Religion and patriotism are both virtues, deeply interconnected. The Founding Fathers understood this truth and warned that abandoning Judeo-Christian faith and morality would ultimately erode our political freedoms as well. Unfortunately, we didn’t heed their warning.
Rights are God-given, and as such rest on Divine Authority. But what happens if a nation doesn’t recognize Divine Authority? John Adams, who was one of the principle minds behind and signers of the Declaration of Independence we celebrate today, later observed after the U.S. Constitution became our second Founding document, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
George Washington, who did not sign the Declaration because he was already in the field commanding the troops who would win independence, agreed with Adams’s view, warning at the end of his presidency, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.”
Can we truly wonder at the infiltration of our institutions and the warping of our culture by Marxists, or at how bloated, corrupt, unconstitutional, and authoritarian much of our government has become? Most Americans turned away from Judeo-Christian religion and morality. The result is exactly what the Founders warned us to avoid.
The Founding Fathers, in fact, would be horrified to find out that most Americans believe in allowing unborn baby murder by starvation or dismembering in some cases (there goes the right to life), that our families are more fractured than ever before, and that nearly 30% of Americans have no religious affiliation at all. How can we expect our politicians, educators, bureaucrats, and military leaders to have more virtue and integrity than we have?
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The Founders correctly affirmed that our rights were given by God. But that leads to the resulting truth that if we reject God’s laws and authority, we will of necessity begin to lose our rights and freedoms, and our leaders will not allow any moral considerations to retard their quest for power. Americans originally rewrote Britain’s “God Save the King” with republican lyrics to end, “Great God our king.” God was meant to be the king of America, the supreme source of our constitutionally-guarded rights, with no rivals. But now that so many Americans have rejected God’s laws in part or altogether, we see many petty tyrants and would-be bureaucratic monarchs seeking to wreck our country and crush our rights and freedoms.
The Declaration of Independence which we celebrate today states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Or, put another way, our rights come not from the government or from material nature or from a majority consensus, but from God Himself.
It is a sobering and incontrovertible fact that when men don’t respect God, they won’t respect God-given rights, either. And until we return to America’s Judeo-Christian roots, we will continue to see irreligious and unpatriotic tyrants chip away at our rights and liberties.
