Fourth of July

On July 4, 1776, Samuel Adams rose in the Continental Congress to announce, “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to whom alone men ought to be obedient.” Thomas Jefferson voiced the same theme in the Declaration of Independence:  “. . . that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” On this day, our Founding Fathers took one of the greatest steps of faith in history—severing the ties of royal authority, representing centuries of tradition, and putting in its place the authority of God. They looked to God as the source and guarantor of their (and our) rights as human beings. At this moment in history a new nation was created with God at the center and individual citizens at the top of the chain of human authority—since it is the individual citizen who has the relationship with God. Ultimate authority came to rest therefore with the private person, not a king, president, parliament, or congress. These are America’s spiritual roots and what has distinguished this nation from all others ever founded.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power. ~Alexander Hamilton