Two hundred forty-seven years ago, the freest, most benevolent, richest, most powerful nation in the history of the world began its journey through history. Fifty-six delegates of the Second Continental Congress convened in Philadelphia and signed what was theretofore the greatest document of freedom since the Magna Carta. This Declaration of Independence is the first founding document of the United States of America. In it we find the foundational ideals upon which this nation was created and built in a single sentence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Throughout our nearly two and a half centuries of existence we have both united around and fought over this single sentence. We have rallied together to fight against those who would threaten our freedoms recognized in these few words, but we have also fought one another over the scope and meaning of these ideals. We fought a great Civil War over the scope of “all men.” We have fought in the highest court in the land over the question of when is a person a person and recognized to have an inalienable right to life—a battle still raging. Yet, a battle over the necessity and significance of another word in this sentence now threatens the very existence of this great nation: “Creator.” Just like the war which began 162 years ago threatened the very existence of this nation, this culture war today is an existential crisis. This single line states that our freedoms are endowed to us by our Creator. If there is no Creator we have no inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is upon these rights that all of our other rights, including those in the Bill of Rights, emanate. We can peer into recent history and see the hundreds of millions of corpses which are the result of nations built on the idea that there is no God. We can look around our nation today and see the results when a people forgets there is a God.
If we want to keep our nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world, then those of us who have not forgotten that there is a Creator God must engage the battle in the spirit of the brave revolutionaries of two hundred forty-seven years ago and the righteous abolitionists of one hundred sixty-two years ago if we are to keep that which is ours, that which is endowed to us by our Creator.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
Throughout our nearly two and a half centuries of existence we have both united around and fought over this single sentence. We have rallied together to fight against those who would threaten our freedoms recognized in these few words, but we have also fought one another over the scope and meaning of these ideals. We fought a great Civil War over the scope of “all men.” We have fought in the highest court in the land over the question of when is a person a person and recognized to have an inalienable right to life—a battle still raging. Yet, a battle over the necessity and significance of another word in this sentence now threatens the very existence of this great nation: “Creator.” Just like the war which began 162 years ago threatened the very existence of this nation, this culture war today is an existential crisis. This single line states that our freedoms are endowed to us by our Creator. If there is no Creator we have no inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is upon these rights that all of our other rights, including those in the Bill of Rights, emanate. We can peer into recent history and see the hundreds of millions of corpses which are the result of nations built on the idea that there is no God. We can look around our nation today and see the results when a people forgets there is a God.
If we want to keep our nation, the greatest nation in the history of the world, then those of us who have not forgotten that there is a Creator God must engage the battle in the spirit of the brave revolutionaries of two hundred forty-seven years ago and the righteous abolitionists of one hundred sixty-two years ago if we are to keep that which is ours, that which is endowed to us by our Creator.
