Endowed by Our Creator for 250 and Counting

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The ringing words of the timeless document — the first, but not the last, of its kind — that sets forth the reasoning behind the announcement that a unique experiment had been born. But it’s more than that. It’s a philosophy just as alive and vibrant a quarter of a millennium later, a rationale with the power and vitality of the nation for which it is the birth announcement.

A statement of power, clarity, and even humility. The communion with timeless values is a nod to something greater than ourselves. More important, the recognition that the Creator is the ultimate source of our inalienable rights is an affirmation not only of Divine omnipotence but also the centrality of God to and for our nation.

Our history, and our national life, are rife with abundant expressions of faith and reaffirmations of Jefferson’s assertion. Time and time again, our leaders and public figures have echoed the sentiment, if not the words.

Timeless though it is, the philosophy articulated in the Declaration of Independence seems in our modern age to not be in vogue — if not actively countered.

It’s not uncommon to encounter the erroneous view that the government itself is the source of our liberties, that it omnipotently grants them rather than simply protects them. From whence does that misapprehension originate? A variety of sources. And ironically, one of them is our very commitment to the principles set forth in the opening of the Declaration.

We are continually reflecting on, and even redefining, what it means to be an American. This is a healthy thing, a sign of vitality, an indication that our country and its core principles mean something and that they matter. But in the process, the conception of the tolerance to which we are committed has changed so. There is a widespread view that overt expressions of religious faith are intolerant and that the First Amendment enshrines freedom from religion, not freedom of religion — the latter of which, of course, is what it really says and means.

Prepositions are important parts of speech, yet they are unassuming components of a sentence, humble and colorless, simply functional. But all it takes to create that mistaken conception of what the First Amendment says about the free exercise of religion is to substitute one for another. Changing two little letters, “of,” to four, “from,” is all it takes.

The difference between those two little words captures the widespread conventional wisdom that separation of church and state is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Spoiler alert: it’s not. That is a term and principle that Thomas Jefferson articulated in his writing, but it’s not written law. Nor is it constitutional principle.

© Mike Miller Photography

But out of that misconception has arisen the societal gospel belief that the First Amendment is constrained by separation of church and state. News bulletin: It’s not.

In countering that misunderstanding, we have our work cut out for us. Popular culture, significant portions of the education establishment, and other influential components of society wholly embrace the faux tolerance that is, in fact, the very opposite. And one of the ways in which it is the opposite is the notion that in order to be tolerant, one should live one’s faith in a specific building where society says it belongs and nowhere else.

So it is incumbent on us to lead the young generation we are committed to lead to Christ to grasp the true language and meaning of the First Amendment. That entails engendering an understanding about what the Declaration says about the origin of our freedom — one  consistent with our Christian conception of true freedom with a capital F — that liberty ultimately leads us to objective good and to the Source of that freedom.

And in doing so, we honor and live our community’s core value of a dedication to truth — the truths so central to the Declaration of Independence that they are articulated in its first sentence, as well as the related truth with a big T at the center of our Faith. And we also demonstrate care — care for our precious nation as well as its young people, whose souls we are pledged to help lead to Our Lord.

So as our nation celebrates 250 years of independence, let us fully embrace the notion that our inalienable freedoms are a gift from God, just as our nation is. And that exercising our freedom of religion and leading young people to that honors our first freedoms and keeps the Declaration of Independence as alive and relevant as it was when it was first read aloud 250 years ago.