I hope your summer is going well! Let’s continue examining the lives of the Declaration of Independence (DOI) signers in relation to their beliefs in the necessity of good morals and religion as the foundation for the birth of our great country!
Perhaps one of the most famous Founding Fathers who led us to freedom was none other than John Adams.
He was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, now known as Quincy. His father was known as Deacon Adams, and while not a wealthy family, they could trace their ancestry to the Puritans. He married Abagail Smith, and their prolific written correspondence is the best-preserved picture of Colonial marriage in the grandest sense. Abigail was a strong leader and often kept John and his rather emotional temperament in check. She ran the farm as he was much engaged in the foundation of the new Nation (America).
He served as George Washington’s vice president, our second President, Ambassador to Great Britain (Minister to the Court of St. James), and representative of Massachusetts in all of the early conventions regarding freedom from Great Britain.
He was a prolific lawyer as well, successfully representing the British in the Boston Massacre.
His father desired that he enter the ministry, and the school in Colonial America designed to train ministers at the time was Harvard University. After graduating, he taught school for three years in Worcester, Massachusetts, and at this point, he chose to switch from the ministry to practicing law.
The Founding Fathers viewed humanity from a Biblical perspective, which included what theologians at the time called, ‘ the depravity of man.” This concept is best described as mankind is in a fallen state of sin and must choose to be reconciled to God through his son, Jesus Christ. With this concept in mind, he and the other founding fathers believed that men without good morals and religion would automatically be self-destructive due to man’s fallen nature, as history had shown them. Therefore, any government, in order to succeed, would have to have internal safeguards and restraints against man’s natural descent into depravity, meaning the inherent selfishness, lust for power, oppression of others, and corruption with money (bribery, stealing, etc..) would eventually take over and create a tyrannical government.
A direct quote from him in this regard is as follows:
“To expect self-denial from men when they have a majority in their favor (and consequently power to gravity themselves) is to disbelieve all history and universal experience-it is to disbelieve (Divine) Revelation and the Word of God, which informs us. “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked” Jeremiah 17:9…There is no man so blind as not to see that to talk of founding a government upon a supposition that nations and great bodied of men left to themselves, will practice a course of self denial is either babble like a new-born infant, or to deceive like an unprincipled impostor1.”
This illustrious man was a true Apostle in the founding of our country. He had a deep, abiding faith in God and the Bible and lived a life that portrayed his faith in God in making government decisions that affect us today.
1Thanks to Dave Barton’s excellent book, The American Story, for this quote.
Until next time!
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Author: Pastor Allen Cook
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