The founding of America was heavily influenced by the Protestant Reformation years earlier. The early settlements in America failed, for two major reasons:
- They lost their spiritual moorings. Columbus started with a mission to bring Christ to heathen lands, but soon got more interested in getting gold. Same thing with many of the next settlements. (1)
- The settlements could not build any level of community in a hostile land.
These early Americans were not necessarily Christians, but they did share the values of the Protestant Reformation and were willing to die for the values they had lost in England. These are commonly expressed in our Bill of Rights. They, like the Puritans, used the Bible as a reference point for their government.The Puritans, however, came over and landed in 1630. They were different. Although they weren’t the first group to come over escaping religious persecution, they were the first to be able to make their settlement work. Their mission was an attempt to escape the persecution in England and Holland and to plant a New Israel in America. They were the cutting edge of the Protestant Reformation. They wanted to see a community committed to God. Their law book was the Bible. Unlike the stories of strict justice frequently told us about them, they really demonstrated a lot of compassion in their communities and they were ready to forgive if the sinner repented. They had a strange settling strategy: In a given area, the Puritans would first covenant together and build a church, and then the town would form around the church.There is a common teaching today that the American Revolution was birthed from objections to taxation without representation and primarily a political issue. This statement is not wrong, but it is incomplete. With the large evangelical base emerging from the first awakening, people where tired of a king with a dying religious institution in England telling them what to believe and how to worship. Many men and women who converted during the awakening had defied various religious authorities to uphold their new convictions.By the 1760s, Americans were getting more than angry with their relationship with England, with the Revolutionary War beginning in 1775. In 1776, it was Thomas Paine who used a press to print a series of articles called Common Sense that rallied the colonists of America to throw off their yoke of slavery and be free:
These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.From The Crisis, by Thomas Paine
Just as Luther did more than two centuries earlier, Paine’s publishing created a “swarm” that rallied the demoralized American colonists and led to a free nation.Paine was not a Christian—in fact, he was against religion and Christianity. Yet he used an almost spiritual language in his writing that the evangelicals could relate to as being able to mobilize the colonies to a political awakening that many evangelicals saw as a holy war against a sinful and corrupt Britain. Unfortunately, this man who moved the nation lost his followers and friends due to his strong anti-religious views and eventually died in New York, lonely and abandoned.These early Americans were not necessarily Christians, but they did share the values of the Protestant Reformation and were willing to die for the values they had lost in England. These are commonly expressed in our Bill of Rights. They, like the Puritans, used the Bible as a reference point for their government.The warning that God gave the Israelites applies to America today:
Beware that you do not forget the LORD your God by not keeping His commandments, His judgments, and His statutes which I command you today, lest—when you have eaten and are full, and have built beautiful houses and dwell in them; and when your herds and your flocks multiply, and your silver and your gold are multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied; when your heart is lifted up, and you forget the LORD your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage;…Deuteronomy 8:11-14
The Lord also told them the consequences.
Behold, I set before you today a blessing and a curse: the blessing, if you obey the commandments of the LORD your God which I command you today; and the curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the LORD your God, but turn aside from the way which I command you today, to go after other gods which you have not known.Deuteronomy 11:26-29
This judgment has already started in America today.
