Declaration of Independence was a Leap of Faith

Posted in: News By House Divided on July 5, 2023

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress meeting in Philadelphia, Pa. With one voice, the 56 representatives from 13 olonies announced to the world the birth of a new nation they named the United States of America.

From the Declaration of Independence, comes the statement thought to reflect the soul of the nation: “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.” Why are truths that once united Americans now at the center of what divides us?

British author G. K. Chesterton observed, “America is the only nation founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence…” Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., echoed these sentiments in his famous speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, envisioning a day when “this nation will rise-up and live out the true meaning of its creed…” Dr. King’s politics were anchored in the theological proposition that “all men are created equal.” He refused to renounce this creed even as he knew the truth of this proposition could only be defended in the context of the verb created, with its reference to a transcendent Creator and his purposes. It was King’s desire to serve the God he loved that changed forever the country he loved.

The Declaration set forth God-given truths, but America has not consistently lived up to this high standard. C.S. Lewis believed such failures are to be expected: all moral systems “agree in prescribing a behavior which their adherents fail to practice. All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own.” Yet our shortcomings cannot diminish these timeless truths — truths that once guided Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed, “…I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence…”

The Declaration was not less than “an expression of the American mind” as Thomas Jefferson believed, it was much more: it was an expression of American’s faith. This document was at once a declaration of the colonists’ independence from Great Britain and a declaration of their dependence upon God. The shared faith in the Creator revealed in the Declaration is the spiritual glue that once united this country. Now, it’s at the heart of what divides us.

In Secular Surge, the authors observed, “First and foremost, there clearly are secular and religious elements to the contemporary partisan and ideological divides. That Democrats and liberal bases consist disproportionally of Secularists while Republicans and conservatives are principally Religionists helps to explain the starkly different policy preferences of the partisans… as well as the growth of affective polarization between them…” The diametrically opposed worldviews of secularist Democrats and religionist Republicans are generating political and cultural strife, but this is not a “culture war,”, these are symptoms of a deeper, spiritual conflict engulfing the nation.

Lincoln understood there are no political solutions to a spiritual problem. In 1863, President Lincoln summoned a bitterly divided nation to a time of prayer saying, “…we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God……we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God who made us…” Now as then, America is in a battle for the soul of the nation. The battlefield isn’t the ballot box, it’s a spiritual struggle engaging the hearts and minds of Americans. At issue: will we adhere to the self-evident truths contained in America’s creed, or abandon them?

The Declaration was a beacon erected to guide every generation of Americans. Lincoln urges this present generation to rekindle their faith in the transcendent truths that once united the nation, saying “Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the Declaration of Independence, let me entreat you to come back to the sacred principles in that immortal emblem of Humanity…” Will we?

James O. Cunningham lives in Orlando.