Some things we need to know first. An abridged history lesson and some definitions.

A Protestant is a member of a Christian denomination that broke away from the Roman Catholic Church in the 16th century. The term “Protestant” comes from a Latin phrase meaning “to testify in favor of something.”
The Protestant Reformation was a movement of protests against the Catholic Church’s authority and corruption.
The movement began with Martin Luther in Germany in 1517 writing the 95 Theses in protest of the Catholic church’s rules.
The protests led to widespread social and religious change moving back to the actual teachings of scripture and God’s word.
The protests eventually ended the Roman papacy’s thousand-year rule.

Protestants believe that the Bible is the ultimate authority on religious truth.
Protestants believe that humans are saved by God’s grace.

-In 1527, Henry VIII tried to get Pope Julius II to allow him to divorce his wife, Catherine of Aragon, and marry another woman, Anne Boleyn (bowlin .pron.); the Pope refused. Well, Henry VIII did it anyway and the Pope excommunicated him which then led Henry VIII to create the Anglican Church of England separate from Rome, and made himself the head of the new church. This allowed him to decree the annulment of his marriage. (This is why we don’t want the mixture of church and state so the state can’t pervert the church to its will. .e.g. 1st Amendment “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion”). The people of England began reading the Tyndale bible which was based on Luther’s German New Testament and the protestant movement. The people then began to disagree with the Church of England and its teachings. These people were called ‘Puritans’. The protestant Puritans left England and sailed to America. Over the next 100 years, they continued to live in their faith and raise the next generations in Christ’s beliefs which would ultimately form the new United States of America. This means that, ‘the Lord used a fickle Catholic King’s wanton lust for a woman to found the greatest nation in the world.’

-Noah Webster wrote, “The Christian religion in its Purity is the basis or rather the source of all genuine freedom in any government and I am persuaded that no civil government of a republic form can exist and be durable in which the principles of that religion have not a controlling influence” The reason they put the establishment clause in the first amendment was to create a wall of separation between the state and church. This was to ensure and prevent the state from perverting the church and watering down the prophetic nature of the church lest the State lose its conscience. Everyone thinks the separation of church and state was to keep the church out of the state, but it was the opposite of that.

As we move forward and take a look at the original state constitutions, we could almost think of the colonial states as different denominations they were representing in Protestant Christianity and they didn’t want to force Presbyterians to act like methodists to act like Baptists to act like Quakers so they said no, we’re going to allow for the free exercise of Faith as they see fit in their states and wrote that in the individual state constitutions.

Constitution of Vermont – July 8, 1777

CHAPTER I: A DECLARATION OF THE RIGHTS OF THE INHABITANTS OF THE STATE OF VERMONT

III. That all men have a natural and unalienable right to worship ALMIGHTY GOD, according to the dictates of their own consciences and understanding, regulated by the word of GOD; and that no man ought, or of right can be compelled to attend any religious worship, or erect, or support any place of worship, or maintain any minister, contrary to the dictates of his conscience; nor can any man who professes the protestant religion, be justly deprived or abridged of any civil right, as a citizen, on account of his religious sentiment, or peculiar mode of religious worship, and that no authority can, or ought to be vested in, or assumed by, any power whatsoever, that shall, in any case, interfere with, or in any manner controul, the rights of conscience, in the free exercise of religious worship: nevertheless, every sect or denomination of people ought to observe the Sabbath, or the Lord’s day, and keep up, and support, some sort of religious worship, which to them shall seem most agreeable to the revealed will of GOD.

Constitution of South Carolina, March 19, 1778:

III. by virtue of this constitution, they shall jointly in the House of Representatives choose by ballot from among themselves or from the people at large a governor and commander-in-chief, a lieutenant-governor, both to continue for two years, and a privy council, all of the Protestant religion.

XII. that no person shall be eligible to a seat in the said senate unless he be of the Protestant religion, and hath attained the age of thirty years, and hath been a resident in this State at least five years.

XXXVIII. That all persons and religious societies who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshipped, shall be freely tolerated. The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of this State.

–Frame of Government of Pennsylvania

May 5, 1682

XXXIV. That all Treasurers, Judges, Masters of the Rolls, Sheriffs, Justices of the Peace, and other officers and persons whatsoever, relating to courts, or trials of causes or any other service in the government; and all Members elected to serve in provincial Council and General Assembly, and all that have right to elect such Members, shall be such as possess faith in Jesus Christ, and that are not convicted of ill fame, or unsober and dishonest conversation, and that are of one and twenty years of age, at least; and that all such so qualified, shall be capable of the said several employments and privileges, as aforesaid.

– Constitution of Delaware 1776

XXII: Every person who shall be chosen a member of either house, or appointed to any office or place of trust, before taking his seat, or entering upon the execution of his office, shall take the following oath, or affirmation, if conscientiously scrupulous of taking an oath, to wit: I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration. I do profess faith in God the Father, and in Jesus Christ His only Son, and in the Holy Ghost, one God, blessed for evermore; and I do acknowledge the holy scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be given by divine inspiration.

THAT’S ORTHODOX, frickin’ TRINITARIANISM CHRISTIANITY!

-One of the accusations is that the founders had this view of God as a distant higher power who wound the world up and let it run like a clock and stepped back and is no longer involved. There were a few who ascribed to some deistic belief systems but it’s untrue that that was the founder’s Faith system.

-New Hampshire, North Carolina, New Jersey, Maryland, and Massachusetts all included similar clauses.

-Do you realize the quieter pulpits get the more government you need? The louder pulpits get the less government you need because the bigger God gets the smaller man becomes. The clearer the gospel is preached the more we understand rightly the limitations of each sphere the role and responsibility God’s given them and how they function in society for the flourishing of humanity.

–-The last paragraph of the Declaration reads like a prayer.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor. Revelation 20:11, Psalm 50:6 “Supreme Judge” referring to Jesus.
The last line of the Declaration:” And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”
Webster’s definition of providence: God conceived as the power sustaining and guiding human destiny

-Without question, the Declaration of Independence references the Providence of God, the law of God, the law of Nature’s God, the equality of man is made in God’s image, god-given human rights, government’s job to secure those rights do not create them, government by consent of the people, the sinful nature of man needing constraint, limited and delegated powers of property rights, and two witnesses to affirm those and the separation of the church and the state is without question that the Declaration and the Bill of Rights sprang forth from a distinctly Christian worldview.

-Webster wrote, “The Bible is the chief moral cause of all that is good, and the best corrector of all that is evil, in human society; the best book for regulating the temporal concerns of men, and the only book that can serve as an infallible guide to future happiness.”

-It’s not the government’s job to be the end-all answer for everything it’s the government’s job to protect those few limited human rights so that humans on their own under the lordship of Jesus can flourish in the Spheres of family, church, and civil magistrate meaning it’s not government’s job to save the world it’s government’s job to get out of the way and protect citizens so they can be fruitful in the world.

– In the first US Census of 1799 99% of the 4 million citizens identified as Christians, specifically Protestants.

– All the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence were Christians except for two who were Unitarian (kind of like Judaism)

– All the 55 delegates of the constitution convention were members of the Orthodox Christian Church. 45 were ordained ministers.

– eight of the 13 American colonies have official Christian church denominations, all Protestant.

– Two of the remaining five colonies had Christianity as their official state religion.

– Six of the colonies required every public office to be a Christian and to take an oath swearing allegiance to Christian doctrines, as I read to you earlier.

– In all 13 colonies’ state constitutions, they refer to the almighty God.

-Congress itself in 1856 wrote “the great vital and conservative element in our system,” not conservative politically, conservative as in preserving/preservation,”is the belief of our people in the pure doctrines and divine truths of the Gospel of Jesus Christ”

-If you know the story of Joseph in Exodus and how God chose him to save the Hebrews, Egypt, and the surrounding nations from 7 years of famine, this verse blows my mind…Exodus 1:8 “Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.” Think about that in today’s view. “And then a new generation, whom the founding fathers meant nothing, came to power in America.”

–Parallels of the grievances in the Declaration vs US government over the last 30 years.

The king’s refusal to give assent to laws meant that he prevented the colonists from having self-rule.
The king’s refusal to give assent to laws also meant that he obstructed the administration of justice.
The king’s refusal to give assent to laws meant that he removed judiciary powers from the people in Massachusetts.
The king’s refusal to give assent to laws meant that he opposed the very purpose of governance.

Examples

The king approved of the Coercive Acts, which closed Boston Harbor and stripped Massachusetts of its charter.
The king consented to the hiring of Hessian mercenaries to help the British troops in America.

-Leviticus 25:10 on the liberty bell. “And you shall consecrate the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you, when each of you shall return to his property and each of you shall return to his clan”

–John Adams to his wife Abigail Adams, 26 April 1777

“Posterity! You will never know, how much it cost the present Generation, to preserve your Freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven, that I ever took half the Pains to preserve it.”

–From John Adams to Massachusetts Militia, 11 October 1798

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Meaning, that if there is no sense of god-given morality or divine accountability, this experiment called the USA will fail.

-We need integrity, but I feel, as a nation, we’ve lost that. We have too many laws because we’ve lost divine accountability. Paul said in Galatians 5:13-14 “For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Imagine if everyone in America did that; even for one day! There would almost be no need for ANY of our laws. Because when a nation looks up and asks, “How good can I be?” All the details and all the fine print become irrelevant. We need to do what’s responsible, not just what’s permissible. Start saying, “How can I help?” Learn from Jesus and adopt a servant leadership attitude. Do what’s moral, not what’s modeled. We need to honor God. Meaning whenever we need to make a decision we should ask, “What would honor God?” Regardless of whether you’ve read the bible or grew up in church you know the answer to this question INTUITIVELY. Because it is Self-Evident. This points us back to the declaration and the founder’s belief that individual rights assume individual accountability to God.

Bibliography

National Archives: America’s Founding Documents

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/bill-of-rights-transcript

National Archives: America’s Founding Documents

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

Yale Law: The Avalon Project

https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/

America was Founded as a Distinctly Christian Nation – Josh McPherson