Constitution Day 2025 - part 1

Constitution Day 2025

Part 1

[B]ecause we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. President John Adams 

• Constitution Day is September 17. Because of the content I will be sharing, this will be a three-part blog. Part 2 will be published on September 30th.

• In this first blog, I will submit a few pieces of evidence concerning the Christian foundation which undergirds our Constitution.

Introduction

Our Constitution grew out of the American soil into which the seeds of the gospel of Jesus Christ had been sewn. Its roots run deep, drawing nourishment from Christian colonial charters and state constitutions. For the purposes of this blog, I will only reference two of each.

Christian Colonial Charters

Noah Webster, in his 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language, explains in part that “The charters under which most of the colonies in America were settled, were given by the king of England, and incorporated certain persons, with powers to hold the lands granted, to establish a government, and make laws for their own regulation.” (“Charter,” def. 1b) 

The First Charter of Virginia (1606)

“We, greatly commending, and graciously accepting of, their desires for the furtherance of so noble a work, which may, by the providence of Almighty God, hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty, in propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God, may in time bring the infidels and savages living in those parts to human civility and to a settled and quiet government, do, by these Our letters patent, graciously accept of, and agree to, their humble and well-intended desires.” (emphasis mine) https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/va01.asp 

The stated purpose of this company was to propagate the Christian religion.

The Mayflower Compact (1620)

This Compact reads in part:

In the name of God, Amen.

We, whose names are underwritten… Having undertaken for the Glory of God and advancement of the Christian Faith, and Honour of our King and Country, a Voyage to plant the First Colony in the Northern Parts of Virginia; do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of other ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof do enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. (emphasis mine) https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/mayflower.asp 

As we recall from history, these Pilgrim settlers did not actually end up in Virginia because stormy weather blew them off course. Instead, “the Compact was drafted and signed by forty-one adult males while aboard the Mayflower in Providence Harbor, MA, at the tip of Cape Cod, on November 21, 1620. The Pilgrims did not settle there, but went on to Plymouth where they landed…” (DeMar 55).

Notice again the stated purpose of this company: the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith. This is what was in the hearts of many of the persons aboard the Mayflower. Dr. Gai M. Ferdon in her excellent book A Republic If You Can Keep It, quotes historian, Donald Lutz, who wrote concerning this document. He explained, “Beginning with the Mayflower Compact, Americans had the habit of turning their major political documents into cultural statements as well, statements outlining the basic presupposition of social and cultural activity in that particular society” (Lutz qtd. in Ferndon 121). 

Finally, I’d like to note a few key points as we advance toward the United States Constitution.

1. “[T]he Pilgrims crafted the first American political document written solely by English emigrants to America” (Ferndon 119).

2. In this document we find individual self-government under God and accountability to one another.

3. Additionally, they individually consented to this compact as noted by the forty-one male signatures (those married obviously represented their wives and children).

4. Finally, they covenanted and combined themselves into a Civil Body Politic. On pages 121 and 122 of Ferdon’s book, she quotes Daniel J. Elazar who wrote in Covenant & Constitutionalism, “[F]rom their earliest beginnings, the people and polities comprising the United States have bound themselves together through covenants to erect their New World order,” and in doing so, they were “deliberately following biblical precedents.” (Elazar qtd. in Ferndon 121). Further, referring to the Mayflower Compact, Elazar states, “It is justly revered for what it is, the founding document of New England and much of American civil society, but it also represents the first step in the modern transformation of covenant into compact. In itself it can be viewed as both, especially when we understand that “combine” was the term generally associated with the compact form. Since not all who signed the document were identified as Reformed Protestants, covenanting had to be supplemented by combining to bind them all” (Elazar qtd. in Ferndon 122). 

Christian Constitutions

A constitution, according to Noah Webster, is “The established form of government in a state, kingdom, or country; a system of fundamental rules, principles and ordinances for the government of a state or nation.” (“Constitution,” def. 4a)

The Massachusetts Constitution (1780)

Here. I will refer to only a few salient points in this constitution. The Preamble reads in part, 

We, therefore, the people of Massachusetts, acknowledging, with grateful hearts, the goodness of the Great Legislator of the Universe, in affording us, in the course of His Providence, an opportunity…of forming a new Constitution of Civil Government, for ourselves and posterity; and devoutly imploring His direction in so interesting a design…

Article II. It is right, as well as the duty of all men in society, publicly, and at stated seasons, to worship the SUPREME BEING, the great creator and preserver of the universe…

III. As the happiness of a people, and the good order and preservation of civil government, essentially depend upon piety, religion, and morality;...

And concerning the election of the governor, it reads, “And no person shall be eligible to this office,...unless he shall declare himself to be of the christian religion.” https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch1s6.html 

As a note: This constitution was “drafted by John Adams, [and it] is the world’s oldest functioning written constitution. It served as a model for the United States Constitution, which was written in 1787 and became effective in 1789.” https://www.mass.gov/guides/john-adams-the-massachusetts-constitution 

The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639)

Historian Gary DeMar writes in his book America’s Christian History: THE UNTOLD STORY, that:

New Haven [CT] was established by the Reverend John Davenport and Theophilus Eaton in 1638. It was at New Haven that the first general court convened in 1638 and enacted a body of laws, “After a day of fasting and prayer, they rested their first frame of government on a simple plantation covenant, that ‘all of them would be ordered by the rules which the Scriptures held forth to them… A year after the meeting of the general court, the colonists desired a more perfect form of government… [New Haven] enacted a civil polity where God’s Word was “established as the only rule in public affairs.

After a period of war with the Indians, the settlers of the western colony resolved to perfect its political institutions and to form a body politic by voluntary association. It was on January 14, 1639, that the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, often called the world’s first written constitution, was adopted at Hartford by the colonists. It was largely the work of [Rev.] Thomas Hooker, John Haynes, and Roger Ludlow. (57, 58)

The preamble of this constitution is very thorough as to its purposes. It states in clear terms that: 

Forasmuch as it has pleased Almighty God by the wise disposition of His Divine Providence so to order and dispose of things that we the inhabitants and residents of Windsor, Hartford and Wethersfield…and well knowing where a people are gathered together the Word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, to order and dispose of the affairs of all the people at all seasons as occasions shall require; do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public State or Commonwealth, and do, for ourselves and our successors and such as shall be adjoined to us at any time hereafter, enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and preserve the liberty and purity of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess, as also the discipline of the churches, which according to the truth of the said Gospel is now practiced among us. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/order.asp 

The Context

As evidenced by the wording and intent of the previous documents, the American “atmosphere” was infused with the truth of the Bible in daily life, and in every area of life. Likewise, the mission to advance the gospel of Jesus Christ was preeminent. This is not to say that everyone was a Christian or that there were no societal problems. It’s simply to promote some understanding concerning that era leading up to and including the founding of the United States of America. 

Marshall Foster, author of The American Covenant: The Untold Story, quotes John W. Whitehead who revealed that:

When the Constitution was adopted and sent to the states for ratification, the population of America numbered only about 3 ¼ million. The Christian population numbered at least 2 million. James C. Hefley has commented that about 900,000 were Scotch or Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, with another million also holding to basic Calvinistic beliefs. (34)

Similarly, historians David and Tim Barton echo these same historical observations in their history book, The American Story: The Beginnings. In documenting the ministers who preached during the First Great Awakening which took place approximately between the years of the 1730s to the 1760s, one minister stands out to me: the Reverend George Whitefield. The Bartons write this concerning him:

Whitefield had a substantial impact on America by changing the lives and thinking of countless Americans. It is estimated that the total number of those who attended his meetings was over 10 million, and his message transformed hundreds of thousands. (Since America had only 3 million inhabitants at the time, not only did most Americans hear Whitefield preach but many likely heard him several times.) (102)

A Righteous Cause–Declaring Independence

The Declaration of Independence is critical to a correct understanding of our Constitution. It is our nation’s birth certificate and it sets forth the philosophy of government to which the thirteen colonies subscribed. The main points that I gleaned from it are as follows:

• They affirmed the reality of God, His laws in nature, and His written laws (the Bible).

• They affirmed that truth exists.

• They affirmed that God created people, and that He gives us certain rights which should not be alienated from us by anyone.

• They affirmed that God ordained government to secure or protect those rights (see Romans 13:1-7).

• They affirmed that the government’s power is to be just and that they have said powers by the consent of the governed. 

• Finally, they affirmed that if government becomes destructive concerning our rights, we have the right to change our government.

Also, they documented twenty-seven grievances committed repeatedly by the king of Great Britain, and they appealed to God, the Supreme Judge, to judge the rightness of their actions.

Thus, God outlines the government’s responsibility thereby limiting it within that framework. This prepared the thirteen united colonies, turned United States, to persevere through the griefs of war, to address the inefficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, and to labor for a more perfect union under the United States Constitution.