Two hundred forty-nine years ago.
Fifty-two men gathered in Independence Hall to sign the Declaration of Independence — a defiant ultimatum to King George III, risking death and treason to demand God-given rights: life, liberty, and self-governance. It offered the crown a choice: Honor the natural rights of free men, or face their unshakeable resolve to break away. In signing it, they signed their own death warrants — for surely if they failed, the gallows awaited them. The Declaration was a message writ upon the hearts of men by God Himself — a sermon steeped in biblical truth and republican virtue.
“Give me liberty or give me death!” The Founders believed that liberty was worth dying for — so much so that they broke from their own country and waged war to secure it. Liberty, unlike freedom as now understood, is not license. It is a divine birthright, rooted in duty, self-governance, and virtue.
Modern man often concludes that liberty and freedom are synonymous, yet this is far from the truth. Today, liberty is confused with license: Men chase “freedom” as unrestrained self-expression, but such a definition leads not to fulfillment, but rather bondage. That distinction is vital. Ungodly freedoms can be revoked. Liberty, being God-given, cannot.
The Bill of Rights, secured under anti-federalist, Jeffersonian influence, protects freedoms — but in service to liberty. The Founding Fathers believed that freedom was not the absence of constraint, but rather the ability to live in alignment with virtue, reason, and moral law. As John Adams warned, “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Freedom, rightly understood, is a means to higher ends: faith, family, truth, and civic responsibility. The libertine and relativistic ideal — “do what thou wilt” — is not freedom, but enslavement to the flesh. Scripture affirms this: “Whoever commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34). True freedom is not found in self-rule alone, but in being made free by Christ to walk in righteousness. Our nation’s liberty and our souls’ liberty are inseparable.
The “Spirit of 1776” was a divine fire — kindled in defiance of the tyranny of the corrupt British elitist aristocracy, a caste inbred and self-anointed, that dared to outlaw God’s gift of liberty and self-governance. The Declaration of Independence, history’s boldest sermon against tyranny was a thunderous rebuke to King George III, a final demand to honor the sacred rights of a free people or face their unbreakable resolve.
The delegates, united in belief that “all men are created equal” and “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” saw the Crown’s taxes, decrees, and denial of representation and religious liberty as moral evils and betrayals of divine justice. Knowing that it was God’s will that they sooner die to secure liberty than kneel to tyranny, they rejected the vile system, proclaiming liberty as man’s birthright. Their stand, against iniquities fewer than what even the modern American has seen (yet, often similar in nature), shook the world in its indignant fury.
The British aristocracy, bloated by inbred and worsening tyrannical elitism, imposed crippling taxes upon the colonists without any form of republican representations. The Intolerable Acts choked self-governance; the king’s divine-right claim mocked the Creator’s design. Colonial commerce was throttled by an elitist English mercantilism that stifled growth and blocked prosperity.
To the delegates, these were not merely misrules, but a spiritual affront, echoing the tyranny the Pilgrims fled. The Declaration was a sermon in defiance — demanding liberty as a divine mandate. This spirit, one willing to sacrifice everything — as necessitated by God — for the future of their homes and families, born of faith and moral outrage, forged a nation dedicated to true liberty.
Modern revisionists have worked to defame the Founding Fathers as irreligious and immoral. One by one, they have distorted our view of the Founders, the Declaration of Independence, the birth of the United States, and true independence and liberty. These attacks are malicious and profoundly false.
Even the least religious among them recognized the need for higher moral law as the foundation of the republic, and nearly all of them worshiped God openly. This includes the wrongly maligned Thomas Jefferson, who was devoutly Christian. From the earliest settlements — “a city upon a hill,” as John Winthrop declared — America was built on Christian principle, moral law, self-governance, and God-given liberty.
The Founding Fathers not only shared that belief, not merely reflected it, but stood boldly in the face of death to ensure it. Their belief in Divine Providence permeated their words, actions, and the entire Founding Era. The Declaration itself reads as a sermon, and most all of the Founders saw that the only success for America was through Christian belief and practice.
Jefferson wrote, “The doctrines of Jesus are simple. ... The practice of morality [is] necessary for the well-being of society.” Washington affirmed that “of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” John Adams declared that the U.S. could be governed only by a moral and religious people — a belief widely shared among the Founders.
It is enough to say this plainly: The claim that America was not founded as a Christian nation by Christian leaders is a bold lie from the enemy. The founding of this nation — endowed by our Creator and purposed for his glory — was truly a Christian movement, the spirit of which has not been seen in America since.
The Declaration of Independence was a sermon etched in defiance against the festering tyranny of British elitism — a corrupt aristocracy that dared to usurp God’s gift of liberty. The Spirit of 1776 — rooted in liberty and the faith of the Fathers — began a movement so powerful that it birthed the greatest nation known to mankind. The Founding Fathers burned with Christian conviction, the Spirit of God etched in their hearts, proclaiming liberty as a sacred birthright, and thus built a nation to shine as a city upon a hill.
Today, we face tyrannies just as insidious (if not worse) than those in 1776. Their revolution shames our hesitation to stand for what our forefathers died to secure. Their faith rebukes our complacency. Jefferson warned, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
As fireworks light the dusk sky, recalling Key’s words — “the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air” — may we not treat this as just a day off, a cookout, and an obligation to visit family. May we be ignited by the holy resolve within us. Rise, as the Founders did, to cast down the idols of this modern age. Take a stand, as is your civic and moral duty, for your community and your country!
Yours is the sacred duty: to live for truth, faith, and virtue, and to defend true liberty. Proclaim, as they did, that no earthly power can chain those endowed by their Creator!
Daniel C. Green is the founder of The Eagle Eye, a journalism, commentary, and multimedia platform covering politics, geopolitics, culture, and Christianity. His company’s website is theeagleye.net and he is @theeagleyenews on Substack.
Image via Free Range Stock.