdom of heaven;” Protestants believed, as French Protestant pastor John Calvin argued in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, that Peter represented the church, and so his spiritual power is given to all believers.[23]  Calvin supported the reformed view from 1 Peter 5:1 where Peter calls himself a “fellow elder.”[24]  Peter, Calvin says, had “no more power over the rest than they had over him.”[25]  Calvin affirmed from Ephesians 4:15 that “the church has Christ for its sole head…, for ‘Christ is the head.’”[26]  Protestants thus asserted that all believers have spiritual power under Christ who is the sole head and mediator of the church.

Secondly, many Protestants believed in Sola Scriptura, Latin for “scripture alone,” the idea that the Bible as the inerrant Word of God is the final authority on Christian faith, doctrine, and practice.  While Catholics believed that the Bible and church tradition are both authoritative on religious and church matters, and that the Bible needs to be interpreted correctly by the pope and bishops; many Protestants believed that the Bible alone is the final authority on religious and church matters and can be interpreted by all spirit-filled believers.  Such discernment by all believers can help prevent errors, heresies, and corruptions in the church.  Citing 1 Corinthians 14:30, John 6:45, and Galatians 2:11, German monk Martin Luther explains in his 1520 Appeal to the Ruling Class,

St. Paul says, 1 Corinthians 14 [:30], “If something superior be revealed to anyone sitting there and listening to another speaking God’s word, the first speaker must be silent and give place.”  What would be the virtue of this commandment if only the speaker, or the person in the highest position, were to be believed?  Christ Himself says, John 6 [:45], “that all Christians shall be taught by God.”  …  Who could enlighten Christian people if the pope erred, unless someone else, who had the support of Scripture, were more to be believed than he?  …
…St. Paul upbraided St. Peter as a wrongdoer [Gal. 2:11].  Hence it is the duty of every Christian to accept the implications of the faith, understand and defend it, and denounce everything false.[27]

Many Protestants thus promoted the authority of the Bible alone and the interpretation of the Bible by all believers in the church.

Thirdly, many Protestants upheld the priesthood of all Christian believers.  While Catholics saw the clergy as priests who minister to and intercede for others, many Protestants saw all believers as priests with ministerial responsibilities.  Luther supported the reformed view from 1 Peter 2:9, stating that “our baptism consecrates us all without exception, and makes us all priests.  As St. Peter says, 1 Pet. 2, ‘You [believers] are a royal priesthood and a realm of priests.’”[28]  Calvin similarly saw that all believers, though differing in abilities and callings, have a ministry function based on Ephesians 4:16 which says, “From Him [Christ] the whole body…grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.”[29]  Many Protestants thus upheld the ministry of all believers in the church.

With such beliefs, many Protestants favored democratic forms of church governance such as Congregationalism in which local churches were governed by their members, and elected elders served as moderators.  Elders were elected, Luther says, for “only by the consent and command of the community should any individual person claim for himself what belongs equally to all.”[30]  The Protestant view of the equal standing of believers in the church indirectly advanced the idea of the equal standing of citizens in the civil state.

Also during this period, but separately, Catholic and Protestant political reformers drew from Genesis 1:26-28 and Judeo-Christian thought on man’s common dominion—to “subdue” the earth and to “have dominion…over every living thing”—to support popular sovereignty in the civil state.[31]  For example, Italian Jesuit Cardinal and counter-reformer Robert Bellarmine in his 1586-1593 Disputations on Controversies of the Christian Faith upheld man’s common dominion by quoting Augustine:  “The Fathers clearly teach this:  ‘God, having made man a rational being in His own Image, was unwilling that he [man] should dominate except over irrational beings, not man over man, but man over beasts.’”[32]  Quoting Pope Gregory, he reiterates, “When he [Gregory] says, ‘All men are equal by nature,’ …he rightly infers that one [man] should not be dominated over by another, as man dominates over the beasts….  Hence he adds:  ‘For it is against nature to act proudly or to wish to be feared by one’s equals.’”[33]  Bellarmine concluded that as all men have equal dominion, all men have a right to freedom.  Consequently, earthly political power is given by God to the whole people of a nation, not to any particular person.  He explains, “In a commonwealth all men are born naturally free:  consequently, the people themselves, immediately and directly, hold the political power so long as they have not transferred this power to some king or ruler.” [34]  He further expounds,

This [political] power resides…immediately in the whole state, for this power is by the Divine law, but Divine law gives this power to no particular man, therefore Divine law gives this power to the collected body.  Furthermore, in the absence of positive [man-made] law, there is no reason why, in a multitude of equals, one rather than another should dominate.[35]

As another example, Scottish Presbyterian pastor Samuel Rutherford in his 1644 Lex, Rex, or The Law and the Prince similarly drew on man’s common dominion to support government by consent.  Like Bellarmine, he argued that because all men have dominion, they all hold political power.  Referencing Genesis 1:28 and Matthew 16:18-19, he states, “As for the official authority [of governing] itself, it is virtually in all in whom any of God’s image is remaining since the fall, …as may be gathered from Gen. i.28.  …One man alone hath not the keys of the kingdom of heaven.”[36]  Thus civil government, Rutherford saw, should be based on consent.  “Political society is,” he says, “grounded on the consent of men.”[37]  With a Bible-based view of man’s common dominion, Bible-based thinkers like Bellarmine and Rutherford directly advanced radical political ideas of equal rights, popular sovereignty, and government by consent in the civil state.

The religious and political ideas that emerged during the Reformation period played an important role in advancing man’s equality in the Western world.  The Bible-based ideas of the equal standing of believers in the church and of man’s common dominion on earth indirectly and directly promoted citizens’ equal rights in the civil state.  They also eventually stimulated democratic concepts of civil government based on popular sovereignty and government by consent, though the application took time.[38]  “The Protestant emphasis on the ‘priesthood of all believers’ and its strong individualism,” observes Kent Greenawalt in his 2010 essay Religion and Equality, “helped to lay the foundation for broader notions of political and legal equality that emerged from the Enlightenment.”[39]  Judeo-Christian and Catholic thought on man’s common dominion also thus became, through thinkers like Bellarmine, foundational to the Western idea of political equality.[40]  Such political ideas influenced modern-era thinkers in Europe and America.

The Puritans in America:  An Early Application of Civil Equality with the Mayflower Compact

In the 1600s, following the Reformation, when the Pilgrims and Puritans came to America, they brought with them the Western, God-oriented worldview of man as well as their Protestant Christian beliefs and church practices.  These religious and philosophical influences shaped their political views on man’s civil equality in rights and under law.  When they settled in the colonies of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, they applied equality in their civil governments, starting with the Mayflower Compact.

The Pilgrims and Puritans believed, like other Western, God-oriented thinkers, that men are equal before God—in origin, nature, dominion, and moral responsibility—and thus in natural rights.  Their philosophical beliefs, in turn, affected their political views on and support for government based on consent.  For example, on man’s common nature, Massachusetts Puritan pastor John Wise in his 1717 Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, alluding to Genesis 1:26-28, described man as “the Favourite Animal on Earth, in that this Part of God’s Image, viz. Reason is Congenate with his Nature.”[41]  Connecticut colony founder and Puritan pastor Thomas Hooker in his 1648 Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline, echoing the same verses, saw that “the nature of man was preserved in one man Adam.”[42]  On man’s common moral responsibility, Wise observed from Romans 2:14-15 that the Law of Nature is “written on Men’s hearts,” “obliging each one to the performance of that which is Right.”[43]  In light of these commonalities, Wise, paraphrasing Ulpian in Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, affirmed that all men are equal in natural rights, for “as Ulpian says, by a Natural Right all Men are born free; and Nature having set all Men upon a Level and made them Equals, no Servitude or Subjection can be conceived without Inequality.”[44]  Thus civil government, they saw, must be based on consent.  Thomas Hooker was one of the first defenders of consent of the governed in America, arguing in his 1638 Connecticut Court Sermon that “the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people.”[45]

The Pilgrims and Puritans also held reformed views that all Christian believers have equal standing in the church and, consequently, saw citizens as equal in the civil state.  For example, on believers’ equal spiritual power, Thomas Hooker, referencing Matthew 16:13-19, affirmed that all believers, not just a select few, hold “the keys of the kingdom of heaven” or the power that Christ gave to Peter because, he says, “those which have the same commission share alike in the same and equal power.”[46]  On believers’ equal ministry, Thomas Hooker, citing John 20:21, pointed out that all believers are called to share the Gospel of Christ, stating, “Prout me misit pater, ego mitto vos [Just as the Father sent me, I send you.].  It was said to all the Apostles equally, and to all their successors indifferently.”[47]  As all believers have a ministerial function, Massachusetts pastor John Cotton noted in his 1645 Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, so all congregations stand in “brotherly equality.”[48]  The Puritans thus practiced a congregational form of church government.[49]  Alexander W. McClure confirmed in his 1846 Life of John Cotton the Puritans’ reformed religious views of equality in the church:  “Following the Scripture rules and precedents, our [Puritan] fathers declared for the equality of all churches, church members, and church ministers.”[50]  The Puritans’ views and practices of equality in the church led to their like views and applications of equality in the civil state.

One of the Pilgrims’ first civil applications of equality was seen in their Mayflower Compact of 1620 in which they agreed to form a civil body and to create “just and equal” laws in their colony of Plymouth.[51]  While most charters at the time were between a king and subjects, the Pilgrims’ pact was among equals, with God as their King.  It thus initiated a self-government among equals.  This compact was, observes Donald S. Lutz in his 1990 essay Mayflower Compact, the “first expression” of political equality in America.[52]  As Albert C. Addison observes in his 1912 Romantic Story of the Puritan Fathers, “What was right and best in Church could not long be denied the State; and so the ‘New England Way’ inevitably broadened out until it led…into the civic and religious liberty which is now enjoyed.”[53]

The Modern Enlightenment:  Man’s Equal, Natural Rights and Government by Consent

In the wake of the Reformation, political thinkers of the Enlightenment period in Europe—including John Locke and Algernon Sidney—arose in the late 1600s and 1700s to challenge the long-held doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings and Robert Filmer’s Patriarcha.  Divine Right is the idea that kings derive authority directly from God, not from the people.  As such, the people’s consent of the king is not required, and resistance is considered a defiance of God’s will.  Locke and Sidney drew from man’s common nature and dominion to refute Divine Right and support man’s natural rights, popular sovereignty, and government by consentWilliam Blackstone drew from man’s common moral responsibility to support equality under law.  Though they articulated their views in more secular terms, these thinkers understood man’s common nature, dominion, and moral responsibility from the Bible and God-oriented thinkers of the ancient, medieval, and Reformation periods.

English theorist Robert Filmer in his 1680 treatise Patriarcha argued in favor of Divine Right based on a particular interpretation of the Bible.  He argued from Genesis that God gave Adam, the eldest parent, authority to be king or “lord paramount over his children’s children to all generations.” [54]  As such, the king of England, as the eldest parent of an ordained line, had absolute authority to govern over the people without their consent.  Filmer paraphrased Bellarmine on man’s common dominion and popular sovereignty as an opposing view:  “It is framed [by Bellarmine]:  ‘That God hath given or ordained [political] power, is evident by Scripture [in Genesis]; but God hath given it to no particular person, because by nature all men are equal; therefore he hath given power to the people or multitude.’”[55]  Patriarcha was relevant because it enabled readers to become familiar with Bellarmine’s Bible-based argument against Divine Right and because Locke and Sidney, who sided with Bellarmine, wrote significant works in response to Filmer.

British philosopher John Locke in his 1689 Two Treatises of Civil Government drew from man’s common nature and dominion to refute Divine Right and to defend man’s natural rights and consent of the governed.  While recognizing that men differ in abilities, traits, and merits, Locke believed that all men have rights to life, liberty, and property in large part because they share a common nature and dominion as seen in Genesis 1:26-28.  Echoing Bellarmine and Rutherford, Locke says in his First Treatise that “God makes him [man] ‘in his own image after his own likeness,’ makes him an intellectual creature, and so capable of dominion.”[56]  Dominion belongs to all men, Locke affirmed, not just to Adam:  “Whatever God gave by the words of this grant (Gen. i.28), it was not to Adam in particular, exclusive of all other men; …but a dominion in common with the rest of mankind.”[57]  He thus says in his First Treatise that “all men are…naturally equal” and in his Second Treatise that “all men by nature are equal.”[58]  Because men are equal in nature and dominion, and God did not make Adam “prince of his posterity” or “lord of mankind,” Locke says, all men have equal rights:  “[A]ll that share in the same common nature, faculties, and powers are in nature equal, and ought to partake in the same common rights and privileges.”[59]  In such a state, men are, he confirms, “equal and independent, all heirs to Adam’s monarchy, and consequently all monarchs too, one as much as another.”[60]  As such, no rank pre-exists among men in which one may justly rule over another without consent.

English Whig parliamentarian Algernon Sidney, like Locke, drew from man’s common nature and dominion to refute Divine Right in favor of man’s natural rights and consent.  In his 1698 Discourses Concerning Government, Sidney aligned with Bellarmine and Locke on the idea from Genesis 1:26-28 that men are equal in dominion and thus in rights.  Referencing Filmer’s Patriarcha, Bellarmine’s Disputations, and Genesis 1:28, he explains,

He [Filmer] recites an argument of Bellarmine, that “it is evident in Scripture [Gen. 1:28] God hath ordained powers; but God hath given them to no particular person, because by nature all men are equal.  Therefore, He [God] hath given power to the people or multitude.”  I leave him [Filmer] to untie that knot, if he can….  I take Bellarmine’s argument to be strong….  …  The only sort of kings mentioned there [in the Bible] with approbation is such a one “as may not raise his heart above his brethren [Deut. 17:20].”  …  Such as are versed in scripture not only know that it [Divine Right] neither agrees with the letter or spirit of that book but that it is unreasonable in itself.[61]

Sidney also supported man’s common dominion from Romans 8:17 where the Apostle Paul calls God’s children “heirs of God.”  He explains, “If children are heirs, or joint heirs, whatsoever authority Adam or Noah had, is inherited by every man in the world.”[62]  Due to man’s equal nature and dominion, he concluded, all men have equal rights and thus liberty.  Thus, just government, regardless of its form, must be based on consent.[63]  Sidney noted, like Plato and Aristotle, that because men differ in traits, characters, and roles in society, the people should choose the most wise and virtuous to govern.

English jurist and Roman law scholar William Blackstone in his 1765 Commentaries on the Laws of England upheld man’s common moral responsibility to the Law of Nature—in line with the Bible, the ancient Israelite, and Roman law—as the basis for man’s equality under law.  He asserted that all men are subject to the Law of Nature which is “binding over all the globe in all countries, at all times.”[64]

During the Enlightenment, political thinkers including Locke, Sidney, and Blackstone defended man’s equality in rights and under law based on man’s common nature, dominion, and moral responsibility as shown in the Bible and in classical and Judeo-Christian thought.  They drew from this view of man’s equality to refute Divine Right and to articulate in clear, modern terms an argument for popular sovereignty and consent of the governed in the civil state.  These thinkers were widely read by founding-era Americans and strongly influenced American political thought.

The Great Awakening:  Man’s Common Moral Condition

In the mid-1700s, a Protestant Christian evangelical revival known as the Great Awakening swept through the thirteen colonies in America.  It helped to inform or reacquaint many colonists with the Judeo-Christian teachings of the Bible including man’s common nature and moral responsibility.  Through influential revivalists of this period, the Great Awakening strengthened the American view of man’s equality, most distinctly, by teaching about man’s common moral condition.

Revivalists strengthened the idea of man’s equality, firstly, by teaching about every man’s fallen moral state.  In his 1758 Doctrine of Original Sin, citing Acts 17:26, Reformed Congregationalist pastor Jonathan Edwards, who was heavily influenced by Calvin, explains,

Things were so wisely established that all should naturally be in one and the same moral state; and not in such exceedingly different states, as that some should be perfectly innocent and holy, but others corrupt and wicked; some needing a Savior, but others needing none….  Such a vast diversity of state would by no means have agreed with the natural and necessary constitution and unavoidable situation and circumstance of the world of mankind; all made of one blood, to dwell on all the face of the earth [Acts 17:26].[65]

Scottish Presbyterian pastor and American Founder John Witherspoon—though perhaps more of a religious unifier than a revivalist—affirmed in his 1700s sermon View of the Glory of God man’s fallen moral condition from Adam, in which “the beauty and excellence of that image [of God]…was stained by sin.”[66]  Citing Ecclesiastes 7:20, Romans 3:10, Romans 3:23, and Romans 5:12, he elaborates in his Man in His Natural State,

As it is written, ‘There is none righteous, no not one [Ecclesiastes 7:20; Romans 3:10].’  And again—‘For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God [Romans 3:23].’  You may also see that the apostle [Paul] traces this disorder to its very source—‘Wherefore as by one man [Adam] sin entered into the world, and death by sin: and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned [Romans 5:12].’ …  Man is everywhere considered as in a fallen and sinful state.  …  It is not one man, or a few men, that are in Scripture called to repentance, but all without exception.”[67]

Revivalists reinforced the idea of man’s equality, secondly, by emphasizing every man’s need for God’s redemption in Christ.  Citing John 3:3-7, Luke 13:1-5, Matthew 6:12, and Luke 11:4, Edwards explains,

Christ was continually saying…that all men in their original state are sinful….  As, when he declared [in John 3:3-7] that…it was necessary for all to be born again, to be converted, and that otherwise they could not enter into the kingdom of heaven; that [in Luke 13:1-5] all were sinners…, and that everyone who did not repent should perish; withal [in Matt 6:12 and Luke 11:4] directing every one to pray to God for forgiveness of sin.[68]

Just as every person is in a fallen state, Edwards concluded, so can every person be redeemed through faith in Christ.  Citing John 20:31, he confirmed in his Concerning Faith, “‘These things are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that…ye might have life through his name.’  …[This] is the faith that all men have that are in a state of salvation.”[69]

In spreading the teachings of the Bible throughout colonial America, the Great Awakening strengthened the American view of man’s equality, most distinctly, in emphasizing man’s common moral condition—including man’s fallen moral state and need for God’s redemption.  The revival proclaimed a Gospel of hope and salvation in Christ for all people, regardless of status.  True to its tenets, the revival affected all kinds of people as Edwards observed in his 1737 Faithful Narrative:  “The work in this town, and some others around us, has been extraordinary on account of the universality of it, affecting all sorts, sober and vicious, high and low, rich and poor, wise and unwise.  It reached the most considerable families and persons to all appearance, as much as others.” [70]  In these ways, the revival reinforced colonial Americans’ philosophical and political views on mans’ equality prior to the American Revolution.

The American Founders and the Declaration:  Man’s Equality in Rights and Under Law

During America’s revolutionary and founding periods, when the American colonists turned their attention to freedom from British control and national sovereignty, the American Founders drew on the idea of man’s equality as a key basis for American independence.  Many colonists believed that the British government had violated their rights by imposing oppressive taxes and policies on them without American representation in British parliament.  The Founders argued that the colonists were entitled to consensual self-government based on man’s equality in natural rights and under law.  They largely understood such equality from man’s common origin, nature, dominion, and moral responsibility as found in the Bible and confirmed by Western thought.

On man’s common origin, for example, the Founders acknowledged from Genesis 2:7, 21-22 and Acts 17:26 that mankind, as created by God, originates from one man, Adam.  Founder Benjamin Rush in his 1798 Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical referred to Adam in Genesis as man’s “great progenitor.”[71]  Founder and pastor John Witherspoon recognized man’s origin from Adam as the “children of Adam” and “race of Adam.”[72]  Founder and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson in his 1790-1791 Lectures on Law affirmed from Acts 17:26 humanity’s origin from one man:  “In civil society, previously to the institution of civil government, all men are equal.  Of one blood all nations are made; from one source the whole human race has sprung.”[73]  Founder John Adams in his 1778 Defense of the Constitutions of Government similarly recognized that “all men are of the same species, and of one blood.”[74]

On man’s common nature, the Founders recognized from Genesis 1:26-28—and in line with Catholic and Protestant Christian thought as expressed by Augustine, Gregory, Aquinas, Bellarmine, Rutherford, and Locke—that man is made in God’s image with reason.  Witherspoon described man “in whom some faint rays…of the divine Image appear by reflection.”[75]  Founder Benjamin Franklin noted man’s unique rational nature and dignity from God in his 1728 Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion:  “Thou [God] hast created man, bestowing life and reason, and placed him in dignity superior to thy other earthly creatures.”[76]  Wilson affirmed man’s unique rational nature:  “The power of reasoning is…the characteristic quality, which distinguishes the human race from the inferior part of creation.”[77]

On man’s dominion, the Founders saw from Genesis 1:26-28—and in line with Bellarmine, Rutherford, Locke, and Sidney—man’s rule over the earth.  Wilson explained man’s earthly rule by quoting Genesis 1:26-28:  “The general property of man in animals, in the soil, and in the production of the soil, is the immediate gift of the bountiful Creator of all.  ‘God created man in his own image…and said unto them, be fruitful and multiply, …and have dominion…over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.’”[78]  Rush likewise saw from Genesis man’s earthly dominion due to his reason:  “It is probable that the dominion of our great progenitor [Adam] over the brute creation…was founded upon a perfect knowledge of their names and qualities, for God appears in this…to have acted by the instrumentality of human reason.”[79]  Founder John Adams in his 1774 Novanglus affirmed “the elevated rank they [men] hold in the universe, as men.”[80]

On man’s common moral responsibility, the Founders—in line with Genesis 3:22, Genesis 4:7, Romans 2:14-15, the Israelites, Aristotle, Cicero, Ulpian, Justinian, Roman law, and Blackstone—saw that all men have a moral obligation to the Law of Nature.  Wilson recognized that the Creator God has prescribed “a law for our conduct” and, from Romans 2:15, that this Law of Nature is “engraven by God on the hearts of men.”[81]  This law, which God reveals and confirms in the Bible, says Wilson, applies to all men:  “The law of nature is universal.  …The law of nature, having its foundation in the constitution and state of man, has an essential fitness for all mankind, and binds them without distinction.”[82]  Revolutionary leader and Founder Samuel Adams in his 1794 letter to the Massachusetts legislature also cited Romans 2:15 on every man’s duty to abide by the Law of Nature:  “All men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or…the laws of the Creator:—They are imprinted by the finger of God on the heart of man….  [I]t is confirmed by written revelation.”[83]  Rush in his 1792 On the Punishment of Murder likewise affirmed the moral law in man’s heart as described in Romans 2:15, recognizing “the sense of justice so universal among all nations” which is “written by the finger of God upon every human heart.”[84]

From these commonalities seen in the Bible, founding-era Americans saw that all men are naturally equal before God.  With such understanding, revolutionary activist James Otis in his 1762 Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives remarked that “God made all men naturally equal.”[85]  Witherspoon observed in his 1774 Lectures on Moral Philosophy that “men are originally and by nature equal.[86]  John Adams stated that “all men by nature are equal.”[87]  Wilson asserted that “in civil society, previous to civil government, all men are equal[88]

The Founders explicitly acknowledged the Bible and Western thought as the primary sources for man’s natural equality.  On the Bible as a source, Rush stated in his 1786 Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,

The history of the creation of man, and of the relation of our species to each other by birth, which is recorded in the Old Testament, is the best refutation that can be given to the divine right of kings, and the strongest argument that can be used in favor of the original and natural equality of all mankind.[89]

Rush in his 1791 Defense of the Use of the Bible as a Schoolbook confirmed of the Bible that “this divine book, above all others, favours that equality among mankind.”[90]  The Founders also confirmed the influence of Western thought of the ancient, medieval, and modern periods on their philosophical and political views of man’s equality.  For example, John Adams named Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, and Sidney as those from whom the Founders drew support:

“They,” the popular leaders, “begin by reminding the people of the elevated rank they hold in the universe, as men; that all men by nature are equal.” … These…are the principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, and Sidney, Harrington, and Locke; the principles of nature and eternal reason; the principles on which the whole government over us now stands.”[91]

Declaration author Jefferson confirmed in a 1825 letter that the Declaration’s authority rests on “the harmonizing sentiments of the day, …as Aristotle, Cicero, Locke, Sidney, etc.”[92]  These sentiments likely included Bellarmine of whom Jefferson would have known through Locke, Sidney, and Filmer.[93]  As such, the Bible and Western, God-oriented thought significantly impacted the Founders’ understanding and assertion of man’s equality during the founding era and in the Declaration.

With such a view of man’s natural equality, the Founders held that all men are equal in natural rights of life and liberty and under law.  On man’s equal rights, for example, John Adams affirmed in a letter, “That all men are born to equal rights is true.”[94]  Wilson recognized that “the natural rights and duties of man belong equally to all” and that “in civil society, previous to civil government…all men are free.”[95]  Founder George Mason wrote in the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights that “all men are by nature equally free and independent.”[96]  Founder Alexander Hamilton in his 1775 Farmer Refuted observed that “natural liberty is a gift of the beneficent Creator, to the whole human race.”[97]  Samuel Adams in his Rights of Colonists, quoting Locke, stated, “‘Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty,’ in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature.”[98]  Just as all individuals are equal and free, Wilson further explained, so are civil states “sovereign and independent.”[99]  Because men are equal in rights, the Founders understood, just government requires the people’s consent.

In accordance with such views of man’s equality, the Founders’ Declaration of Independence of 1776 asserts, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” and “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  It also declares the American people’s right and intent to “assume among the Powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God entitle them” and to become “Free and Independent States.”[100]

To be sure, the institution of slavery that existed in colonial and early America was, as many early Americans saw, a direct contradiction to and a dark shadow on the American principle of equality.  This system had developed in America because many Southern colonies, later states, had agricultural economies that were dependent on slave labor for crops.  African-American slaves were—against their will—imported, bought, and sold as property.  Children and descendants of slaves were also typically considered slaves.  During the Revolutionary period, an increasing number of early Americans including many Founders protested slavery as an immoral practice that sorely violated the Law of Nature and man’s natural rights.  For example, Founder and lawyer James Otis observed in his 1764 Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved that slavery was “the most shocking violation of the law of nature.”[101]  Founder and physician Benjamin Rush in his 1773 tract On Slave Keeping urged Americans to oppose slavery as “a vice which degrades human nature.”[102]  Pastor Samuel Cooke of Massachusetts, referencing Romans 2:11, preached in 1770 against slavery, saying that God “is no respecter of persons” and that “we, the patrons of liberty, have dishonored the Christian name and degraded human nature nearly to a level with the beasts that perish.”[103]  Though the American Revolution did not end slavery in America, the Declaration’s explicit assertion of equality among all men laid the groundwork for the future abolition of slavery.  As Bernard Bailyn explains in his 1967 Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, slavery was “subjected to severe pressure as a result of the extension of revolutionary ideas, and it bore the marks ever after.  As long as the institution lasted, the burden of proof would lie with its advocates to show why the statement ‘all men are created equal’ did not mean precisely what it said:  all men, ‘white or black.’”[104]

During the American Revolution and founding of the United States, the Founders articulated in the Declaration an important principle of American political thought—the equality of all men.  They believed that men were equal not in ability, merit, character, or virtue—factors yet important for civil service—but in the sight of God.[105]  They supported this principle with a Western, Bible-based worldview of man’s common origin, nature, dominion, and moral responsibility.  From this natural equality, they asserted man’s equality in natural rights and under law, and just government by consent.  The Americans separated from Britain and formed the new nation of the United States with this justification.  In this way, the principle of equality became a part of America’s founding philosophy.  Later, it became the primary argument against slavery in America.  As Thomas Kidd affirms in his 2010 God of Liberty:  A Religious History of the American Revolution, the Declaration’s assertion of man’s “equality by creation” was “the most powerful and productive ideological force to come out of the Revolution.”[106]

The U. S. Constitution of 1787:  The New Republic and The Problem of Slavery

The American Founders favored a Constitutional Republic as the form of government for the United States because it reflected the Declaration’s principles and man’s natural equality.  When drafting the U. S. Constitution of 1787, the Founders created such a self-government for the new nation that essentially upheld man’s equality in rights and under law.  The New Republic uniquely applied such equality in being based on popular sovereignty, or the people’s rule, and the consent of the governed and in having a constitution of laws.  To be sure, the Constitution initially fell short of the Declaration’s ideal because it allowed for the continuance of slavery, but this flaw was later remedied.

The Founders’ republic upheld man’s equality in rights because the government was based on popular sovereignty and authorized by the people’s consent.  All qualified citizens could elect or be elected to public offices, and the elected representatives served and governed for the people.  Founder Thomas Jefferson observed in a 1816 letter, “The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen, in his person and property, and in their management.”[107]  Founder Benjamin Rush in his 1787 Thoughts Upon Female Education praised “the equal share that every citizen has in the liberty, and the possible share he may have in the government of our country.”[108]  Founder James Wilson explained that in a republic “the doors of publick honours and offices are, on the broad principles of equal liberty, thrown open to all.”[109]  The Founders’ republic upheld man’s equality under law with a constitution of laws so that all the people, including public servants, were subject to the same, equal laws.  Constitution architect James Madison in his 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance affirmed that equality “ought to be the basis of every law.”[110]

To be sure, the Founders’ Constitution did not fully realize the ideal of equality because it initially permitted the continuation of slavery in the states—which meant that slaves did not have equal rights or equal protection of the law.  The Founders compromised on the issue of slavery so that enough states would ratify the Constitution and form the union.  For Southern states would not ratify the Constitution unless slavery was allowed.  Thus Article 1, Section 9, in the Constitution says, “The Migration or Importation of such Persons [slaves] as any of the states now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress.”  Article 1, Section 2, of the Constitution also tolerated inequality because it allowed states to count slaves as three-fifths of one free person in determining a state’s total population.  This “Three-Fifths Compromise” allowed for inequality because it assigned different values to free and slave persons and did not give slaves voting rights.

Though some Founders inherited and/or owned slaves, they overwhelmingly recognized and admitted that slavery was an immoral, unjust practice contrary to the Law of Nature and man’s equal, natural rights.  Deeply conflicted, most voiced dissatisfaction with slavery and expressed hope that it could be abolished.  For example, Wilson acknowledged that slavery was “repugnant to the principles of natural law, that such a state should subsist in any social system.”[111]  Madison stated at the 1787 Constitutional Convention that he “thought it wrong to admit in the Constitution the idea that there could be property in men.”[112]  He called slavery “the most oppressive dominion ever exercised by man over man.”[113]  In his 1784 Notes on the States of Virginia, Jefferson called slavery “a political and moral evil.”[114]  Indeed, many Founders expressed concern that God would judge the nation for allowing slavery to continue.  Jefferson wrote, “I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever.”[115]  Rush expressed, “National crimes require national punishments, …it cannot pass with impunity, unless God shall cease to be just or merciful.”[116]  Founder George Mason stated at the Constitutional Convention that slavery will “bring the judgment of heaven on a Country.”[117]

In drafting the Constitution of 1787, the Founders created a bright constitutional republic for America that applied in important ways the Declaration’s principle of equality—by popular sovereignty, consent of the governed, and a constitution of laws.  The Constitution’s expression of equality was dimmed, to be sure, by its initial compromise on slavery.  While the Founders tolerated slavery in order to achieve national unification, many expressed fear that God would judge the nation for slavery and hope that it would be abolished.  Such consequence and outcome occurred with the American Civil War.

The American Civil War:  Equal Rights, Equal Protection of Law, and the Abolition of Slavery

The American Civil War of 1861-1865 was a significant event in American history that greatly impacted the nation’s progress toward and realization of equality for all citizens.  The Civil War broke out in large part due to the political unrest that arose over the issue of slavery.  The Northern states of the Union protested slavery as an immoral practice that violated the Law of Nature and man’s natural rights.  They fought initially to preserve the union but later, as scholars note, to end slavery in America.[118]  The Southern states of the Confederacy defended slavery as being under the protection and sovereignty of constitutional and state rights.  They viewed the North’s challenges to these rights as a violation of the Union compact.  Both North and South cited the Bible to support their positions yet could not agree.  When the Southern states seceded, war ensued.  President Abraham Lincoln led the Union’s fight against slavery, believing that slavery contradicted the principles of equality and rights in the Declaration of Independence.  Though Lincoln did not subscribe to all traditional Christian doctrines, his belief in God and the Bible further shaped his view of slavery as an immoral evil.  Lincoln was instrumental in focusing the Union’s cause on ending slavery, declaring in his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation that all slaves in Confederate states “are, and henceforward shall be free.”[119]  With the Union’s win, the war ended slavery and gave former slaves equal rights and laws.

Prior to the Civil War, from the 1840s to 1860s, Americans debated over what the Bible said about slavery, for most saw the Bible as a moral guide for society.  Pro-slavery activists argued from verses like Genesis 12:16, Leviticus 25:44, 1 Corinthians 7:21-24, and Ephesians 6:5 that because the Bible did not eradicate but regulated slavery, God approved of the institution.[120]  Anti-slavery activists or abolitionists argued from larger biblical principles as found in Genesis 1:26-28, Romans 2:14-15, and related verses that all men are created in God’s image, have certain natural rights, and are morally responsible to the Law of Nature.  They also argued from the book of Exodus that slavery was not God’s ultimate will for His people since the prophet Moses led the enslaved Israelites out of Egypt to freedom.[121]  Abolitionists further cited Leviticus 25:10 as inscribed on the Philadelphia Liberty Bell to bring to mind the Declaration’s principles of equality and liberty.  Leviticus 25:10 states, “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land Unto All the Inhabitants thereof.”[122]  As Americans could not agree on the Bible’s position on slavery, the nation was left to resolve the issue through the Civil War and leaders like Lincoln.

President Abraham Lincoln, who presided over the nation during the Civil War, adhered to the founding rationale of the Declaration of Independence to determine his perspective on the Constitution and slavery and his actions in the war.  Lincoln believed that the Declaration provided “the definitions and axioms of free society,” and he confirmed in his 1861 speech at Independence Hall that this founding document was the source of his political philosophy:  “I have never had a feeling, politically, that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.”[123]  The Constitution, he believed, should reflect and uphold the ideas in the Declaration.  While greatly respecting the Constitution, Lincoln saw that its permitting of slavery was a moral and philosophical flaw because it contradicted the Declaration’s principles of equality and natural rights.  He lamented in a 1854 speech how slavery led so many Americans into “open war” with the Declaration and gave the impression “that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”[124]  He illustrated what he saw as the proper relationship between the Declaration and Constitution with Proverbs 25:11 which states, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in settings of silver.”[125]  The Declaration and its principles, he thought, were like the “apples of gold” framed by the Constitution as the “settings of silver.”  He expounded on this picture in his 1861 Fragment on the Constitution and the Union:

Without the Constitution and the Union, we could not have attained…our great prosperity.  There [however] is something back of these, entwining itself more closely about the human heart.  That something, is the principle of “Liberty to all”….  The expression of that principle, in our Declaration of Independence, was most happy, and fortunate.  …[W]ithout it, we could not, I think, have secured our free government….  No oppressed, people will fight, and endure, as our fathers did, without the promise of something better, than a mere change of masters.  The assertion of that principle, at that time, was the word, “fitly spoken” [Prov. 25:11] which has proved an “apple of gold” to us.  The Union, and the Constitution, are the picture of silver, subsequently framed around it.  The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple; but to adorn, and preserve it.  The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.  So let us act, that neither picture, or apple shall ever be blurred, or bruised or broken.[126]

Allen Guelzo in his 2017 Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas explains of Lincoln’s view, “The Constitution did not exist merely for its own sake, as though it were only a set of procedural rules with no better goal than letting people do what they pleased with what they pleased; it was intended to serve the interests of ‘the principle of ‘Liberty to all.’’”[127]  The Founders, Lincoln saw, permitted slavery in the Constitution in order to secure the republic, but they hoped for its eventual demise.  “They meant simply to declare the right,” he explained in a 1857 speech, “so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.”[128]  Indeed, Lincoln saw the Declaration as a promise that all Americans would eventually realize their rights, a “promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”[129]  Thus, in his 1863 Gettysburg Address, Lincoln cited the Declaration’s principle of equality as the primary justification for the Union’s cause, stating, “Fourscore and seven years ago [1776] our fathers brought forth upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.  Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can endure.”[130]  In this way, Lincoln’s political thought reflected the Declaration and was, describes Tony Williams in a 2020 review, “a lens into the ideals of the American founding.”[131]

In addition to his views on the Declaration, Lincoln’s beliefs about God and the Bible also influenced his position and actions in the Civil War, for he sought direction from these sources in all that he did.  On his belief in the Bible as a moral guide, Lincoln in a 1864 speech to the Committee of Colored People of Baltimore expressed, “In regard to this great book, …it is the best gift God has given to man.  All the good Saviour [Jesus] gave to the world was communicated through this book.  But for it we could not know right from wrong.  All things most desirable for man’s welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it.”[132]  Lincoln also reportedly once remarked, “I know the Lord is always on the side of the right.  But it is my constant anxiety and prayer that I and this nation should be on the Lord’s side.”[133]  Thus, Lincoln supported the Union’s cause against slavery because he believed that it was the moral position favored by God and the Bible.  For instance, in a 1856 speech encouraging the North to fight against slavery, he exhorted, “Let us reinaugurate the good old ‘central ideas’ of the republic.  We can do it.  The human heart is with us; God is with us.  We shall again be able…to declare…that ‘all men are created equal.’”[134]  In a September 22, 1862, meeting prior to issuing his Emancipation Proclamation, he reportedly told his cabinet, “I have made a solemn vow before God, that if [Confederate] General Lee was driven back from Pennsylvania, I would crown the result by the declaration of freedom to the slaves.”[135]  Thus Lincoln’s proclamation was, as Bruce Feiler observes in his 2009 America’s Prophet:  Moses and the American story, “an outgrowth of his relationship with God.”[136]

Further, in his 1865 Second Inaugural Address near the end of the war, Lincoln repeatedly cited the Bible to confirm the evil of slavery, recognize God’s judgment, and call for the nation’s healing and unity.  On the evil of slavery, Lincoln referenced Genesis 3:19 and Matthew 7:1 in stating, “It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God’s assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged.”[137]  On God’s judgment against evil, Lincoln quoted Jesus in Matthew 18:7:  “‘Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh.’”[138]  Citing Psalm 19:9, he suggested that the war was God’s judgment on the nation for slavery, saying, “If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which…He [God] now wills to remove, and that He gives…this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?  …[I]t must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’”  On the nation’s healing and unity, Lincoln drew from Colossians 3:8, Philemon 1:4-5, 2 Thessalonians 1:3, Psalm 147:3, and James 1:27 in stating, “With malice toward none, with charity for all, …let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan.”[139] Lincoln clearly esteemed the Bible as a guiding moral lamp and knew that the people did too.

Following the Civil War and the Union’s victory, Congress adopted Amendments 13, 14, and 15, known as the Civil War Amendments.  The 13th Amendment of 1865 overrode the Constitution’s slavery clause and made slavery illegal, except as punishment for a crime, in the United States.  The 14th Amendment of 1868 repealed the Constitution’s Three-Fifths Compromise by ensuring that all citizens—including all former slaves—had equal rights and “equal protection of laws” in the states.  The 15th Amendment of 1870 gave all male citizens—including former slaves—the right to vote regardless of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”  (To be sure, the 15th Amendment did not give women the right to vote.  Women gained this right in 1920 with the 19th Amendment.  Later, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 prohibited any further voter discrimination and secured voting rights for all citizens.)

The Civil War played an important role in advancing the Declaration’s principles of equality and rights in the New Republic.  With much conviction and encouragement from leaders like President Lincoln—who upheld the Declaration’s idea that “all men are created equal” and the Bible-based view of the immorality of slavery—the nation fought, reunified, and amended its Constitution to further realize these values.  The Civil War led to the abolition of slavery and to more equal rights and equal protection of the law for all citizens in America.

Conclusion

One of the most important principles that the American Founders followed when creating the new nation of the United States was the shining axiom, as asserted in the Declaration, that all men are created equal.  The Founders recognized that all men, though differing in their abilities and traits, are equal in the eyes of God.  Their understanding of this principle came in large part from classical and biblical ideas of man’s common origin, nature, dominion, moral condition, and moral responsibility.  The Bible and Judeo-Christian thought greatly influenced this view by revealing that all men originated from one man Adam, are made in God’s image with reason, and are subject to the Law of Nature.  Because of these commonalities—as many classical and God-oriented thinkers saw—all men are equal under law and in natural rights to life and liberty.  Just governments, then, are based on the people’s consent.  This Western view of man’s equality can be seen developing in the ancient, medieval, Reformation, modern Enlightenment, and early American periods—though its full application took time.  Ultimately, the Founders created a constitutional republic for America that was based on popular sovereignty and government by consent and that upheld man’s equality under law and in rights.  Though early Americans struggled with the moral problem of slavery, the Civil War ended this practice and led to greater equality for all citizens.  Today, the principle of equality brightly shines as a great light of the American idea.

—————

[1] See Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order (Washington, DC:  Regnery Gateway, 1991), 408; Kent Greenawalt, “Religion and Equality,” in Christianity and Human Rights:  An Introduction, eds. John Witte, Jr., and Frank S. Alexander (New York:  Cambridge U Press, 2010), 236; John Witte, Jr., God’s Joust, God’s Justice:  Law and Religion in the Western Tradition (Grand Rapids, MI:  Eerdmans, 2006), 49.

[2] boldface mine

[3] All Bible verses are taken from the New International Version (NIV) unless otherwise noted.

[4] New King James Version (NKJV).

[5] Theodore Buckley, ed., Aristotle’s Treatise on Rhetoric (London:  Henry G. Bo N, 1853), bk. 1, 86.

[6] Francis Barham, ed., The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, in Two Volumes, Vol. 1 (London:  Edmund Spettigue, 1841), 35, 40, 48.

[7] Alan Watson, trans., The Digest of Justinian, Vol. 4 (Philadelphia:  U of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), bk. 50, 473.  Ulpian’s statement originally appeared in the Roman law record, Sabinus, books 42-43.  It reappeared in the Digest which is part of Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis.

[8] Allan C. Johnson et al., Ancient Roman Statutes:  A Translation with Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Index, ed. Clyde Pharr (Austin, TX:  U of Texas Press, 1961), table 9, law no. 1-2, 12.

[9] See Watson, trans., Digest of Justinian, Vol. 4, bk. 50, 473.  The Digest is part of Justinian’s Corpus.

[10] On men’s differences, the Greco-Romans saw that citizens’ diverse roles in society benefited their communities, which caused them, Plato notes, to “care more for the city and for one another.”  See B. Jowett, trans., The Republic of Plato, 2nd ed. (Oxford:  Clarendon Press, 1881), 47-48, 101, 243; John Gillies, ed. and trans., Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics, Vol. 2, 2nd ed. (London:  Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), 87-89, 232, 403, 409-410; Francis Barham, ed., “Cicero’s Commonwealth,” in Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Vol. 1, 179.

[11] John Gillies, ed. and trans., Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics, 2nd ed., Vol. 2.  (London:  Printed for T. Cadell and W. Davies, 1804), bk. 6, 333.

[12] Barham, ed., Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Vol. 1, 179.  The Greeks and Romans opposed the equalizing or redistribution of wealth by government.  They thought it had minimal, if any, positive outcomes in society and was often misused and abused.  See Gillies, ed., Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics, Vol. 2, bk. 2, 107-108, 110-111.

[13] Charles H. Monro, trans., The Digest of Justinian, Vol. 1 (London:  C. J. Clay and Sons, Cambridge U Press, 1904), bk. 1, 4.  Ulpian’s statement appears in The Institutes of Justinian and in The Digest of Justinian which are part of Justinian’s Corpus.

[14] Scott Robinson, “Equality,” in The Origins of Our Founding Principles, ed. Chris Hammons (Houston, TX:  Morris Family Center for Law & Liberty, Houston Baptist U, 2020), 199.

[15] Marcus Dods, ed., The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Vol. 1:  The City of God (Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark, 1871), bk. 12, 514; J. G. Pilkington, trans., The Confessions of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark, 1876), bk. 13, 391.

[16] Marcus Dods, ed., The Works of Aurelius Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, Vol. 2:  The City of God (Edinburgh:  T. & T. Clark, 1881), bk. 19, 323-324.  boldface mine

[17] Members of the English Church, trans., Morals on the Book of Job, by Saint Gregory the Great, In Three Volumes, Vol. 2, Parts 3 & 4 (Oxford:  John Henry Parker, F. and J. Rivington, 1845), bk. 21, 533-534.  Boldface mine.  Genesis 9:1-3 says, “God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.  The fear and dread of you will fall on all the beasts of the earth….  Everything that lives and moves about will be food for you.  Just as I gave you the green plants, I now give you everything.’”

[18] R. W. Carlyle and A. J. Carlyle, A History of Mediaeval Political Theory in the West, Vol. 1:  The Second Century to the Ninth (Edinburgh and London:  William Blackwood and Sons, 1903), 114.

[19] Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans., The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part 1, Vol. 1 (London:  R. & T. Washbourne, 1911), Q. 3, 31.

[20] Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans., The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, Part 2 (Second Part) (London:  Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, 1922), Q. 104, 36.  boldface mine

[21] Fathers of the English Dominican Province, trans., The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas, 2nd ed., Part 1, Vol. 3 (London:  Burns, Oates, & Washbourne, 1922), Q. 64, 174.

[22] Thomas Aquinas, “Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard,” in Thomas Aquinas:  Philosophical Texts, ed. Thomas Gilby (London:  Oxford U Press, 1951), 385-386.  boldface mine

[23] John Allen, trans., The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, In Three Volumes, Vol. 3 (Philadelphia:  Published by Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 112-113.  Matthew 16:13-19 states, “He [Jesus] asked his disciples, …  ‘Who do you say that I am?’  Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’  Jesus replied, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah….  And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.  I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’”

[24] NKJV

[25] Allen, trans., Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 3, 112-113.  In 1 Peter 5:1, the Apostle Peter says to believers, “To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder and a witness of Christ’s sufferings who also will share in the glory to be revealed.“  Calvin also cites Acts 15:6-29, Acts 11:2, Acts 8:14-15, and Galatians 1, 2 on this point.

[26] Allen, trans., Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 3, 114.  In Ephesians 4:15, the Apostle Paul exhorts believers, “Speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of Him who is the head, that is, Christ.”

[27] Martin Luther, An Appeal to the Ruling Class of German Nationality as to the Amelioration of the State of Christendom, 1520, in Martin Luther:  Selections From His Writings, ed. John Dillenberger (New York:  Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1961), 412-415.

[28] Luther, Appeal to the Ruling Class, 408.  In 1 Peter 2:9, the Apostle Peter tells believers, “You are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession.”

[29] Allen, trans., Institutes of the Christian Religion, Vol. 3, 114.

[30] Luther, Appeal to the Ruling Class, 409.

[31] NKJV

[32] Kathleen E. Murphy, trans.  De Laicis or The Treatise on Civil Government by Robert Bellarmine (New York:  Fordham U Press, 1928), 11.  Bellarmine’s De Laicis appears in Book Three of his Disputations or Disputationes de Controversiis Christianae Fidei.  Bellarmine cites Augustine in City of God.  boldface mine

[33] Murphy, trans., De Laicis, 35-36.  Bellarmine cites Gregory in Morals on the Book of Job.  boldface mine

[34] John C. Rager, The Political Philosophy of Blessed Cardinal Bellarmine:  Dissertation (Washington, DC:  Catholic U of America, 1926), 15.  boldface mine.  This quote appears in Bellarmine’s De Clericis, Chapter VII, in his Disputations.

[35] Murphy, trans., De Laicis, 25.

[36] Rutherford, Lex, Rex, Q. 7, 25.  boldface mine

[37] Rutherford, Lex, Rex, Q. 13, 52.

[38] H. Richard Niebuhr, The Kingdom of God in America (Middletown, CT:  Weslayan U Press, 1988), 23-24.

[39] Kent Greenawalt, “Religion and Equality,” in Christianity and Human Rights:  An Introduction, eds. John Witte Jr. and Frank S. Alexander (New York:  Cambridge U Press, 2010), 236.

[40] See John C. Rager, Democracy and Bellarmine:  An Examination of Blessed Cardinal Bellarmine’s Defense of Popular Government and the Influence of His Political Theory Upon the American Declaration of Independence (Shelbyville, IN:  Qualityprint, 1926); Matthew Bunson, “Bellarmine, Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence,” National Catholic Register, 26 June 2016, repub. 4 July 2018, https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/bellarmine-jefferson-and-the-declaration-of-independence.

[41] John Wise, “A Vindication of the Government of New England Churches, 1717,” in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing Co., 1965, 2003), 254.

[42] Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline (London:  Printed by A. M. for John Bellamy, 1648), 261.

[43] Wise, Vindication, 254.

[44] Wise, Vindication, 259-260.  As appears in the Institutes of Justinian and Digest of Justinian in the Corpus Juris Civilis, Ulpian states that “by natural law all were born free.”  See Charles H. Monro, trans., The Digest of Justinian, Vol. 1 (London:  C. J. Clay and Sons:  Cambridge U Press, 1904), 4.

[45] Thomas Hooker, “Sermon Before the Connecticut General Court in Harford, May 31, 1638,” in The Puritan Tradition in America, 1620-1730, Revised ed., ed. Alden T. Vaughan (Hanover, NH:  U Press of New England, 1972), 83.

[46] Hooker, Summe, 214-215.  boldface mine

[47] Hooker, Summe, 26.  In John 20:21, Jesus says to his disciples, “‘Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.’”

[48] John Cotton, The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (London:  Printed by Matthew Simmons, 1645), 54-55, footnote 50.

[49] On the Puritan’s New England church governments, see John Cotton’s 1644 Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven and 1645 Way of the Churches of Christ in New England.

[50] Alexander W. McClure, The Life of John Cotton, Limited ed. (Boston, 1870), 165.

[51] William Bradford, “Of Plymouth Plantation, 1602-1646,” in The Mayflower Papers:  Selected Writings of Colonial New England, eds. Nathanial Philbrick and Thomas Philbrick (New York:  Penguin Classics, 2007), 14.

[52] Donald S. Lutz, “Mayflower Compact 1620,” in Roots of the Republic:  American Founding Documents Interpreted, ed. Stephen. L. Schechter (Madison, WI: Madison House 1990), 21.

[53] Albert C. Addison, The Romantic Story of the Puritan Fathers and Their Founding of New Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony (Boston, MA:  L. C. Page & Co., 1912), 157.

[54] Robert Filmer, Patriarcha, or The Natural Power of Kings, 1680, in Two Treatises on Civil Government by John Locke, ed. Henry Morley (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 15-16.

[55] Filmer, Patriarcha, 15.  Boldface mine.

[56] John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government, Book 1 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 97.

[57] Locke, Two Treatises, Book 1, 96.

[58] Locke, Two Treatises, Book 1, 112; John Locke, Two Treatises on Civil Government, Book 2 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 217.

[59] Locke, Two Treatises, Book 1, 122-123.

[60] Locke, Two Treatises, Book 1, 172.

[61] Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, In Two Volumes, Vol. 1 (Edinburgh:  Printed for G. Hamilton and J. Balfour, 1750), 24-26.  Boldface mine.

[62] Sidney, Discourses, Vol. 1, 125.  Romans 8:17 says, “If we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ.”

[63] Sidney, Discourses, Vol. 1, 442, 37.

[64] Tucker, ed., Blackstone’s Commentaries, 41.

[65] Jonathan Edwards, “The Great Christian Doctrine of Original Sin Defended,” 1758, in The Works of President Edwards, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, Reprint of the Worcester ed. (New York:  Leavitt & Allen, 1858), 492.  Boldface mine

[66] John Witherspoon, “A View of the Glory of God Humbling to the Soul,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, 2nd ed., ed. John Rodgers (Philadelphia:  Printed and Published by William W. Woodward, 1802), 141-142.

[67] John Witherspoon, “Man in His Natural State,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, 2nd ed., ed. John Rodgers (Philadelphia:  Printed and Published by William W. Woodward, 1802), 160.  Boldface mine

[68] Edwards, Doctrine of Original Sin, 505-506.  Boldface mine

[69] Jonathan Edwards, “Miscellaneous Observations:  Observations Concerning Faith,” in The Works of President Edwards, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, Reprint of Worcester ed. (New York:  Leavitt & Allen, 1858), 634. Boldface mine

[70] Jonathan Edwards, “Narrative of Surprising Conversions:  A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God,” 1737, in The Works of President Edwards, in Four Volumes, Vol. 3, Reprint of Worcester ed. (New York:  Leavitt & Allen, 1858), 238.

[71] Benjamin Rush, “Observations on the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages,” 1791, in Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, by Benjamin Rush, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia: Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 48.

[72] John Witherspoon, “The Object of a Christian’s Desire in Religious Worship,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, 2nd ed., ed. John Rodgers (Philadelphia:  Printed and Published by William W. Woodward, 1802), 14; John Witherspoon, “The Righteous Scarcely Saved, and the Wicked Certainly Destroyed,” in The Works of the Rev. John Witherspoon, in Four Volumes, Vol. 2, 2nd ed., ed. John Rodgers (Philadelphia:  Printed and Published by William W. Woodward, 1802), 280.

[73] James Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” 1790-1791, Part 1, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, Vol. 1, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 306.

[74] John Adams, “Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America,” 1778, Vol. 1, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Vol. 4, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 380. Boldface mine

[75] Witherspoon, View of the Glory of God Humbling to the Soul, 140.

[76] Benjamin Franklin, “Essays on Religious and Moral Subjects and the Economy of Life:  Articles of Belief and Acts of Religion,” 1728, in The Works of Benjamin Franklin, Vol. 2, ed. Jared Sparks (Boston:  Tappan & Whittemore, 1836), 4.

[77] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 251.

[78] James Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” 1790-1791, Part 3, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, Vol. 3, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 182.

[79] Rush, Observations on the Study of the Latin and Greek Languages, 48.

[80] John Adams, “Controversial Papers of the Revolution:  Novanglus, or A History of the Dispute with America,” 1774, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Vol. 4, ed. Charles Francis Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 15.

[81] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 108, 64.

[82] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 138, 141.  Boldface mine

[83] Samuel Adams, “To the Legislature of Massachusetts, Jan 17, 1794,” in The Writings of Samuel Adams, 1778-1802, Vol. 4, ed. Harry A. Cushing (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 356. Boldface mine

[84] Benjamin Rush, “An Enquiry into the Consistency of the Punishment of Murder by Death, with Reason and Revelation (On the Punishment of Murder by Death),” 1792, in Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, by Benjamin Rush, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia:  Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 174.  Boldface mine

[85] James Otis, A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of the Massachusetts Bay (Boston:  Printed by Edes & Gill, 1762), 17-18. Boldface mine

[86] Varnum L. Collins, ed., Lectures on Moral Philosophy by John Witherspoon, 1774 (Princeton, NJ:  Princeton U Press, 1912), 71.  Boldface mine

[87] John Adams, Novanglus, 15.  Boldface mine

[88] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 309.  Boldface mine

[89] Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts Upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic,” 1786, in Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, by Benjamin Rush, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA:  Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 9.  boldface mine

[90] Benjamin Rush, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible as a Schoolbook,” 10 March 1791, in Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, by Benjamin Rush, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA:  Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 112.  boldface mine

[91] John Adams, Novanglus, 14-15.  Boldface mine.  Adams quoted a December 26, 1774, article in the Massachusetts Gazette by Massachusettenis.

[92] Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, Monticello, 8 May 1825, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7, ed. H. A. Washington (Washington, DC:  Taylor & Maury, 1854), 407.

[93] See John C. Rager, Democracy and Bellarmine:  An Examination of Blessed Cardinal Bellarmine’s Defense of Popular Government and the Influence of His Political Theory Upon the American Declaration of Independence (Shelbyville, IN:  Qualityprint, 1926); Matthew Bunson, “Bellarmine, Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence,” National Catholic Register, 26 June 2016, repub. 4 July 2018, https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/bellarmine-jefferson-and-the-declaration-of-independence.  Bunson affirms in his 2018 editorial, “If Jefferson was influenced by Bellarmine, the author of the Declaration was also shaped by Aquinas and the whole of the Catholic intellectual tradition.  And so, too, was America’s chosen form of government.”

[94] John Adams to John Taylor of Caroline, Virginia, 15 April 1814, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Vol. 6, ed. Charles F. Adams (Boston:  Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 453.

[95] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 308, 309.  Boldface mine

[96] Virginia Bill of Rights, 12 June 1776, in The Constitution of Virginia together with the Virginia Bill of Rights, Passed June 12, 1776 (Richmond, VA:  Printed at the Office of the New Nation, 1867), 3.

[97] Alexander Hamilton, “The Farmer Refuted, or A More Comprehensive and Impartial View of the Disputes Between Great Britain and the Colonies,” 5 February 1775, in The Works of Alexander Hamilton, Vol. 2, ed. John C. Hamilton (New York:  John F. Trow, 1850), 61.

[98] Samuel Adams, “Report on the Rights of Colonists,” Boston, 20 November 1772, in American Patriotism:  Speeches, Letters, and Other Papers which Illustrate the Foundation, Development, and Preservation of the United States of America, comp. Selim H. Peabody (New York:  American Book Exchange, 1880), 33. Boldface mine

[99] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 362.  Wilson elaborates, “That liberty and equality, belonging to the individuals before the union, belong after the union to the society, which those individuals compose.  ….  Every state, therefore, composed of individuals, is a state sovereign and independent. …  States are moral persons, who live together in a natural society, under the law of nations.” (359-360)

[100] Boldface mine

[101] James Otis, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, 1764 (Boston:  Printed and Sold by Edes and Gill, 1764), 29.

[102] Benjamin Rush, “An Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave-Keeping,” 1773, in From Many, One:  Readings in American Political and Social Thought, ed. Richard C. Sinopoli (Washington, DC:  Georgetown U Press, 1997), 253.

[103] Samuel Cooke, “A Sermon Preached at Cambridge, 30 May 1770,” in The Pulpit of the American Revolution, or The Political Sermons of the Period of 1776, 2nd ed. (Boston:  D. Lothrop & Co., 1876), 182, 183.  In Romans 2:11, the Apostle Paul says, “There is no respect of persons with God.” (KJV)

[104] Bernard Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Enlarged ed. (Cambridge, MA:  Belknap/Harvard U Press, 1967, 1992), 246.

[105] See Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 306-309; John Adams, “Defence of the Constitution of Government of the United States of America,” 1778, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Vol. 4, ed. Charles F. Adams (Boston:  Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 397.  Civil government, the Founders saw, should be composed of the best men with the best qualities in ability and virtue.  These qualities, Adams expressed, were “essential to be considered in the institution of a government.”

[106] Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty:  A Religious History of the American Revolution (New York:  Basic Books, 2010), 143.

[107] Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kerchival, 12 July 1816, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 7, ed. H. A. Washington (Washington DC:  Taylor & Maury, 1854), 11.

[108] Benjamin Rush, “Thoughts Upon Female Education,” 28 July 1787, in Essays Literary, Moral, and Philosophical, 1798, by Benjamin Rush, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, PA:  Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 76.

[109] Wilson, Lectures on Law, Vol. 1, 13.

[110] James Madison, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” 1785, in The Writings of James Madison, Vol. 2:  1783-1787, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1901), 186.

[111] James Wilson, “Lectures on Law,” Vol. 2, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, Vol. 2, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 488.

[112] James Madison, Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Part 2, in The Writings of James Madison, Vol. 4:  1787, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1903), 305-306.

[113] James Madison, Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Part 1, in The Writings of James Madison, Vol. 3:  1787, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1902), 104.

[114] Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” 1784, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, Vol. 8, ed. H. A. Washington (New York:  Published by Riker, Thorne, & Co., 1854), 334.

[115] Thomas Jefferson, “Notes on the State of Virginia,” 404.

[116] Rush, Address to the Inhabitants of the British Settlements in America Upon Slave-Keeping, 254.

[117] Madison, Journal of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, Part 2, 266.

[118] U. S. National Archives and Records Administration, The Emancipation Proclamation, 1863, Online Exhibits, <www.archives.gov/exhibits/featured-documents/emancipation-proclamation> (last reviewed 28 January 2022) (accessed 10 November 2022); U. S. National Archives and Records Administration, Emancipation Proclamation (1863), Milestone Documents, <www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/emancipation-proclamation> (last reviewed 10 May 2022) (accessed 10 November 2022).

[119] Abraham Lincoln, “Emancipation Proclamation,” 1 January 1863, in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, ed. James Bryce (London:  J. M. Dent & Co., 1907, 1909), 204.

[120] See Bruce Feiler, America’s Prophet:  Moses and the American Story (New York:  William Morrow, 2009), 143, 154.  In the King James Version (KJV), Genesis 12:16 says that Abraham acquired in Egypt “menservants” and “maidservants.”  Genesis 16:1 and 21:10 say that Sarah had a “handmaid” or “bondwoman.”  In Leviticus 25:44, God allows Israel to acquire “bondmen” and “bondmaids” from surrounding heathen nations.  In 1 Corinthians 7:21-24, Paul instructs Christian “servants” to “abide with God” in the state of servanthood if they are not freed.  In Ephesians 6:5, Paul instructs “servants” to obey their masters.

[121] See Feiler, America’s Prophet, 150-157.

[122] KJV

[123] Abraham Lincoln to H. L. Pierce and others, 6 April 1859, in Letters and Addresses of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Mary Maclean (New York:  A. Wessels Co., 1907), 141; Abraham Lincoln, “Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861,” in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, ed. James Bryce (London:  J. M. Dent & Co., 1907, 1909), 163.

[124] Abraham Lincoln, “A Speech Delivered in reply to Sen. Stephen A. Douglas at Peoria, Illinois, 16 October 1854,” in Letters and Addresses of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Mary Maclean (New York:  A. Wessels Co., 1907), 75.

[125] New King James Version (NKJV)

[126] Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment on the Constitution and the Union,” January 1861, in Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 4., ed. Roy P. Basler et al. (New Brunswick, NJ:  Rutgers U Press, 1953), 168-169.  Boldface mine

[127] Allen C. Guelzo, Abraham Lincoln as a Man of Ideas (Carbondale, IL:  Southern Illinois U Press, 2009, 2017), 106.

[128] Abraham Lincoln, “Speech on the Dred Scott Decision,” 26 June 1857, in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, ed. James Bryce (London:  J. M. Dent & Co., 1907, 1909), 66.

[129] Abraham Lincoln, “Address in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, February 22, 1861,” in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, ed. James Bryce (London:  J. M. Dent & Co., 1907, 1909), 163.

[130] Abraham Lincoln, “Address at the Dedication of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg, November 19, 1863,” in Speeches & Letters of Abraham Lincoln, 1832-1865, ed. James Bryce (London:  J. M. Dent & Co., 1907, 1909), 213.  Boldface mine

[131] Tony Williams, “An Apple of God in a Picture of Silver,” 7 August 2020, Law & Liberty (Liberty Fund, 2022), <https://lawliberty.org/book-review/an-apple-of-gold-in-a-picture-of-silver/> (accessed 11 November 2022).  Williams reviews Lucas Morel’s Lincoln and the American Founding.

[132] Abraham Lincoln, “Reply to Committee of Colored People of Baltimore Who Presented Him with a Bible,” 7 September 1864, in The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 2, eds. John G. Nicolay and John Hay (New York:  Century Co., 1894), 574.

[133] Francis B. Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln:  The Story of a Picture (New York:  Hurd and Houghton, 1866), 282.  Carpenter was an American artist who was commissioned and resided at the White House when Lincoln was president.  Six Months was Carpenter’s published memoir.

[134] Abraham Lincoln, “Fragment of a Speech Delivered at a Republican Banquet in Chicago,” 10 December 1856, in Letters and Addresses of Abraham Lincoln, ed. Mary Maclean (New York:  A. Wessels Co., 1907), 95.  Boldface mine

[135] Carpenter, Six Months at the White House with Abraham Lincoln, 90.

[136] Bruce Feiler, America’s Prophet:  Moses and the American Story (New York:  William Morrow, 2009), 162.

[137] In Genesis 3:19, after the Fall of Adam and Eve, God says to Adam, “In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, Till you return to the ground.”  In Matthew 7:1, Jesus tells His followers, “Judge not, that you be not judged.” (NKJV)

[138] In Matthew 18:7, Jesus tells His disciples, “Woe to the world because of offenses! For offenses must come, but woe to that man by whom the offense comes!” (NKJV)

[139] On malice toward none, the Apostle Paul in Colossians 3:8 instructs the church to “put off all these: anger, wrath, malice.”  On charity for all, Paul commends the church in Philemon 1:4-5 for their “love and faith which you have…toward all the saints” and in 2 Thessalonians 1:3 “because the love of every one of you all abounds toward each other.”  On binding the nation’s wounds, Psalm 147:3 states, “He [God] heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.”  On caring for widows and orphans, the Apostle James in James 1:27 instructs believers “to visit orphans and widows in their trouble.” (NKJV)

—————

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

This article is available as a printable PDF handout in the member resources section on americanheritage.org.  Simply sign up and login as a member (no cost), go to the resources page, and look under Miracle of America articles.

Source for more information:  Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Third Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015, 2020.  Third Edition (2020) is available!

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35.  The American Defense of Unalienable Rights in the Declaration 
36.  When the People Rule:  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty in the Declaration and Constitution
37.  The American Social Contract in the Declaration and Constitution
38.  The Principle, Practice, and Morality of a Constitutional Republic in America
39. The Principles of Limited Government and Separation of Powers in the U. S. Constitution
40. The Covenant-Inspired Principle of Federalism in the U. S. Constitution
41.  An Introduction to Rule of Law in the Constitution
42.  Unabridged:  The Moral Dimension of Rule of Law in the U. S. Constitution
43.  A Brief Overview:  The Moral Dimension of Rule of Law in the U. S. Constitution
44.  The Bible-Inspired Influences on the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights
45.  The Purpose of American Civil Government


High School Teaching Activity – Drawing Key Understandings/Answering Key Questions on Equality

Activity/Source:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 2, Activity 1:  Drawing Key Understandings/Answering Key Questions, p. 247, 251-252.  MS-HS.  See member resources at americanheritage.org.

Purpose/Objective:  Students learn key principles of the United States Constitution including a self-governing constitutional republic, why Americans saw a republic as the best form of government for the nation, and how influential thinkers and early Americans connected this concept with the Bible.

Required Reading:
-Kamrath, Angela E., The American Principle of Equality in the Declaration, 2022 December 7, on The Founding Blog (Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2017-present), www.thefounding.net.

Suggested Reading: 
-Miracle of America book/text.  Students read sections 1.1-1.3, 2.4, 3.10, 5.1-5.5, 5.13, 5.14, 6.4, 6.5, 7.2, 7.3, 7.11, 7.16, 8.6, 8.7, 8.14, 8.19.
-“Popular Sovereignty” sub-section, in Principles of the Declaration of Independence essay, in Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 363-364.

Questions and Answers:  Teachers may wish to have students answer some of the Key Understanding Qs in the Miracle Course Guide.  Additional, more focused key questions include:
1.  How or in what ways did the American Founders view all men as equal?  (Students should consider the Founders’ view of men as equal not in abilities, character, traits, or merits but before God the Creator.  Thus men are equal in natural rights and under law.)
2.  What is an important philosophical and biblical basis for man’s equality in the Western world?  Give specific scriptures when applicable. (Students should consider man’s common origin, nature, dominion, and moral responsibility in classical and Bible-based, Judeo-Christian thought.)
3.  How did the Protestant Reformation and the American Puritans’ views of the church contribute to civil equality in America?  (Students should consider the Protestant view of the church in which all the members have spiritual power, ministry function, and role as priests.  The Puritans applied their church practices to their civil practices, seeing citizens as equal, starting with the Mayflower Compact.)
4.  Explain the early Americans’ argument for independence from Britain in terms of man’s equality.  (Students should consider how man’s equality leads to man’s natural rights, proper representation, and equality among other nations).
5.  Describe some of the struggles that colonists and early Americans faced in the practice of equality.  (Students should consider the practice of slavery.  Many Americans were dependent on slaves for crop labor, but many believed slavery violated man’s natural rights and the Law of Nature.)
6.  How did the idea of man’s equality as expressed in the Declaration impact America’s history, its leaders, and the American Civil War?  (Students should consider how Americans disagreed about the morality and right to own slaves which led to the Civil War; how Lincoln believed slavery was a moral evil that violated the Declaration, the Law of Nature, and man’s natural rights and thus led the fight against slavery; and how Americans amended the U. S. Constitution after the Civil War to align with the Declaration and to make slavery illegal.)

To download this whole unit in the course guide, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

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To receive blog and resource updates, we invite you to subscribe at no cost to the Founding Blog on this page.

This blog is provided by the American Heritage Education Foundation (AHEF).  AHEF is a non-profit organization dedicated to the understanding and teaching of America’s founding philosophy, principles, documents, and history.  AHEF’s work is made possible by the donations of private individuals and organizations.  Please consider a tax-deductible donation to AHEF to support our mission.  Thank you! 

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

The Law of Nature and Nature’s God in the Declaration: The American Basis and Standard for Just Civil Law

April 11, 2019
The Founding

The American Founders recognized the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” the universal moral law of mankind, in the United States’ Declaration of Independence as the moral and legal basis for creating a new, independent nation.  For this law served as the foundation of man’s natural rights and the limits of earthly power.  To the Founders, as to various historical thinkers, this basic moral law or “Golden Rule” found in man’s conscience and the Bible—that tells one to live honestly, love others, treat others with dignity and respect, harm no one, and render to everyone his due—was also, more specifically, the standard for the new nation’s government and civil laws.  Civil laws are just and legitimate, the Founders recognized, only when they adhere to the higher moral law.  Civil laws that disregard the moral law are thus unjust and illegitimate.  As such, the Law of Nature and God served and serves as a general legal framework and aspiration for the U. S. Constitution and the nation’s civil laws and amendments.

The idea that the Law of Nature and God should serve as a higher law to guide man’s civil law was found among various European thinkers in history who impacted the early Americans.  Enlightenment-era thinkers influential to the American Founding—including Charles de Montesquieu, William Blackstone, John Locke, and Algernon Sidney—all affirmed this principle.

In his 1748 Spirit of the Laws, French philosopher Charles-Louis Baron de Montesquieu, the most cited secular thinker of the American founding era, asserted the value for civil law of the universal moral law to love others found in the Bible.  He observes, “The Christian religion, which ordains that men should love each other, would, without doubt, have every nation blest with the best civil, the best political laws; because these, next to this religion, are the greatest good that men can give and receive.”[1]

British lawyer and jurist William Blackstone, the second most frequently cited secular thinker of the American founding era, confirmed in his 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England that the Law of Nature and God was the standard of all just civil laws.  He writes, “Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation [God’s revelation as found in the Bible or Holy Scripture], depend all human laws.  That is to say, no human laws should be suffered to contradict these.”[2]

British philosopher John Locke, the third most frequently cited secular thinker of the American founding era, also asserted that the legitimacy of man-made laws comes from the Law of Nature and God.  In his 1689 Second Treatise of Civil Government, he explains, …

In his 1698 essay, Discourses Concerning Government, British politician and theorist Algernon Sidney shared Locke’s view that civil governments and laws can only rightly exist if they abide by the Law of Nature and God.  He says, “If it be said that every nation ought in this to follow their own constitutions, we are at an end of our controversies.  For they ought not to be followed, unless they are rightly made.  They cannot be rightly made, if they are contrary to the universal law of God and nature.”[4]

Like these God-oriented Enlightenment thinkers, the American Founders and leading early Americans—including James Wilson, James McHenry, Joseph Story, and John Quincy Adams—acknowledged the Law of Nature and God as the basis for a new nation and the standard for the United States’ civil laws.  Man-made laws, they affirmed, are not legitimized merely by an earthly civil power or by the people’s majority.  Man-made laws must abide by the higher moral law in order to be valid, just, and worthy of obedience.  If a civil state violates this moral law by, for example, legalizing or ordering the cold-blooded murder of an innocent person, such a law or order would be considered illegitimate and should not be obeyed.

American Founder James Wilson

American Founder and U. S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson observed in his 1790-1791 Lectures on Law the importance of God’s moral law in the Bible in the forming of human civil law.  He asserts, “Human law must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law which is divine [God’s moral law in the Bible].  …  Far from being rivals or enemies, religion and law are twin sisters, friends, and mutual assistants.  Indeed, these two sciences run into each other.  The divine law, as discovered by reason and moral sense, forms an essential part of both.”[5]

Portrait of James McHenry by H. Pollock, 1873.

Constitution signer, U. S. Secretary of War, and founder and president of the Baltimore Bible Society, James McHenry also expressed the value of the Bible and its moral law to civil law and society.  He expresses, … 

Portrait of Joseph Story by George P. A. Healy.

U. S. Supreme Court Justice, lawyer, and author of Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, Joseph Story similarly saw the importance of the Bible and its commandments to the foundation of American civil law. In his 1829 induction speech as Harvard law professor, he states, “One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is, that Christianity is a part of the common law, from which it seeks the sanction of its rights, and by which it endeavours to regulate its doctrines.  ….  There never has been a period, in which the common law did not recognise Christianity as lying at its foundations.”[7]

Portrait of John Quincy Adams c1843-1848.

Sixth U. S. President and U. S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams, son of Founder John Adams, would later aptly observe that the Declaration of Independence committed Americans to the biblical moral law.  He observed in his July 4, 1821, address titled “The Nation’s Birth-Day” that “From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union and of its constitutent states were associated bodies of civilized men and Christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy.  They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the Gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledge as the rules of their conduct.”[8]

The early Americans reflected the spirit of the moral law in establishing just constitutional laws and amendments that ultimately respected the individual rights and dignity of citizens—including the right to vote, free exercise of religion, due process of law, trial by impartial jury, assistance of counsel, habeas corpus, innocence until proven guilt, no cruel and unusual punishment, no unreasonable search and seizure, abolition of slavery, equal protection under the law, etc.

Evidently, just as the American Founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence that the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” were the foundation for a new nation, they also held an understanding and view that this moral law was and/or should be the basis and standard for the nation’s civil laws.  The early Americans created their constitutional government and civil laws with an aspiration and commitment to this moral law.  As such, the U. S. Constitution and our nation’s foundational civil laws and amendments were (and aspired to be), in their approach and spirit, directed by the universal moral law that aligns with the Bible.

[1] Charles-Louis Secondat Baron de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, in Two Volumes, New Edition, vol. 2, bk. 24, trans. Thomas Nugent, ed. J. V. Prichard (London:  George Bell & Sons, 1892), 111.

[2] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries, in Five Volumes, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, 1996, 2008), 42.

[3] John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1690, in Two Treatises on Government, Bk. 2 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 262.

[4] Algernon Sidney, Discourses Concerning Government, to which are added, Memoirs of his Life, 1698, 3rd ed. (London:  Printed for A. Millar, 1751), 48.

[5] James Wilson, Lectures on Law, Part 1, 1790-1791 in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, Vol.1, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 104-105, 106.

[6] Bernard C. Steiner, One Hundred and Ten Years of Bible Society Work in Maryland, 1810-1920 (Baltimore, MD:  Maryland Bible Society, 1921), 13-14.

[7] Joseph Story, A Discourse Pronounced Upon the Inauguration of the Author, as Dane Professor of Law in Harvard University, 25 August 1829 (Boston, MA:  Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1829), 20-21.

[8] John Quincy Adams “The Nation’s Birth-Day,” 4 July 1821, Address at Washington, Niles’ Weekly Register, Mar-Sept 1821 (Baltimore) 20, no. 21 (Mar-Sept, 21 July 1821): 331.

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

—–
Source for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Related articles/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Judeo-Christian Law of Love
3.  The American Revolution
4.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
5.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
6.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
7.  American Revolution Debate:  Obedience to God Over Man
8.  The American Quest for Self-Government
9.  The Creator God:  The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States of America
10.  The Law of Nature:  The Universal Moral Law of Mankind
11.  The Law of Nature in the Bible
12.  The Law of Nature and Nature’s God:  One Moral Law Revealed by God in Two Ways  

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 1, Activity 6:  Identifying Biblical Principles in the Declaration, p. 237, 372-376.  MS-HS.

Identifying Biblical Principles in the Declaration…. 

Purpose/Objective:  Students learn key principles of the Declaration of Independence including Creator God, God as Supreme Judge, Law of Nature and Nature’s God, Rule of Law, Popular Sovereignty, and Consent of the Governed, and how historical, influential thinkers and early Americans connected these concepts with the Bible.

Suggested Readings:
1)  Chapter 7 of Miracle of America reference/text.  Students read sections 7.1 to 7.12, 7.18, & pp. 236-237.
2) Essay/Handout:  Principles of the American Revolution by Angela E. Kamrath found in the “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 354-356, or in the “Miracle of America Snapshots” handout under member resources at americanheritage.org.
3)  “Historical Figures Quoted in Miracle of America” and “References to the Law of Nature and Natural Rights in Miracle of America” in “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 347-348, 360-61, 366-371.
4)  Related blogs/videos (see above).

Matching Card Game:
Beforehand, the teacher should print, copy, and cut the matching game cards for a class set.  If students work in small groups of 2 or 3, the teacher will only need to create 10-15 plastic bags of cards to make a class set.  Before the game, the teacher should show and discuss the art image “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo with students.  Students should be familiar with this image before playing the game.  Follow game instructions.  See “The Creation of Adam” Michelangelo painting and the “Matching Card Game” instructions and cut-outs in the “Supporting Resources” section of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 372-376.

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

Grove City College Defeats Abigail Adams Institute for First Place at 2019 American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl

January 31, 2019
The Founding

2019 2nd AHWCCB Finalists (from L to R): For Grove City, Dr. Jason R. Edwards, Elena Peters, Noah Gould, Carolyn Hartwick; AHEF Co-Founder Jack Kamrath, AHEF President Angela Kamrath; For Abigail Adams Institute, Liam Warner, Finnian Brown, Portia Berry-Kilby, Dr. Danilo Petranovich

AHEF’s Second American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl™ (AHWCCB) held on January 25-26, 2019, at The King’s College of NY in New York City was a great success!

Grove City College defeated The Abigail Adams Institute in the finals in a close match (537-526) to win first place academic recognition along with $4,000 scholarship prizes and copies of AHEF President Angela Kamrath’s book, The Miracle of America!

Student teams from Grove City College, Abigail Adams Institute, James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and The King’s College of New York competed in the event.

All students received a cash scholarship award of between $1,000-$4,000 according to their order of finish.

The event is sponsored by the American Heritage Education Foundation (AHEF) in Houston, TX. (www.americanheritage.org)

WATCH:  2nd AHWCCB Finals
WATCH:  Presentation on AHEF’s History, Founding, & Mission

2019 Semi-Finals Essay Topic:
“Since the beginning of human history, most people have lived under some form of authoritarianism.  In such regimes, rulership was largely a matter of the elite few ruling over and living off of the unprivileged many.  Only during the last few hundred years has the idea of the constitutional accountability of government to the populace as a whole risen to prominence.  Discuss the philosophical and historical causes of the ascendancy of this idea, including key events, leaders, and reasoning.”

2019 Finals Essay Topic:
“Discuss the origins, development, and justification of the fundamental American idea that ‘all men are created equal’ (as in the Declaration of Independence).”

AHWCCB Impact & Feedback:
AHWCCB Impact & Feedback:  Responses from Participating Professors and Students

 

For Grove City (L to R): Elena Peters, Carolyn Hartwick, Noah Gould

For Abigail Adams Institute (L to R): Liam Warner, Portia Berry-Kilby, Finnian Brown

For Princeton (L to R): Alvin Zhang, Nicholas Sileo, Emerson Salovaara

For The King’s College (L to R): Abigail Rose-Smith, Michael Napoli, Ellen Rogers


Semi-Finals
:  Friday, January 25, 2019
5 PM – Grove City College vs Princeton University
7 PM – The King’s College vs Harvard University

Finals:  Saturday, January 26, 2019
2 PM – Finalists

Location:
The King’s College, 56 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 (City Room, 5th Floor)
212-659-7200 / 888-969-7200

Academic Curriculum Analyst:
-The National Association of Scholars (NAS)

Moderator:
-Mr. Jeremy Tate, Co-Founder and President of the Classic Learning Test

Academic Teams:
-Grove City College – Coach: Dr. Jason R. Edwards.  Student Team: Noah Gould, Carolyn Hartwick, Elena Peters
-Abigail Adams Institute – Coach: Dr. Danilo Petranovich.  Student Team: Portia Berry-Kilby, Finnian Brown, Liam Warner
-Princeton University – Coach: Dr. Russ Nieli.  Student Team: Emerson Salovaara, Nicholas Sileo, Alvin Zhang
-The King’s College of New York – Coach: Dr. Josh Kinlaw.  Student Team: Michael Napoli, Ellen Rogers, Abigail Rose-Smith

Academic Judges:
-Dr. Stephen Balch, Director of The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Texas Tech University; Co-Founder of the National Association of Scholars
-Dr. Robert Koons, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Founder of The Western Civilization and American Institutions Program, The University of Texas at Austin

Hosted by the American Heritage Education Foundation Inc. in partnership with The King’s College of New York.

Related articles/videos:
AHEF Pioneers Innovative History & Civic Education Initiatives
American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl – Program Information
AHWCCB™ Video
1st American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl (AHWCCB) – 2017
AHWCCB 2019 Printable Flyer (PDF)

In the news:
King’s to Host Western Civilization Challenge Bowl with Princeton, Harvard, and Grove City College, The King’s College, Nov 1, 2018
GCC Tapped for History, Western Civilization Challenge, Grove City College, Jan 18, 2019
The King’s College to Host Western Civilization Challenge Bowl with the James Madison Program at Princeton, the Abigail Adams Institute at Harvard and Grove City College, RFD TV, Jan 19, 2019
Grove City College Faces Princeton in History Challenge Bowl, The Business Journal, Jan 22, 2019
GCC Team Beats Harvard in American History Challenge, Grove City College, Jan 29, 2019
Grove City College Beats Harvard in American History Challenge, Butler Radio, Jan 30, 2019

AHWCCB is a college-level academic competition and scholarship where students compete in their knowledge and understanding of Western Civilization and America’s founding history and philosophy to determine the nation’s top colleges in these subjects.

AHEF started AHWCCB to address a growing problem in our nation–confirmed by many studies–which is that many Americans are not informed about America’s heritage or the American idea.  This is a concerning problem in a self-government like ours which depends on an educated citizenry to continue and improve.  AHWCCB aims to encourage schools to teach and students to learn these subjects–including Western Civilization and America’s founding history, philosophy, laws, governing process, and free enterprise system.  Further, AHWCCB aims to inspire citizens’ education and understanding of the American idea so that they may become informed, engaged participants and contributors in our democracy, who can perpetuate and improve the practice of our nation’s founding principles for present and future generations.

Topics covered in the competition are relevant to America’s founding heritage.  Topics span from ancient, classical civilizations of the Greco-Romans and Hebrews to the medieval and modern eras including the Reformation, Renaissance, and Enlightenment to the history and founding of the United States of America.

For more information about AHWCCB, please visit americanheritage.org.

If you or someone you know would like to sponsor our next challenge bowl, please see our Donate page or contact us at 713.627.2698.  Thank you!

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

January 25 & 26, 2019: 2nd American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl in NYC

January 7, 2019
The Founding

Challenge Bowl 2017 026 - Copy

AHEF’s second American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl™ (AHWCCB) will be held on January 25-26, 2019, at The King’s College of NY in New York City!  Student teams from Grove City College, Abigail Adams Institute, Princeton University (James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions), and The King’s College of New York will compete for scholarship prizes and academic recognition at the 2019 event.

AHEF initiated the challenge bowl to encourage and incentivize colleges and universities to teach, and students to study, the objective and factual content of Western Civilization and America’s founding history and philosophy.  Studies in the last 20 years show that Americans of all backgrounds are not as informed as we need to be about these subjects or our nation.  Further, many schools are no longer teaching these subjects.  Such trends are a dangerous matter in a self-governing republic like ours which depends on an educated citizenry.  The challenge bowl aims to motivate and improve citizens’ education and intellectual and practical understanding of the American idea so that Americans may become informed, engaged participants and leaders in our democracy who can perpetuate and improve the realization of our nation’s founding principles and values in present and future generations.

Topics covered in the competition are relevant to America’s founding heritage.  Topics span from ancient, classical civilizations of the Greco-Romans and Hebrews to the medieval and modern eras including the Reformation, Renaissance, and Enlightenment to the history and founding of the United States of America.

The 2019 Semi-Finals Essay Topic has been released as follows:
“Since the beginning of human history, most people have lived under some form of authoritarianism.  In such regimes, rulership was largely a matter of the elite few ruling over and living off of the unprivileged many.  Only during the last few hundred years has the idea of the constitutional accountability of government to the populace as a whole risen to prominence.  Discuss the philosophical and historical causes of the ascendancy of this idea, including key events, leaders, and reasoning.”

Semi-Finals:  Friday, January 25, 2019
5 PM – Grove City College vs Princeton University
7 PM – The King’s College vs Abigail Adams Institute

Finals:  Saturday, January 26, 2019
2 PM – Finalists

Location:
The King’s College, 56 Broadway, New York, NY 10004 (City Room, 5th Floor)
212-659-7200 / 888-969-7200

Academic Curriculum Analyst:
-The National Association of Scholars (NAS)

Moderator:
-Mr. Jeremy Tate, Co-Founder and President of the Classic Learning Test

Academic Teams:
-Grove City College – Coach: Dr. Jason R. Edwards.  Student Team: Noah Gould, Carolyn Hartwick, Elena Peters
-Abigail Adams Institute – Coach: Dr. Danilo Petranovich.  Student Team: Portia Berry-Kilby, Finnian Brown, Liam Warner
-Princeton University – Coach: Dr. Russ Nieli.  Student Team: Emerson Salovaara, Nicholas Sileo, Alvin Zhang
-The King’s College of New York – Coach: Dr. Josh Kinlaw.  Student Team: Michael Napoli, Ellen Rogers, Abigail Rose-Smith

Academic Judges:
-Dr. Stephen Balch,  Director of The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization, Texas Tech University; Co-Founder of the National Association of Scholars
-Dr. Robert Koons, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Founder of The Western Civilization and American Institutions Program, The University of Texas at Austin

All team members will receive scholarship prizes according to their order of finish of between $1,000-$4,000.

Free Admission.  Please register to attend in person or watch in livestream.

AHWCCB 2019 Printable Flyer (PDF)

Hosted by the American Heritage Education Foundation Inc. in partnership with The King’s College of New York.

In the news:
King’s to Host Western Civilization Challenge Bowl with Princeton, Harvard, and Grove City College, The King’s College, Nov 1, 2018

Related articles/videos:
AHEF Pioneers Innovative History & Civic Education Initiatives
American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl – Program Information
AHWCCB™ Video
1st American History & Western Civilization Challenge Bowl (AHWCCB) – 2017

For more information about AHWCCB, please visit americanheritage.org.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

The Law of Nature and Nature’s God in the Declaration: One Moral Law Revealed by God in Two Ways

December 14, 2018
The Founding

The Sermon on the Mount by Henrik Olrik, c1855. In the Sermon of the Mount in Matthew 5-7, Jesus taught the Golden Rule, to “do to others as you would want them to do to you.”

The Declaration of Independence of 1776 tells much about the founding philosophy of the United States of America.  One philosophical principle that the American Founders asserted in the Declaration was the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This universal moral law served as their moral and legal basis for creating a new, self-governing nation.  One apparent aspect of this law is that it was understood in Western thought and by early Americans to be revealed by God in two ways—in nature and in the Bible—and thus evidences the Bible’s influence in America’s founding document.

The “Law of Nature” is the moral or common sense embedded in man’s heart or conscience (as confirmed in Romans 2:14-15).  It tells one to live honestly, hurt no one, and render to everyone his due.  The law of “Nature’s God” as written in the Bible and spoken by Jesus Christ consists of two great commandments—to love God and love others (as found in Deuteronomy 6:5, Leviticus 19:18, Matthew 7:12, Matthew 22:36-40, Mark 12:28-31, and Luke 10:25-28).  The first commandment, first found in Deuteronomy 6:5, is to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength.”  The second commandment, often referred to as the Golden Rule and first found in Leviticus 19:18, is to “love your neighbor as yourself” or, as expressed by Jesus in Matthew 7:12, to “do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Thus the content for both the natural and written laws is the same.

The law of Nature and God can be traced through the history and writings of Western Civilization.  This principle is found, for example, in medieval European thought.  In his 1265-1274 Summa Theologica, published in 1485, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged a “two-fold” moral law that is both general and specific: … 

Aquinas explained that the written law in the Bible was given by God due to the fallibility of human judgment and the perversion of the natural law in the hearts of many.  In the 1300s, medieval Bible scholars referred to the “Law of Nature and God” as a simple way to describe God’s natural and written law, its two expressions.  The phrase presented this law in the same order and timing in which God revealed it to mankind in history—first in creation and then in Holy Scripture.

During the Reformation period, French religious reformer John Calvin affirmed this two-fold moral law in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, observing, “It is certain that the law of God, which we call the moral law, is no other than a declaration of natural law, and of that conscience which has been engraven by God on the minds of men.”[2]  He further explains, “The very things contained in the two tables [or commandments in the Bible] are…dictated to us by that internal law which…is…written and stamped on every heart.”[3]  Incidentally, Puritan leader John Winthrop, who led a large migration of Calvinist Puritans from England to the American colonies, identified God’s two-fold moral law in his well-known 1630 sermon, A Model of Christian Charity, delivered to the Puritans as they sailed to America.  He taught,

There is likewise a double law by which we are regulated in our conversation one towards another:  …the law of nature and the law of grace, or the moral law and the law of the Gospel….  By the first of these laws, man…is commanded to love his neighbor as himself.  Upon this ground stands all the precepts of the moral law which concerns our dealings with men.[4]

During the Enlightenment period, British philosopher John Locke, who was influential to the Founders, wrote of the “law of God and nature” in his 1689 First Treatise of Civil Government.[5]  This law, he further notes in his 1696 Reasonableness of Christianity, “being everywhere the same, the Eternal Rule of Right, obliges Christians and all men everywhere, and is to all men the standing Law of Works.”[6]  English legal theorist William Blackstone, another oft-cited thinker of the American founding era, recognized the two-fold moral law in his influential 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England.  This law, he believed, could be known partially by man’s imperfect natural reason and completely by the Bible.  Due to man’s imperfect reason, Blackstone like Aquinas observed, the Bible’s written revelation is necessary: …

Portrait of Samuel Adams by John Singleton Copley, 1772.

Founding-era Americans themselves recognized the two-fold moral law of nature and God.  American revolutionary leader Samuel Adams was, for example, one significant voice on the law of Nature and God during the American Revolution.  He referred to this law as the source of man’s natural rights in his 1772 Report on the Rights of Colonists, asserting, “‘Just and true liberty, equal and impartial liberty’ in matters spiritual and temporal is a thing that all men are clearly entitled to by the eternal and immutable laws of God and nature.”[8]  Later, in a 1792 address to the Massachusetts legislature, Adams again referred to this two-fold law:

All men are equally bound by the laws of nature, or to speak more properly, the laws of the Creator.  They are imprinted by the finger of God on the heart of man.  Thou shall do no injury to thy neighbor, is the voice of nature and reason, and it is confirmed by written revelation [in the Bible].[9]

In his 1796 Senate notes, American Founder and second president John Adams recognized the two-fold Law of Nature and God as the same moral law:

One great advantage of the Christian Religion is that it brings the great principle of the Law of nature and nations—Love your neighbor as yourself, and do to others as you would that others should do to you—to the knowledge, belief, and veneration of the whole people.[10]

Official Portrait of U. S. Supreme Court Justice James Wilson

American Founder, Supreme Court Justice, and lawyer James Wilson elaborated on the natural and written moral law in his 1790-1791 Lectures on Law: …

Both the natural and written law, Wilson emphasized, are given by God and necessary for fully understanding God’s moral law.  He explained, “The law of nature and the law of revelation [in the Bible] are both divine.  They flow, though in different channels, from the same adorable source.  It is, indeed, preposterous, to separate them from each other.  The object of both is to discover the will of God—and both are necessary for the accomplishment of that end.”[12]  This law, Wilson asserted, upholds the maxims to obey God, to injure no man, and to faithfully fulfill one’s engagements.

In conclusion, while Americans have complete religious freedom and are not required to hold a religious belief in the Bible or Judeo-Christianity, it is important for Americans to recognize and appreciate that the early colonists held a certain philosophical worldview when founding the United States.  This worldview derived largely from Western thought and their beliefs and values.  Indeed, they apparently affirmed the two-fold idea of a moral law for mankind, found in nature and the Bible.  When the Founders wrote the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God” into the Declaration, therefore, they were likely referencing the law that came not only from human nature and reason but from written revelation in the Bible.  Thus the Declaration, as Gary T. Amos observes in his Defending the Declaration:  How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the Writing of the Declaration of Independence, “makes the Bible a fundamental part of the legal foundation of America.  …The phrase…incorporates by reference the moral law of the Bible into the founding document of our country!”[13]

Portrait of Benjamin Rush by Charles Willson Peale, c1818

The Declaration’s “Law of Nature and Nature’s God” serves not only as the legal basis for the American founding but is also a testament to the philosophical, religious beliefs and values of a people who sought to create a godly, free, and just nation—a nation that closely reflected the kingdom of heaven on earth.  It is the creed of a people who sought to abide, with God’s grace and help, by God’s law of love.  Citing the words of Jesus in John 13:34-35, American Founder Benjamin Rush expressed well an American view of such values in a 1791 letter on the “Defense of the Use of the Bible in Schools:”

Let us not be wiser than our Maker.  If moral precepts alone could have reformed mankind, the mission of the Son of God into our world would have been unnecessary.  He came to promulgate a system of doctrines, as well as a system of morals.  The perfect morality of the Gospel rests upon a doctrine which, though often controverted, has never been refuted.  I mean the vicarious life and death of the Son of God.  This sublime and ineffable doctrine delivers us from the absurd hypotheses of modern philosophers concerning the foundation of moral obligation, and fixes it upon the eternal and self-moving principle of LOVE.  It concentrates a whole system of ethics in a single text of scripture:  “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.”[14]

Michael Novak in his On Two Wings:  Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding affirms the biblical, Judeo-Christian values that influenced early Americans and shaped the American founding:  “In those days, faith permeated philosophy and lifted it above its own limitations.  …  The vast majority of the American Founders and the whole ratifying people thought and acted in the conviction that the American theory of rights is religious as well as reasonable.”[15]

[1] Thomas Aquinas, The Summa Theologica, trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province, pt 2/Q 91, Article 5, trans Fathers of the English Dominican Province (Benziger Bros., 1947) in Christian Classics Ethereal Library, ccel.org <https://www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/home.html >.

[2] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 3, bk. 4, trans. John Allen (Philadelphia, PA:  Philip H. Nicklin, 1816), 534-535.

[3] John Calvin, The Institutes of the Christian Religion:  A New Translation, vol. 1, trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh, Scotland:  Printed for Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 430.

[4] John Winthrop, A Model of Christian Charity, 1630, in Puritan Political Ideas, 1558-1794, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN:  Hackett Publishing, 2003), 75-93.

[5] John Locke, First Treatise of Civil Government, in Two Treatises on Government, bk. 1 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 142, 157, 164.

[6] John Locke, The Reasonableness of Christianity, as delivered in the Scriptures, Second Edition (London:  Printed for Awnsham and John Churchil, 1696), 21-22.

[7] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries in Five Volumes, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, 1996, 2008), 41.

[8] Samuel Adams, Report on the Rights of the Colonists, 20 November 1772, in American Patriotism:  Speeches, Letters, and Other Papers Which Illustrate the Foundation, the Development, the Preservation of the United States of America, comp. Selim H. Peabody (New York:  American Book Exchange, 1880), 33.

[9] Samuel Adams to the Legislature of Massachusetts, 17 January 1794, in The Writings of Samuel Adams:  1778-1802, vol. 4, ed. Harry A. Cushing (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1908), 356.

[10] John Adams, Diary, Notes of a Debate in the Senate of the United States, 24 August 1796, in The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, vol. 3, ed. Charles F. Adams (Boston:  Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1851), 423.

[11] James Wilson, Lectures on Law, Part 1, 1790-1791, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, Vol. 1, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia, PA:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 104, 120.

[12] Wilson, Lectures on Law, 120.

[13] Gary T. Amos, Defending the Declaration:  How the Bible and Christianity Influenced the Writing of the Declaration of Independence (Brentwood, TN:  Wolgemuth & Hyatt, 1989), 60.

[14] Benjamin Rush to Rev. Jeremy Belknap, “A Defense of the Use of the Bible in Schools,” Philadelphia, 10 March 1791, in Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical, 2nd ed., by Benjamin Rush (Philadelphia, PA:  Printed by Thomas and William Bradford, 1806), 105.  John 13:34 states:  “A new commandment I [Jesus] give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

[15] Michael Novak, On Two Wings:  Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (San Francisco, CA:  Encounter Books, 2002), 82.

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

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Sources for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Aquinas, Thomas.  The Summa Theologica of St. Thomas Aquinas.  Part 2, No. 1/QQ 1-XXVI.  Translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican Province.  New York:  Benziger Brothers, 1911.  Google Books.  See Question 91, Articles 4 & 5, and Question 94, Article 5.

Related articles/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Judeo-Christian Law of Love
3.  The American Revolution
4.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
5.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
6.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
7.  American Revolution Debate:  Obedience to God Over Man
8.  The American Quest for Self-Government
9.  The Creator God:  The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States of America
10.  The Law of Nature:  The Universal Moral Law of Mankind
11.  The Law of Nature in the Bible

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 1, Activity 6:  Identifying Biblical Principles in the Declaration, p. 237, 372-376.  MS-HS.

Identifying Biblical Principles in the Declaration…. 

Purpose/Objective:  Students learn key principles of the Declaration of Independence including Creator God, God as Supreme Judge, Law of Nature and Nature’s God, Rule of Law, Popular Sovereignty, and Consent of the Governed, and how historical, influential thinkers and early Americans connected these concepts with the Bible.

Suggested Readings:
1)  Chapter 7 of Miracle of America reference/text.  Students read sections 7.1 to 7.12, 7.18, & pp. 236-237.
2) Essay/Handout:  Principles of the American Revolution by Angela E. Kamrath found in the “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 354-356, or in the “Miracle of America Snapshots” handout under member resources at americanheritage.org.
3)  “Historical Figures Quoted in Miracle of America” and “References to the Law of Nature and Natural Rights in Miracle of America” in “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 347-348, 360-61, 366-371.
4)  Related blogs/videos (see above).

Matching Card Game:
Beforehand, the teacher should print, copy, and cut the matching game cards for a class set.  If students work in small groups of 2 or 3, the teacher will only need to create 10-15 plastic bags of cards to make a class set.  Before the game, the teacher should show and discuss the art image “The Creation of Adam” by Michelangelo with students.  Students should be familiar with this image before playing the game.  Follow game instructions.  See “The Creation of Adam” Michelangelo painting and the “Matching Card Game” instructions and cut-outs in the “Supporting Resources” section of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 372-376.

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

Self-Evident Truth: Equality and Rights in the Declaration

November 29, 2018
The Founding

Portrait of Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis, c1785.

When American Founder Benjamin Franklin edited Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, he changed the wording of one important phrase from “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable” to “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”  The notion of “self-evident” truth is the idea that some truths do not require complex reasoning or evidence to prove.  Such truths are simply understood by basic, original evidence and man’s innate moral or common sense.  They are often called “first principles” upon which other truths and arguments are based.  The Declaration of Independence of 1776 conveys the principle of self-evident truth in stating, “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.”  This principle contributes to the American understanding of and justification for the equality and natural rights of mankind.  While self-evident truth may hold value from a purely secular, scientific and rational standpoint, many early God-oriented thinkers also found it to be compatible with biblical, Christian teaching.  Franklin knew this.

The support for self-evident truth is found among Christian thinkers throughout history.  Augustine of Hippo in the 400s, John of Damascus in the 700s, Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s, and John Calvin and Richard Hooker of the 1500s all expressed ideas related to self-evident truth.  The concept was later supported by God-oriented Enlightenment-era thinkers including John Locke and, ultimately, by the American Founders.

In his 1265-1274 Summa Theologica, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas acknowledged that some truths are “naturally implanted” in human beings and are therefore self-evident.  Such truths, he believed, include the existence of God and God’s natural, moral law.  Drawing from John of Damascus in Orthodox Faith, Aquinas writes, for instance, about the self-evident existence of God:  “These things are said to be self-evident to us, the knowledge of which is naturally implanted in us, as we can see in regard to first principles.  [Saint John] the Damascene says that the knowledge of God is naturally implanted in all.  Therefore, the existence of God is self-evident.”  Aquinas further asserted that the two Great Commandments in the Bible to love God and others, as found in Matthew 22, are also self-evident to mankind.  These principles of God’s universal moral law, he writes, “need no further promulgation after being once imprinted on the natural reason to which they are self-evident; as, for instance, that one should do evil to no man.”

French religious reformer John Calvin expounded on the existence of God based on self-evident truth in his 1536 Institutes of the Christian Religion, writing about “the knowledge of God naturally implanted in the human mind.”  For one, he draws from Romans 1:18-20 in which the Apostle Paul writes about the evidence of God in creation: …

Calvin consequently affirms that “the knowledge of God being manifested to all” means every person is “without excuse.”  In addition, Calvin asserts that the knowledge of God is self-evidently manifested through a person’s inward moral sense or conscience.  Alluding to Romans 2:15 in which the Apostle Paul says that God’s moral law is written on human hearts, Calvin explains, …

English theologian Richard Hooker, influenced by Augustine and Aquinas, also acknowledged self-evident truth.  He explains in his 1594-1597 Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity that “to make nothing evident of itself to man’s understanding were to take away all possibility of knowing anything.”  Hooker believed, for example, that a universal moral law or Law of Nature among humanity is self-evident.  He pointed out from Augustine that some truths are “universally agreed upon” and that from these truths the “greatest moral duties we owe towards God or man may without any great difficulty be concluded.”

British philosopher John Locke, influenced by Hooker, recognized self-evident truths that do not require complex reasoning to understand.  He asserts in his 1690 Essay Concerning Human Understanding, “There are a sort of propositions, which under the name of maxims or axioms, have passed for principles of science; and because they are self-evident, have been supposed innate.”  Locke affirmed the existence of a Creator God as self-evident based on natural creation.  Citing Romans 1:20, he expresses, “I judge it as certain and clear a truth, as can anywhere be delivered, that ‘the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the creation of the world, being understood by the things that are made.’”

Just as Benjamin Franklin, American Founder James Wilson similarly recognized self-evident truths, calling them common sense and first principles.  Echoing Hooker and Locke, Wilson expounds on this idea in his 1790-1791 Lectures on Law (Vol. 1): … 

With their inclusion of the principle of self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence, the American Founders affirmed mankind’s creation by God and moral, common sense.  While this principle may at times be identified within secular science and reason, it is also strongly supported by the Bible.  In fact, this principle was historically acknowledged by Christian thinkers—with Romans 1 to support the existence of God through creation and with Romans 2 to support man’s moral sense.  It stands to reason that if God exists as creation evidences, and mankind is made in God’s image as the Bible and man’s conscience confirm, then all human beings possess dignity, equality, and God-given rights.  It is from this philosophy and simple line of reasoning that the Founders asserted some basic moral truths in the Declaration, that all human beings are “created equal” and that their Creator bestows on them the rights to “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  The Founders knew that without these first principles or self-evident truths, the arguments and defense for man’s equality, rights, and freedoms would ring hollow.

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

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Sources for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Calvin, John.  The Institutes of the Christian Religion:  A New Translation.  Vol. 1, Book 1, Ch. 3.  Translated by Henry Beveridge.  Edinburgh, Scotland:  Printed for Calvin Translation Society, 1845.  pp. 55-56.  Google Books.

Related blogs/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  The Puritans’ Moral Authority was the Bible
3.  Great Awakening Principle:  All Men Equal Before God
4.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Judeo-Christian Law of Love
5.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Dignity of the Human Being
6.  How the Great Awakening Impacted American Unity, Democracy, Freedom & Revolution
7.  The American Revolution
8.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
9.  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:  God’s Opposition to Absolute Rule
10.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
11.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
12.  The American Quest for Self-Government
13.  The Creator God:  The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States of America
14.  The Law of Nature:  The Universal Moral Law of Mankind
15.  The Law of Nature in the Bible

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 2, Activity 3:  Unalienable Rights in the Declaration, p. 252, 318-319.  MS-HS.

Unalienable Rights in the Declaration (Revised)

Purpose/Objective:  Students learn key principles from the Declaration of Independence including self-evident truth, natural or unalienable rights, and how influential thinkers like Locke and Sidney as well as early Americans justified these rights and connected them with the Bible and other principles.

Suggested Readings:
1)  Chapter 7 of Miracle of America reference/text.  Students read sections 7.1-7.17, 7.23, & pp. 236-237.
2) Essay/Handout:  Principles of the Declaration of Independence by Angela E. Kamrath found in the “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 362-364, or in the “Miracle of America Snapshots” handout under member resources (see Miracle of America articles) at americanheritage.org.
3)  Related blogs/videos (see above).

KWL Chart (Revised):
1.  At the outset of the lesson, ask students to write anything they know about unalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence on a 3-column KWL Chart under the “K” column for “what I know.”
2.  Students will then respond to the question, “What do you want to know about unalienable rights?”  Students will write this information under the “W” column of their chart for “what I want to know.”  The teacher will then lead students in a reading, analysis, and discussion of unalienable rights and the self-evident truth philosophy that justifies them in the Declaration.
3.  As the lesson concludes, students will add new information they have learned under the “L” column of their chart for “what I’ve learned.”

(See KWL Chart in the “Supporting Resources” section of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 318-319.)

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

The Law of Nature in the Bible

November 1, 2018
The Founding

Saint Thomas Aquinas by Carlo Crivelli, 1476 (National Gallery). Drawing from the ancient Greek philosophy of Aristotle as well as Romans 2:14-15 of the Apostle Paul, Italian theologian Thomas Aquinas in his 1200s Summa Theologica notably identified the Law of Nature in man’s reason and “written in the hearts of men.”

In the Declaration of Independence of 1776, a key founding document, the American Founders presented the founding philosophy of the United States of America.  One important philosophical principle the Founders recognized in the Declaration is a universal moral law among mankind, the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” as the basis for self-government and just civil law.  The Founders’ view of this moral law was consistent with and supported by their God-centered and/or Judeo-Christian worldview, for this law is found in the Bible.

Emerging in the Old Testament and in ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, the Law of Nature, or Natural Law, was understood as the moral law that dwells within the heart, conscience, and right reason of every person.  It includes mankind’s basic understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, and it supports the general view that one should not harm others but rather should love others, treating others with dignity and respect.  This basic morality exists among all humanity, regardless of nation, religious belief, culture, etc.  Indeed, it exists before civil society.

This universal moral law was arguably first found in the Old Testament in Genesis 9:6, written by Moses in 1400s BC, in which God sets a moral law to govern humanity:  “Whoever sheds man’s blood, by man his blood shall be shed, for in the image of God He made man.”  It is also reflected in God’s great commandment in the Bible to love others as ourselves as found in Deuteronomy 6, Leviticus 19, Matthew 22, Matthew 7, and Mark 12.  One of the key verses where this law was specifically identified was in Romans 2:14-15 in 50s AD by the Apostle Paul.  Paul writes in Romans 2:14-15: 

Paul points out that this moral law written on the human heart is given by the Creator God to mankind in nature and is validated by a person’s innate moral sense and reason.

The Law of Nature was affirmed by God-oriented medieval and modern thinkers who recognized and cited Paul’s description in Romans 2.  These thinkers included Bible or religious scholars like Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, John Calvin, Richard Hooker, and William Ames; legalists Edward Coke and William Blackstone; and political philosophers Samuel Rutherford, Samuel Pufendorf, and John Locke.  These thinkers helped to shape Western Civilization and the American Founding.

From the Bible and ancient Greek and Roman philosophy, the Law of Nature was taken up by Christian thinkers and incorporated into European church theology and canon law.  It was then taken up by modern European political reformers as the basis for just civil law and government.  It also became part of Christian legal thought and English common law.  This idea, in turn, influenced those who migrated to and/or lived in the American colonies.  The principle of natural law was thus passed down from Christian thinkers to English legalists and European political theorists to the American Founders.

The Law of Nature was expressed in the United States’ Declaration of Independence as the legal foundation for a new, self-governing nation.  Further, civil laws in this nation aim to abide by this higher moral law.  Civil laws that align with the Law of Nature are considered just, while laws that contradict the Law of Nature are considered unjust.  While the Law of Nature is acknowledged by many secular rationalists, the expression of the Law of Nature in the Declaration shows that early American’s found it to be consistent with and complementary to the Bible and their God-centered, Judeo-Christian beliefs and worldview.  Indeed, the Law of Nature was largely advanced in Western Civilization by God-oriented thinkers.

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

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Source for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Related articles/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  The Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact Initiated Self-Government
3.  Great Awakening Principle:  All Men Equal Before God
4.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Judeo-Christian Law of Love
5.  The American Revolution
6.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
7.  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:  God’s Opposition to Absolute Rule
8.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
9.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
10.  American Revolution Debate:  God Desires Freedom, Not Slavery, for His People
11.  American Revolution Debate:  Obedience to God Over Man
12.  The American Quest for Self-Government
13.  The Creator God:  The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States of America
14.  The Law of Nature:  The Universal Moral Law of Mankind

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 1, Activity 5:  Understanding the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” p. 235, 347-348, 360-361, 366-371.  MS-HS.

Understanding the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God”…. 

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

The Law of Nature in the Declaration: The Universal Moral Law of Mankind

October 18, 2018
The Founding

Declaration of Independence, 1776.  The Declaration opens, “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 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.”

When the American Founders drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence of 1776 to form the United States of America, they set down the principles for the new nation’s founding philosophy.  One of the key principles of the Declaration acknowledged by Americans is a universal moral law, known as the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God.”  This law serves as the legal foundation of self-government and of all civil law in this country.

For a century before the new nation was founded, the American colonists had relied on the British constitution and their colonial charters and laws for the protection of their rights.  As such, when Britain began to impose more intrusive policies on the colonies in the mid-1700s, just prior to the American Revolution, the colonists cited the British constitution and their charters to defend their freedom.  However, when the colonists petitioned for their English rights, King George III rejected their petition, announcing that the colonies were in rebellion and must be controlled by force.  The colonists thus realized they could no longer defend themselves under British law and rule.  In response, they turned to God and His higher moral law, the Law of Nature, as their final defense and hope.  This law is supported by nature, reason, and the Bible.

Recognized for centuries in the West, the Law of Nature is understood as an eternal, constant moral law given by the Creator God to mankind.  This law is naturally revealed in a person’s reason and conscience, or in common sense, and it is considered a natural, rational version of God’s moral law of love in the Bible.  It sets down standards of right and wrong, how to treat others, and justice in society.  It cannot be abolished or changed by any earthly power but simply exists as the will of God.  God purposes this law for the morality, order, and preservation of mankind.  This law is superior to all man-made laws, existing before any civil state existed.  All people and nations are subject to this law at all times, and to oppose it would be ungodly and unjust.  Indeed, just civil laws reflect this higher law.  When applied to civil states, this law is sometimes called the Law of Nations.

Some of the earliest references to the Law of Nature can be found in Genesis written by Moses in 1400s BC, such as Genesis 4:7 in which God tells Cain to “do what is right” and avoid sin.  Other early references came from ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle in his 300s BC Rhetoric and from ancient Roman philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) in his 54-51 BC The Republic as reported in 3 AD by Lucius Lactantius, the Christian Roman author and advisor to first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine I.  Cicero was one of the first secular writers to articulate a moral law from God that ruled over all men.  He defined this moral law as man’s “right reason.”[1]  The concept of “Law of Nature” emerged, then, in the Old Testament in ancient times and again during the time of the Gospel and New Testament.  It became part of Western tradition.

Some key historical thinkers who influenced early Americans in their understanding of the Law of Nature included Cicero; medieval churchmen Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Francisco Suarez; and modern-era thinkers Edward Coke, Samuel Pufendorf, Richard Hooker, and William Blackstone.  These thinkers wrote from a God-oriented worldview.

Portrait of Sir William Blackstone by Thomas Gainsborough, 1744

British jurist William Blackstone was one of the most frequently cited secular sources of the American founding era.  He affirmed for Americans that the Law of Nature was the highest law, given by God, and that civil law should be based on it.  Blackstone acknowledged the Law of Nature in his 1765-1769 Commentaries on the Laws of England, the best-known description of English common law.  He sought to compare the common law with “the Laws of Nature and of other Nations.”[2]  His Commentaries, taken from his lectures at Oxford University, became the basis of legal education in England and America.  It sold as many copies in America as in England.  Blackstone’s work, observes Russell Kirk in his The Roots of American Order, “confirmed Americans in their appeal to a justice beyond parliamentary statute.”[3]  Blackstone expounds on the Law of Nature as the first and highest moral law, given by God to mankind, and as the basis of just civil law: …

British philosopher John Locke affirmed this idea of the Law of Nature in his influential 1689 Second Treatise of Government in which he states that the Law of Nature teaches and obliges every one that “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or posessions.”[5]

The early Americans, including the American Founders who wrote and signed the Declaration, largely understood and affirmed the Law of Nature as presented by Blackstone.  Blackstone described the Law of Nature through a God-oriented, Bible-based worldview as the law and will of the Creator God and the universal moral law of right and wrong to which all men and all civil laws are accountable.  This law was a key principle and value held by the American people.

Founding-era Americans ultimately based their independence and new self-governing nation on the Law of Nature.  For if one nation’s civil laws or rulers repeatedly violated the Law of Nature by a “long train of abuses,” that nation’s laws and/or rulers were no longer just or legitimate.  The people had a right to separate and govern themselves under just civil laws.  The Declaration of Independence thus opens by stating, “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 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.”  As such, the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God” served as the legal foundation for the American people’s freedom and right to govern themselves as an independent nation, as the United States of America.  Later, the “Law of Nations” was acknowledged in Article I, Section 8, of the U. S. Constitution.

[1] Marcus Tullius Cicero, Treatise on the Republic, in The Political Works of Marcus Tullius Cicero, vol. 1, ed. Francis Barham (London:  Edmund Spettigue, 1841), 270.

[2] William Blackstone, Announcement on the Course of Lectures which led to the Commentaries on the Laws of England, 23 June 1753, in William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England, vol. 1, ed. William C. Jones (San Francisco, CA:  Bancroft-Whtiney Co., 1915), xv.

[3] Russell Kirk, The Roots of American Order, Third Edition (Washington, DC:  Regnery Gateway, 1991), 369.

[4] William Blackstone, Blackstone’s Commentaries, in Five Volumes, vol. 1, ed. George Tucker (Union, NJ:  Lawbook Exchange, LTD, 1996, 2008), 39-41.

[5] John Locke, Second Treatise of Civil Government, 1689, in Two Treatises on Government, bk. 2 (London:  George Routledge and Sons, 1884), 193-194.

Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

This essay is available as a printable PDF handout in the member resources section on americanheritage.org.  Simply sign up and login as a member (no cost), go to the resources page, and look under Miracle of America essays.

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Source for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Related articles/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  The Mayflower Compact:  The Pilgrims’ First Self-Governing Act in America
3.  Great Awakening Principle:  All Men Equal Before God
4.  Great Awakening Principle:  The Judeo-Christian Law of Love
5.  The American Revolution
6.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
7.  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:  God’s Opposition to Absolute Rule
8.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
9.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
10.  American Revolution Debate:  God Desires Freedom, Not Slavery, for His People
11.  American Revolution Debate:  Obedience to God Over Man
12.  The American Quest for Self-Government
13.  The Creator God:  The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States of America
14.  Self-Evident Truth:  A Philosophy of Rights in the Declaration of Independence
15.  The Law of Nature:  The Universal Moral Law of Mankind
16.  The Law of Nature and Nature’s God:  One Moral Law Revealed by God in Two Ways
17.  The Law of Nature and Nature’s God:  The American Basis and Standard for Just Civil Law
18.  John Locke and Algernon Sidney:  A Bible-based Defense of Equality and Popular Sovereignty for the American Founders
19.  The American, Bible-based Defense of Unalienable Rights 
20.  The Unalienable Right to Pursue Happiness

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 1, Activity 5:  Understanding the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God,” p. 235, 347-348, 360-361, 366-371.  MS-HS.

Understanding the “Law of Nature and Nature’s God”…. 

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

The Creator God in the Declaration: The Basis of Authority, Law, & Rights for Mankind in the United States

October 4, 2018
The Founding

Writing the Declaration of Independence, 1776 by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, 1932. The painting depicts Founders Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams.

During the American Revolution in the 1700s, the American Founders drafted what would become a key founding document for their new nation, the U. S. Declaration of Independence of 1776.  This document announced their forming of a new nation, the United States of America.  It reflected the values of the American people and comprises principles based on a God-oriented worldview including the recognition of a Creator God as the basis of authority, law, and rights for mankind.

Influenced by a Bible-based and/or Judeo-Christian worldview, the Declaration notably acknowledges a Creator God, just as early Americans had always done.  Whether or not they held orthodox Christian beliefs, most of the American Founders (including those who contributed to the writing of the Declaration like Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and John Adams) acknowledged a Creator God as well as this widely-held belief among the American people.  Their view of a Creator God of mankind is essential to understanding their perspective on the law, rights, and value assigned to human beings.

American Founder, professor, and Supreme Court Justice James Wilson, for example, explained in his 1790-1791 Lectures on Law how the Creator God is the basis for all authority and law.  He cited Swiss theorist Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui’s 1748 Principles of Natural Law on the point.  Influenced by the Scottish Enlightenment, Burlamaqui was often quoted in political sermons of the American founding era, and his Principles was often used as a textbook.  Burlamaqui notably referenced the Bible in his view of God.  Wilson paraphrased Burlamaqui and his allusion to Acts 17:28 to explain the Creator God as the source of all authority and law: … 

Wilson affirmed this idea that the Creator of mankind is the ultimate ruler and law-maker of mankind.  Human beings have an obligation to this Creator and to His laws which are made to preserve moral order.  Further, humanity’s own man-made laws should necessarily reflect the Creator’s for the same purpose.  Wilson observed that this principle raised by Burlamaqui “contains a solemn truth, which ought to be examined with reverence and awe.”[2]  Wilson asserted, “That our Creator has a supreme right to prescribe a law for our conduct, and that we are under the most perfect obligation to obey that law, are truths established on the clearest and most solid principles.”[3]

An excerpt from the Declaration of Independence appears on the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC.

American Founder James Madison—primary writer of the U. S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, and fourth U. S. president—also acknowledged that recognition of a Creator God was essential to the order and benefit of mankind.  He observed, … 

In addition to upholding the moral order and law of the Creator God, the Declaration upheld the dignity and rights of the individual human being.  For human beings are created by God and made in His image and likeness according to Genesis 1 and 2 in the Bible.  The individual’s worth in the eyes of God became the basis for man’s natural rights.  Russell Kirk affirmed in his The American Cause that man’s dignity as God’s creation is the source of man’s rights and freedoms.  He elaborates, …

In sum, the American Founders laid the groundwork for the American philosophy in the U. S. Declaration of Independence of 1776, with its reference to a Creator God and to a moral, natural law and natural rights.  In the new nation of the United States of America, God as Creator and Supreme Judge is recognized as the highest moral authority.  And all individual citizens, as human beings created by God, are recognized as possessing certain unalienable rights and freedoms.  Later, the Founders would base the U. S. Constitution on these principles—in its rule and application of just law and in recognizing that citizens have certain legal rights and protections.

To be sure, United States citizens have religious freedom and are not required to believe in God.  However, it is important for citizens to recognize that individual dignity, rights, and freedoms in the United States are, in fact, based on the philosophical idea of a Creator God.  Removing God from America’s founding philosophy would make the nation more vulnerable to abuse of power, tyranny, corruption, and loss of individual rights and freedoms.

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[1] James Wilson, Lectures on Law, Part 1, 1790-1791, in The Works of the Honourable James Wilson, vol. 1, ed. Bird Wilson (Philadelphia, PA:  Lorenzo Press, Printed for Bronson and Chauncey, 1804), 109.

[2] Wilson, Lectures on Law, 111.

[3] Wilson, Lectures on Law, 108.

[4] James Madison, James Madison to Frederick Beasley, Montpellier, 20 November 1825, in The Writings of James Madison, vol. 9/1819-1836, ed. Gaillard Hunt (New York:  G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910), 230.

[5] Russell Kirk, The American Cause, ed. Gleaves Whitney (Wilmington, DE:  Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2002), 20, 23.

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Contributed by AHEF and Angela E. Kamrath.

This article is available as a printable PDF handout in the member resources section on americanheritage.org.  Simply sign up and login as a member (no cost), go to the resources page, and look under Miracle of America articles.

—–
Source for more information:
Kamrath, Angela E.  The Miracle of America:  The Influence of the Bible on the Founding History and Principles of the United States of America for a People of Every Belief.  Second Edition.  Houston, TX:  American Heritage Education Foundation, 2014, 2015.

Related articles/videos:
1.  The Principle of Popular Sovereignty
2.  The Pilgrims’ Mayflower Compact Initiated Self-Government
3.  Great Awakening Principle:  Dignity of the Human Being
4.  Great Awakening Principle:  All Men Equal Before God
5.  The American Revolution
6.  American Revolution Debate:  The American Quest for a New, Bible-Inspired Republic
7.  Thomas Paine’s Common Sense:  God’s Opposition to Absolute Rule
8.  The Bible was the Most Cited Source of the American Founding Era
9.  American Revolution Debate:  Submission to Authority
10.  Freedom:  The Most Important Characteristic of America
11.  American Revolution Debate:  God Desires Freedom, Not Slavery, for His People
12.  American Revolution Debate:  Obedience to God Over Man
13.  The American Quest for Self-Government
14.  John Locke and Algernon Sidney:  A Bible-based Defense of Equality and Popular Sovereignty for the American Founders
15.  Self-Evident Truth:  Equality and Rights in the Declaration of Independence
16.  The American, Bible-based Defense of Unalienable Rights
17.  The American, Bible-based Defense of Religious Freedom

Poster:  Declaration of Independence

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Activity:  The Miracle of America High School Teacher Course Guide, Unit 7, Part 1, Activity 4:  Principles of the Declaration of Independence, p. 235, 354-356.  MS-HS.

Principles of the Declaration of Independence

Purpose/Objective:  Students learn key principles of the Declaration of Independence including Creator God, Law of Nature and Nature’s God, Popular Sovereignty, Unalienable Rights, and Social Contract, and how historical, influential thinkers and early Americans connected these concepts with the Bible.

Suggested Readings:
1)  Chapter 7 of Miracle of America reference/text.  Students read sections 7.1 to 7.20, 7.23, & pp. 236-237, 240.
2) Essay/Handout:  Principles of the American Revolution by Angela E. Kamrath found in the “Supporting Resources” of the Miracle of America HS Teacher Course Guide, pp. 354-356, or in the “Miracle of America Snapshots” handout under member resources at americanheritage.org.
3)  Related blogs/videos (see above).

Reading and Questions:
Have students read the “Principles of the American Revolution” and “Principles of the Declaration of Independence” reading handouts and, as desired, relevant sections in Miracle of America text as indicated on the handout.  Assign specific sections to read, and then analyze and discuss the reading together as a class.  You may wish to project some text on-screen.  Answer questions, clarify vocabulary, and fill in other information as needed.  (The text analysis will help students grasp the terms and concepts, and it is a great practice for having students read historical texts.)  After the reading, have students write answers to the questions that follow on the handout.  Discuss.  This reading or portions of this reading may be done in either the first or second part of this unit as the teacher finds appropriate.  See “Principles of the American Revolution” reading and questions in the “Supporting Resources” section of this course guide, pp. 354-356.  See “Principles of the Declaration of Independence” reading and questions in the “Supporting Resources” section of the course guide, pp. 363-366.  (These questions are also found in Chapter 7 of Miracle of America text, p. 240.)

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To download this whole unit, sign up as an AHEF member (no cost) to access the “resources” page on americanheritage.org.  To order the printed binder format of the course guide with all the units, go to the AHEF bookstore.

Copyright © American Heritage Education Foundation.  All rights reserved.

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