"The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP)- Although modern commentators sometimes argue about whether religion should have anything to do with politics, it was a religious concept that produced the nation itself.
That transcendent principle was the backbone of a document celebrated on July 4— the Declaration of Independence— which initiated the very nationhood that gives politics its life.
The declaration "ought to be commemorated as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts of devotion to Almighty God," wrote John Adams, one of its signers who became the country's second president.
He also suggested fireworks and parades would be in order, the sort of festivities that mark issuance of that formative document in 1776.
In its essential reasoning, it was a theological treatise, challenging the prevailing theory that kings inherited divine rule.
The justification that it sets forth for the birth of these United States was that human beings are "endowed by their Creator with certain unalianable Rights" that cannot be usurped by any other power. They belong inherently to people, rights derived from the "Laws of Nature and Nature's God," the declaration says, and they cannot be given nor taken away by any monarch or government.
On that basis, hinged to that high conviction, and "appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of Our Intentions." the founding fathers declared the independence of the 13 British colonies.
In doing so, they asserted their "firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence." Four times in that brief, ringing exposition of the cause for independence, the founders rested their case on God.
The signers were all religious men. Some of them such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were called "deists," who had little use for denominational rivalries and who considered their faith reasonable Christianity.
"Deism" generally consisted of affirmations that God created and sustained the natural world, that he is to be worshipped, that worship demands virtue, that wrongdoing should be repented and that there is an afterlife of rewards and punishments.
Jefferson, who largely wrote the declaration, was something of a biblical scholar who spent his evenings while serving as the nation's third president arranging the four gospels in sequential order and eliminating repetitions, a work known as "The Jefferson Bible."
"It is a document in proof that I am a real Christian, that is to say, a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus," Jefferson wrote later.
As for denominational affiliations, the 56 signers of the declaration included 30 Anglicans (Episcopalians), 12 Congregationalists, seven Presbyterians, 4 Quakers, one Baptist, one Unitarian and one Roman Catholic.
The rationale of the declaration sometimes is attributed to influence of philosopher John Locke, who saw human rights grounded in "nature," as "natural rights." But he said nature itself "evidences a Deity," that life gets its direction from God's "great design."
The Continental Congress regularly opened its sessions with prayer, a practice still continued by the U.S. Congress.
In drafting the constitution, whose bicentennial is being observed this year, debate over it had virtually ground to a standstill in mid-summer of 1787, bogged down in wrangling conflict.
It was an "awful and critical moment," wrote William Few, a Georgia delegate, who said if the impasse was not resolved, the "dissolution of the union of states seemed inevitable."
In that crisis, Benjamin Franklin, 81, the oldest of delegates, took the floor, suggesting an humble "applying to the Father of Lights to illuminate our under standing."
"We have been assured, sir, in the sacred Writings, that "except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it," he added, "I have lived a long time, sir, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth— that God governs in the affairs of men."
"I firmly believe that, and I also believe that without his concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building not better than the builders of the tower of Babel."
In the ensuing discussion, Edmund Randolph of Virginia proposed a special sermon be preached on July 4, and from then on, there be daily intercessory prayers. It was done, and on September 17, 1787, the Constitution was approved.
George Washington, who served as the first president, said "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports."
Religion, said Jefferson, is the "alpha and omega of the moral law" and "a supplement to law in the government of men."
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French statesman and historian commissioned to analyze the special genius of the American system in its early stages, termed religion "the foremost of their political institutions."
Religious Concept Basis Of Nation's Birth