"NEW JERUSALEM" - CHAPTER # 2

"NEW JERUSALEM" - CHAPTER # 2 __From the overhanging limbs of a riverside tree, Robert Hunt rigged a canopy from an unwanted sail, declared the crude shelter a "church," and called his congregation to worship. It was 1607, and Hunt was the chaplain of what would be the first successful English colony in America__the newly founded Jamestown settlement on the forested coast of Virginia. An Anglican minister who had been educated at Cambridge University, he had answered a call to leave his parish church and accompany three shiploads of English colonists to the foreboding wilds of the New World. No English colony had yet survived in North America, and only males were allowed on the maiden voyage to Jamestown. So taking the post of chaplain or vicar meant assuming grave risks, and saying good-bue to his wife and two children for an unknown period. Even so, Hunt had felt led to accept the call. On December 19, 1606, he and 104 other colonists had left England aboard the Susan Constant, the Discovery, and the Godspeed__bound for the distant, mysterious New World. 
# 2 _Calamity befell Hunt almost immediately. Stormy weather forced the ships to hug the English coast for two weeks, and the chaplain became seriously ill with an unidentified shipboard malady while still a mere twenty miles from home. The other passengers expected him to die, but Hunt surprised them and recovered. He then set about winning their trust. That was no small achievement: they were a boisterous, bickering lot, and, according to one of their number, a few were "little better than Atheists." By the time they made landfall in Virginia's Cape Henry in April 1607, however, they were willing to join Hunt in their first collective action in the New World: they erected a cross at Cape Henry, and thanked God for safe passage. The chaplain's love for the Lord and his pastor's heart for the people reportedly won their respect. So too, perhaps, did his pluck__he was described as "courageous" as well as "honest
[and] religious."
# 3 _Whether by patience, pluck, or providence__or all three __the determined chaplain brought light into the "darkness" of the New World wilderness. Sobered by an Indian attack that killed two of their number, the settlers moved inland from Cape Henry and established a crude settlement on the James River, which they named Jamestown in honor of the king. Immediately, the Reverend Hunt took an active role. As Jamestown's chaplain and vicar, he dedicated the selected site "in the name of God" and shouldered a share of the physical labor__"We are all laborers in a common vineyard," he told the colonists. In his ministry, he summoned the settlers to public prayer mornings and evenings, preached two sermons every Sunday, oversaw regular communion, and tended to the colonists like a shepherd to his flocks. Eventually, he moved worship services to a church that boasted four walls, even though one worshipper called it a "homely thing like a barne."
# 4 _Hacking out a life in the North American forest was far more grueling than Jamestown's colonists had imagined. Amid the harsh, hardscrabble conditions, morale teetered, but Hunt remained faithful and uncomplaining__even when a fire consumed his church, clothes, and precious books. As conditions turned deadly and the colonists were struck down by New World illness and hardship, Hunt nursed the ill and ministered to the dying. He also eased the colonists' contentious ways. "Many were the mischiefs that daily sprung from their ignoranr (yet ambitious) spirits," a Jamestown leader would report, "but the good Doctrine and exhortation of our preacher Mr Hunt reconciled them. . . " According to Jamestown's Captain John Smith, the courageous chaplain "quenched those flames of envie, and dissention." After more than a year of God's work in the wilderness, Robert Hunt was stricken by illness and died. His ministry had been brief, but the faith he followed would prove critical to the colony's survival.
# 5 _Along with its capitalist mission, the colony of Virgina was also faith-based from the beginning. Named for Queen Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen," it had been chartered in 1606 to the London Company by King James 1. The company intended to employ colonists to harvest gold and other natural resources, and find a water passage through the New World to expand the lucrative trade with the farway East Indies. Critical support for colonization of Virginia was fueled by the preaching of the Reverend William Crashaw, a prominent Puritan pastor and scholar in early-seventeenth-century England. From 1605 to 1613, Crashaw was rector of London's renowned Temple Church. There, in 1609, he preached a sermon that compared English colonization of the New World with the call of the Israelites into the Promised Land. "I say, many greater States than this is likely to prove hath as little or less beginning," he predicted. Printed and distributed throughout England, Crashaw's call to colonize the New World for Christ proved instrumental to the struggling colony, helping infuse it with financial support and new settlers.
# 6 _The original charter for the Virginia colony officially cited the "propagating of Christian Religion" as a goal for colonization and called it a "noble" work. Jamestown's early days were more desperate than "noble," but the Judeo-Christian worldwiew was central to the colony's creation and its survival. An Anglican minister named Richard Hakluyt was the colony's chief visionary in the beginning. A member of an influential family of merchants and investors, Hakluyt was an English authority on overseas navigation, exploration, and colonial development. A principal in the London Company, he believed New World colonization would enrich England, gave it world dominance, reward its investors__and enable Englishmen to carry the Gospel to untold scores of Native American people. Although noble efforts to Christianize Virginia's Indians were indeed made by some__including an attempt to establish an Indian "college"__Anglo-Indian relations were marked more by conflict than conversions. Even so, Jamestown's settlers came to America equipped with the biblical world__view, and, eventually, the application of biblical principles gave the colonists the discipline necessary to survive.
# 7 _They sorely needed assistance. Most were former city dwellers untrained in farming, hunting, and other survival skills. They managed to survive an early Indian attack, but most were soon struck down by fatal diseases. They had built their settlement on low, swampy land up the James River from Chesapeake Bay, and dysentery, scurvy, and malaria killed scores of them. So did starvation, which was encouraged by indolence and attitude. The Old World artisans and gentry among them refused to do the hard work that was necessary for survival__clearing trees, uprooting stumps, planting, weeding, construction. Even so, a socialistic form of government__the common store system__entitled everyone to equal rations from a common storehouse regardless of how much they worked. Amid constant squabbling and demoralizing dissension, the colonists began starving to death. When theyhad consumed all their livestock, they turned to dogs, cats, rats, and mice. Eventually, some reportedly restorted to cannibalism. Almost two-thirds of them died.
# 8 _Finally, Captain Smith, a professional soldier and explorer, saved the volony by obtaining food from neighboring Indians__and by enforcing a compulsory work program based on a New Testament admonition: "if any would not work, neither should he eat." Discarding the common-store system, Smith insisted that settlers had to work in order to draw rations. So they held on__barely: when Smith returned to England in 1609, the starving resumed and within months, the colony was again in peril. A relief expedition arrived in 1610, however, and Virginia's new governor, Lord De La Warr, secured the colony with fresh supplies and several hundred more colonists. Captain Smith considered the timing of the rescue to be providential. "God inclineth all casual events to worke the neccessary helpe of his Saints," he proclaimed. Two and a half centuries later, Pulitzer Prize__winning historian Samuel Eliot Morison would conclude: "The only thing that kept Virginia alive in these difficult years was the patriotism and deep religious faith of some of the leaders."
# 9 _Two of those leaders who "kept Virginia alive" were Sir Thomas Gates and Sir Thomas Dale, both knighted English military officers appointed by the London Company to preserve the Virginia colony during its desperate early years. Destruction seemed imminent on several occasions, and Jamestown's serve conditions reduced some colonists to personal savagery__described by one of their number as "disordered persons, so prophane, so rioutous, so full of treasonable Intendments." In 1609, Governor Gates established a code of laws for the colony, which Governor Dale expanded two years later during his administration. Both governors oversaw harsh, military-style law enforcement, which embittered many Virginia settlers__but the laws produced the discipline necessary for the colony's survival.
# 10 _Gates and Dale believed that biblical principles were the cure for frontier savagery, and that Christianity was the proper foundation for an orderly society. To Dale, wildness Virginia offered the opportunity to establish what he envisioned as a "new Jerusalem." Building on statutes implemented earlier by Gates, he established a code of laws for Virginia__the Laws Divine, Moral and Martial. It was the first formal criminal and civil code in America. Like English law, it was based on the Bible. "First," stated the introduction to the Laws, Since we owe our highest and supreme duty, our greatest, and all our allegeance to him, from whom all power and authoritie is derived . . . the King of kings, the commaunder of commanunders, and Lord of Hosts, I do strictly commaund and charge all Captaines and Officers . . . to have a care that the Almightie  God bee duly and daily served, and that thy call upon their people to beare Sermons, as that also they diligently frequent Morning and Evening praier themselves by their owne exemplar and daily life, and dutie herein, encouraging others thereunto. . . .
# 11 _Governor Dale returned to England in 1616. His successor eased the harsh military penalties for wrongdoings in Virginia, but kept Dale's laws in place. Virginia was hardly the "new Jerusalem" Dale had envisioned, but his Bible-based code of laws eventually transformed the colony from a desperate state of rebellion, starvation, disease, and desperation to a "tranquil and prosperous" colony. It was a long and arduous transformation, marked at times by disasters and disillusionment, but also by a determination, perseverance, and faith that were indeed "noble" at times. Jamestown evolved into the first successful English colony in America and established a precedent for American law and culture, both of which began at Jamestown with a faith-based foundation__the Judeo-Christian worldview.
# 12 _That worldview helped established another important American precedent in Virginia__self-government. By 1619, the colony was relatively stable and was expanding inland. Gone were the slovenly ways of the common-store system, which had been replaced by free enterprise and biblically inspired accountability. "When our people were fed out of the common store," oberved a colonial leader, "glad was he who could slip from his labour, or slumber over his taske . . . the most honest among them would hardly take so much true paines in a week as now for themselves they will doe in a day." The Virginia colonists learned to grow tobacco, which gave the colony an expanding economy. To provide wives for the Virginia settlers, the London Company recruited English women__"young and incorrupt maids," they were called__and the colony was infused with the stability of family life. Within a dozen years, Virginia had been transformed from desperation to development, thanks to rule of law, family life, free enterprise__all of which were faith-based. So too was the dramatic jump forward in political freedom that occurred in 1619.
# 13 _That year, Virginia governor George Yeardley convened the first legislative assembly in America. Known as the House of Burgesses, it was composed of twenty-two elected representatives, or burgesses, chosen by the Virginia colonists. Governor Yeardley was acting at the direction of Sir Edwin Sandys, the London Company's new treasurer and chief officer. The son of an Anglican archbishop who had helped translate the Bible into English, Sandys was the author of a popular and respected book on the state of Christianity in Eurpoe and a book of hymns. He was also a principal leader in the English Parliament, who believed the Virginia Colony would prosper if its colonists could own land and exercise self-government.
# 14 _Under Sandys's direction, the London Company restructured the colony under what was called the Great Charter, which allowed private land ownership, implemented a strategy to Christianize Virginia's Indian tribes, and established the House of Burgesses, which was also called the General Assembly. Company officials in London initially held veto power, and the legislature was under nominal oversight of the king__but England's monarchs took little interest in distant Virginia's fledgling General Assembly. Gradually, the law of the land in Virginia was determined by the House of Burgesses__which grew into a bicameral legislature elected by the people. It became the cornerstone of American government and established two fundamental precedents for the future American nation: America's political tradition would be self-government, and it would be based on the biblical world-view.
# 15 _ The English common law that inspired American law and government was also based largely on the Bible. The English constitution was not a single document, but was a collection of legal traditions, judicial rulings, and historic statutes the developed from Anglo-Saxon culture, Christianity's canon law, and milestone legal statutes__especially the Magna Carta. In 1215, a group of English barons foeced England's King John to sign a document that guaranteed basic God-given or inalienable freedoms to his subjects, and officially proclaimed that even the English monarchy was under rule of law, The Magna Carta, as King John's concession would be known, was the legal cornerstone of Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was drafted by a leading Christian theologian and authority on canon law__Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury__and was rooted in the Higher Law of Scripture.
# 16 _The English common law that inspired American law and government was also based largly on the Bible. The English constitution was not a single document, but was a collection of legal traditions, judicial rulings, and historic statutes that developed from Anglo-Saxon culture, Christianity's canon law, and milestone legal statutes-especially the Magna Carta. In 1215, a group of English barons forced England's King John to sign a document that guaranteed basic God-given or inalienable freedoms to his subjects, and officially proclaimed that even the English monarchy was under rule of law. The Magna Carta, as King John's concession would be known, was the legal cornerstone of Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was drafted by a leading Christian theologian and authority on canon law__Stephen Langton, the archbishop of Canterbury__and was rooted in the Higher Law of Scripture.
# 17 _The legislators enacted dozens of statutes. Among them were laws mandating church attendance on the Lord's Day, a measure requiring that Sundays be kept "in holy and religious order," a provision to financially support Virginia's Anglican clergymen, and regulations outlawing drunkenness and "Gaming with Dice & Cardes." Two years later, in 1621, a new constitution for Virginia dedicated the colony anew to "the Advancement of the Honour and Service of God, and the Enlargement of His Kingdom." The enlargement of the colony faced a severe setback in 1622, when a devastating Indian attack claimed the lives of hundreds of colonists. The attack and mismangement of the colony by the London Company led King James to revoke the colony's charter and make Virginia a royal colony. In 1698, the colony's capital was shifted from Jamestown to nearby Williamsburg. The Jametown settlement eventually disappeared, but the colony of Virginia survived and prospered__and its heritage of Bible-based self-government became a model for the future American nation. Meanwhile, some 450 miles up the forested coasts of America, another model was emerging__and it too was founded on faith.
#  

"PLEAD OUR CAUSE, O LORD" _ CHAPTER # 1

PLEAD OUR CAUSE, O LORD - CHAPTER # 1 !!!    Already they were bickering. It was day two of the First Continental Congrees__Tuesday, September 6, 1774. Delegates from twelve of America's thirteen colonies had assembled at Carpenters Hall in Philadelphian to officially reacts to deteriorating relations between Great Britain and its American colonies. Decades of disagreement had led to a tense crisis between the colonies and the Mother Country. In an attempt to resolve the issues, the colonies had dispatched delegations to Philadelphia's gtand assembly, which was the first of its king in America. Oprning deliberations had been cordial and productive. The delegates had voted to call their assembly the "Continental Congress," had appointed Virginia delegate Peyton Randolph as its president, and had agreed to meet in Philadelphia's Carpenters Hall. Then came day two__and the opening display of cooperation sank into a mire of argument.

# 2 _At issue was the question of how to count votes. Large colonies wanted their populations to count for more. Small colonies wanted equal repersentation. Amid the debate, Philadelphia's church bells began tolling at the news that British forces were bombarding the city of Boston. It was a false alarm, but it added to an atmosphere of anxiety in Congress. The dark mood may have been heightened by the deadly risk each delegate faced by simply being there. The unprecedented assembly was unauthorized by Britain's King George 111 or the British Parliament. Among the delegates in attendance were men who believed the British government's treatment of the American colonies amounted to tyranny. Such politics were deemed treasonous by some, and the delegates undoubtedly knew what grisly fate sometimes befell traitors to the Crown.

# 3 _If arrested and convicted of high treason, a delegate might find himself in Great Britain's notorious Tower of London, waiting to be "drawn and quartered." If so sentenced, he would first be hanged until almost dead, then cut down and disemboweled. While still alive, he would be forced to watch his intestines burned. Then, one by one, other bodily organs would be torturously removed until death finally occurred. Afterward, his corpse would be beheaded and his torso cut into quarters. Finally, his head would be publicly mounted on a post. "Let us prepare for the worst," New Jersey delegate Abraham Clark at one point advised a colleague; "we can Die here but once." Debate on how to count votes concluded with a consensus__a single vote for each delegation__but the tension among delegates led some to fear that the Continental Congress might dissolve in disunity.

# 4 _Then Massachusetts delegate Thomas Cushing made a motion. Cushing was a forty-nine-year-old Boston lawyer, a Harvard alumnus, and a successful merchant. A member of the Masschusetts Committee of Safety, he was a prominent champion of Colonial political rights__always "busy in the interest of liberty," according to a colleagus. He observed the second day's tense deliberations with the savvy of a seasoned stateman__then he acted. From now on, Cushing formally proposed, Congress should officially open its day with prayer. The motion reflected Cushing's personal faith__he was a deacon at Boston's Old South Congregational Church__and it also reflectedthe common faith of most delegates. Even so, Cushing's motion for prayer provoked an immediate challenge.

# 5 _Concerns were voiced by John Rutledge of South Carolina and John Jay of New York. A thirty-five-year-old Lordon-educated attorney, Rutledge was renowned for his eloquence and political acumen. The older of two brothers in the South Carolina delegation, he would eventually become his state's governor and later the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He was anything but a critic of Christianity: tutored by clergymen as a child, he was an Anglican who worshipped at Charleston's St. Michael's Church.

# 6 _John Jay was also  a believer. At twenty-eight, the New York attorney was a prominent member of New York City's Trinity Church. Descended from French Huguenots who had been driven from Europe for their Protestant faith, he would eventually become president of the American Bible Society. Like Rutledge, he too would someday become a governor and a U.S. chief justice, and__like Rutledge__he made no argument for separation of church and state. They were merely concerned that a congressional prayer might increase disunity because so many Christian denominations were represented in Congress. Could the delegte unite in a congressional act of worship?

# 7 _Massachusetts delegate Samuel Adams believed so__and he quickly rose to support Cushing's prayer motion. By almost any measure, Sam Adams was the most famous advocate of Colonial rights in America__and the most controversial. Politics was his passion, and he was a master of the craft. An instrumental leader in the Massachusetts legislature, he was viewed by many as Colonial America's leading defender, but Britain's leaders called him an "angel of darkness." He too was devout. Raised in a family of committed Christians, he had considered the ministry in his youth. Now, as a middle-aged Calvinist, he took his faith seriously, and was said to possess "the dogmatism of a priest."

# 8 _He was "no Bigot," Sam Adams told his fellow delegates. He "could hear a Prayer from a Gentleman of Piety and Virtue, who was at the same Time a Friend to his Country"__and he heartily endorsed the call to congressioal prayer. Congress agreed__and promptly passed Cushing's motion. Beginning the next day, the Continental Congress would officially open every day's session with prayer. But who would be the first to pray? In an obvious display of congressional unity, Samuel Adams, a Puritan Congregationalist, nominated an Anglican clergyman to offer the first official prayer. Congress approved his nomination and promptly sent an invitation to the selected minister.

# 9 _His name was Jacob Duche, and at age thirty-seven, he may have been the most popular preacher in Philadphia. The Anglican pastor of Philadelphia's prestigious Christ Church, Duche was the son of a former Philadelphia mayor and brother-in-law to congressional delegate Francis Hopkinson. A graduate of Cambridge University, he was well educated, served as professor of ortaory at the College of Philadelphia, and was renowned for his eloquence in the pulpit. The invitation to open Congress with prayer was a measure of his prominence, but carried genuine risk: Duche was a minister in the Church of England, Britain's official state church, and accepting the invitation could have put him in harm's way with the British government. He accepted anyway.

# 10 _The next morning__Wednesday, September 7, 1774__the pastor appeared before the delegates attired in Anglican clergyman's robes. When the Congress was called to order, he opened the day's session with a formal prayer, then followed it by reading from the Bible. The Bible passage Duche read was the Anglican "collect" for the day__the scripture scheduled for that day in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer__PSALM 35:

Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me: fight against them that fight against me. Take hold shield and buckler; and stand up for mine help. Draw out also the spear; and stop the way against them that persecute me: say unto my soul, I am thy salvation. Let them be confounded and put to shame that seek after my soul: let them be turned back and brought to confusion that devise my hurt. Let them be as chaff before the wind: and let the angel of the Lord chase them. Let their way be dark and slippery: and let the angel of the Lord persecute them. For without cause have they hid for me their net in a pit, which without cause they have digged for my soul. Let destructioncome upon him at unawares; and let his net that he hath bid catch himself: into that very destruction let him fall. And my soul shall be joyful in the Lord: it shall rejoice in his salvation. . . .Let them be ashamed and brought to confusion together that rejoice at mine hurt: let them be clothed with shame and dishonour that magnify themselves against me. Let them shout for joy, and be glad, that favour my righteous cause: yea, let them say continually, Let the Lord be magnified, which hath pleasure in the prosperity of his servant. And my tongue shall speak of thy righteousness and of thy praise all the day long.

# 11 _Assembled in the intimidating shadow of Royal power, the  delegates found the relevance of Psalm 35 to be extraordinary. It was all the more striking for those who realized that particular Psalm had been placed in the prayer book as the reading for September seventh many years earlier. "It seemed as if Heaven had ordained that Psalm to be read on that morning," Massachusetts' John Adams wrote his wife. Duche's prayers were apparently equally moving. The Secretary of the Continental Congress, Charles Thompson, managed to record one of them as it echoed in the stillness of Carpenters Hall.

O! Lord, our heavenly father, King of Kings and Lord of lords: who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth and reignest with power supreme & uncontrouled over all kingdoms, empires and governments, look down in mercy, we beseech thee, upon these our American states who have fled to thee from the road of the oppressor and thrown themselves upon thy gracious protection, desiring henceforth to be dependent only on thee.

# 12 _To thee they have appealed for the righteousness of their Cause; to Thee do they look up, for that countenance & support which Thou alone canst give. Take them, therefore, Heavenly Father, under thy nurturing care: give them wisdom in council, valour in the field. Defeat the malicious designs for our cruel adversaries. Convince them of the unrighteousness of their cause. And if they persist in their sanguinary purposes, O! let the voice of thy unerring justice sounding in their hearts constrain them to drop the weapons of war from their enerved hands in the day of battle.

# 13 _Be thou present, O God of Wisdom and direct the counsels of this honourable Assembly. Enable them to settle things upon the best and surest foundation, that the scene of blood may be speedily closed; that harmony and peace may effectually be restored, and truth and justice, religion and piety prevail and flourish amongst thy people. Preserve the health of their bodies and the vigour of their minds; shower down upon them and the millions they represent such temporal blessings as Thou seest expedient for them in this world, and crown them with everlasting glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ thy son, Our Saviour, AMEN. 

# 14 _Some delegates were moved to tears. Duche's prayer, marveled John Adams, was "as pertinent, as affectionate, as sublime, as devout, as I ever heard offered up to Heaven. He filled every Bosom present." Connecticut's Silas Deane said the congressional devotion was "worth riding One Hundred Mile to hear." On a motion by New York's James Duane, the delegates unanimously voted to award Duche the official thanks of Congress. After the prayer and Bible-reading, some said, Congress had a renewed sense of purpose and unity.

# 15 _Their decision to find their way by faith was typical of Colonial America. In eighteenth-century America, observed Colonial scholar Patricia Bonomi, "the idiom of religion penetrated all discourse, underly all thought, marked all observances [and] gave meaning to every public and private crisis." The philosophical foundation of Colonial American culture, law, and government was the Judeo-Christian worldview. It was also the flame of inspiration that fired the American quest for freedom. The common people of Colonial America and their learders would soon established a new nation, and it would be founded on an old Book__THE BIBLE.

BIRTH OF THE NATION 1607 - 1776

# 1 _He was old now__white headed and weather-faced__but his memories were rich. He had been present at creation__at the birth of the nation. What scenes he had witnessed: Stamp Act protests, rousing debates in the Massachusetts legislature, ministers passionately preaching freedom from the pulpit, crowds crying, "No taxation without representation!"__and tons of tea spreading like brown ink in Boston Harbor. He has almost been captured by British troops at Lexington in 1775, when the shots were fired that changed the world. He had served as a delegate to the Continental Congress__as the most famous man there, by some estimate. He could remember the faces, the voices, the votes for independence__and the fresh, new appearance of the Declaration of Independence, which bore his signature.
# 2 _He was Samuel Adams, and in March 1797 he was seventy-four years old. He had served God and the people almost his entire life, and he was not finished yet. Not quite. He had been a political writer, an agitator, a legislator, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a United States congressman, a member of the Massachusetts convention that ratified the U.S. Constitution, the lieutenant governor of Massachusetts__and now, in his final years, he was the state's governor.
 He had seen so much__a grand, sweeping survey of America-in-the-making-and yet, he still had important duties to perform.
# 3 _One of them was before him now. It was his responsibility as governor to issue an official proclamation for the commonwealth of Massachusetts. This was no frivolous public statement. It did not resemble future proclamations issued by governors to promote tourism, celebrate sports victories, or recognize beauty queens, state fairs, and cooking festivals. On March 20, 1797, founding father Samuel Adams, now governor of Massachusetts, issued an official state proclamation calling for a "Day of Solemn Fasting and Prayer" in Massachusetts.
# 4 _It was not an unusual government action in eighteenth-century America: legislatures, governors, and the Anerican Congress had officially called for days of thanksgiving and had set aside official days for prayer and fasting. On the designated days, normal activities ceased in most places. Businesses closed. Traffic disappeared. Countless Americans assembled in their churches. Ministers of the Gospel, the most respected professionals in America, led them in worship, confessing sins, giving thanks, and respectfully imploring the blessings of Almighty God.
# 5 _Adams now did so again. With the "advice and consent" of the state legislatute, he officially proclaimed that a day in May would be set aside throughtout Massachusetts "for the purpose of public fasting prayer." On that day, "Ministers of the Gospel, with their respected congregationd" were asked to "assmble together and seriously consider, and with one untied voice confess our past sins and transgressions, with holy resolutions, by the Grace of God, to turn our feet into the path of His Law__Humbly beseeching Him to endue us with all the Christian spirit of Piety, Benevolence and the Love of our Country; and that in all our public deliberations we may be possessed of a sacred regard to the fundamental principles of our free elective civil Constitutions. . . .'' As governor, Adams also called on the people of Massachusetts to pray for the state's businesses, its industry, its education system, for the other American states, and for the national goverment. "And I do hereby recommend," he added, "that all unnecessary labour and recreation may be suspended on the said day." The proclamation concluded with an official request that would undoubetedly seem statling to many in a distant, future America:
I concede that we cannot better express ourselves than by humbly supplicating the Supreme Ruler of the World__That the rod of tyrants may be broken into pieces, and the oppressed made Free__That wars may cease in all the Earth, and that the confusions that are and have been among the Nations may be overruled for the promoting and speedily bringing on that holy and happy period, when the Kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ may be everywhere established, and all the people willingly bow to the Sceptre of Him who is the Prince of Peace.
# 6 _By issuing such an official proclamation, were the governor and legislature of Massachusetts violating the United States Constitution? Not to their thinking. Samuel Adams had signed the Declaration of Independence and had voted to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Therefore, he not only understood the original intent of America's founding documents__he had helped make them. So had many others in his day, and they too had crafted, assisted, or observed First Day proclamations such as the one Samuel Adams issued in 1797. For them, America's foundation of faith was common knowledge, and they viewed American liberty as a legacy of the Judeo-Christian worldview. In their day, it was an accepted fact that American and English law were based on the Higher Law of the Bible__ans so were America's founding documents."The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence, were the only principles in which that beautiful assembly of young gentleman could unite," wrote founding father John Adams. "And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity. . . ." America's founding fathers, however, did not act alone: their decisive, deliberate actions reflected the common values of the people they represented. They were the real founding fathers__the people of Colonial America whose values forged the nation. Today, they are largely forgotten. So too are many of the key events that motivated them, such as the Great Awakening, and many of the leaders who inspired them, such as Jonathan Edwards, Samuel Davies, George Whitefield, even Samuel Adams. Fading too among the American public is awareness of the nations, founding values, such as Higher Law and inalienable rights.
# 7 _Some modern historians, such as the Jewish scholar Abraham Katsh, have labored mightily to preserve a record of America's faith__based founding. Of the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, Katsh wrote: "there runs through these two prime instruments of American government the deeper meaning and higher purpose of a constant regard for principles and religious ideads, based on a profound sympathy with the Scriptures. . . ." The historical record is clear: America was forged on faith. But is that foundational fact common knowledge in contemporary America? Or has it been cast aside amid the clutter of modern distractions? Or perhaps lost by the neglect of the disinterested?
# 8 _In a contemporary classroom survey of upper-level American university students, all demonstrated extensive knowledge of popular culture-music and musicians, actors and actresses, star performers of the NBA, NFL, and NASCAR. They correctly identified the leading contestants in a televised talent show and the titles of contemporary motion pictures. When queried on topics from American history, all demonstrated a general knowledge that was decidedly superior to the random on-the-street interviews frequently cited in the modern news madia. Fewer than 10 percent, however, correctly indentified Jonathan Edwards. One percent knew of George Whitefield. Twice as many thought Samuel Adams was an alcoholic beverage rather than a founding father. One percent recognized the Great Awakening. None__not one__was able to correctly identify John Calvin's Institutes or apparently had ever heard of Higher Law.
# 9 _A century after his death , New England theologian Jonathan Edwards, whose 1741 sermon launched the Great Awakening, was deemed so important that Harvard historian Gerorge Bancroft devoted numerous pages to him in his epic History of the United States of America. Fifty years later, in the early twentieth century, Pulitzer Prize__winning historian Edward Channing depicted Edwards as a "keen intellect" who "united wonderful skill in the use of language and remarkable power of expression." In the same era, Encyclopaedia Britannica described Edwards as "an earnest, devout Christian and a man of blameless life," who had achieved a "great work" of scholarship. When New York University established the nationally acclaimed Hall of Fame for Great Americans in 1901, Edwards was honored as one of its first inductees, and was enshrined alongside Gerorge Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson.
# 10 _By the twenty-first century, however, Americans and their heroes had changed. Jonathan Edwards was now unkown to most and discredited by others. In contrast to the respectful treatment Edwards had received from biographers a century earlier, he was now denounced for "high-handedness and bigotry" by a leading online student encyclopedia. The famous sermon that sparked the Great Awakening was dismissed as an "appeal to religious fear," and the faith in Christ inspired by his preaching was belittled as emotional "convulsions and hysteria." As for the Great Awakening__the unprecedented revival that inspired American independence? It was merely an odd "religious frenzy," the encyclopedia's student readers were informed, which spun "out of control" and stifled "liberal interpretation of doctrine."