The Founders put God at the center of the Declaration of Independence

Today is synonymous with fireworks, flags, parades and barbecues, but 33 percent of Americans do not plan to celebrate the nation’s 249th birthday. National pride has fallen to record lows, and a 2023 poll found that 41 percent of Americans do not know the meaning of Independence Day on the Fourth of July.

As a lead-up to next year’s 250th anniversary, a concerted effort should be made to educate citizens about the holiday and the risks the Founding Fathers took to make it happen. Little attention is paid to the collective bravery necessary to establish our country after the Declaration of Independence was signed, which severed ties with Great Britain, then a leading world power.

Most significantly, God’s role is often downplayed or ignored in the Declaration, with three godly references that altered history and remain politically relevant. For example, after President Trump authorized the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities last month, he addressed the American people and concluded by saying, “And I want to just thank everybody, and in particular, God. I want to just say, we love you, God, and we love our great military. Protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much.”

While Trump expressed gratitude and love for God after a successful attack, the Founders justified their Declaration of Independence because of God. Knowing that winning freedom from Great Britain would be a David-vs.-Goliath battle, our revolutionary leaders placed God at the tip of their spear both philosophically and militarily.

Let’s analyze the three references to God in the Declaration of Independence. The first paragraph is a single long sentence: “The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them ...”

Initially, the Founders declared political independence based on “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” They believed these were inherent, universal natural rights emanating from God, to which people are entitled. Those rights help establish a divine moral order where humankind can thrive, achieve and create.

Best-known is the second mention of God, found in the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

So having established that God grants natural law and rights that cannot be nullified, the Founders based their new nation on unalienable rights “endowed by their Creator.” This was groundbreaking because, for centuries, rights and freedoms had been granted by kings. Then the Declaration listed the many reasons why the 13 colonies were being unjustly governed by the British king, who violated their God-given rights.

President Ronald Reagan eloquently explained that revolutionary concept in an essay published in Parade Magazine commemorating Independence Day in 1981. “Somewhere in our growing up, we began to be aware of the meaning of the day, and with that awareness came the birth of patriotism," he wrote. "July Fourth is the birthday of our nation. I believed as a boy, and believe even more today, that it is the birthday of the greatest nation on earth.

“It also commemorates the only true philosophical revolution in all history. Oh, there have been revolutions before and since ours. But those revolutions simply exchanged one set of rules for another. Ours was a revolution that changed the very concept of government.

“Let the Fourth of July always be a reminder that here in this land, for the first time, it was decided that man is born with certain God-given rights; that government is only a convenience created and managed by the people, with no powers of its own except those voluntarily granted to it by the people. We sometimes forget that great truth, and we never should.”

The founding document’s third reference to God appears in the final paragraph: “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

So the Founders openly proclaimed a “firm reliance on protection of divine Providence” to establish their new nation based on natural rights “endowed by their Creator.” That three-part, divinely-inspired reasoning helped sustain our fledgling nation through seven years of revolutionary war.

Miraculously, on Sept. 3, 1783, the 13 states won independence from the tyrannical British crown. By 1945, the U.S. had become — and continues to be — a global superpower.

However, on this 249th birthday, America is being tested in ways that our Founders foresaw when they established three co-equal branches of government to prevent the president from usurping power and becoming a king. That system of checks and balances was attacked on Jan. 6, 2021 — and it survived.

Today, Trump delights in expanding executive power, while the judicial and legislative branches willingly cede authority to him. If current trends continue, by America’s 250th birthday the three co-equal branches could form a triangle, with the executive at the top and the judicial and legislative branches relegated to the base.

Fearing the expansion of the executive branch, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor recently warned the American people, writing, “The rule of law is not a given in this nation, nor any other. It is a precept of our democracy that will endure only if those brave enough in every branch fight for its survival. Today, the court abdicates its vital role in that effort.”

Cue the fireworks! Requoting the Declaration of Independence, America needs “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”

Happy Fourth of July, and God Bless America!

Myra Adams is a political and religious opinion writer who served on the creative team of two Republican presidential campaigns, in 2004 and 2008.