Tag Archive for: Founding Fathers

American Men: The Masculine Virtues of the Founding Fathers

/in , , , , , /by

Every year, on the Fourth of July, Americans celebrate the signing of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of our great nation. That nation did not emerge from a vacuum, nor was its founding the result of lengthy, laborious diplomatic discussions. America was forged in a furnace of war, tempered and hammered by men of tremendous strength, character, and will, memorialized as the Founding Fathers. It was men like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, John Jay, John Hancock, Charles Carroll, Samuel Adams, and other heroes whose blood, sweat, tears, and toil wrought America as a nation and pulled that nation from the flickering fires of the furnace.

In the 250 years since the nation’s founding, however, America has suffered many trials and has been thrust back into the furnace time and time again to be tempered, reshaped, expanded, or beautified. The men who have cast her back into the fires in recent years have not always had the force of will and strength of character that the Founding Fathers evinced. In fact, many have abdicated the masculine virtues so carefully cultivated by generations past, so that they often fail to temper and reforge the nation, instead allowing her to become warped and burned.

This absence of masculine virtue — and even a refusal to acknowledge that particular virtues are masculine — has left many men today confused and leaderless. Fatherlessness, divorce, pornography and drug addictions, transgender ideation and ideology, and elevated crime rates are all evidence of this. With precious few men in the public square today to lead by example and inspire the next generation of young men, it may be worth looking to the examples of the Founding Fathers, as much for their guidance for the next generation as to learn what has been lost over the centuries.

Courage

One of the most essential virtues for men is that of courage. Traditionally, courage has also been called “fortitude,” which empowers men to face suffering and pain for the sake of something greater or more meaningful. Courage is not an absence of fear, but is instead the act of facing one’s fear, enduring suffering or hardship or terror for the sake of something better, whether that be for an ideal or principle or for the protection of a loved one. The virtue of courage is essential for men, who God established as protectors for the vulnerable; in the order of the family, in particular, husbands and fathers are the first line of defense for their wives and children.

While all of the Founding Fathers evinced courage over the course of the American Revolution, perhaps the most dramatic example of this virtue is found in George Washington. As an aide-de-camp to British General Edward Braddock during the French and Indian War, Washington was ambushed by French and American Indian forces outside Fort Duquesne, near modern-day Pittsburgh. When the British line advancing against the French was broken and Braddock was wounded, the young Washington (only 23 years old at the time) did not panic or run away, despite the fact that he was ill and suffering from dysentery. Instead, he did as his commanding officer would have and rallied the troops, organized a rear guard, and provided cover for Braddock’s retreating men. During the episode, Washington had two horses shot out from under him and later found four bullet holes in his coat and hat and even found shrapnel in his hair.

More than 20 years later, as the Commander-in-Chief of the Continental Army, Washington once again displayed his courage. Following defeats in New York and a grueling retreat across New Jersey, the Continental Army was suffering low morale, crushed spirits, dwindling supplies, and a harsh winter. Many men had lost essentials like boots and coats in the defeated trek across New Jersey, and now had to contend with snow and ice in Pennsylvania at Christmastime. Instead of cowering in the face of defeat at the hands of the greatest military power in the world (at the time), Washington marched onwards, leading more than 2,400 men in a daring expedition across the Delaware River to surprise a British garrison of Hessian mercenaries and cripple the crown’s army.

“Courage is almost a contradiction in terms. It means a strong desire to live taking the form of a readiness to die. ‘He that will lose his life, the same shall save it,’ is not a piece of mysticism for saints and heroes. It is a piece of everyday advice for sailors or mountaineers,” wrote Christian author G.K. Chesterton.

“This paradox is the whole principle of courage; even of quite earthly or brutal courage. A man cut off by the sea may save his life if we will risk it on the precipice. He can only get away from death by continually stepping within an inch of it. A soldier surrounded by enemies, if he is to cut his way out, needs to combine a strong desire for living with a strange carelessness about dying. He must not merely cling to life, for then he will be a coward, and will not escape. He must not merely wait for death, for then he will be a suicide, and will not escape. He must seek his life in a spirit of furious indifference to it; he must desire life like water and yet drink death like wine.”

In the face of threats to honor, his health, and even his life, Washington persevered. He was not deterred. Instead, he constantly, repeatedly risked his life for the sake of living as an American.

Strength

While all men should strive for physical excellence, strength of character is what allows a man to wield his physical strength well. John Adams evinced such strength at the outbreak of the American Revolution.

The Boston Massacre polarized colonial society, enflaming tensions between American patriots and British loyalists. Undeterred by the controversy, Adams endured the scorn and rebuke of his friends and countrymen — his cousin, for example, Samuel Adams — and took the job of defending the British soldiers accused. Convinced that all men are entitled to fair representation before the law, Adams risked his career and reputation in commitment to his principles. In the end, Adams won the case, with British Captain Thomas Preston and six of the soldiers under his command being acquitted. “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence,” Adams famously said in his closing arguments.

Despite the initial unpopularity which Adams’s defense of the British brought him, his practice prospered in the aftermath as he became known as a man of commitment, principle, and strength. It was that strength of will and character which enabled him to lead the Continental Congress in establishing the Continental Army and appointing Washington to lead it, spurring independence from the crown, securing the assistance of France, and crafting the Constitution.

Prudence

The moral and intellectual exercise of practical wisdom, prudence is among the most useful of the virtues — and, today, among the rarest. Of the Founding Fathers, many displayed exemplary prudence, just as many evinced courage and strength, but James Madison is perhaps the most notable example of prudence.

Known as the “Father of the Constitution,” Madison demonstrated tremendous prudence and foresight in drafting and largely structuring the Constitution, particularly the series of “checks and balances” intended to prevent any one singular branch of the government from exerting its power beyond its legal reach and devolving into the very tyranny which American patriots had just fought so bravely against. Relying heavily on political and legal foundations from Western Europe, including the structure of the Dutch Republic, the Swiss Federation, and the Hellenistic-era Achaean League, Madison sought to prevent disunity among the states and prevent the abuse of majority rule with the Constitution, establishing a strong federal government, also balanced to prevent abuse.

It was Madison’s prudence which led to the structure of Congress, balancing the concerns of smaller, less populated states with the interests of larger, more populated states by creating two bicameral chambers, with the size of the lower being apportioned according to the size of each state and the size of the upper being fixed. When state legislators loudly criticized the not-yet-established Constitution, Madison joined with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay to pen the Federalist Papers, a collection of essays clarifying what the Constitution is and the need for it. With both charity and clarity, Madison conducted a lengthy correspondence with Virginia delegate Edmund Randolph, who eventually sided with Madison in favor of ratifying the Constitution. The fourth president’s prudence was evident when he argued at the Virginia ratification convention against the passionate former governor of Virginia Patrick Henry, a staunch anti-Federalist.

That Constitution has guided and shaped America for nearly 250 years (the Constitution was ratified in 1788), thanks in large part to the prudence and practical wisdom of Madison.

Justice

In simple terms, justice is giving to one what he is due, a principle clearly evident in law. Thomas Jefferson was a champion of justice, particularly when rectifying and preventing religious persecution. Many of the earliest settlers of what would eventually become the United States of America fled religious persecution and intolerance. The Mayflower Pilgrims, the Quakers of Pennsylvania, the Catholics of Maryland, and many others left the Anglican regime of England — and, in many cases, other European nations; German Catholics, for example, especially from Bavaria, fled religious persecution in their home country and settled in Maryland and Pennsylvania, where their Catholic faith was tolerated and even shared by many of their fellow settlers — and sought peace in the New World.

In the mid 1770s, Jefferson worked tirelessly to disestablish the Anglican Church as Virginia’s state religion, drafting the Bill Establishing Religious Freedom, which served as a critical foundation in later years when he assisted Madison in crafting the Constitution. Jefferson recognized that the virtue of justice demanded that no man be persecuted for worshipping God. According to longstanding Christian doctrine, God endowed man with both free will and reason, so that man’s worship of God may be a willing choice to love his Maker. Depriving man of this choice would also deprive God of love freely given, which Jefferson rightly recognized as an injustice — both against God and man.

Today, 250 years later, Jefferson’s commitment to justice and religious liberty is still seen in the nation he played such a crucial role in founding. The rights of Americans of faith, even when threatened, are guaranteed protection and justice under the Constitution, thanks to Jefferson.

Loyalty and Faithfulness

Few qualities are as valued by men in their friendships as those of loyalty and faithfulness. The signers of the Declaration of Independence evinced these noble virtues in putting their names to that foundational document. The final line of the Declaration reads, “[F]or 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.”

The men who founded this nation knew that they risked their lives in declaring independence from the crown. Had they not won the Revolutionary War, they would no doubt have been imprisoned or even hanged as traitors. Yet they were faithful not just to the promise of America, but to one another. It was this faithfulness that led the Founding Fathers and their countrymen through the war and through the first years of the nation’s existence. No man fought alone; each fought alongside his brethren, his countrymen, each relying on the other and his loyalty and faithfulness to forge a new nation.

Duty and Responsibility

Following the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Adams urged independence and a military response. While he was initially voted down by the Second Continental Congress, which sought to exhaust all avenues of possible reconciliation with Britain before taking the irrevocable measure of declaring independence, he found solace in the figure of Washington. The future first president, a delegate from Virginia, wore a black armband in mourning for his sister colony of Massachusetts. He told Adams that he was prepared to raise an army, at his own personal expense, to march to the aid of the besieged Massachusetts. When Adams, truly touched, thanked Washington for his generosity, the latter is said to have replied, “It is not generosity, Mr. Adams; it is duty.”

This sense of duty, certainly, was evinced by many of the Founding Fathers, who set aside profitable trades, vast estates, promising careers, sterling reputations, and even friends and family for the sake of fighting for America, but Washington demonstrated time and time again the true man’s practice of shouldering duties and responsibilities. When asked to lead the Continental Army — a largely untrained, ill supplied, rag-tag collection of farmers, tradesmen, merchants, and former militiamen — against the most powerful military the world had yet seen, Washington did not shirk or shy away, but took the tremendous responsibility upon himself.

After leading the fledgling America to victory, Washington was elected president, a role he did not particularly want. As one of the wealthiest of the Founding Fathers, he preferred to retire to his plantation and manage his household, not a nation. Nevertheless, he took the job, out of a sense of duty to his country and his countrymen. When his term came to an end, Washington again sought retirement. He was weary of the duties of his office, particularly the infighting among his cabinet members and the political conflicts between Hamilton’s Federalist Party and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans, and his health was deteriorating. His nephew, George Augustine Washington, who was managing his estate of Mount Vernon while Washington served as president, was also in poor health, and Washington’s wife, Martha, asked him to reconsider running for office.

Madison, however, warned Washington that the political fractures in his cabinet needed to be kept from widening by a firm and steady hand, and both Jefferson and Hamilton set aside their political quarreling to plead with Washington run for a second term. He was, once again, unanimously elected to office. Although not bound by any term limits, Washington voluntarily departed the office at the end of his second term, laying down his power once his duty was fulfilled.

In an age of ambition and politicking, when men vie for power and rarely ever lay it down once taken up, Washington stands as an admirable example of what it means to treat power and public life as a duty and a responsibility, to be shouldered as a burden in times of need, and laid down again once the task is accomplished.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

What Does America Stand for?

Fiery Scots, Especially Their Presbyterian Ministers, Were Key to the American Revolution

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Lost Ties between the United States and Cuba (Part 1)

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

If you were to ask any 21st-century American about Cuba, most of the stories that would come to mind would be those of the Missile Crisis, the world on the brink of nuclear collapse, and the repression of freedoms against the island’s inhabitants by a socialist tyranny. And they are right.

But the rich connections between the island and the United States are not limited to the last 70 tumultuous years. There is a whole current of prior ties, in which solidarity and alliance between regional neighbors prevailed.

We discussed these with Cuban-American historian Octavio de la Suarée, who for years was a professor and head of the Department of Language, Literature, and Culture at William Paterson University in New Jersey, and who presides over the Cuban Academy of History in Exile. Here is part of that long conversation on the 250th anniversary of the United States.

In what ways did Cubans contribute to the American Revolutionary War?

The contribution of Cubans to the American Revolutionary War between 1775 and 1783 was very important, although often underappreciated. As a Spanish colony, and given its proximity to the United States, Cuba supported the Thirteen Colonies through Spain, which officially entered the war against Great Britain in 1779.

Their contributions are highlighted in various ways, but perhaps the most poetic of all was the famous collection by the ladies of Havana, whose donations helped finance the military campaign that culminated in the Battle of Yorktown in 1781, considered decisive for the American victory. Several sources refer to the large quantity of personal jewelry that, when sold, helped reach the sums required to finance that battle.

Another substantial economic foundation was the large sums of money that were collected from all over Havana to help finance the independence army.

Likewise, another significant military reinforcement was the fact that Cuba served as a strategic base for operations against the British in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. Cuban troops, militias, and resources participated in campaign actions such as the capture of Pensacola, which weakened the British.

And among the logistical support was the location of Cuban ports on the island, from where weapons, gunpowder, food, and medicine were sent to the American rebels. Similarly, Havana was a key naval supply center for the Allied Forces against England.

There were figures who stood out at that historical moment, right?

Yes. I’m only going to mention two key Hispanic figures in the American Revolutionary War against the British.

Bernardo Gálvez, for example, was an essential figure in the independence of the United States, although he is little known in this country. This Spanish politician and military leader was born in Macharaviana, Spain, near Málaga, in 1746, and distinguished himself as a military strategist during the war between Spain and Great Britain. He was governor of Spanish Louisiana during the conflict and fought against the British on many occasions. Gálvez decisively aided the Thirteen Colonies, without openly declaring it at the beginning, by sending arms, gunpowder, money, and supplies to the rebels, which he received from Havana.

Later, he participated in and led important military campaigns against the British, including those of Baton Rouge, Mobile, and Pensacola in 1781. In the latter, he led a very risky naval attack, and it was there that he acquired his motto, “Yo solo” (I alone), because he sailed his ship where other military personnel thought it was impossible. These victories not only expelled the English from the region but also prevented the rebels from being attacked from the south. Gálvez ended his brilliant career as Viceroy of New Spain (present-day Mexico).

In 2014, the United States Congress named him an Honorary Citizen of the United States (a very rare honor). There is a statue of Bernardo de Gálvez in Washington, D.C., near the State Department.

The other important figure was Juan Mirallés, an 18th-century Spanish merchant and diplomat, known for his role during the American Revolutionary War. In short, he was the main informal liaison between Spain and the American revolutionaries.

Mirallés was born in Spain and later settled in Havana, which at that time was a key center of Spanish trade. He quickly became a wealthy merchant with extensive networks in the Caribbean and North America.

He was a personal friend of George Washington and lived for a time very close to the headquarters of the Continental Army. From there, he discreetly helped channel financial support, supplies, and weapons to the rebels. At the same time, he served as an observer and political advisor for Spain, reporting on the war’s progress.

Juan de Mirallés died in 1780, during the war. George Washington attended his funeral, a very significant gesture that shows the respect he had for him. Although not very well known today, Mirallés was a substantial figure in the secret diplomacy that helped make American independence successful and a reality.

In short, although Cuba did not participate directly as an independent nation, its economic, military, and logistical support was crucial to the triumph of the American colonies.

Without these resources, especially in the final stage of the conflict, the independence of the United States would have been much more difficult to achieve.

Now, let’s change direction. In the Cuban wars of independence in the 19th century, several North American names stand out. But perhaps the most well-known is Henry Reeve, also known as “the little Englishman.” What is his story?

Many Americans participated in the Cuban Wars of Independence, and among the most prominent names are Thomas Jordan, a general of the Confederate States, who served as Chief of Staff of the Mambí Army in 1869; Colonel Federico Fernández Cavada of the Union Army, who was commander-in-chief of the Mambí Army for a time; his brother Adolfo, who was a colonel; and W.A.C. Ryan, executed in Santiago de Cuba, among others.

We also have Henry Mike Reeve Carroll — who was a brigadier general in the Liberating Army during the Ten Years’ War (1868-1878), the First War of Independence of Cuba — proclaimed against Spanish colonialism by the Father of the Nation, Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, with the Grito de Yara (Cry of Yara) at his La Demajagua estate on October 10, 1868. He is also known as the first president of the Republic of Cuba in Arms.

Henry Reeve, for his part, was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 4, 1850, and participated as a drummer boy for the Union Army from a very young age in the American Civil War (1861-1865), where he developed a strong opposition to slavery. Three years later, upon learning of the revolution in Cuba against Spain, he felt compelled to join the Mambí Army.

Is it true that he didn’t speak Spanish?

Yes. Although he didn’t speak a word of Spanish, Reeve boarded the steamship “Perrit” in 1869 under the alias Henry Earl and arrived on the Cuban coast at the port of Nipe, eight months after the war began. The next day, he engaged the enemy in combat, where he was captured along with several other expedition members, and they were taken to be executed.

Reeve was shot four times, the bullets piercing his body, but fortunately, none of them hit a vital organ. He regained consciousness later and managed to escape his captors at night. He wandered aimlessly for two days until he found the Mambí detachment of General Luis Figueredo at El Mejías camp, where he received medical attention.

The following month, the American received the rank of Second Sergeant in the Mambí Army, and in October of the same year, he was appointed aide-de-camp to General Thomas Jourdan. Jourdan, however, resigned shortly afterward, and the young man joined the 1st Cavalry Squadron of the Northern Brigade of Camagüey under the command of Brigadier General Cristóbal Acosta. Throughout that year, he participated in several encounters with the enemy, including the battles of Tana, Imías, and Jagua, where he was wounded again.

Reeve fought on the island under the command of the legendary lawyer who fought in some 100 battles, Ignacio Agramonte, correct?

In March 1871, Reeve was transferred to Ignacio Agramonte’s cavalry unit with the rank of captain. He fought in the battles of Estrada and Mulato before taking part in the rescue of Brigadier General Manuel Sanguily on October 8, 1871, leading a machete charge of Agramonte’s cavalry against superior Spanish forces. Agramonte had selected a small group of 35 horsemen, led by Commander Reeve, to carry out the daring rescue, which resulted in a resounding success.

Later, the young commander participated in the battles of Plátano, La Redonda, San Ramón de Pacheco, Santa Deo, La Matilde, and Sitio Potrero, and, in November 1871, he was wounded again. The following year, on November 29, 1872, he received an abdominal wound during the Battle of Le Carmen, an injury that would cause him problems for the rest of his life.

In 1873, Reeve participated in the battles that took place in Ciego de Najasa, Soledad de Pacheco, and Cocal del Olimpo. His daring and valor in the Battle of Jimaguayú on May 11, 1873, in which Ignacio Agramonte died, earned him even more distinctions. During this battle, Reeve briefly assumed command of Agramonte’s division, later handing it over to General Julio Sanguily. When Agramonte died in Jimaguayú, Reeve already held the rank of colonel.

After the death of Ignacio Agramonte, Reeve was reassigned to the command of Major General Máximo Gómez and was appointed Chief of Cavalry for the First Division on July 27, 1873. Gómez described Reeve as an exceptional officer, highlighting “his proven courage, his tireless dedication, and his strict military discipline.”

AUTHOR

Yoe Suarez

Yoe Suárez is The Washington Stand’s international affairs correspondent. He is an exiled journalist, writer, and producer who investigated in Havana about torture, political police, gangs, government black lists, and cybersurveillance. A graduate of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, he was a CBN correspondent, and has written for outlets like The Hill and Newsweek. He has appeared on Vox, Univision, and Deutsche Welle as an analyst on Cuba, security, and U.S. foreign policy.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Is America an Idea? Not According to the Founding Fathers

/in , , , , , , /by

As a sitting U.S. Supreme Court justice, Justice Neil Gorsuch has distinguished himself as one of the nation’s foremost originalists in constitutional interpretation, seeking the original understanding of the text at the time that it was written. Like conservative stalwart Justice Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch also favors natural law jurisprudence, the belief that particular moral laws are established in nature and can be discovered and clarified through reason.

Despite his fierce originalism, Gorsuch still somehow fails to grasp the essence of the United States of America and the understanding of the nation clearly articulated by the Founding Fathers, recently parroting the misguided claim that America is a “creedal nation,” nothing more, in fact, than a series of propositions: in short, just an idea.

“The Declaration of Independence had three great ideas in it: that all of us are equal, that each of us has inalienable rights given to us by God, not government, and that we have the right to rule ourselves,” Gorsuch observed in a recent podcast appearance, discussing America’s founding document and the legacy of the Founding Fathers. However, he continued, “Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture, even, or heritage. It’s based on those ideas. We’re a creedal nation.”

The Supreme Court’s first chief justice, John Jay, who also served as president of the Second Continental Congress and a co-author of both “The Federalist Papers” and the Constitution itself, did not agree with Gorsuch’s assessment, nearly 250 years removed from the actual foundation of the nation. As a matter of fact, nearly all of America’s Founding Fathers would have, based upon their own immortalized words and writing, rejected Gorsuch’s statement. In Federalist No. 2, Jay wrote:

“Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people — a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence. This country and this people seem to have been made for each other.”

Here’s where Jay and Gorsuch do agree: the rights which the American government was established to protect are rights given to man by God, not rights which originate within the government itself. But Jay’s definition of a nation — specifically, the American nation — is utterly at odds with Gorsuch’s. The nation, Jay contended, was not founded upon mere ideas, but is defined by its people, who in turn are defined by a common ancestry, a common heritage, a common language, a common religion, and common manners and customs, or culture. This is a direct contradiction of Gorsuch’s claim: “Our nation is not founded on a religion. It’s not based on a common culture, even, or heritage.”

Those ideas — that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that they have a right to govern their own selves — are not the foundation of the American nation. They are, rather, the fruits of this nation’s spiritual soil, the results of a distinct people with a common religion, a common culture, a common heritage. No religion other than Christianity could have produced such a charter for a government. All men are created equal? This belief certainly did not originate in India, where women were burned as property on the funeral pyres of their deceased husbands, and where even today a caste system, intimately intertwined with the Hindu religion, still dominates social and even political life. This notion cannot be traced to China’s Confucius, who advocated a strict hierarchy and class system. It did not come from the then-mighty Ottoman Empire, a Muslim domain which often persecuted Christians and other non-Muslims. Nowhere can it be found in the superstitious beliefs of the African continent of the time, where tribe or clan identity defined one’s worth and where slavery was far more commonplace than in either Europe or the New World.

The concept that all men are created equal is inextricably rooted in Christianity, which has upheld over the centuries that all men are created in the image and likeness of God and are thus inheritors of a dignity and worth which is beyond the power of other men either to increase or decrease. Less than a century after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it was this same Christian principle that would move leaders and lawmakers in the U.S. to formally abolish the practice of slavery. The well-known words of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” commonly sung by Union soldiers during the Civil War, explicate this:

“In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me:
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.”

The founding stock of America most certainly shared a common religion: Christianity. True, the Founders adhered to varying brands of Christianity — the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence included a Baptist, a Catholic, Congregationalists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Quakers — but they were all Christians. At the time, “Christian” was almost synonymous with “European.” It was Europe that had, for centuries, not only embraced but lovingly cherished and fiercely defended the Christian faith, even from before the fall of Rome. It was the great minds of Europe — Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, Plato and Duns Scotus, Cicero and Stephen Langton — who applied the moral principles of the Christian faith to the formation of the laws which governed Europe, out of which came the American people.

More specifically, the American people came from the unique application of Christian morality to law found in the culture of the English. It is for this reason that Gorsuch and his colleagues on the Supreme Court still turn to English common law when deciding constitutional questions with little precedent or contemporary historical context; the justices do not turn to the laws of 17th century India or 16th century Japan, nor even to the laws of medieval France or Spain. The American nation was born from predominantly English stock: the settlers of Jamestown, the Mayflower Pilgrims, the English who conquered New Amsterdam and renamed it New York.

Even when others — again, of Christian European heritage — were permitted into the U.S., it was under the condition of assimilation to this American brand of English heritage. Irish, Dutch, Polish, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians — all were expected to speak the English language, to abide by and conform to the legal, social, and cultural tradition inherited from England, and assimilate to the Anglo-influenced American way of life.

More than two decades before signing his name to the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin wrote of this stipulation in his 1751 treatise “Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind.” Pennsylvania, he said, was “founded by the English,” but a wave of immigrants from Germany threatened to erode the distinct culture and customs inherited from Britain. Why, Franklin asked, should Pennsylvania “become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion?”

America’s very first president and the general who won the War of Independence, George Washington, made a similar observation in a letter to his vice president, John Adams. Settling vast swaths of immigrants into “our people,” he warned, was dangerous, “for by so doing they retain the Language, habits & principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, laws: in a word soon become one people.”

In “Notes on the State of Virginia,” Thomas Jefferson, the chief author of the Declaration of Independence that Gorsuch claims to so revere and one of the principal architects of the Constitution, warned that a tangled mass of foreign customs, cultures, laws, and beliefs would easily upset and threaten to destroy the fledgling United States. “They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth. … In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass,” he wrote, with some prescience. He added that “it is for the happiness of those united in society to harmonize as much as possible in manners and habits.”

Perhaps the strongest rejection of the sentiments espoused by Gorsuch comes from John Adams, another of the American minds responsible for the Declaration of Independence and one of the great leaders of the American Revolution. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other,” Adams wrote. The American government — and, indeed, the American Constitution — did not precede the American nation or the American people. The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and all the noble principles therein did not give birth to America: they were rather themselves the product of a specific people of a specific heritage who adhered to a specific religion and the customs of a specific culture.

While Gorsuch glibly trots out the first line of the Declaration of Independence in defense of America as a “creedal nation,” his more senior colleague, Justice Clarence Thomas, recently spoke of the significance of the final line of the same document: “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.” Thomas observed, “Nothing in the Declaration of Independence, I now realize, matters without that final sentence. Without that sentence, the rest of the Declaration is but mere words on parchment paper.” He continued, “What changed the world was not the words, but the commitment and spirit of the people who were willing to labor, sacrifice, and even give their lives — what Lincoln at Gettysburg called the ‘last full measure of devotion’ — for the Declaration’s principles.”

The 56 patriots who signed their names to the Declaration of Independence knew that doing so was an act of treason against the British Crown. The men who fought under Washington against the redcoats knew that in so doing they were making themselves enemies of the world’s greatest, most powerful empire and military force. Nathan Hale knew that throwing in his lot with the colonial rebels meant certain death, yet when he was to be hanged on the morning of September 22, 1776, he boldly declared, “I only regret, that I have but one life to lose for my country.”

Hale did not go to the gallows for a creed. None of the men who braved the winter at Valley Forge and crossed the Delaware River or who fought at Lexington, Concord, Saratoga, Cowpens, or Yorktown were putting their lives on the line for a series of propositions. The men who signed the Declaration of Independence were not willing to die for a mere idea. No, each of these men was willing to brave death for the sake of his nation, for the love of his people.

The principles elucidated in the Declaration of Independence are noble ones, but their longevity and their tremendous impact on history cannot be separated from the men who penned and signed the Declaration, from the people and the culture that birthed the Declaration, and the patriots who were willing to fight and die not for the Declaration but for their nation. The Founding Fathers recognized that the American government, the whole system of American laws and customs, was inextricable from the American people. America is not a “creedal nation,” it is not an “idea,” it is not a series of propositions to which one either assents or does not, it is not a set of terms and conditions which one breezily skims over before agreeing to. No patriot gave his life for such a thing.

There is no such thing as a “creedal nation.” A church, a club, a cult, a community, these may have creeds to which members must assent in order to maintain membership. But America is not a church, a club, a cult, or a mere community. She is a nation, brought forth by a particular people at a particular point in time. America was not founded as some litany of evanescent ideals; she never would have survived the Revolutionary War had that been the case. She is a nation, founded by a people and for a people, and whose system of governance is wholly unsuitable to the maintenance and well-being of any other people.

For all that he may have gotten right on the Supreme Court (and he hasn’t gotten everything right), Gorsuch is dead wrong in his assessment of the foundation and essence of America: Our nation was founded on a common religion, the Christian religion. It is based on a common culture and a common heritage. It is not based on the ideas contained in the Declaration of Independence; those ideas are instead rooted in the people who founded the nation.

America is more than just an idea. She is a nation and a people — a nation and a people that generation after generation of Americans and their ancestors, over the course of four centuries, have fought, bled, died, killed, sweat, wept, and toiled to settle, build, preserve, safeguard, cherish, and lovingly pass on to the next generation. If all Americans believed as Gorsuch does, then that noble, centuries-old tradition would be at its end, and America would not live long past 250.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

What Does It Mean to Be Conservative?

/in , , , , , , , , /by

As yet another primary election season heats up, how do we cut through the rhetoric and evaluate candidates? One sure way is to have a measuring stick based on more than personal opinion.

One such popular standard for evangelicals is the word “conservative.” At Family Research Council, we take it a step further and talk about SAGECons (Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservatives). More about those at the end.

During the 2026 election cycle, you’ll hear this word “conservative” tossed around. What does it really mean? In my opinion, the late Russell Kirk spelled it out better than just about anyone. This all-but-forgotten man laid out 10 principles of conservative thought that many seem to have forgotten. See how many you might agree with.

First, conservatives believe in an enduring moral order. This is really important to evangelicals. Kirk said that human nature was a constant, and moral truths were permanent. That’s not surprising considering that 81% of Americans affirm a belief in God according to a 2022 Gallup poll. Surprisingly, Kirk said that a society in which men and women are governed by an enduring belief in moral order — by a strong sense of right and wrong — and by personal convictions about justice and honor — that would be a good society, regardless of the political machinery. Politics do not determine the trajectory of a nation — the people do. Andrew Breitbart put it well when he said that politics is downstream from culture.

Second, tradition in a culture is important and should not be tossed out on a whim. This sometimes frustrates onlookers, but Kirk actually calls this “continuity.” What he meant is that order and justice and freedom are the result of centuries of trials and reflections and sacrifice. Change should be gradual and calculated — never undoing traditions as a knee-jerk reaction. Oftentimes, an election cycle brings cries for “change,” but true conservatives should always be wary of change. Wary doesn’t mean completely closed to some change though. It just means “slow change.” If you look at how our bicameral system of government, loaded with checks and balances, was designed, clearly our Founders thought “slow” was good. For this reason, presidential executive orders should be used sparingly.

Third, conservatives adhere to Edmund Burke’s mantra that the individual is foolish, but the species is wise. Using that advice, real conservatives stand on the shoulders of those who have gone before them and look to enduring wisdom. That means not only the Ronald Reagans, but other great thinkers and statesmen beyond our lifetime like T.S. Eliot, Adam Smith, Sir Walter Scott, William Wilberforce, and, of course, Burke himself.

Fourth, true conservatives look at the long-term consequences of laws and policies. Weighing consequences is certainly biblical. I fear this principle frequently gets tossed in favor of reelection. Kirk said that rushing into legislation or policies without weighing the long-term consequences will actually create new abuses in the future. We should slow down and look as far as we can into the future.

Fifth, conservatives know good and well that you can’t totally level the economic playing field, and in fact, we should not aspire for it. Robbing one taxpayer to pay another truly violates conservative thought because it is not sustainable. In our society, we have tried to make charity the government’s job, and true conservatives have to take issue with that practice. Churches and nonprofits should take seriously their role in culture, and we need to defend them at every turn.

Sixth, mankind is messed up. Kirk didn’t exactly quote the Bible, but conservatives believe that because man is flawed from birth, no perfect social order can ever be created. All that we can reasonably expect, Kirk said, is a tolerably ordered, just and free society, in which evil and suffering continue to lurk. Can morality be legislated? Kirk would say that all laws are an effort to legislate morality, and that is okay.

Seventh, conservatives know that great societies are built upon the foundation of private property. We see it in the Ten Commandments. Policies that seek to redistribute wealth and property should be an anathema to the real conservative. While getting rich should not be the conservative’s chief aim, the institution of private property has been a powerful instrument for teaching responsibility, shaping integrity, creating prosperity, and providing opportunities for people to think and act. It is the prospect of going from rags to riches. This has given us countless Americans who worked their way up from nothing.

Eighth, conservatives favor smaller government at the federal level and champion small governments such as county commissions and city councils. Decisions most affecting the lives of citizens should be made locally, and as Kirk would say, voluntarily. That is how I got started. I ran a city council race for a friend. A strong, centralized, and distant federal government tends to be more hostile to human freedom and dignity. This is why our Pray Vote Stand Chapters are so focused on local government — their decisions matter.

Ninth, the conservative believes in flattening the power — or limiting government. Real conservatives know the danger of power being vested in just a few, even if it’s called benevolent. Constitutional restrictions are necessary, political checks and balances are a must, and enforcement of the law is a must — all the while balancing the claims of authority with the claims of liberty.

Finally, conservatives should be slow to change. Any thinking conservative would be resistant to hastily throwing out the old way of doing something in favor of something completely new — even in the name of “positive change.” Progress, or change, is important — for Kirk argued a society would stagnate without it. Change has to be reconciled with the permanent though, and both are important.

When Kirk revised these 10 principles in 1993 before his death in 1994, he said that the word “conservative” was being abused. If he were here today, he probably wouldn’t be surprised that the distortion has not stopped.

The bottom line is that being “conservative” best describes how you feel about “truth,” and whether it is an old thing or a new thing. “Conservative” means you see great value in permanent things. It sounds old-fashioned, and I guess in a way it literally is.

As you evaluate political candidates who use the word “conservative” to describe themselves, ask them what it means and see how close they get to the real definition.

For those who follow Family Research Council, you know that a SAGECon is a “Spiritually Active, Governance Engaged Conservative.” This takes the conservative ideology and overlays it with a biblical worldview. Being a SAGECon prioritizes how God has dealt with His people, looking at the Christian roots of our nation, and listening to the Holy Spirit. We need to develop many, many more of these people. Join FRC in our mission.

AUTHOR

Tim Echols

Tim Echols was a statewide elected official in Georgia regulating energy, telecom, and pipeline safety. He founded TeenPact, the national youth organization working in all 50 states. He is currently the executive director of the Pray Vote Stand Chapter effort for FRC.

RELATED ARTICLE: Ben Carson Warns of Decline in Patriotism among Young People ahead of America’s 250th

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2026 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Battlefield Faith: 250th Anniversary of the Battle of Great Bridge, Virginia

/in , , , , , , , /by

One of the most overlooked but pivotal battles in the American War for Independence was fought at Great Bridge, Virginia on December 9, 1775. Significantly, it was also the first recognized battle in the colony. While the scale was small in comparison with other major battles during the Revolution, the impact on the war going forward was enormous. As it was in New England, biblical faith animated the participants in their steps toward war, and it was evident in the men who fought in the Battle of Great Bridge.

Escalating Tensions

The Battle of Great Bridge came at the end of a long train of events. The conflict in Virginia had been brewing for over a year. When the British military Governor Thomas Gage prepared to close the port of Boston on June 1, 1774, several patriot members of the Virginia House of Burgesses, including Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Richard Henry Lee, and Francis Lightfoot Lee, huddled in Williamsburg for a response. They decided that a colony-wide Fast Day proclamation would show solidarity with beleaguered Boston. Jefferson took the lead in rummaging through some of the documents from the English Civil War in the 1640s, as well as recalling some of the Puritan prayer proclamations, then drafted a document, and ultimately convinced Robert Carter Nicholas, the respected Treasurer, to propose the proclamation in the House on May 24.[i] The proclamation for a “Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer” was set for June 1 to coincide with the closure of Boston harbor and contained the recommendation that a sermon be preached at the Bruton Parish Church to the Burgesses.[ii] The measure passed with a lone dissent among nearly 100 members and was printed in the newspaper.[iii]

When the Royal Governor John Murray, the fourth Earl of Dunmore, known as “Lord Dunmore,” read it, he was highly offended at the proclamation, which claimed that the British government had perpetrated a “hostile invasion” of Boston and threatened the “destruction to our Civil Rights, and the Evils of Civil War.”[iv] Indeed, the Burgesses called on Virginians to observe the Fast Day by pleading for God’s “Divine interposition” to avert “the heavy calamity” and “to give us one heart and mind firmly opposed, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights” and “that the minds of His Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation and justice.”[v] Dunmore perceived that this proclamation reflected negatively on his Majesty, King George III, as well as on the Parliament. Consequently, Dunmore called the Burgesses together on May 26 and declared that such an inflammatory proclamation “makes it necessary for me to dissolve you; and you are dissolved accordingly.”[vi]

However, the disbanded Burgesses remained undaunted. On May 27, a group of 89 met at Raleigh Tavern, voting to form an association that, among other things, directed the Virginia Committee of Correspondence to reach out to sister committees in an effort to call for a “general congress” made up of representatives from the colonies.[vii] This led to the gathering of the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia in September of 1775.

According to Thomas Jefferson, the group then left Williamsburg, returned to their respective counties, and “invited the clergy to meet assemblies of the people on the 1st of June, to perform the ceremonies of the day, & to address to them discourses suited to the occasion.”[viii] Then on Wednesday, June 1, 1774, the same day the British blockade of the Boston Harbor was to take effect, disbanded members of the House “went in procession, with the Speaker at their head, to the church.” The “Fast Sermon” was delivered by the House Chaplain, the Rev. Mr. Thomas Price, and the message was to be published under the title of “The Doctrine of a Providence Considered,” the text from Genesis 18:23, “Wilt thou also destroy the righteous with the wicked?”[ix] Additionally, Jefferson reports regarding the Fast Day that all across Virginia, “The people met generally, with anxiety & alarm in their countenances, and the effect of the day thro’ the whole colony was like a shock of electricity, arousing every man & placing him erect & solidly on his centre.”[x] George Washington’s diary entry for that day noted that he “Went to church and fasted all day.”[xi]

In essence, the Fast Day proclamation and observance on June 1, 1774 represented a watershed moment in Virginia. The disbanded representatives publicly defied the Royal Governor. Lord Dunmore responded by dissolving the assembly. Many Virginians chose to join the patriot cause by observing the Fast Day. Consequently, the patriot leaders gathered for a series of “extralegal” Virginia Conventions that eventually guided the colony toward preparing for war. That Fast Day and the fallout was a spark that lit the fuse for many Virginians to join the “rebellion.”

On March 23, 1775, at the second session of the Viginia Convention in what is known as St. John’s Church in Richmond, Patrick Henry gave his celebrated “Liberty of Death” speech, which “relied heavily upon biblical references for its persuasive power.”[xii] Since he learned his oratorical skills by listening to the Rev. Samuel Davies, a Great Awakening Presbyterian preacher, it is not surprising that Henry either quoted parts of, alluded to, or echoed truths from nearly a dozen biblical texts.[xiii] The effect of the Scripture-laced and passionate speech ignited the flames of patriotism. Yet his fiery rhetoric was paired with practical proposals for the colony to prepare to defend itself against armed British aggression. The Convention adopted Henry’s resolutions and made him chair of a committee that crafted the strategy to form and arm volunteer militia companies in every county. Each militiaman was to be clothed in a “hunting shirt by way of uniform” and was to muster with a firearm, ammunition, and a tomahawk.[xiv]

In view of the growing unrest, London had instructed its colonial governors in late 1774 to restrict access to gunpowder.[xv] In the pre-dawn hours of Friday, April 21 and under Governor Dunmore’s orders, Captain Henry Collins and nearly 20 Marines from the HMS Magdalen executed their clandestine operation by cleaning out 15 half-barrels of gunpowder and then disabling the guns stored in the Powder Magazine by removing the firelocks.[xvi] The gunpowder was loaded on a wagon Dunmore provided and carted off to the ship, causing an uproar in Williamsburg. Then came news a week later of the battles at Lexington and Concord outside of Boston. In his celebrated speech just a month earlier, Patrick Henry had warned that “the next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms!” Events had proven him right. Consequently, Dunmore’s heist of the colony’s gunpowder, together with the news from Boston of bloodshed at the hands of British troops, pushed the colony to the edge of a bloody civil war.

First, a mob threatened to attack the governor’s palace. On Sunday, April 23, Dunmore raged that he would “declare Freedom to the Slaves, and reduce the City of Williamsburg to Ashes” if the mob attacked. He declared: “I once fought for the Virginians. By God, I would let them see that I could fight against them!”[xvii] On April 27, hundreds of militiamen from western counties rendezvoused in Fredericksburg, purposing to march on the capital. Henry’s more moderate colleague in the House, Peyton Randolph, sent an express rider with a message to stand down with assurances that a deal would be struck for the stolen gunpowder.[xviii]

However, Patrick Henry was itching for a fight. On May 2, 1775, he rallied the Hanover County Militia and urged the Committee of Safety to vote in favor of marching on Williamsburg. His biographer, William Wirt, relates this lesser-known narrative:

“When assembled, he addressed them with all the powers his eloquence; laid open the plan on which the British ministry had fallen to reduce the colonies to subjection, by robbing them of all the means of defending their rights; spread before their eyes, in colours of vivid description, the fields of Lexington and Concord, still floating with the blood of their countrymen, gloriously shed in the general cause; showed them that the recent plunder of the magazine in Williamsburg was nothing more than a part of the general system of subjugation; that the moment was now come in which they were called upon to decide, whether they chose to live free, and hand down the noble inheritance to their children, or to become hewers of wood, and drawers of water [Josh. 9:23] to those lordlings, who were themselves the tools of a corrupt and tyrannical ministry (i.e., government).”[xix]

After describing what the American colonies would look like in a “state of subjugation” if they stood by and did nothing to defend their liberties, he then turned to what America could become if they took a stand:

“On the other hand, he carried them, by the powers of his eloquence, to an eminence like Mount Pisgah; showed them the land of promise [Deut. 34:1-4], which was to be won by their valour, under the support and guidance of heaven, and sketched a vision of America, enjoying the smiles of liberty and peace, the rich productions of her agriculture waving on every field, her commerce whitening every sea, in tints so bright, so strong, so glowing, as set the souls of his hearers on fire.
“He had no doubt, he said, that that God, who in former ages had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, that he might show forth his power and glory in the redemption of his chosen people [e.g., Exod. 7:3; 9:12, 10:1, 14:8; Rom. 9:17-18], had, for similar purposes, permitted the flagrant outrages which had occurred in Williamsburg, and throughout the continent. It was for them now to determine, whether they were worthy of this divine interference; whether they would accept the high boon now held out to them by heaven.”[xx]

Yet Patrick Henry was under no illusions of an easy victory. He knew the costs. Yet he also expressed his confidence in God:

“[T]hat if they would, though it might lead them through a sea of blood, they were to remember that the same God whose power divided the Red Sea for the deliverance of Israel [Exodus 14:21-31], still reigned in all his glory, unchanged and unchangeable ?” was still the enemy of the oppressor, and the friend of the oppressed ?” that he would cover them from their enemies by a pillar of fire [Exod. 14:19-20]… [And] that for his own part, he was anxious that his native county should distinguish itself in this grand career of liberty and glory, and snatch the noble prize which was now offered to their grasp…”[xxi]

He then called on the militia “to compel the restoration of the powder which had been carried off, or to make a reprisal on the king’s revenues in the hands of the receiver general, which would fairly balance the account.” Henry concluded, “That the Hanover volunteers would thus have an opportunity of striking the first blow in this colony, in the great cause of American liberty, and would cover themselves with never-fading laurels.”[xxii] Wirt reports that “The effect was equal to his wishes. The meeting was in a flame, and the decision immediately taken, that the powder should be retrieved, or counterbalanced by a reprisal.”[xxiii] After Henry had spun up those assembled with his fiery speech, they took a vote and then marched toward Williamsburg. Fearful that Henry and his militia would suddenly descend upon in the capital, Dunmore made preparations for battle.

Thankfully, wiser and cooler heads among the disbanded Burgesses persuaded Dunmore to reimburse the colony for the arsenal and successfully talked Henry into backing down upon receipt of the funds. Otherwise, bloodshed would have taken place then and there. Yet the proverbial Rubicon had been crossed. On May 6, Dunmore issued a proclamation condemning the outlaw Patrick Henry and his “deluded followers,”[xxiv] then on June 8, he removed his family from the governor’s palace in Williamsburg, retreating to the HMS Fowey anchored off Yorktown. In late June, Dunmore put his family on the HMS Magdalen, and they set sail for England.

Preparing for War

From the safety of the British ships in Norfolk, Lord Dunmore worked to gather Loyalist support and began to build his own military force. He received welcome news from Lt. Gen. Thomas Gage that a couple of British warships were sailing to his aid, as well as a small detachment from the Fourteenth Regiment of Foot at Fort Augustine, Florida. He later successfully lobbied Gage’s successor, Major General William Howe, to send the remainder of that regiment from St. Augustine, bolstering Loyalists forces in the fall. While Dunmore continued to make plans to bring the rebels to heel, Henry and fellow patriots continued to meet in Conventions to make plans for defending themselves against an increasingly hostile Mother Country.

The result of the Third Virginia Convention in August 1775 was a detailed, three-tiered plan to raise and maintain a vital fighting force. The first tier consisted of two regiments of regular troops, similar to those raised in the French and Indian War, who were paid and commissioned for one year. The 1st Virginia Regiment would be comprised of eight companies of 68 men each, totaling 544 men.[xxv] The 2nd Virginia Regiment would be comprised of seven companies totaling 476 men.[xxvi] In order to raise this force, the Convention divided Virginia into 16 districts, requiring each district to recruit, supply, and send a company of regulars to Williamsburg as soon as possible.

A second tier of service was in one of 16 district minute battalions called for by the Convention. Each district was ordered to raise a 500-man battalion of minutemen “from the age of sixteen to fifty, to be divided into ten companies of fifty men each.”[xxvii] These men were drawn from the local county militias, but they were “more strictly trained to proper discipline.”[xxviii] Like the regiment regulars, these minutemen were provided with proper arms as well as a hunting shirt and leggings.[xxix] Consequently, hundreds of minutemen were ordered to march to the capital along with the regulars.

The third tier in the Convention’s new military plan consisted of traditional county militia. Essentially, if you were an able-bodied male over 16 and under 50, you must serve in the militia.[xxx] County militia companies were to hold private musters every two weeks excluding in winter. These men were pressed into service as needed but were unpaid.

A hard lobbying Patrick Henry was sworn in as a Colonel and selected to command the 1st Virginia Regiment but was disappointed to be relegated to what amounted to guarding the capital. [xxxi] However, it was Col. William Woodford of Caroline County who was selected to lead the 2nd Virginia Regiment, and the first to engage Dunmore’s British forces in battle.

Woodford was connected to George Washington in a couple of ways. His wife’s grandmother, Mildred Washington Gregory, was George Washington’s aunt and godmother. He also served under Washington during the French and Indian War (1754?”1763). When the French threatened to take over lands claimed by Virginia in the Ohio Valley, Royal Governor Robert Dinwidee sent young Washington to lead a force to halt the advance of French troops and marauding Indians in the frontier. Within that force was a unit from Caroline commanded by William Woodford, who acquitted himself well as a leader.

When Woodford was appointed to lead the 2nd Virginia Regiment, Rev. Mr. Abner Waugh volunteered to serve as its chaplain. Waugh served as the Anglican priest for St. Mary’s Parish in Caroline County, where Woodford served as a church Warden as well as a Vestryman. Basically, Woodford served his church sort of like an administrative pastor but without the clerical duties, managing church finances, which included paying the parish priest, overseeing maintenance of church property, and ensuring order both inside and outside the church during divine services. The colonel and the chaplain not only served the church together, they were also personal friends. Rev. Waugh ended up serving as regimental chaplain from October 24, 1775 until March 2, 1776, accompanying the troops in the field and serving twice as a courier between Woodford and Edmund Pendleton in the Fourth Virginia Convention.[xxxii]

Those serving under Colonel Woodford were also engaged in their respective congregations. For example, his second in command, Lt. Colonel Charles Scott, another French and Indian War veteran, was a part of the Tar Wallett Church in Cumberland County, part of the Anglican St. James Southam Parish, where Rev. Mr. Robert McLaurine ministered to the Scott family as their rector until his death in 1773.[xxxiii] Charles’ dad, Major Samuel Scott, was a member of the House of Burgesses and served as a Vestryman with the Southam Parish until his death in 1755.[xxxiv] Captain Richard Kidder Meade, who commanded the 6th company and went on to serve as an aide to General Washington and later attended Christ Church in Alexandria, was the father of Rev. William Meade, who became the third Episcopal Bishop of Virginia and an ardent opponent of slavery.[xxxv] Interestingly, Captain James Wilson, who led the Norfolk Militia, fell out with his Anglican rector, Rev. Mr. John Rowland, who began serving in early 1775 at St. Brides Parish Church, which was about eight miles south of Great Bridge. Not only was Rowland a Loyalist, but he was also an informant to Lord Dunmore, reporting on patriot parishioners like Cap. Wilson. Having served St. Brides as a Vestryman since 1761, Wilson decided to leave that church and gave land for the building of Hickory Ground Methodist Church.[xxxvi]

Lt. Colonel Edward Stevens, who commanded the Culpeper Minute Battalion, which also mustered to support the 2nd Regiment, was a member of Little Fork Church in Culpeper, and donated the land for a new church, St. Stephen’s Episcopal.[xxxvii] Major Thomas Marshall was another officer who helped lead these minutemen. His eldest son John served as a lieutenant in one of the companies and eventually became the longest-serving chief justice of the Supreme Court. Justice Marshall wrote Rev. Jasper Adams, president of the College of Charleston, South Carolina, regarding his pamphlet “The Relation of Christianity to Civil Government in the United States,” commenting: “The American population is entirely Christian, and with us, Christianity and Religion are identified. It would be strange, indeed, if with such a people, our institutions did not presuppose Christianity, and did not often refer to it, and exhibit relations with it.”[xxxviii] Under their command, Captain Joseph Spencer raised a company of riflemen in Orange, presumably from his own congregation since he was a Baptist preacher. In fact, he was jailed in Orange back in 1773 because such preaching was against the law in Anglican Virginia where that church was the officially sanctioned, established, denomination.[xxxix] There were nine other Baptist ministers who, like Captain Joseph Spencer, had suffered varying levels of persecution for their “unlicensed preaching” and yet fought in the Revolutionary War.[xl]

The Culpeper minutemen bearing long rifles, fowling pieces, and squirrel guns, were apparently a fearsome lot. When they arrived in the capital, clad in “strong brown linen bunting shirts, dyed with leaves, and the words ‘Liberty or Death’ worked in large white letters on the breast, buck-tails in each hat, and a leather belt about the shoulders with tomahawk and scalping-knife,” it caused some alarm. One of their number who arrived in the capital on October 20 was 17-year-old Philip Slaughter, who would later become the Episcopal rector of Emmanuel Church in Culpeper. He reflected on the reaction his unit received in genteel Williamsburg: “The people hearing that we came from the backwoods, and seeing our savage-looking equipments, seemed as much afraid of us as if we had been Indians.”[xli] In fact, Edmund Pendelton, president of Virginia’s Committee of Safety, reported to the Second Continental Congress during mid-October 1775: “Lord Dunmore, it is said, is very much afraid of the riflemen, and has all his vessels calked up on the sides. Above a man’s height, however, they may perhaps pay him a visit, ere long.”[xlii]

Skirmishes Culminating in the Battle of Great Bridge

On October 26, British Captain Matthew Squires, commanding the HMS Otter, intended to bombard Hampton as punishment for patriot forces commandeering one of his small craft tenders, confiscating the contents, detaining his sailors, and burning the boat. He assembled a flotilla of longboats carrying marines and sailors and attempted a predawn amphibious assault on the town. However, Colonel Woodford and a detachment of Culpeper Minute Battalion riflemen led by Captain Abraham Buford marched all night through a driving rain from Williamsburg to Hampton and proceeded to menace the flotilla from elevated and concealed positions onshore, using their rifles to pick off the British sailors and gunners, forcing the flotilla to retreat.[xliii] Rifles gave the patriot forces an advantage because of their effective range of 200 to 300 yards, which was at least two to three times that of a musket. This was the first well-documented use of rifles to successfully defend against well-armed landing parties equipped with artillery. In fact, the skirmish resulted in the first reported British and Loyalist casualties in Virginia.[xliv] Not surprisingly, John Page wrote to Thomas Jefferson, “It is incredible how much they dread a Rifle.”[xlv]

Yet on the evening of November 14, there was another skirmish. Dunmore led a force consisting of British regulars, marines, Loyalist volunteers, and members of the newly formed Ethiopian Regiment toward Kemp’s Landing.[xlvi] Local Princess Anne County militia, dubbed “shirtmen” for their hunting shirt uniforms, had assembled in hopes of ambushing Dunmore’s column. However, as Dunmore’s troops approached Kemp’s Landing in the darkness, patriot sentries opened fire prematurely. The British responded immediately with a coordinated volley and pressed forward with bayonets fixed. Only about 10% of the militia fired a single volley, then they all broke ranks and retreated in confusion.[xlvii] The skirmish was brief, just minutes in duration, but it was decisive. Patriot casualties were light, a few were taken prisoner, but the psychological impact was severe. Loyalist morale surged across the region. A prideful Lord Dunmore bragged in his report to General Howe that the “Enemy immediately fled on all quarters,” proving (in his view) the weakness of patriot resolve, confidently claiming: “I make no doubt we shall now be able to maintain our ground” and adding, “I really believe we should reduce this Colony to a proper sense of their Duty.”[xlviii] Yet as the Scripture teaches, pride goes before a fall (Proverbs 16:18).

Dunmore raised the King’s Standard and called for all loyal subjects to help suppress the rebellion. He established martial law, freeing slaves who could fight for the crown to gain their freedom, and enlisting everybody capable of bearing arms.[xlix] By this time in November, his forces numbered about 300 or so but grew after the skirmish at Kemp’s Landing. Norfolk was fortified and cannon were mounted on the entrenchments. Hundreds of newly emancipated slaves were put to work on the fortifications to hold back patriots until work could be finished. A detachment was sent to build a stockade fort near the tiny village of Great Bridge, almost 20 miles from Norfolk. There, the British could block the main road between Virginia and North Carolina and impede not only troop movements but the entire supply chain. Constructed out of planks, rotting logs, and mounds of earth, Dunmore’s “Fort Murray” was derisively dubbed as the “hog pen” by the patriots.

This development in late November prompted Edmond Pendleton and the Committee of Safety to order Col. Woodford to deploy the 2nd Virginia regiment and five companies of the Culpeper Minute Battalion, drive the British out of their defensive positions, and secure Norfolk. Woodford had been delayed by the lack of military materiel to properly supply his men, but he had marched his force from Hampton to Suffolk and finally arrived in the vicinity of the Great Bridge on Saturday, December 2, some 12 miles southeast of Norfolk. The bridge crossed the southern Branch of the Elizabeth River, which was surrounded by a marsh-filled swamp that stretched out for a considerable distance on either side of the bridge, except for two pieces of land that might “not improperly be called islands, being surrounded entirely by water and marsh, and joined to the main land by causeways.”[l]

On the northern end of the causeways on one “island” stood Fort Murray and a four-pounder cannon to cover the bridge and both causeways. The southern causeway ran the 150-yard length of the second “island” and contained several houses. From that point, the road extended 400 yards past a dozen houses to where it forked in front of the Southern Branch Chapel of Ease for St. Brides Parish, which stood on the high ground. Woodford and his men bivouacked there on the church grounds. The patriots had made their camp essentially within cannon shot of the British fort, but they proceeded to construct a breastwork.

The matter of entrenching was left to Colonel Thomas Bullit of Prince William County, the adjutant general of Virginia’s regular forces. Though he was a staff officer, Bullit had some military engineering experience. At the southern end of the street, Colonel Bullit directed the construction of a breastwork in the form of a staggered “W,” in order to maximize effective crossfire. It was built seven feet high, 150 feet long, fronted with a six-foot wide parapet of earth, complete with mounting platforms and loopholes, providing protective firing lanes. Then Bullit had two flanking earthworks constructed on a peninsula west of the village intended for artillery batteries. Behind that breastwork in a strong defensive position were the 60 or so men commanded by Lieutenant Edward Travis.

Yet Woodford was growing concerned about their circumstances, writing Patrick Henry that “our stock of ammunition much reduced” and on top of that, his men were ill-equipped to deal with the damp ground in the raw December weather.[li] On December 4, Lt. Col. Scott welcomed the arrival of a company of men from North Carolina with the promise of reinforcements as well as artillery coming behind them.[lii] Skirmishes continued with a few casualties on either side. So, there was an uneasy stalemate until Dunmore had gotten wind of the promised arrival of reinforcements with artillery. Captain Samuel Leslie had been told by an informant, Thomas Marshall’s slave who purportedly defected to Dunmore but whom Woodford claimed as a spy, that only about 300 of the “shirtmen” were encamped across the Great Bridge, and that the British could defeat them with ease.[liii] That planted intel prompted Dunmore to expedite the attack on Woodford’s position before the North Carolina troops arrived.

On Friday night, December 8, Captain Leslie moved his command out of Norfolk and arrived undetected at Fort Murray the next morning around 3:30 a.m. With him were members of the 14 Regiment of Foot that Dunmore had available, including both the grenadier and light company. Their force amounted to 121 rank and file, and 32 officers, sergeants, and drummers. Captain Matthew Squire had also sent a detachment of marine gunners from the Otter to man two cannon. Add to this about 60 Loyalist volunteers and runaway slaves already in Fort Murray, for a combined force of about 672 men.[liv]

Captain Leslie purposed to send out Captain Fordyce first with the grenadiers, convinced that their tall hats and bristling with bayonets would unnerve Woodford’s unseasoned recruits, and they would break and run as they had at Kemp’s Landing. At dawn on December 9, Lt. Batut moved out of the fort with the light troops and began replacing planks that had been removed from the bridge. After crossing the northern causeway and running into the rebel pickets, they set fire to the remaining buildings. Captain Squire’s marine gunners wheeled the two cannon to the bridge, where a natural bend in the road allowed the cannon to rake the rebel breastworks without endangering the attacking force.

While the British forces were replacing planking, reveille was beating in the rebel camp. Then behind the advance led by Lt. Batut, through the billowing smoke-obscured dawn appeared the grenadiers of the 14th Regiment, marching six abreast across the causeways south toward the patriot defenses with Captain Charles Fordyce at their head. One of the patriot sentries, William “Billy” Flora, a free black man from Portsmouth who served with the Princess Anne District Minute Battalion, witnessed the approaching force and sprang into action. He raised his musket from behind the stack of shingles he was using as cover and fired. Other sentries joined in but then retreated to sound the alarm. Yet Billy held his ground, reloading and firing into the British ranks eight times, with musket volleys being fired back at him before he was finally forced to give way and retreat to the defensive position behind the breastworks.[lv] He single-handedly caused the British force to delay their advance in order to fire at him and that bought precious time for Woodford’s forces to assemble into their positions.

At first, Colonel Woodford and Major Alexander Spotswood supposed the exchange of gunfire only to be the usual “morning salute” they had engaged in for over a week with the British. Before a messenger from the breastworks could reach them, they heard Adjutant Christopher Blackburn shout “Boys, stand to your arms!” Quickly equipping themselves, the two officers scampered out of their tent and saw that the enemy was attacking. Rallying Culpeper riflemen, Woodford pushed north to the breastwork, and Spotswood sprinted to his alarm post.[lvi]

From the breastwork, Lt. Edward Travis and his 60 men could see Batut’s advance guard coming through the dense smoke from the burning buildings. Behind it followed the van and the grenadier company commanded by Captain Fordyce, a tall, homely, “very genteel” man. Behind Fordice came Leslie with over 300 Tories and former slaves who halted behind the artillery, waiting to exploit rebel gaps once the grenadiers had broken through.[lvii] The redcoats with their Union Jack unfurled made for a perfect parade array as they marched across the causeway to the beating of two drums. They alternated the firing of volleys by platoons and paused only to reload, a matter of only 15 seconds to these seasoned troops. However, the narrow causeway restricted the British into an extremely tight formation of just six men abreast with an impassable marshy swamp on either side.

Lt. Travis had ordered his men to reload and hold their fire until the enemy was within 50 yards ?” the range marker being the small creek in front of the entrenchment.[lviii] When the patriots finally fired their volley from their defensive positions, the “bullets whistled on every side.” The result was devastating. Lt. Batut was hit in the leg. Fordice fell from a bullet wound to the knee, wrapped it in his handkerchief only to rise and brush it off. He doffed his hat, waved it high above his head, and shouted, “The day is our own!”[lix]

However, the riflemen from the Culpeper Minute Battalion were now filling into the flanking entrenchment to the west. They proceeded to pour a hail of bullets into the British column’s right flank. Between the ingeniously staggered breastworks and the flanking entrenchments, the British were caught in a perfect crossfire kill-box. Yet they bravely attacked again. However, brave Captain Fordyce went down within 15 feet of patriot defenses, his lifeless body riddled by buck and ball and lying in his own blood. Twelve grenadiers fell dead from the withering fire, 19 were wounded. Two or three reached the breastwork only to fall against it.

With Fordyce and many in the vanguard dead or wounded, the regulars broke, retreated, and Captain Leslie tried to rally them under the cover of their cannon fire. While British troops attempted to regroup, Col. Woodford led more of the regiment from the main camp through heavy artillery fire to reinforce the breastworks. Major Spotswood also noted the severity of the enemy cannon fire: “The [enemy] field pieces raked the whole length of the street, and absolutely threw double-headed shot as far as the church, and afterwords, as our troops approached, cannonaded them heavily with grapeshot.”[lx]

Bullitt urged Woodford to make a countercharge, but instead Woodford directed Lt. Colonel Edward Stevens and the Culpeper riflemen to take the battery entrenchments on the eastern peninsula. After a sprint to the position without a single loss, the long rifles of Culpeper began to do their deadly work. Captain Leslie’s position was now completely compromised and the sharpshooters began picking off Loyalist and Ethiopian forces at the bridge, which then induced Leslie to withdraw to the fort. Little wonder, since they were already reeling from their losses, which included the Captain’s own nephew, Lieutenant Peter Leslie, who died in his arms. The Virginia Gazette reported:

“From the beginning of the attack till the repulse from the breast work might be about fourteen or fifteen minutes; till the total defeat upwards of half an hour. It is said that some of the enemy preferred death to captivity, from fear of being scalped, which lord Dunmore inhumanly told them would be their fate should they be taken alive. Thirty one, killed and wounded, fell into our hands, and the number borne off was much greater.”[lxi]

Captain Richard Kidder Meade wrote of the battle in graphic terms: “[I]n short, the like is not to be equall’d in history; they fought, bled, and died, like Englishmen, and, I have the pleasure to say, were treated as such. The scene, when the dead and wounded were bro’t off, was too much; I then saw the horrors of war in perfection, worse than can be imagin’d; 10 and 12 bullets thro’ many; limbs broke in 2 or 3 places; brains turning out. Good God, what a sight!” At the end of his letter he added: “Apologise to all those who had a right to expect letters from me; I have been on guard 6 nights out of 7. But, thank God, well.”[lxii]

Colonel Woodford would hear that the enemy losses totaled 102. By Dunmore’s own account, which he limited to the regulars, there were 17 killed and 49 wounded, nearly 40% of those who had charged the breastwork.[lxiii] Only a single patriot, Private Thomas Nash, was slightly wounded in the hand.[lxiv] Giving credit to God’s providential protection, Major Spotswood wrote a friend in Williamsburg: “It would appear that Providence was on our side; for during the whole engagement, we lost not a man…”[lxv]

Aftermath

Gracious in victory, Colonel Woodford sent forward a flag of truce and procured a ceasefire while the remaining dead and wounded were removed by the British. He also saw to it that brave Captain Fordyce was buried with full military honors. He wrote Edmund Pendleton of the victory at Great Bridge, describing it as, “a second Bunker’s Hill affair, in miniature; with this difference, that we kept our post, and had only one man wounded in the hand.”[lxvi]

When news of the battle at Great Bridge raced along the coast, the Loyalists became panicked. Those who had rallied to the King’s standard only a month ago, now suddenly had second thoughts. Dunmore was forced to evacuate Norfolk, his last foothold in the colony. He took his troops and many Loyalist supporters aboard ship. Devastated by his losses and unable to regain momentum, Dunmore attempted to regroup at Portsmouth and later on Gwynn’s Island in the Chesapeake. For months, he carried out small raids, seized supplies where he could, and sought reinforcements that never came. He still hoped the British high command would send troops, ships, and material to restore royal authority in the colony, but it became impossible after the battle for Dunmore to get any support from either those still loyal to the crown or slaves that he sought to turn against the colony. His days were numbered in Virginia.

The victory also secured the passage between the colonies of North Carolina and Virginia. With the British expelled from Virginia after July 1776, the commonwealth became a secure base for Continental Army recruitment as well as supply. It also provided capable field commanders to Washington. Without Virginia’s relative security during these years, the Continental Army would have struggled to maintain field strength. The victory at Great Bridge was the hinge upon which this all swung.

The Battle of Great Bridge was the culmination of a conflict that began when the House of Burgesses called for a day of fasting, humiliation, and prayer. Though there were skirmishes leading up to it, Great Bridge was the first decisive battle fought in the South. In that battle, patriot forces withstood an artillery-supported attack by some of the finest professional soldiers in the world and effectively decimated their force without a loss. As was attested by battlefield commanders and the soldiers who served under them, God’s providence provided the victory.

AUTHOR

Kenyn Cureton

Dr. Kenyn Cureton is Vice President for Christian Resources at Family Research Council.

Notes:

[i] Paul Leicester Ford, ed., The Works of Thomas Jefferson, 12 vols., (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904-5), 1:11-12.  Jefferson says they consulted John Rushworth, Mr. Rushworth’s Historical Collections, 8 vols., (London, 1703).

[ii] See the Fast Day proclamation in John P. Kennedy, ed., Journals of the House of Burgesses of Virginia 1773-76, (Richmond: Virginia State Library, 1913), 124.

[iii] However, Robert Carter Nicholas wrote that there was “not above one Dissentient appearing amongst near an Hundred Members” as reported in Earl Gregg Swann, ed., Considerations on the Present State of Virginia, Attributed to John Randolph, Attorney General, and Considerations on the Present State of Virginia Examined by Robert Carter Nicholas (New York: Charles F. Heartman, 1919), 80. However, Jefferson claimed that it passed “without opposition” as recorded by Paul Leicester Ford, ed., Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, 1743-1790, (New York and London, G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1914), 12.

[iv] Kennedy, Journals, 124. Here is the full proclamation: “This House, being deeply impressed with apprehension of the great dangers to be derived to British America from the hostile invasion of the city of Boston in our Sister Colony of Massachusetts Bay, whose commerce and harbor are, on the first day of June next, to be stopped by an armed force, deem it highly necessary that the said first day of June be set apart, by the members of this House, as a Day of Fasting, Humiliation and Prayer, devoutly to implore the Divine interposition, for averting the heavy calamity which threatens destruction to our civil rights and the evils of civil war; to give us one heart and mind firmly opposed, by all just and proper means, every injury to American rights; and that the minds of His Majesty and his Parliament, may be inspired from above with wisdom, moderation and justice, to remove from the loyal people of America all cause of danger from a continued pursuit of measures pregnant with their ruin. Ordered, therefore, that the Members of this House do attend in their Places, at the hour of Ten in the forenoon, on the said first day of June next, in Order to proceed with the Speaker, and the Mace, to the Church in this City, for the purposes aforesaid; and that the Reverend Mr Price be appointed to read Prayers, and the Reverend Mr Gwatkin, to preach a Sermon, suitable to the Occasion.”

[v] Ibid.

[vi] Kennedy, Journals, 132.

[vii] See the Broadside and the transcript chronicling the results of the meeting posted by Colonial Williamsburg here.

[viii] Works. 1:12. Indeed Jefferson, one of the instigators of the Day of Fasting, Humiliation, and Prayer, urged observance at “the new church on Hardware River” near his home at Monticello, where the Rev. Charles Clay presided.

[ix] The advertisement for the printed sermon appeared in Alexander Purdie and John Dixon, eds., Virginia Gazette, on  June 16, 1774, page 2. See further commentary on this Fast Day by Colonial Williamsburg: https://www.ouramericanrevolution.org/index.cfm/page/view/p0206#:~:text=The%20American%20Revolution,the%20Evils%20of%20civil%20War.%22.

[x] Works, 1:13.

[xi] Jared Sparks, ed., The Writings of George Washington; Being His Correspondence, Addresses, Messages, And Other Papers, Official And Private, Selected and Published From The Original Manuscripts; With a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustrations, 12 vols., (Boston: American Stationers Company, 1837), 12:400.

[xii] Thomas S. Kidd, Patrick Henry: First Among Patriots, (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 98.

[xiii] Tradition holds that his mother Sarah took young Patrick to hear Rev. Davies preach then asked him to repeat the text and gist of the sermon on the wagon ride home. See Kidd, 30. Furthermore, Patrick Henry would have been present for Rev. Davies artillery sermon to the Hanover County Militia on May 8, 1758, titled “The Curse of Cowardice,” which can be found here.  It is striking to compare that sermon with Henry’s “Liberty or Death” speech, which was reconstructed mainly from remembrances of eyewitnesses, such as St. George Tucker. See the reconstructed speech in William Wirt, Sketches of the Life and Character of Patrick Henry, 2d ed., (Philadelphia: J. Webster, 1818), 120-23. Finally, here is a list of the Scriptures that may have been in Henry’s mind and heart:

  1. “Majesty of Heaven….” 1 Chronicles 29:11
  2. “Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, ‘having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not.’” Jeremiah 5:21 (see also Ezek. 12:2)
  3. “it will prove a ‘snare to your feet.’” Jeremiah 18:22
  4. “Suffer not yourselves to be ‘betrayed with a kiss.’” Matthew 26:48
  5. “God of Hosts…” 2 Samuel 5:10 et al.
  6. “There is a just God…” Deuteronomy 32:4
  7. “God who presides over the destinies of nations…” Daniel 4:17
  8. “and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us….” 2 Chronicles 32:8
  9. “The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone…” Ecclesiastes 9:11-12
  10. “Gentlemen may cry, ‘Peace, Peace– but there is no peace.’” Jeremiah 6:14
  11. “I know not what course others may take, but as for me….” Joshua 24:15

However, his “Liberty or Death” climax came from the popular play Cato, A Tragedy. See Kidd, 99.

[xiv] William Van Schreeven, Robert L. Scribner and Brent Tarter, eds., Revolutionary Virginia: The Road to Independence: A Documentary Record, 7 vols., (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1973), 2:374-75.

[xv] “Newport, Dec. 12,” in Virginia Gazette (J. Dixon and W. Hunter), no. 1223, Jan. 14, 1775, p. 1. Here is a link provided by Colonial Williamsburg.

[xvi] Kennedy, Journals, 223.

[xvii] Ibid., 231.

[xviii] Kidd, 103.

[xix] Wirt, Sketches, 138.

[xx] Ibid., 138-39.

[xxi] Ibid., 139.

[xxii] Ibid., 139.

[xxiii] Ibid., 139-40.

[xxiv] Lord Dunmore, “A Proclamation,” May 6, 1775, in Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 3:100-01.

[xxv] William W. Hening, ed., The Statutes at Large Being a Collection of all the Laws of Virginia, 13 vols., (Richmond: J. & G. Cochran, 1821), 9:9.

[xxvi] Ibid., 9:10.

[xxvii] Ibid., 9:16-17.

[xxviii] Ibid., 9:16.

[xxix] Ibid., 20.

[xxx] Ibid., 27-28.

[xxxi] Ibid., 9:36.

[xxxii] Otto Lohrenz, “The Reverend Abner Waugh: The “Best Dancer of the Minuet in the State of Virginia” in Kentucky Review, vol. 15 : no. 2 , article 3, p. 34. Available online here. He cites Brent Tarter, ed., “The Orderly Book of the Second Virginia Regiment,” Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 85 (1977): 172, 326-27.

[xxxiii] https://clanmclaurin.blogspot.com/p/rev-robert-mclaurine-18th-c-cumberland.html.

[xxxiv] See https://www.geni.com/people/Samuel-Scott/6000000007848722373.

[xxxv] See https://scrc-kb.libraries.wm.edu/william-meade.

[xxxvi] Elizabeth Wingo and Elizabeth B. Hanbury, The Battle of Great Bridge, (Chesapeake, VA: The Norfolk County Historical Society of Chesapeake, Virginia, and The Chesapeake Public Schools, 1998), 21.

[xxxvii] See https://www.dhr.virginia.gov/historic-registers/204-0003/.

[xxxviii] Charles Hobson, ed., The Papers of John Marshall, (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 278

[xxxix] W.W. Scott, A History of Orange County Virginia from Its Formation in 1734 (O.S.) to the end of Reconstruction in 1870; Compiled Mainly from Original Records with a Brief Sketch of the Beginnings of Virginia, a Summary of Local Events to 1907, and a Map (Richmond, VA: Everett Waddey Co.,1907), 50. He reports the following from court records:

In 1773 Joseph Spencer, being brought before the court by a warrant under the hand of Rowland Thomas, Gent., for a breach of his good behavior in teaching and preaching the gospel as a Baptist not having a license; and it appearing that he did teach and preach as aforesaid, he at the same time insisting that he decented [dissented] from the principles of an Anabaptist; ordered, that he be committed to the custody of the sheriff until he give bond conditioned not to teach or preach without first obtaining a license as the law directs. Bond was required in a penalty of one hundred pounds, and he was allowed the liberty of the prison bounds on giving security.

At the next term leave was given him to live in the courthouse, he indemnifying the County against loss, and on his petition, his bond was reduced to twenty pounds, and William Morton and Jonathan Davis became his sureties for his good behavior.

See also Lewis Peyton Little, Imprisoned Preachers and Religious Liberty in Virginia (Lynchburg, Va., 1938), 380?”83.

[xl] John Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), 93.

[xli] See Reverend Philip Slaughter, A History of St. Mark’s Parish: Culpeper County Virginia. with Notes of Old Churches and Old Families, and Illustrations of the Manners and Customs of the Olden Time (Baltimore: Innes & Company, 1877), 107.

[xlii] See Patrick Hannum, “It is Incredible How Much They Dread a Rifle” in Journal of the American Revolution, September 1, 2025, which can be accessed here. He cites Edmund Pendleton to Richard Henry Lee, October 15, 1775, in David John Mays, ed., The Letters and Papers of Edmund Pendleton, 1734-1803, (Charlotteville: University of Virginia Press, 1967), 1:121-23.

[xliii] Michael Cecere, March to Independence: The American Revolution in the Southern Colonies, 1775?”1776 (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2021), 68-70.

[xliv] Hannum, Rifle. He cites Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, November 2, 1775, p. 2.

[xlv] Ibid. He cites John Page to Thomas Jefferson, November 11, 1775, in William Bell Clark, ed., Naval Documents of the American Revolution, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966), 1:991.

[xlvi] John E. Selby, The Revolution in Virginia 1775-1783, (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988), 64?”66.

[xlvii] Ibid.

[xlviii] Lord Dunmore to William Howe, Nov. 30, 1775, in Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 2:1209.

[xlix] Force, Archives, 3:1385

[l] Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:10.

[li] Ibid., 77-78.

[lii] “Letter from Colonel Scott to a Friend in Williamsburg, December 4, 1775,” in Force, American Archives, 4:171.

[liii] “Colonel Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, December 9, 1775,” Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 3:28.

[liv] Ibid., 7.

[lv] See Pinkney’s Viginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 3, which reports: “The conduct of our centinals I cannot pass over in silence. Before they quitted their stations they fired at least three rounds as the enemy were crossing the bridge, and one of them, who was posted behind some shingles, kept his ground till he had fired eight times; and after receiving [the fire of] a whole platoon, made his escape over the causeway into our breastwork.” See also Norman Fuss, “Billy Flora Hero of Great Bridge,” in Journal of the American Revolution, October 14, 2014. See online here.

[lvi] Force, American Archives, 4:224.

[lvii] Scribner, Revolutionary Virginia, 5:8.

[lviii] Cecere, March to Independence, 97.

[lix] “Letter to Pinkney,” in Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 2-3.

[lx] Force, American Archives, 4:224.

[lxi] “Letter to Pinkney,” in Pinkney’s Virginia Gazette, December 20, 1775, 2-3.

[lxii] “From Richard Kidder Meade to Theodorick Bland, Jr. ,18 December 1775,” in Charles Campbell, ed., The Bland Papers: Being a Selection from the Manuscripts of Colonel Theodorick Bland, Jr. of Prince George County, Virginia… (Petersburg: Printed by Edmund & Julian C. Ruffin, 1840), 38-39.

[lxiii] Scribner and Tarter, Vol. V, p. 9.

[lxiv] Colonel William H. Stewart, History of Norfolk County, Virginia, and Representative Citizens, (Chicago: Biographical Printing Co., 1902) 34, 54.

[lxv] Force, American Archives, 4:224.

[lxvi] “Colonel Woodford to Edmund Pendleton, December 10, 1775,” Naval Documents of the American Revolution, 3:39-40.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

Partner with The Washington Stand to bring news from a biblical worldview to readers nationwide. From now until December 31, every gift will be doubled through our year-end Challenge Match.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Washington, Lincoln, and Now Trump: The Presidents Who Dared to Call America to Prayer

/in , , , , , , /by

It’s easy to think that the American colonists were united during the Revolutionary War. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many colonists hated British control but vehemently opposed the idea of war.

Among those was a Quaker named Isaac Potts. He was an outspoken critic of the Continental Army and the Revolutionary War. As Potts surveyed his estate near Valley Forge, he was enraged to find patriot soldiers camped on his property. He searched for officers so he could file an official complaint. But what he found was a lone officer kneeling in the forest. As he approached, Potts discovered the man was fervently praying for his soldiers and the nation.

The officer was General George Washington. The scene so moved Potts that he immediately declared his allegiance to the Revolution despite his long-held Quaker beliefs of nonviolence. This scene inspired the painting “Prayer at Valley Forge” that now hangs in the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.

That was not the last time George Washington would invoke prayer on behalf of the new nation. In a farewell address to state governors at the end of the War for Independence, Washington petitioned God for the protection of the nation. When Congress signed the Bill of Rights in 1789, then-President Washington declared to Congress “the duty of all nations to acknowledge the Providence of Almighty God” and recommended a national day of thanksgiving and prayer.

George Washington was not only an effective military and political leader, but he was a great spiritual leader. Prayer was always his priority, and he set the tone for the nation, inspiring the American people to seek Almighty God in times of adversity and victory.

Washington set a good example, and throughout history, U.S. leaders have called for national prayer during times of crisis. During the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln urged prayer for national healing. In World War II, Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman declared days of prayer for divine intervention in the two-front conflict. In 1952, amid the Korean War, Truman established an annual National Day of Prayer to renew the nation’s commitment to seeking divine guidance.

The history of our great nation is not without blemishes, scars, and missteps, but along the way, we have been guided by devoted leaders who encouraged citizens to pray. In recent years, however, our nation has experienced a scarcity of this kind of leadership.

As it stands now, it’s been over two decades since a president petitioned the nation to our knees during a crisis. Not since the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and President George W. Bush have we had a commander-in-chief who urged the American people to pray.

During those 22 years, we have experienced numerous national tragedies. And now, we are sharply divided in a way we have not seen since the 1960s. Violence seems to have replaced peace. We are living in a time when we desperately need to bend our knees and humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God.

Now more than ever, we need a leader with the fortitude and resolve to encourage all Americans to continually lift our nation in prayer and seek the face of God.

Many could not have foreseen that Donald Trump would be that kind of leader. A reality TV star and billionaire from New York City would hardly have been my first guess as the leader calling our nation back to its knees. But God often has a way of using people we don’t expect in ways we could never fathom.

The fact remains that President Trump is the first president in decades to urge America to return to an intentional life of prayer. Earlier this year, the president declared (emphasis added):

“As we prepare to celebrate two and a half centuries of freedom, I am inviting America’s great religious communities to pray for our nation and for our people. From the beginning, this has always been a country sustained and strengthened by prayer. So important, if we bring religion back stronger, you’re going to see everything get better and better and better. You are going to see it get better and better. So, as we chart our course for the next 250 years, let us rededicate ourselves to one nation under God.”

With this statement, President Trump birthed an initiative never seen in our long history. His initiative, America Prays, urges all Americans to rededicate our nation to dependence on God and express that dependence by submitting ourselves to His hands through prayer. In another unprecedented action, the White House website has an entire page dedicated to the America Prays initiative. The page gives instructions, resources, and ideas to help Americans fulfill this call. It also provides historic prayers from the likes of Washington, Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Apollo space program, which changed the direction of the nation.

Our culture is decaying, and people, especially Millennials and Gen Z, are spiritually hungry like never before. Thousands of young people are gathering on college campuses to pray, be baptized, and recommit to Jesus Christ, hinting at a possible revival. But revival requires people of faith to prioritize prayer and seek God earnestly. I believe we are on the cusp of a Third Great Awakening in our nation, but that cannot happen without people of faith on their knees, seeking God and making prayer a priority again. And that’s exactly what President Trump has called us to do.

AUTHOR

Brad Brandon

Brad Brandon is the founder and CEO of Across Nigeria. Since 2018, he has been actively serving in the foreign mission field. He serves predominantly in high-risk, highly persecuted areas like Northern Nigeria and other parts of West Africa.

RELATED ARTICLES:

PERKINS: The Missing Ingredient among America’s Men

Earth’s Fleeting Applause or Heaven’s Eternal Echo: Where Will Your Name be Known?

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

An Untold Story of Battlefield Faith: The Birth of the American Army

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Over the weekend, President Trump celebrated his birthday, which coincided with the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army, with a “Big Beautiful” Military Parade in Washington, D.C. The White House also released another video in their “The Story of America” series to commemorate the anniversary. Produced by Hillsdale College and hosted by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, they recounted the vote by Congress on June 14, 1775, the appointment of General George Washington as commander in chief, and some of the early battles.

Other than the blessings invoked at the end, God was not a part of this version of our history. Yet a closer look reveals that God was very much a part of the birth of the American army.

Faith Undergirds a Growing Army

In the late spring of 1775, the Massachusetts countryside was alive with a martial spirit. Following British-initiated bloodshed at Lexington and Concord on April 19, the patriot militia harassed the defeated red-coated regulars all the way back to their base in occupied Boston. During their retreat, Dr. Joseph Warren, who had dispatched Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Dr. Samuel Prescott to warn fellow patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams that the “British are coming,” joined the action at West Cambridge and narrowly escaped death when a British musket ball grazed the side of his head, knocking out a hairpin.[i]

The next day, General Artemas Ward arrived from Shrewsbury and took charge of the Massachusetts militia.[ii] The 47-year-old veteran of the French and Indian War (aka Seven Years War) was described as a “God-fearing man, strongly believing in and living up to the religion he professed,” as well as “somewhat slow in speech and with a biblical turn to his conversation… fully convinced that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was the land most approved by Providence, and that those of Massachusetts were the Chosen People.”[iii] Yet soon General Ward would find himself leading militia companies from other New England colonies, who were streaming into Cambridge, Medford, and Roxbury, encircling occupied Boston.

Among them, Peter Brown wrote his mother back in Rhode Island about God changing his summer plans:

“I had plan’d out to go to Connecticut where I expected to work the Summer; but the Allwise in his providence hath very differently plann’d my summers work, which I hope may turn to his Glory and my good… I was at Westford… call’d about Day-light, or a little after, and rode as post that forenoon, before I could get to Concord, after which I pursu’d with the rest and fought that day, tarried at Cambridge that Night… I did not know what I could do better than to en-list.”[iv]

Again, the air was filled with more than military tension ?” it throbbed with spiritual intensity. Even as troops from Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island gathered in makeshift camps, resolved to fight against British tyranny, many turned to prayer and the Scriptures with the support of their pastors and chaplains who had marched with them.

Amos Farnsworth, a young soldier from Groton, Massachusetts, recorded in his diary the deeply religious rhythm of camp life. On Sunday, April 23, he recorded: “lay Stil in the fore noon in the Afternoon the Regiment to the meeting hous And herd a fine Sermon from Timothy 2[:]3 [?”] thou therefore Endure Hardness as a good Solder of jesus Christ.”[v] On April 25, he wrote: “in the afternoon we went up to the Genarals And Receved ordars and marched to Cambridge Agiin. oh the goodness of God in Preserving my life from Danger.”[vi] On the last day of the month, Sunday April 30, he recorded: “Retired alone in the morning for Secret Prayer. Preaded the Sun half a Nour hie for Prayers And then About Ten oclock went to a Barn And herd the Rev Mr Emerson from the first Book of Samuel 30[:]6 [?”] and Daved was gratly Distressed &c.”[vii] Rev. William Emerson was the bold Concord pastor, who raised the town militia, mustered with them when the alarm rang out on April 19, stood with them in the famed engagement at the Old North Bridge, and then marched with his parishioners to Cambridge.

Corporal Farnsworth continues: “And in the afternoon herd the Re* Mr Goodridge From those words in judges 20 C 22 & 23 Verses more Porticuly the last Claus in the 23 Varse And the Lord Said go Up Against him. An Exelent Sermon he incoridged us to go And fite for our Land And Con try : Saying we Did not do our Duty if we did not Stand up now.”[viii] These were not perfunctory pieties. These prayers and sermons were biblical bricks fortifying these men for battle, and for some, the ultimate sacrifice for liberty.

On May 2, Dr. Warren was elected president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, taking over for John Hancock, who would travel to Philadelphia along with Samuel and John Adams and others as delegates to the Second Continental Congress. Like Hancock the year prior, Warren was chosen to deliver the annual Oration commemorating the Boston Massacre to a standing room crowd at the Old South Church back on March 6, dramatically entering through a window, wearing a Roman senatorial toga, reprising his college portrayal of brave Cato, declaring:

“Our streets are again filled with armed men; our harbour is crowded with ships of war; but these cannot intimidate us; our liberty must be preserved; it is far dearer than life, we hold it even dear as our allegiance; we must defend it against the attacks of friends as well as enemies… The man who meanly will submit to wear a shackle, contemns the noblest gift of heaven, and impiously affronts the God that made him free.”

The next day, May 3, Warren requested that his current pastor, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooper of Brattle Street Church in Boston, serve as Chaplain to the Provincial Congress.[ix] Dr. Cooper agreed to serve. Cooper and Warren were kindred spirits, with the former having been accused by Loyalist Peter Oliver as a member of the “dissenting Clergy, who took so active part in the Rebellion.” Indeed, Oliver labeled Cooper one of the “Black Regiment,” a nod to his black clerical robes, but no less deadly as a patriot militiaman armed with a musket.[x] Indeed, the ministers were more dangerous by means of their sermons because they were mass recruiters of their congregants, force-multipliers for the sacred cause of liberty.

General Artemas Ward Assumes Command

The Second Continental Congress convened on May 10, 1775, in Philadelphia at the State House, which is now referred to as Independence Hall. On that same day, Colonel Benedict Arnold, sanctioned by the Massachusetts Provincial Congress, joined forces with Colonel Ethan Allen and his “Green Mountain Boys” with the objective of taking the British stronghold of Fort Ticonderoga in New York, confiscating the arsenal and artillery pieces. Allen famously seized the fort “in the name of the great Jehovah and the continental Congress.”[xi]

Under Dr. Warren’s predecessor, the Provincial Congress had set May 11 as a “Day of Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.” In fact, Warren had written Samuel Adams previously: “I think religion and policy require that a day be set apart for publicly addressing the King of kings.”[xii] On the Fast Day, Corporal Farnsworth records that he heard Rev. Amos Adams of Roxbury, Joseph Warren’s former pastor, preach from Psalm 50:15 ?” “Call upon me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me”[xiii] On May 14, he listened to Rev. Mr. Noble preach from Isaiah 59:1: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save.” Farnsworth jotted in his journal, “O the Goodness of God in Promoting me the Liberty of Prayer and to hear Preaching.”[xiv] On May 21, a Sunday, he wrote: “Etended Prayers on the Common in the morning… herd the Revent Docter Langdon from Hebrews 2:10… he incorridge us to Enlist our Selves under the Great Jeneral of our Salvation.” Dr. Samuel Langdon, the president of Harvard College and a former New Hampshire pastor, preached frequently to the troops.[xv]

On May 25, British military Governor Gage welcomed reinforcements to Boston as well as three new generals: William Howe, John Burgoyne, and Henry Clinton. Also on May 25, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress accepted a committee recommendation on providing chaplains for the army:

“Whereas, it is necessary that chaplains should be appointed in the Massachusetts army, under the command of the Hon. Artemas Ward, Esq…. and, whereas, it has been represented to this Congress, that several ministers of the religious assemblies, within this colony, have expressed their willingness to attend the army aforesaid, in the capacity of chaplains, as they may be directed by this Congress; therefore, Resolved, that it be, and it is hereby recommended, to the ministers of the several religious assemblies within this colony, that, with the leave of their several congregations, they attend said army in their several towns, to the number of thirteen at one time, during the time the army shall be encamped…”[xvi]

Thus, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress set an example, along with other colonies, for the Second Continental Congress to do the same on June 29, 1775. Then the Provincial Congress further: “Resolved, unanimously, that the president [Warren] be desired to deliver to Gen. Ward, the commission prepared for him by this Congress, as general and commander in chief of the Massachusetts forces.”[xvii]

As the newly minted commander in chief, General Artemas Ward had his hands full. While the militia forces that bottled up the British in Boston fluctuated between 12-20,000, they were a loose confederation lacking a regimented command structure. Assuming military action would be over quickly, most militia companies came unprepared and ill-equipped for a long campaign. Consequently, they came and went at the whim of their company officers. Though some of the older soldiers had seen action in the French and Indian War, most had never seen combat, having only drilled with their town companies and used their muskets to shoot wild game. In addition to their general lack of battlefield experience, they lacked sufficient quantities of the basic material of war: gunpowder, musket balls, and artillery pieces. Yet they believed that the Lord of Hosts was on their side, and that would make all the difference.

Joining the cautious General Ward in the war council was the aggressive Connecticut General Israel Putnam, another veteran of the French and Indian War. Indeed, he was a member of the famed Roger’s Rangers, a special warfare unit recruited and commanded by Captain Robert Rogers of New Hampshire, which specialized in long-range reconnaissance and covert operations. Roger’s Rangers were the predecessors of today’s Army Rangers. During his eventful service, Putnam had been badly burned while heroically putting out a fire in 1757, captured by Kahnawake Indians in 1758 but escaped their plan to burn him alive by ritual execution through a providential rainstorm, survived shipwreck in Cuba in 1762, as well as enduring other close calls in battle.

When Putnam returned from war to his homestead in 1765, his wife died, the mother of their 10 children, leaving behind a son in infancy. Yet in his grief, he turned to the Lord for comfort and hope, publicly professing faith in Christ and joining the Congregational Church in Brooklyn under the ministry of Rev. Dr. Josiah Whitney.[xviii]

Having come out of retirement and joining the militia companies around Boston, Putnam’s battle-scarred reputation as a fearless wolf hunter and grizzled war fighter was the topic of tall tales. His men apparently lionized him, as an acrostic in the newspapers of the day shows:

“Pure mass of courage, every soldier’s wonder,
Unto the Field he steps, enrobed with martial Thunder,
Tares up the elements, and rends the Earth asunder,
Nature designed him for the Field of Battle,
Unused to Statesmen’s wiles or courtier’s prattle,
Mars-like, his chief Delights, where thundering cannon rattle.”[xix]

In fact, “Old Put” was celebrated throughout Connecticut and other colonies, who described the conflict in biblical terms: “the British were the Philistines and Putnam, the American Samson, a chosen instrument to defeat the foe.”[xx]

Success in the First Naval Engagement of the War

Stuck in the middle between Ward and Putnam who were polar opposites, Dr. Warren once remarked to Putnam, “I admire your spirit, and respect General Ward’s prudence. We shall need them both, and one must temper the other.”[xxi] Nevertheless, Putnam convinced Warren, Ward, and the council to go on the offensive and conduct a covert operation on the night of May 26 to deprive the British of access to the free ranging livestock and fodder on Noddles and Hog Islands. Spearheaded by former-fellow Ranger, Captain John Stark, and his 1st New Hampshire regiment of 300 men along with Massachusetts Colonel John Nixon and his nearly 300, the overnight maneuver was successful in driving the cattle, sheep and horses across patriot lines and setting fire to the haystacks and barns.[xxii]

However, by mid-morning the next day, the British had discovered the patriot mischief, and Vice-Admiral Samuel Graves dispatched the HMS Diana, other gunships, as well as the Royal Marines, who engaged patriot forces. In response to the call for reinforcements, General Ward dispatched General Putnam and 1,000 men from Cambridge, one of whom was Dr. Warren.[xxiii] The combined forces were able to frustrate the British advance as well as destroy the Diana in the first Naval engagement in the War for Independence.

Another member of the operation under Colonel Nixon’s command was none other than Corporal Farnsworth, who records:

“Before we got from Noddels island to hog island we was fird upon by a Privatear Schooner But we Crost the river and about fiften of us Squated Down in a Ditch on the mash and Stood our ground. And thare Came A Company of Regulars on the marsh on the other side of the river And the Schooner: And we had A hot fiar untill the Regulars retreeted. But notwithstanding the Bulets fiue very thitch yet thare was not A Man of us kild Suerly God has A faver towards us : And He can Save in one Place as well as Another… At night Marchd, to Winnisimit ferry whare thare was A Schooner and Sloop Afiring with grate fury on us thare But thanks be unto god that gave vs the Victry [1 Cor. 15:57] at this time for throu his Providence the Schooner that Plad upon us the day before run Aground and we Sot fiar to hur And Consumed hur thare And the Sloop receved much dammage. in this ingngment we had not A man kild : But fore wounded but we hope all will Recover, one of the fore was A tounsing [Townsend] man belonging to our Company the bulet went throu his mouth from one Cheek to the other, thanks be unto God that so little hurt was Done us when the Bauls Sung like Bees Round our heds.”[xxiv]

Again, Farnsworth saw what happened through a providential perspective, giving credit to God. While British forces suffered significant casualties, the Pennsylvania Journal report is filtered through a biblical lens:

“Our killed none! Wounded three! Heaven apparently, and most evidently, fights for us [Deut. 20:4], covers our heads in the day of battle [Ps. 140:7], and shields our people from the assaults of our common enemies [Ps. 3:3]. What thanks can speak our gratitude! These interpositions, and our determined resolutions, may perhaps make our haughty enemies… leave us peaceably to enjoy those rights and liberties which God in our nature has given us, as our inalienable right, and which they are most unjustly endeavoring to wrest from us by violence.”[xxv]

‘I Shall Rely on Providence’: Washington Appointed Commander in Chief

Meanwhile in Philadelphia, President John Hancock presided over Congress and on Wednesday, June 14, they voted to establish a Continental Army:

“Resolved, That six companies of expert rifflemen, be immediately raised in Pensylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drum-mer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates. That each company, as soon as compleated, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army…

“That the form of the enlistment be in the following words: I ____________have, this day, voluntarily enlisted myself, as a soldier, in the American continental army, for one year, unless sooner discharged: And I do bind myself to conform, in all instances, to such rules and regulations, as are, or shall be, established for the government of the [aforesaid] Army.”[xxvi]

Furthermore, Congress appointed George Washington, Philip Schuyler, Silas Deane, Thomas Cushing, and Joseph Hewes as a committee to bring in a draft of “Rules and regulations for the government of the army.”[xxvii]

On Thursday, June 15, Congress took up the matter of choosing the commander in chief of the newly formed American Continental Army: “Resolved, That a General be appointed to command all the continental forces, raised, or to be raised, for the defence of American liberty… The Congress then proceeded to the choice of a general, by ballot, when George Washington, Esq. was unanimously elected.”[xxviii] On Friday, June 16, President Hancock informed Washington: “that the Congress had by a unanimous vote made choice of him to be general and com[mander] in chief to take the supreme command of the forces raised and to be raised, in defence of American Liberty, and desired his acceptance of it.” Dressed in his uniform, Washington stood and addressed the Congress with an attitude of humility, admitting “with the utmost sincerity, I do not think myself equal to the Command I am honored with.” Yet he pledged: “I will enter upon the momentous duty, and exert every power I possess in their service, and for support of the glorious cause.”[xxix]

Washington then declined the pay offered, only asking to be reimbursed for his expenses. In reflection on this momentous event, he wrote his wife Martha, beginning with words with which every servicemember can sympathize:

“My Dearest, I am now set down to write to you on a subject, which fills me with inexpressible concern, and this concern is greatly aggravated and increased, when I reflect upon the uneasiness I know it will give you. It has been determined in Congress, that the whole army raised for the defence of the American cause shall be put under my care, and that it is necessary for me to proceed immediately to Boston to take upon me the command of it… I assure you, in the most solemn manner that, so far from seeking this appointment, I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the family, but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my capacity…”[xxx]

Having expressed his reluctance to be away from his wife and family in the service to his country, Washington then zooms out to consider the bigger picture, trusting in the providence of Almighty God:

“But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose… I shall rely, therefore, confidently on that Providence, which has heretofore preserved and been bountiful to me, not doubting but that I shall return safe to you…”[xxxi]

Indeed, his confidence in God was not misplaced. After eight years of war that included several close calls, God indeed returned him safely home. Yet first, Washington must undertake the monumental task.

General Washington arrived in Cambridge, Massachusetts on Friday, July 2. Corporal Farnsworth wrote with gratitude to God: “Felt Lively to Day in Sperital things : Blesed he god for such A Ceson.”[xxxii] On Saturday, July 3, Washington proceeded to take command of the army. He was discouraged by what he found, such as the general lack of command structure, lack of discipline, lack of proper barracks and equipment, as well as a lack of camp and personal cleanliness.[xxxiii] There was much work to do in order to forge these loosely confederated militia companies from towns all over New England into a disciplined army.

Yet the one thing that had to encourage Washington was their mutual faith in God, a faith that he not only shared, but also reinforced by his example and through his orders. In fact, on Sunday, July 4, his general orders stated:

“The General most earnestly requires, and expects, a due observance of those articles of war, established for the Government of the army, which forbid profane cursing, swearing and drunkeness; And in like manner requires and expects, of all Officers, and Soldiers, not engaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine Service, to implore the blessings of heaven upon the means used for our safety and defence.”[xxxiv]

Washington continued to foster the deeply religious rhythm already observed by many of his men. Not surprisingly, Corporal Farnsworth journaled about his “attendance on divine Service” that Sunday: “Etended Publect worship And in ye forenoon herd ye Re? Mr Whitcome from Isaiah: furst Chapter: from ye twenty first verse to ye end of ye 24 verse. And in ye afternoon herd ye Rev Mr [David] Avery: from Stockbridge: who Spoke Exelenty from Job 35…”[xxxv]

The point of Washington’s general orders, as well as succeeding ones throughout the war, is that he intended that the Continental Army not simply put their trust in “chariots or horses” alone but place their trust firmly in “the name of the Lord our God” (Ps. 20:7). To prevail in their struggle against the greatest military power in the world, they unashamedly looked to God as their only hope. Now, 250 years later, America would do well to follow in their footsteps of faith.

AUTHOR

Kenyn Cureton

Dr. Kenyn Cureton is Vice President for Christian Resources at Family Research Council.

Notes:

[i] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “History of the Siege of Boston, and of the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. Also, an Account of the Bunker Hill Monument” 2d ed., (Boston: Little and Brown, 1851), 77.

[ii] Charles Martyn, “The Life of Artemis Ward” (New York: Artemis Ward, 1921), 90.

[iii] Ibid., 91.

[iv] Letter from Peter Brown to Sarah Brown, 25, June 1775 (p 1) as found at https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=725&img_step=1&mode=dual

[v] Samuel A. Green, “Amos Farnsworth’s Journal, Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1897 – 1899,” Second Series, vol. 12, (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1897-1899), 78.

[vi] Ibid.

[vii] Ibid, 79.

[viii] Ibid.

[ix] William Lincoln, ed., “The Journals of Each Provincial Congress of Massachusetts in 1774 and 1775, and of the Committee of Safety, with an Appendix, Containing the Proceedings of the County Conventions-Narratives of the Events of the Nineteenth of April, 1775-Papers Relating to Ticonderoga and Crown Point, and other Documents, Illustrative of the Early History of the American Revolution,” (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1838), 184.

[x] Peter Oliver, “The Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View,” edited by John A. Shultz, (Stanford, CA: University Press, 1961), 41-44.

[xi] Ethan Allen, “A Narrative of Col. Ethan Allen’s Captivity, Written by Himself,” 4th ed., (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1846), 14-15.

[xii] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “Life and Times of Joseph Warren,” (Boston: Little Brown & Co., 1865), 317.

[xiii] Farnsworth, 79.

[xiv] Ibid.

[xv] Ibid., 80.

[xvi] Lincoln, 247.

[xvii] Ibid.

[xviii] Increase N. Tarbox, “Life of Israel Putnam (‘Old Put’): Major-General in the Continental Army” (Boston: Lockwood, Brooks, and Co., 1876), 66.

[xix] Richard Frothingham, Jr., “Battle of Bunker Hill” (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co., 1890), 18.

[xx] William F. Livingston, “Israel Putnam, Pioneer, Ranger, and Major-General, 1718-1790” (New York, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1905), 204-05.

[xxi] Frothingham, “Warren,” 505.

[xxii] See the detailed account by Robert D. McKay, “The Battle of Chelsea Creek: An account of the second engagement of the American Revolution,” May 27, 1775, (Chelsea, MA: n.p.,1925), 1-35 as drawn upon here: https://www.academia.edu/28170390/Chelsea_Creek_First_Naval_Engagement_of_the_American_Revolution

[xxiii] Frothingham, “Warren,” 497.

[xxiv] Farnsworth, 81.

[xxv] Pennsylvania Journal, June 21, 1775 as found in Frank Moore, ed., “Diary of the American Revolution from Newspapers and Original Documents” (New York: Charles Scribner, 1860), 1:86. Scripture references added.

[xxvi] Worthington C. Ford, et al, eds., “Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789,” 34 vols., (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904-37), 2:89-90.

[xxvii] Ibid., 90.

[xxviii] Ibid., 91.

[xxix] Ibid., 92.

[xxx] “From George Washington to Martha Washington, 18 June 1775,” Founders Online, National Archives, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0003. [Original source: The Papers of George Washington, Revolutionary War Series, vol. 1, 16 June 1775??”?15 September 1775, ed. Philander D. Chase. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1985, pp. 3?”6.]

[xxxi] Ibid.

[xxxii] Farnsworth, 82.

[xxxiii] See the letter from George Washington to Samuel Washington, 20 July 1775 in W. W. Abbot, et al., eds., “The Papers of George Washington,” (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1987- ), Revolutionary War Series, 1:135. See also his letter to Lund Washington, 20 August 1775, “Papers of George Washington,” 1:335.

[xxxiv] George Washington, General Orders for July 4, 1775 as found in “George Washington Papers,” Series 3, Varick Transcripts, -1785, Subseries 3G, General Orders, -1783, Letterbook 1: July 3,- Sept. 30, 1776. July 3, 1775, 1775. Manuscript/Mixed Material. https://www.loc.gov/item/mgw3g.001/.

[xxxv] Farnsworth, 82.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

Like what you’re reading? Donate to The Washington Stand! From now until June 30, your gift will be doubled to fuel bold, biblically-based reporting.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Impeaching Federal Judges Protects the Constitution … If Used Properly

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

A much-needed national debate about impeaching rogue judges has erupted over a federal judge’s order to return illegal immigrant terrorists and murderers to the American heartland — a power which, if exercised properly, holds the potential to restore constitutional government.

This week, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, unsuccessfully ordered planes deporting Tren de Aragua gang members to be stopped in midair and returned to the United States. The ruling proved so outrageous that Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg, and President Trump has led broader calls to impeach the “Radical Left Lunatic of a Judge.” Chief Justice John Roberts sharply responded that “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.” But America’s founders would disagree.

Boasberg is one snowflake in an avalanche of judicial activists waging lawfare against President Trump. At least 46 judicial opinions had enjoined the 47th president’s actions as of March 15, according to The New York Times, including:

  • U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Biden appointee who identifies as LGBTQ, overturned Trump’s executive order to preserve military readiness by disallowing most people who identify as transgender from joining.
  • U.S. District Judge Lauren King, a Biden appointee, prevented Trump from shielding minors from transgender procedures, claiming his executive order violates the Fifth Amendment.
  • U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, a Biden appointee, ordered the Trump administration to pay USAID grantees $2 billion.
  • U.S. District Judge Julie Rubin, a Biden appointee, forced taxpayers to keep funding Department of Education grants funding DEI programs.
  • U.S. District Judge William Alsup, a Clinton appointee in San Francisco, reinstated 24,000 fired federal employees at the behest of public-sector labor unions.
  • U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman, a Biden appointee, halted Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship.
  • U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan, a Biden appointee, stopped the Trump administration from ending grants that promote DEI extremism and transgender ideology.
  • U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, a Biden appointee, insisted the United States cannot stop admitting illegal immigrants who abuse asylum status by posing as “refugees.”

The New Yorker summarized bluntly: “Judges Are Blocking His Agenda.” Call it the Legal Resistance 2.0.

America’s Black-Robed Oligarchy

Yet judicial activists are doing far more than opposing the president. Nationwide injunctions against legislation in effect reverse the basis of American government.

Monarchs and despots of old ruled their subjects by the code of Rex Lex: The king is the law.

The Founding Fathers waged the American Revolution to institute the principle of Lex Rex: The law is king. Democratically ratified legislation becomes legally binding even on the highest magistrate, in a reflection of the biblical concept that one law should rule all people.

But in current-year America, the reality is Iudex Rex et Lex: The judge is the king and the law. Nationwide injunctions, which are a controversial and relatively recent development, give every one of America’s 670 unelected district judges veto power over the nation’s elected representatives. Over time, judges’ temptation to impose their personal views has become irresistible.

When judges can impose their private opinions without reference to the Constitution’s fixed original intent, America has become a black-robed oligarchy. Thankfully, the Founding Fathers gave Americans the tool to regain their sovereignty over their government, the very process Trump mentioned: impeachment of rogue judges.

In her ruling, Reyes cited the musical “Hamilton.” But Lin-Manuel Miranda never wrote a rap paeon to Alexander Hamilton’s position on judicial impeachment (nor of the immigrant’s restrictive view of immigration). Like the other Founders, Hamilton believed Congress has the right to remove judges whose rulings violate the Constitution before they become “a permanent tyranny.”

Impeachment: The Constitution’s Self-Defense Mechanism

In an 1802 essay written under the pen name “Lucius Crassius,” Hamilton addressed concerns that activist judges could one day become a “colossal and overbearing power, capable of degenerating into a permanent tyranny, at liberty, if audacious and corrupt enough, to render the authority of the Legislature nugatory, by expounding away the laws, and to assume a despotic controul over the rights of person and property.” But Hamilton said the Constitution institutes “a complete safeguard” against such “a palpable abuse of power” in Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution: “the authority of the House of Representatives to impeach; of the Senate to condemn. The Judges are in this way amenable to the public Justice for misconduct; and upon conviction, removeable from office.”

Impeachment is the Constitution’s self-defense mechanism. Hamilton naively believed the threat of impeachment alone could stop bad judicial behavior. “There never can be danger that the judges, by a series of deliberate usurpations on the authority of the legislature, would hazard the united resentment of the body intrusted with it, while this body was possessed of the means of punishing their presumption, by degrading them from their stations,” wrote Hamilton in Federalist No. 81. He once again referred to removing activist judges as “complete security” for American liberties.

But no security system works unless it is armed. And Congress has ceded much of its delegated powers to undemocratic commissions, federal regulators, and the ever-expanding encroachments of power-mad presidents and judges. (The fact that the Boasberg case involves a district judge enjoining an executive action demonstrates the growing irrelevance of Congress.)

Until the Left discovered it as a tool to overturn elections, impeachments had been rare. In America’s nearly 250-year history, “The House has impeached twenty individuals: fifteen federal judges, one Senator, one Cabinet member, and three Presidents. Of these, eight individuals — all federal judges — were convicted by the Senate,” according to a 2023 Congressional Research Service report. (Since its publication, the House impeached Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas last February over his refusal to secure the border.)

The exceptional nature of impeachment shows not only the Founders’ love of stability but also that the Supreme Court and the American people retained a largely Originalist constitutional orientation until just decades ago. A pivotal moment came in 1936, when FDR’s court-packing scheme intimidated constitutionalist Justice Owen Roberts into reversing his opposition to New Deal legislation, a change of heart history dubbed the “switch in time that saved nine.” Since then, all three branches of government have been free to expand federal power without proper constitutional restraint. Supreme Court justices now openly base their opinions on foreign law rather than the Constitution, e.g., in a notable case striking down a Texas law against sodomy.

The Left has since waged war on the ideology and legitimacy of the American project writ large. Destroying the image of America’s founders — and thus, the limits they imposed on government power — was the entire point of the 1619 Project.

Now, the culturally dominant liberals pressure judges to conform every opinion to the Left’s lone governing principle: Does it expand government power and further the social revolution? Hence, judges are good when they foist immorality on the American people by, for example, removing prayer and the Ten Commandments from public schools, or discovering constitutional “rights” to abortion and same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court became evil to the Left when it allowed the American people to halt the process democratically. This explains why liberals have no qualms opposing the impeachment of judges in one breath and trying to frame a specious “ethics code” as the first step to removing justices and packing (or “expanding”) the Supreme Court in the next.

Despite popular judicial impeachment efforts (such as that of the infamous Chief Justice Earl Warren), only in the second Trump administration does anyone seem poised to clean out the worst offenders. This escalation shows the American people realize that the last four years, to use the Left’s regnant phrase, were not normal. But that abnormality should also inform our qualified use of judicial impeachment going forward.

Judicial Impeachments Must Be Principled, Not Partisan

While the Founding Fathers held out impeachment, they assumed the vast majority of judges would faithfully serve the Constitution and the American people for life. They saw this as a major boon to the American people. Judges’ lifetime tenure gives them the “independent spirit” necessary to defy lawmakers, wrote Hamilton in Federalist No. 78. Courts, Hamilton wrote, must be free “to dispense the laws with a steady and impartial hand; unmoved by the storms of faction, unawed by its powers, unseduced by its favors.” Otherwise, the judiciary becomes “doomed to fluctuate with the variable tide of faction, degenerates into a disgusting mirror of all the various, malignant and turbulent humors of party-spirit.” Justices who bow to political pressure — like Owen Roberts in 1936 or John Roberts switching his Obamacare vote under pressure from the liberal media — degrade the American people’s liberties.

If wrongly pursued, the potent tool of judicial impeachments can undermine national stability. It is fitting the Boasberg ruling involves one of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts. The Adams administration’s only use of the laws came in prosecuting journalists who belonged to the other party. In many ways, the Alien and Sedition Acts were the original weaponization of government that set the tone for all future efforts. The Left has certainly never had any trouble accusing the president and his supporters of “sedition.” (The Alien Enemies Act was the only one of the four laws with a legitimate purpose.) It is hardly a stretch to foresee the mass impeachment of constitutionalist judges by a Democratic Party that cheers on the full disbarment of Trump lawyers and fantasizes about rendering Trump voters unable to earn a living.

To properly restore our government, the American people need both civic revival and spiritual revival. The necessary use of judicial impeachments cannot be based on politics or the political popularity of any one leader. Impeachment must be principled, not partisan. Judges must be appointed or removed based solely on their fidelity to the original intent of the U.S. Constitution as written. This must be accompanied by widespread cultural appreciation for the nation’s magnificent charter of liberties, the Constitution. And it must be informed by the deeply Christian (and overwhelmingly Protestant) worldview that inspired its framers.

President Trump’s speeches have done much to revive America’s flagging patriotism. Vice President J.D. Vance has publicly discussed the importance of faith and family. Their Cabinet members, perhaps especially Pam Bondi, can speak to the glorious limitations the Constitution places on the State, paving the way for a Hamiltonian use of judicial impeachment. They should adopt the motto of Hamilton’s rival, Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in 1798, “In questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.” As with illegal immigration, modest enforcement will likely induce judges to self-correct.

The Constitution gives the American people the ability to exercise the greatest government: self-government under the direction of the Holy Spirit.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Congress Reacts to the Judicial Actions Slowing Progress on Trump’s Agenda

Congress Has The Tools To Stop Rogue Judges From Overriding Trump’s Agenda — Without Reaching For Impeachment

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2025 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Texas State Board of Ed. Approves the Bible in Public School Curriculum

/in , , , , , , , /by

One vote can make an enormous difference. In Texas, it was a single vote that allowed biblical material to be included in the local public schools through the state-authored curriculum, Bluebonnet Learning (BL). On Friday, eight of 15 Texas State Board of Education members voted it through. Although it was not free from controversy, last week’s decision means the new curriculum will be available starting in the spring and likely put to use within the 2025 to 2026 school year.

Notably, the biblical material included in BL is optional. As The Texas Tribune summarized, “The curriculum was designed with a cross-disciplinary approach that uses reading and language arts lessons to advance or cement concepts in other disciplines, such as history and social studies.” Some of the specific Christian references and teachings integrated into BL is Jesus’s parable of “The Good Samaritan,” which can be found in Luke chapter 10, and the “Golden Rule,” found in Matthew 7. The Tribune noted that these parables are “about loving everyone, including your enemies.” The Golden Rule, as stated in the Bible, says, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them.”

Those who voted against this curriculum included all four Democrats who are on the board, as well as three Republicans. According to The Daily Wire, several Democrats who voted against it felt concerned it would “force Christianity on public school children.” Of those Democrats, Staci Childs verbalized her belief that the curriculum will eventually find itself in court. She told NBC News, “[I]f a parent or a teacher who didn’t feel comfortable teaching this were to bring this up to a court, I believe they would be successful.” Childs also noted that, in her opinion, “these materials are [not] yet reflective of the experiences and the nuance of Texas students.”

Conversely, Republican board member Will Hickman celebrated the future of Texas public schools now that BL has been approved. “In my view,” he said, “these stories are on the education side and are establishing cultural literacy. … [R]eligious concepts like the Good Samaritan and the Golden Rule and Moses [are ones] that all students should be exposed to.” Apart from the board members, it appears parents were also divided on the topic. However, The New York Times reported on one mother’s opinion, in which she stated that the incarnation of Jesus “is and always will be the hinge of all of history.” This mother also posed the question: “How would the canceling of such fundamental facts serve the education of our children or contribute to shape them morally?”

To add to the conversation, Joseph Backholm, Family Research Council’s senior fellow for Biblical Worldview and Strategic Engagement, offered a comment to The Washington Stand. “The classroom will never be values neutral,” he said. “We’ve seen the aggressive way some classrooms have pushed the Sexual Revolution, which is essentially just a different religion. [So,] the fact that the curriculum includes biblical stories doesn’t mean its teaching Christianity, just that they aren’t pretending there is something dangerous about biblical stories anymore.”

Backholm agreed that “the history of America is largely Christian. It’s not possible to have a clear understanding of American history without understanding the role faith played in the lives and beliefs of our founders.” According to Backholm, “This is just one of the many ways that biblical knowledge is [simply] part of a basic education. If you learn American history, you’ll learn about the Bible.”

Ultimately, Backholm believes parents should “be the primary shapers and guardians of children, [but] we don’t want our fear of ‘religious instruction’ to make us afraid of giving a real education. [Because] in the American context, knowing about our history and culture requires knowledge of the Bible.”

FRC’s Meg Kilgannon, senior fellow of Education Studies, also weighed in with TWS. “The folks who are concerned about ‘teaching Christianity’ in classrooms have likely never batted an eye over mindfulness lessons or practice for children, Greek and Roman mythology, and other types of religious content in schools.”

She continued, “Biblical or overtly Christian content is too controversial for use in the classroom when viewed through the ‘lens of inclusivity.’” Agreeing with Backholm, she noted, “There is simply no way to separate America from its expressly Christian foundation, [even] though the educational industrial complex continues to try.” At the end of the day, Kilgannon said she’s “grateful for the Texas school board members who voted to support this measure. We must continue to pray for America’s schools, families, and school children. We must also support local leaders who take a stand for God and country.”

Kilgannon concluded, “Education has always been about state and local control. It’s our duty to pay attention to local matters and make sure our perspectives are heard.”

AUTHOR

Sarah Holliday

Sarah Holliday is a reporter at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council,

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

PERKINS: Once Again, the Sacred Fire of Liberty Is Preserved

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Last Tuesday, Americans spoke loudly and clearly to keep the American experiment alive.

A few years back, I visited the National Archives here in Washington, D.C., with a Member of Congress. We had the rare privilege of seeing some of our nation’s founding documents — papers not typically on public display. It wasn’t a “National Treasure” adventure, but it was an unforgettable moment for a student of history like me. One of these documents was the original U.S. Senate’s markup of the Bill of Rights, sent over from the House in 1789.

Another was a simple but profound page: George Washington’s inaugural address, delivered on April 30, 1789. His speech was brief — only about 10 minutes — but the words were powerful. As he took his first steps as the leader of a new nation, Washington said:

“Since we ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven, can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained: And since the preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the Republican model of Government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally staked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.”

From the very beginning, our republican form of government — placing the power to govern into the hands of the people — was viewed as an “experiment.” Why? Because nothing like it had ever been tried before. Self-government, grounded in the rule of law and crafted for a nation this vast and diverse, was unprecedented. The Constitution was new, untested, and the Founders knew that true power now rested with the people, not a monarchy or ruling elite. They also understood that this experiment depended not only on good laws but on a bedrock of virtue and morality, rooted in timeless truth.

John Adams captured this reality in 1798. “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” he insisted. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Washington had previously stated this point in his Farewell Address in 1796. This grand experiment of ours, he reminded us, could not survive if truth and morality were ignored or discarded.

And thank God, there are still Americans who understand that reality today — who saw that what Kamala Harris offered was an agenda that would have aborted this experiment and snuffed out our hard-won freedoms.

But we can’t be lulled into complacency. The American experiment isn’t on autopilot; it is not “safe and secure.” Our work is far from over. Right now, we have an opportunity, a window, to fortify the moral foundation of this experiment — to restore, promote, and protect what Washington called the two great pillars of our political prosperity: religion and morality.

If America is to thrive, if we are to pass this precious experiment down to future generations, we must remember this: political and economic greatness cannot survive without moral goodness.

As the scriptures declare: Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.

AUTHOR

Tony Perkins

Tony Perkins is president of Family Research Council and executive editor of The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: President Donald J. Trump Pledges Educational Gamechanger By Creating The American Academy

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The Biblical Roots of American Law and Why It’s Necessary to Return to Them

/in , , , , , , , /by

America is at a crisis point. While it’s easy to dismiss presidential candidates brashly proclaiming November to be the most important election in the nation’s history as mere votemongering, their words may have a kernel of truth at their center. At present, America is facing something of an identity crisis: the principles and truths upon which the nation was founded have been largely shouldered out of the public square, leaving a sort of vacuum which demands to be filled.

The question before the nation now is whether to restore those principles and truths to their rightful place or attempt to retroactively replace the country’s foundation, which will likely result in chaos and will certainly result in the creation and proliferation of an entity radically different to the United States which has stood for nearly 250 years.

American Founding Father and the nation’s first vice president John Adams famously declared, “Our [C]onstitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” This truth seems to have been largely forgotten and even inverted today. To read frequent disappointing judicial opinions and listen to the lectures and arguments of legislators, one might think that the Constitution was rather made to tame or shape an otherwise moral and religious people.

Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin expressed this point of view when he chided a fellow state legislator for supporting the biblical definition of marriage. Raskin quipped, “Senator, when you took your oath of office, you placed your hand on the Bible and swore to uphold the Constitution. You did not place your hand on the Constitution and swear to uphold the Bible.”

Yet America’s founding principles are rooted in that Bible and in centuries of Christian theology, philosophy, and morality. It is not so much, as Raskin implied, that the Bible and the Constitution are mutually exclusive doctrines, but rather that the Bible itself upholds the Constitution. An attempt to use the Constitution to suppress the Bible is the proverbial attempt to saw off a tree branch that the man with the saw is sitting upon at that very moment.

Who devised the idea of community and society if not God — the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost — who is Society itself? The very first thing in the created world that God named “not good” was solitude, an absence of community and society (Genesis 2:18). Who devised the idea of law, of right and wrong, if not God, who gave to Moses the Ten Commandments and who, through the prophets and finally in the Person of Christ, declared unequivocally what was right and what was wrong? Who devised the idea of government if not God, the King of Kings and Prince of Peace? And who determined that man was fit to rule if not God, who made man in His image and likeness, who gave to him free will, who granted him dominion over all other creatures?

The very tenets which the American Constitution is founded upon were established by God Himself and are in fact rooted in the teachings and truths enumerated in the Bible. Without those teachings and truths, chaos alone would reign. How could society possibly be defined — much less defended and bettered — by its own self? On what authority could a society or a portion of a society claim to enact and enforce law, to govern, or to give or deny others a say in law and government?

Without God and the truths He established in the Bible, there would be no authority. What man may claim to rule or argue that his notion of right and wrong is more right than another man’s if the highest authority he might cite is just his own self? All arguments would become circular then, resolved only by violence, by brute force. The only truth which could be relied upon, as C.S. Lewis so brilliantly explained in “The Abolition of Man,” would be fickle feelings and irrational appetites.

But those very tenets which the American Constitution was founded upon have been crowded out, silenced, and labeled second-rate. The Jamie Raskins of the world insist that a man’s sacred duty is not to uphold a sacred and divinely-ordained moral code, but a legal document written by demonstrably flawed and imperfect men nearly three centuries ago. Turning again to the wisdom of Lewis, we can see, “Where men are forbidden to honor a king they honor millionaires, athletes, or film-stars instead: even famous prostitutes or gangsters. For spiritual nature, like bodily nature, will be served; deny it food and it will gobble poison.” Today, men are forbidden to honor the sacred scriptures, and so they honor instead an ever-expanding legal document which, cut off from the Word of God, is rapidly becoming poisonous.

This is not to disparage the Constitution, of course. The men who wrote it were learned and sincere, and many of them were wise. They were largely brought up on the classics, studying both the good ideas and the bad of the past several thousand years, but careful not to confuse the former for the latter or vice versa. Most prudently of all, they based their notions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness on the truth and morality which Christianity has lovingly preserved for some 2,000 years. The document they wrote, the Constitution, was a good one, but not a divinely-inspired one.

In fact, without the Bible and the truths it safeguards and passes down from generation to generation, the Constitution could not have been written and the American experiment never tried. It was the Christian understanding of the imago Dei which emboldened the Framers to declare that man might participate in government. It was the Christian notion of human dignity which enabled the Framers to rule that your vote counts the same as mine. And it was the example of Christ crucified which encouraged these men to not merely write down their ideas but to fight and, in many cases, die for them. A man would not go to war for the sake of a poem he has written, nor would he die for an ingenious work of fiction. It is the biblical truths upon which the Constitution is based which inspired the Founding Fathers to fight and die, in the hopes of preserving and safeguarding these truths for future generations of Americans.

But now the saw is nearly through the branch, and America is hanging precariously by a thread. The demonic anti-sacrament of abortion, the worship of the chief of the seven deadly sins in Pride Month, the diabolical practices of transgenderism are all clear and sure signs that a ghastly new religion has arisen from Hell to challenge Christianity and supplant it as the basis of Western civilization. If the American Constitution remains rooted — or is rather re-rooted — in Christianity, America will survive, prosper, and thrive. If not — if the cult of leftism has its way — if sin and degeneracy, butchery and debauchery are worshipped and idolized — if the word of man is placed on a par with or higher than the Word of God — then America, and indeed the whole of Western civilization with it, will be plunged into the abyss.

In its place will be erected a soulless facsimile, devoid of life, devoid of virtue, devoid even of the knowledge of virtue or the acknowledgement of the difference between virtue and vice. It will bear the same name, it will have many of the same buildings, the same domed Capitol, the same White House, the same Statue of Liberty, but it will be a radically different entity. The America of the past 250 years will have died, and something else entirely will have taken its dead skin and put it on like a suit, like a costume.

A return to the nation’s roots, to the Word of God, to an understanding of goodness and not virtue as defined by God — not by man! — is an urgent necessity if the nation is to live.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pro-Abortion Groups Ramp Up Spending ahead of Elections – But So Do Pro-Life Groups

EDITORS NOTE: This The Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Expert: Louisiana’s Ten Commandments Law Is Grounded in History and the Constitution

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Following the recent passage of a bill in Louisiana that requires the Ten Commandments to be displayed in every public school classroom, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other left-wing legal groups filed suit in federal court on Monday to block the measure. But legal experts say that the new Louisiana law should withstand legal challenges in light of American history and constitutional law.

The following is a transcript of “Washington Watch” guest host Jody Hice’s interview with Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel. It has been edited for length and grammar.

HICE: When it comes to constitutional law and our country’s founders, it’s well documented. They had a good understanding of the Ten Commandments being the basis for our laws and our legal system. So with that backdrop, why would someone oppose public school students from gaining a better understanding and appreciation of the foundational documents that our states and our national government really relies upon when it comes to legal matters and how we stand?

STAVER: The ACLU and groups like Freedom From Religion Foundation, they have an agenda, and that is to wipe away anything that has a Judeo-Christian heritage or history. And certainly the Ten Commandments predate America. I wrote a booklet called “The Ten Commandments in American Law and Government” going through all 10 of the commandments, and I did this based on litigation, where we were defending the Ten Commandments displays all the way up to the United States Supreme Court. Since 2005, when the Supreme Court issued some decisions on this issue, we’ve never lost a Ten Commandments case, whether it’s a standalone case or it’s a case in the context of other legal documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Magna Carta, and so forth.

If you go back to the Ten Commandments prior to even the founding of America, they have for thousands of years influenced law and government societies and certainly had a big influence in Europe. That influence carried over here in the United States. And that’s why when you go to the United States Supreme Court, the most prominent display of any symbol in this court, inside and outside, is the Ten Commandments, which appears around 50 times both inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court. Amazingly, the actual official seal of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals — which has been infamously known to be a very activist court — that particular seal has the Ten Commandments as part of it. It is prominent all over the United States. Why? Because it is critically important and influential in American law and government.

In fact, if you go back to many of our early states and in our judiciary laws and many, many court decisions, they actually referenced the Ten Commandments, when we are referring to laws such as theft, murder, being truthful under oath, and so forth. All 10 of the Ten Commandments have been cited as bases for law, like, for example, blasphemy laws [having to do with] libel or defamation in the context of this would be referring to some of the first four of the Ten Commandments — very influential.

What we have seen, however, is back in the 1970s there was an activist Supreme Court. [Monday] we celebrate[d] the overturning of Roe v. Wade from 1973. Well, two years ago this month, the court also overturned the 1971 decision Lemon v. Kurtzman from that liberal ’70s. And it was that decision that caused all kinds of chaos and havoc. But even under that decision of Lemon v. Kurtzman — which distorted the First Amendment, Free Exercise, Establishment Clause, and free speech clauses — even under that, we won time after time after time Ten Commandment cases. Now, with Lemon being overturned as of two years ago, the Supreme Court says we need to go back to a historical approach to the Establishment Clause. And when you do that with the Ten Commandments, that’s exactly why Louisiana took this opportunity to pass this law. They are on very good legal standing.

HICE: So you feel good with the language that they’ve put into this? As I understand, they’re referencing some U.S. Supreme Court rulings, as you just mentioned, in the language that they have. Why is this case going to be so important?

STAVER: Well, I think it’s very important because it’s one of the first cases post the overturning of Lemon v. Kurtzman in 2022 that actually addresses a religious symbol. Now, we’ve had other cases involving free speech. Our case that was part of overturning Lemon was the Shurtleff v. City of Boston, where they used Lemon to censor private Christian viewpoints. The other case was the Coach [Joe] Kennedy case. Those two combined together, they used Lemon to censor private viewpoints. But Lemon is gone, it’s over. It can no longer be cited. It was cited or referenced 7,000 times in law review articles, and now it’s history. Now we go back to a historical approach. And what the Tennessee legislature did is they actually cited cases such as the Van Orden v. Perry case that came out of Texas that upheld that standalone monument.

But even greater than that is this new sea change. We certainly remember that Roe was overturned two years ago [Monday], which was a huge change in 51 years of bad Supreme Court precedent. And now we’re focused on a historical approach to the First Amendment that is huge, not only for the Ten Commandments in public schools or the Ten Commandments in public places, but nativity scenes and other kinds of expression of religious, particularly Christian, viewpoints, whether they’re Bible clubs or churches. We have more freedom now than we had two years ago, and we need to exercise that freedom. And that’s what we’re seeing in this law. I think we will see many states follow the lead of this particular development.

HICE: We hear a lot about the “Lemon test.” Can you explain what is meant by that phrase, but also just how huge this whole reversal of Lemon is. Let’s begin with what’s meant by the Lemon test.

STAVER: Yeah, it comes from a 1971 case called Lemon v. Kurtzman. And in that case, the Supreme Court developed three tests to determine whether something violates the First Amendment Establishment Clause. And in doing so, they distorted and twisted the First Amendment. So this is the beginning of the ’70s activism. You have ’71 on Lemon. You have ’73 on abortion. You have ’77 with regard to protection for people of faith in the workplace, and that was overturned one year ago. Then you had ’78 the affirmative action admissions to colleges and universities, all from the ’70s activist court because they didn’t like faith, they didn’t like Christianity, they were pro-death. And they had a very liberal activist bent.

So Lemon v. Kurtzman was a case that was used to develop a three-part test. And that test was used to allow a lot of subjectivity. For example, a nativity scene could be constitutional if it was set up by the government, like if the city wanted to have their own nativity display, but it depended upon how many other secular symbols of the holiday were in that display. And it also depended upon how close they were. Was Santa Claus close enough to the nativity scene? Was a Christmas tree secular, or was it sacred? Was it close in proximity to the nativity scene? And sometimes you’d have to get out your measuring stick to decide whether or not this is constitutional. It is really nonsensical. So it allowed a lot of judges to wield autocratic authority based upon their own ideology, to strike down a religious display or to uphold it. I remember a situation where the Ten Commandments was literally etched on the courthouse wall in Philadelphia, and during a lower court decision which struck it down, they covered it while it was up on appeal. And thank God, the Court of Appeals reversed it. But they were going to literally chisel that off the outside of this courthouse where it had been there for decades and decades if the Court of Appeals went the wrong way. So that’s the kind of nonsense that we face now.

Thank goodness we’re looking at the First Amendment from its historical meaning and purpose. And when you look at that in context, the Ten Commandments, more than any other document through thousands of years, but certainly in America, have influenced our American law and government. We don’t have our laws that we have now absent the Ten Commandments. They clearly grew out of the Ten Commandments and were shaped by the Ten Commandments. So no wonder why it would be an appropriate display in schools as well as in public places. And that’s why we’ve seen it in so many different locations.

But they would rather keep the Ten Commandments — about not murdering, not stealing, honoring God, honoring your parents — they’d rather keep that from their view while they indoctrinate them and make people protesters and anti-American. I think this is a great move by Louisiana, and I think it will be upheld. Certainly we will file an amicus brief in support. We have lots and lots and lots of research. I was amazed when we delved into it back in the early 2000 as to how much the Ten Commandments literally have shaped our American law and government. We would not be the same country without the Ten Commandments.

HICE: I’m sure the ACLU’s argument will be you can’t be cramming your morality down the minds of these children. But this is more than that. They are cramming their immorality down the minds of our children with their LGBT ideology. But you bring up the whole historical role of the Ten Commandments and how they have played such an enormous role in the founding of our country and our legal system.

STAVER: Yeah, they really have. It is really surprising when you go into the United States Supreme Court. When you walk in up the big steps to go into the Supreme Court, every fifth symbol is the profile of Moses with the Ten Commandments. When you walk in the double doors, the Ten Commandments are etched on both double doors — a lot of times you don’t see it because the doors are open when you walk in. When you sit in the pew and you exit, the Ten Commandments are at eye level on each pew, both to the right and to the left. The Ten Commandments is the only document that actually is written inside the Supreme Court, and on the outside of the Supreme Court in the back of the building, Moses occupies the very central seat holding the Ten Commandments, with all the other lawgivers looking up to him. And that is because the Supreme Court building was created in the 1930s. But when you go through our country, to places like the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is 100+ years old. And that’s why it’s there on the seal. It’s a court of law, and the shorthand of that is the Ten Commandments.

In fact, if you go on a Google search for different kinds of research and you type in “Ten Commandments of” and an ellipsis, it’ll pull up tens of thousands of documents that will say something like “the Ten Commandments of gardening,” “the Ten Commandments of building a better house,” “the Ten Commandments of fixing your roof.” Why is that? Because the Ten Commandments have been shorthand for a rule of law. So we use it in a practical sense, but we’ve used it in a government sense and in a legal sense. It literally has shaped everything about our legal and governmental system in the United States, and not just in the United States, but throughout Europe and throughout millennia of human history.

HICE: Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, I can’t thank you enough. Liberty Counsel has done so much on this issue and so many other issues as well. We all just say thank you for your leadership and the incredible work of Liberty Counsel as well.

AUTHOR

TWS Staff Report

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

‘If You Can Keep It’: America’s Foundation Is Crumbling but Not Lost

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Pride Month is once again upon us — that special time of the year when governments, corporations, and seemingly every major institution band together to noxiously celebrate the chief of all sins, as well as a whole legion of sexual perversions, degeneracies, and aberrations.

As absolutely everything about it makes clear, Pride Month is not a matter of fostering tolerance nor even a misguided notion of affection for a marginalized minority (the very claim that the LGBT crowd is “marginalized” puts to shame even the most egregious cases of George Orwell’s “doublespeak”) but rather of insufferably demanding submission to grave depravity and psychologically browbeating the masses into accepting as “normal” that which is diabolically deviant. From leather bondage gear and public nudity at Pride parades to the mutilation of children’s genitals in surgical theaters, the accoutrements of Pride Month would have appalled generations past.

The top-down adoration of the LGBT agenda (for, of course, Pride Month is not a grassroots achievement but an innovation of the elite) is symptomatic of the decadence of America. Nigh-unfettered immigration pouring millions of third-world denizens across the border, rampantly rising lawlessness seeping out of urban hellscapes, the debilitating decline of both marriage and birth rates plaguing society, the stentorian campaign to slaughter untold thousands of unborn children, and the more recent corruption and subversion of the justice system to target lawful political figures like former President Donald Trump are also indicative of the impending demise of the Land of the Free.

While many on the political, social, and cultural Left like to hypothesize that America’s Constitution is out of date, designed uniquely for a people who lived and labored over 200 years ago and thus in need of revisions and updates according to modern standards, that is by no means the case. Certainly, America’s Founding Fathers likely never imagined the nightmare scenario of “doctors” chopping off the healthy breasts of teenage girls and the healthy penises of adolescent boys, blithely calling the whole barbaric affair “lifesaving,” but they were far from ignorant of degeneracy. Those on the Left pretend that the Founders never imagined or possibly foresaw the advent of such things as pornography, abortion, or the LGBT agenda.

Certainly, it is difficult to imagine the Founding Fathers sitting around their desks in Philadelphia, New York City, or Annapolis, Maryland and discussing whether or not there would be a time when “doctors” would cut off adolescent children’s sex organs, but the provisions they placed in the Constitution were intended to prevent such nightmares from ever becoming reality — by addressing the principles which could either prevent or permit such nightmares. But those principles rested upon and rest upon still certain conditions. When asked in 1787 what kind of government the Constitutional Convention had agreed upon for the fledgling American nation, Benjamin Franklin famously answered, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

We have not kept it. But we can perhaps reclaim it. Franklin himself intimated how. In a speech before that Continental Convention on September 17, 1787, the scientist-turned-statesman proclaimed:

“I think a General Government necessary for us, and there is no form of government, but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered; and [I] believe further, that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic government.”

At the time, Franklin was nominally addressing the Convention’s president, the legendary George Washington. But the content of his speech was directed to three delegates present who expressed doubts about the form of government which their colleagues were crafting. In earnestly encouraging his fellow Americans to sign the Constitution, Franklin wisely observed that while other forms of government may devolve into despotism at one man’s whim, the American government was structured in such a way that only the will of the people could corrupt it. Franklin’s fellow Founder and America’s first Vice President John Adams put it more pointedly when he said, “Our [C]onstitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

America was once comprised of a moral and religious people, but no longer. Now, Pride Month is close to becoming a state-mandated religious observance, child sacrifice via abortion is a protected anti-sacrament across numerous states, drag queens preach the gospel of gay to children, the rank stench of marijuana hangs over most major metropolitan centers, the soul-sucking scourge of pornography is available at the click of a button on every cell phone and laptop, heartless hookup culture and DIY prostitution have their own trending apps, and all manner of godlessness is accepted and touted in the public square while Christianity is ostracized and shushed. This is the present state of the people.

Is it any wonder then that the American government — of those people, by those people, and for those people — is hurtling headlong into the very despotism that the Founders warned against? The Justice Department is abdicating its duty to the virtue it is named for and targeting pro-life Americans for the crime of standing up for the unborn; courts award government-run schools carte blanche to secretly transgenderify children, leaving American moms and dads in the dark; government “health” agencies commit fraud against the American people to bolster pharmaceutical sales; the legitimacy of authorities is smeared and castigated in pursuit of radical, unamerican agendas; and the dominant political party shields its own when the law is broken and just as wantonly breaks the law in persecuting its political opponents.

In establishing the American republic, the Founding Fathers also articulated how to reclaim it: morality and religion. The American government was, in fact, predicated upon morality and virtue, as the writings of the Founders evince — America’s foundation is morality and religion. This was not a novel concept, nor singularly unique to the new American government. The Founders were no simpletons: they were well-read men with a profound depth and breadth of knowledge of history and philosophy. Many of the Founders had enjoyed classical educations in the Christian West and were thus familiar with the most significant works of the ancient Greeks and Romans, as well as the Bible and the writings of Christian saints and heroes over the previous centuries. All of these sources upheld virtue as a necessary prerequisite for a functioning society.

Greco-Roman political philosophy, shaped by men like Plato and Aristotle, Cicero, and Marcus Aurelius, considered virtue paramount and even fundamental to the city, state, nation, and empire. These pagan ideas were perfected upon by Christian thought. In his voluminous treatise “The City of God,” penned shortly after the Sack of Rome, Augustine of Hippo concluded that for any earthly nation to survive and eventually thrive, its people must be virtuous, as are the citizens of the Heavenly City. Almost 1,400 years later, Franklin’s speech before the Continental Convention closely echoed Augustine when the saint wrote:

“In this world, therefore, the dominion of good men is profitable, not so much for themselves as for human affairs. But the dominion of bad men is hurtful chiefly to themselves who rule, for they destroy their own souls by greater license in wickedness; while those who are put under them in service are not hurt except by their own iniquity. For to the just all the evils imposed on them by unjust rulers are not the punishment of crime, but the test of virtue. Therefore the good man, although he is a slave, is free; but the bad man, even if he reigns, is a slave, and that not of one man, but, what is far more grievous, of as many masters as he has vices; of which vices when the divine Scripture [2 Peter 2:19] treats, it says, ‘For of whom any man is overcome, to the same he is also the bond-slave.’”

Indeed, Augustine’s words perfect upon not only the philosophy of the pagan Greeks and Romans, but even upon the American ideals of Franklin and his fellow Founders.

Sadly, as the rampant degeneracy and lawlessness of today make clear, we have not kept the republic given to us by the Founders, the foundations of America are crumbling — but we can reclaim the republic, we can restore the foundation upon which America rests. To do so, we must mount a crusade of virtue, we must model ourselves after the citizens of Heaven, we must become again a moral and religious people.

We may very well, as Augustine warned and as our Founders themselves experienced, live for a time under the rule of the unjust, of the vicious and licentious, but if we keep our eyes fixed upon God and the Heavenly City, such trials will serve as “the test of virtue” and will become for us a strength. The nation is not lost, so long as we keep alive virtue in our hearts.

AUTHOR

S.A. McCarthy

S.A. McCarthy serves as a news writer at The Washington Stand.

RELATED VIDEO: It’s Not a Republic. We Couldn’t Keep It. | TIPPING POINT

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. All rights reserved. ©2024 Family Research Council.

The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Secularism: The Forgotten Factor in Falling Fertility

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The decline in faith has precipitated a drop in procreation.

James McHenry is a lesser-known American Founding Father. A Scots-Irish Presbyterian born in County Antrim, Ireland, he came to the colonies in 1771, just five years before independence.

McHenry eventually became a military surgeon, signer of the Constitution and Secretary of War for Presidents Washington and Adams. Fort McHenry, of Star-Spangled Banner fame, bears his name. James McHenry was of the early American elite. He wrote:

“The holy Scriptures… can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability, and usefulness.”

Holy Scriptures? How unwoke can you get?

Are we to assume that McHenry was racist, “homophobic,” nativist or a bigot? Can you imagine a member of the Biden cabinet referencing holy Scripture? Why, that would be a violation of “separation of church and state,” the Jeffersonian doctrine intended to prevent government from meddling in matters of faith. Today that doctrine has been wholly transmuted, weaponised to eradicate religious expression from the public square.

A different century

McHenry wasn’t the only American Founder whose words would get him cancelled today. How about the “father of our country” George Washington? Here is what Washington told a gathering of Delaware Indian leaders:

You do well to wish to learn our arts and our ways of life and above all, the religion of Jesus Christ. These will make you a greater and happier people than you are. Congress will do everything they can to assist you in this wise intention.

A compilation of religious sentiments by early American leaders would consume more terabytes than MercatorNet can handle. Needless to say, the Founders were people of faith. Back then, the West was commonly referred to as Christendom. As far as I know, no one found that offensive.

What does any of this have to do with demography?

Well, according to the World Atlas, “American women reaching child-bearing age in 1800 had on average of seven to eight live births in the course of their reproductive life.” In 1800, America was mostly rural and practising Christian.

In the early 1800s, two overarching factors influenced family life. The first was faith. The Biblical injunction “And you, be ye fruitful, and multiply; bring forth abundantly in the earth, and multiply therein.” (Genesis 9:7, KJV) was taken quite seriously.

Also, having children was sound economics. Children meant more hands on deck at the farm and family business. That was early American family planning.

From 1800, however, US fertility steadily declined, bottoming out in the 1940s. Then the postwar “baby boom” brought a 60% bump. The decline has since resumed, attributed to better public health (lower infant mortality), urbanisation, industrialisation, higher incomes and women in the workforce.

However, one tremendously significant reason for fewer children is usually omitted from demographic analyses: secularism.

What is secularism?

The term was coined c.1850 to denote a system which sought to order and interpret life on principles taken solely from this world, without recourse to belief in God and a future life. It is now used in a more general sense of the tendency to ignore, if not to deny, the principles of supernatural religion.
— The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church

According to Merriam-Webster, secularism is “indifference to or rejection or exclusion of religion and religious considerations.”

The US is today’s secularist imperium. Secularism is a major contributing factor, usually overlooked, for persistent below-replacement fertility worldwide.

It is no secret that, on average, religious folks have more children than the non-religious. Why? Quite often, people of faith seriously follow the Biblical injunction to go forth and multiply. They believe in salvation and are usually somewhat less egocentric and materialistic than the average modern Joe.

But today we are in the age of Economic Man, defined by Merriam-Webster as

… an imaginary individual created in classical economics and conceived of as behaving rationally, regularly, and predictably in his economic activities with motives that are egoistic, acquisitive, and short-term in outlook.

By adopting the model of Economic Man, Western societies abandoned believing that humanity’s intellectual, spiritual and moral essence were in the image of God, a view that had sustained them for at least 18 centuries. This stone-cold secularism would eventually lead to Communism and the many other atheistic ideologies we suffer from today.

Major General JFC Fuller, in volume 3 of his Military History of the Western World, posited that “the myth of Economic Man [was] the fundamental factor in Capitalism, Socialism, and Communism.”

We are also addicted to the Idea of Progress, defined by the web’s Conservapedia as

… a worldview mainly promoted by globalists and liberals that argues “that the human condition has improved over the course of history and will continue to improve.”[1]

It is closely associated with the concept that man is perfectible and at some point in the future will, in fact, be perfect. While popular in contemporary culture, this idea has several serious flaws.

Flawed indeed. Shallow belief in the inevitability of human progress and unlimited temporal advancement disregards the transcendent, giving rise to the “prosperity gospel” and rank materialism.

Many prosper, but post-World War II affluence is proving to be ephemeral. Something is lacking. That is why China popularises Confucius, Russia subsidises Orthodoxy and Hungary promotes Catholicism in hopes of boosting birthrates. The US mandates wokeism and relies on immigration.

Today politicians rarely invoke religious faith except in throwaway lines for public consumption. People made of sterner stuff like James McHenry and George Washington are vilified and cancelled, their names expunged and statues removed. What will tomorrow’s children know of their heritage?

Yes, we’re oh-so-modern, high tech, sophisticated and secular. Having children is uncool. Modernity is slowly but surely killing us. The idea of progress that venerates Mammon, radical environmentalism, egocentrism and wokeism has Homo sapiens on the path to extinction. But as the old saying goes, “Fish are the last to notice the water.”

AUTHOR

Louis T. March

Louis T. March has a background in government, business and philanthropy. A former talk show host, author and public speaker, he is a dedicated student of history and genealogy. Louis lives with his family… More by Louis T. March

RELATED ARTICLES:

‘Permanent Male Sterilization’: Vasectomies Soar After SCOTUS Overturns Roe

Biden Admin To Families Suffering High Gas Costs: ‘This Is About The Future Of The Liberal World Order’

RELATED VIDEO: Groomed – How Schools Sexualise Your Children.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.