In 1492, Christopher Columbus made a well-known journey from Spain to the Americas that opened up a bridge between the Old and New Worlds.  What is not as well known about this man was his deep Christian faith that served as the primary motivator for his setting out on this risky journey.  Following his discovery of this new land, in a letter to King Ferdinand of Spain, Columbus wrote the following:[i]

“Therefore let the king and queen, the princes and their most fortunate kingdoms, and all other countries of Christendom give thanks to our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who has bestowed upon us so great a victory and gift.  Let religious processions be solemnized; let sacred festivals be given; let the churches be covered with festive garlands.  Let Christ rejoice on earth, as he rejoices in heaven, when he foresees coming to salvation so many souls of people hitherto lost.” 

In his journal called the Book of Prophecies, Columbus made the following observation of what he believed the Lord was doing during his day:[ii]

“The Holy Scriptures testify in the Old Testament, by the mouth of the prophets, and in the new [Testament], by our Savior Jesus Christ, that this world will come to an end: Matthew, Mark, and Luke have recorded the signs of the end of the age….And I say that the sign which convinces me that our Lord is hastening the end of the world is the preaching of the Gospel recently in so many lands.” 

The Pilgrims vs. the Puritans

Both the Pilgrims and the Puritans were made up of Protestant Christians who had their origins in England during the early 1600’s and who both had disagreements with the Church of England.   What was the difference between these two groups? 

The Pilgrims, unlike the Puritans, did not believe there was any hope for reform for the national Church of England.  This group felt that the national church was so heavily influenced by human traditions instead of the Bible in their practices that they felt the need to separate themselves completely from its influence.  They even went so far as to seek out a new land where they could set up their own government and to practice their faith with freedom.  The Pilgrims, hence, were the first group of Christian dissidents to make the journey to the New World in 1620 to establish their own self-government.  The most significant thing to note about the Pilgrims, as observed by author Paul Johnson in his book A History of the American People[iii] and author Peter Marshall in his book The Light and the Glory[iv], was that this was the first group of people in the history of the world to establish a self-governing charter between a group of like-minded people, based on the Bible and on the authority of God, instead of a king.  The charter they created was known as the Mayflower Compact.  The following is an excerpt from that document:

“In the name of God, Amen.  We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James…Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith, and the Honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern Parts of Virginia; do by these Presents, solemnly and mutually in the Presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid…”

Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans believed that there was still hope for the Church of England.  Although they were at odds with the Church of England, their intentions were to establish purity in the national church, hence their name the Puritans.  Shortly after the Pilgrims arrived to the New World, the Puritans were granted a charter by the King of England at the time, King Charles I, to establish their own Commonwealth in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1629.  One of the distinctive characteristics about the Puritans was that they had their origins in the educated elite of England, thus bringing with them wealth, education, professionalism and a desire to establish a model of government and religious practice that was more perfect in its form than the one which they were leaving.[v]  Just like the Pilgrims, the Puritans, too, established their own covenant.  The following is an excerpt from that agreement:

“We covenant with our Lord, and one with another; and we do bind our selves in the presence of God, to walk together in all his ways, according as he is pleased to reveal himself unto us in his blessed word of truth; and do explicitly, in the name and fear of God, profess and protest to walk as followeth, through the power and grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.” 

Together, the Pilgrims and the Puritans established the blueprints and foundations in the New World for self-governing charters that paved the way to the creation of the U.S. Constitution.[vi]

Harvard University

Harvard, America’s first university was founded in 1636 shortly after the Puritans began to settle the Massachusetts colony.  This university was named after the Reverend John Harvard and was established as a seminary with the primary aim to train up ministers of the Gospel.  Cotton Mather, a Puritan historian and student of Harvard wrote the following about this institution:[vii]

“[T]he Christians in the most early times of New-England were to form a colledge, wherein a succession of a learned and able ministry might be educated.  And, indeed, they foresaw that without such a provision for a sufficient ministry, the churches of New-England must have been less than a business of one age, and soon have come to nothing: the other hemisphere of the world would never have sent us over men enough to have answered our necessities; but without a nursery for such men among ourselves “darkness must have covered the land, and gross darkness the people.””

Today at Harvard, the following words are still etched in stone in old English:

“After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had built our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God’s worship, and settled the civil government, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches, when our present ministers shall lie in the dust.”[viii]

John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was a political philosopher of the Enlightenment period.  Locke is best known for his revolutionary ideas on “life, liberty and property”, principles which he articulated in his work called Of Civil Government and that had a direct impact on the formation of the American Declaration of Independence.  As a part of his career, Locke had received his master’s degree from and taught at Christ Church College of Oxford University in 1658.  In a work that he wrote later in his life in 1695 called The Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke articulated the need for human governments to base their legitimacy on God with the Bible as their ultimate source for moral direction.[ix]  In it, he wrote the following: 

“As Men we have God for our King, and are under the Law of Reason: as Christians, we have Jesus the Messiah for our King, and are under the Law reveal’d by him in the Gospel.” 

Locke further wrote in A Vindication of the Reasonableness of Christianity, “He that shall collect all the moral rules of the philosophers and compare them with those contained in the New Testament will find them to come short of the morality delivered by our Saviour and taught by His disciples: a college made up of ignorant but inspired fisherman…”[x]

Locke also professed that, “The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men.”

Sir William Blackstone

Sir William Blackstone (1723-1780) was a well-known British jurist of his day who wrote a body of work called Commentaries on the Laws of England.  From the time this book was published in 1760, and for the next one hundred years, this book was so popular in the early history of America that it out-sold most other books during its day and became one of the most often cited and quoted works by students of the law.[xi]  In his Commentaries, Blackstone articulated concepts of the laws of nature and natural rights such as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness all of which he reasoned from principles taught in the Bible.  The following are some quotes from his work:

“Law, in its most general and comprehensive sense, signifies a rule of action, and is applied indiscriminately to all kinds of action, whether animate or inanimate, rational or irrational.  Thus we say, the laws of motion, of gravitation, of optics, or mechanics, as well as the laws of nature and of nations.  And it is that rule of action which is prescribed by some superior, and which the inferior is bound to obey.

Thus, when the Supreme Being formed the universe, and created matter out of nothing, He impressed certain principles upon that matter, from which it can never depart, and without which it would cease to be.  When He put that matter into motion, He established certain laws of motion, to which all moveable bodies must conform.” 

“Man, considered as a creature, must necessarily be subject to the laws of his Creator, for he is entirely a dependent being.  A being, independent of any other, has no rule to pursue but such as he prescribes to himself; but a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him on whom he depends as the rule of his conduct; not, indeed, in every particular, but in all those points wherein his dependence consists…[a]nd, consequently as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his Maker’s will.  This will of his Maker is called the law of nature.”[xii]

Blackstone draws out a critical conclusion from this reasoning that the “pursuit of happiness” is the natural aim for human life, but that this happiness is totally dependent upon the obedience to God’s law.  He writes, “For He has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former.”[xiii]

Thomas Jefferson and the Separation of Church and State

In the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”  From the perspective of the Founders of this nation, this amendment was intended to put a limit on the government of this nation from interfering with the rights of the people to the free exercise of religion.  In recent years, however, the meaning of the First Amendment has been flip-flopped and used to limit the rights of the free exercise of religion to prevent it from interfering with the practices of government.  This perspective is embodied in the concept of the “separation of church and state”.[xiv]

The term “separation of church and state” is not one that is directly found in the U.S. Constitution or the Bill of Rights.  Instead, it was taken from a letter written by Thomas Jefferson to the Danbury Baptists on January 1, 1802.  This religious group was concerned at the time that the newly formed federal government would put limits on their ability to freely practice their faith.  Jefferson reassured them through this letter that that was not the case.  He justified this position by stating that their faith practices were safe-guarded by the addition of the First Amendment because it erected a “wall of separation” between the church and the state.[xv]

Contrary to popular belief, even though Jefferson did express doubt in Christianity later in his life, during the years that he served in public office, he was an active participant in his church and created policies that were friendly towards the practice of religion in public life.  Two days after his letter to the Danbury Baptists, Jefferson began attending church services held in the chambers of the House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. which was later moved to the Capitol Rotunda.  He attended these services every Sunday for the next seven years for the remainder of his term as President of the United States.[xvi]