1692 a slave girl was brought by her master to live in Salem,
Massachusetts. She began to tell young girls there wild and
vivid tales about the power of Voodoo, and it wasn’t long
until fear filled the community, and the Salem Witch Trials
began. The result of it all was that by 1730, only about 10% of
the people in the Colonies attended church at all.
Then something amazing happened! Beginning in 1734,
a handful of preachers – Jonathan Edwards, George White-
field, Gilbert Tennant, John Wesley, and others – began to
preach in the churches and the streets and the fields. These
great crusades and revivals spread throughout the 13 Colo-
nies. So many people came to Christ that the era came to be
known as “The Great Awakening.” Tens of thousands dedi-
cated their lives to Jesus Christ and were baptized. So many
people came to hear Whitefield as
he traveled the colonies that he had
to hold open-air meetings because
there just wasn’t enough room in the
churches. Benjamin Franklin wrote,
“It was wonderful to see the change
soon made in the manners of our
inhabitants. From being thoughtless or
indifferent about religion, it seemed as
if all the world were growing religious,
so that one could not walk through
the town in an evening without hear-
ing psalms sung in different families of
every street.”
Now, why is this important you
ask? Because this “Great Awakening”
was a precursor to the American
Revolution. Our Founding Fathers,
the signers of the Declaration of Independence, those who
wrote our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, those who put
their lives on the line, who fought and died that we might be
free – all these grew up and came into leadership while this
“Great Awakening” was engulfing the land. The generation
that experienced the “Great Awakening” became the leaders
of the American Revolution!
Over a 10-year period, political science professors at the
University of Houston collected and cataloged 15,000 writ-
ings by the founding fathers. Their goal was to determine
the primary source of ideas behind the Constitution by
identifying the sources quoted most often by them. Guess
what that primary source was? It was the Bible. 94% of the
founders’ quotes were based on the Bible. “America’s govern-
94 %
ment is patterned after biblical principles.” You know that we
have an Executive Branch, a Legislative Branch that makes
laws, and a Judicial Branch. Where did the framers of our
government get the idea or pattern for three branches of
government? Not from Europe; not from Plato or any of the
other philosophers. No, when the framers of our govern-
ment got together to determine, “How can we best organize
our government?” they looked to the word of God. They
were influenced by Isaiah 33:22 which refers to God in those
same three aspects. “For the Lord is our Judge [that’s judicial],
our Lawgiver [that’s legislative], and our King [that’s execu-
tive]. It is He who will save us.” What a wonderful thought to
know that the formation of our cherished documents was
shaped by the truth of God’s word! May it continue to be so.
The influence of the “Great Awak-
ening” in the early to mid-1700’s
touched the lives of many of the
men who signed their name to the
Declaration of Independence. It’s
worth noting that even though
Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin
(two of the least religious signers)
are typically the only signers studied
today, almost half of the signers
of the Declaration (24 of 56), held
what today would be considered
seminary or Bible School degrees.
They were also involved for reli-
gious reasons. Americans are taught
that “taxation without representa-
tion” was the reason that America
separated from Great Britain, yet
that was only number seventeen out of twenty-seven
reasons given in the Declaration of Independence, and it
was not even in the top half. Never mentioned today are
the numerous grievances condemning judicial activism or
those addressing moral and religious issues. What religious
issues do you ask? In 1762, the king vetoed the charter for
the first American Missionary Society; he also suppressed
other religious freedoms and even prevented Americans
from printing an English-language Bible. Almost unknown
today is the fact that Declaration signers such as Samuel
Adams and Charles Carroll cited religious freedom as the
reason they became involved in the American Revolution.
So, how did the founding fathers really feel? It was John
Jay, the first Chief Justice and “Father” of the Supreme Court,
of the founders’
quotes were based
on the Bible.
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