Americans see the Fourth of July as the time to celebrate their nation's freedom. But some say it's also an excellent time to remember the faith that made them free.
Among them is Author Rod Gragg, a South Carolinian who sees himself fighting an uphill battle in an increasingly secular culture. He's wants to show that America wasn't just shaped by faith on the fringes, but that it was absolutely saturated in Christianity, led by biblical-thinking in every facet of life.
In his book, Forged in Faith: How Faith Shaped the Birth of the Nation, Gragg points out that America had the good fortune to be settled by Englishmen at a time when their homeland was exploding with religious fervor from the Reformation.
"And it was in this atmosphere that these English people spilled into America, and they brought this biblical faith with them," Gragg said. "And it was on this faith, this Judeo-Christian worldview, that American government, law, and culture were established."
A Secular Settlement?
Of the first two colonies, some often consider the pilgrims at Plymouth, Mass., as the religious settlement, and the settlers at Jamestown, Va. as the secular settlement. But Gragg said Jamestown settlers were also immersed in Christian belief.
"They brought a chaplain with them," he pointed out. "They erected a cross at Cape Henry. The first legislative assembly in America at Jamestown met in a church and opened with prayer. They stopped to pray several times a day."
And having a religion that was so much about free will, they established self-government as the central tenet of every colony and state that came after.
Then the pilgrims arrived. Before they even left the Mayflower, they made a covenant - which was basically the first American constitution. The Mayflower Compact reflected their core belief that people should be free and these free people should govern themselves by biblical law.
"This precedent was established for self-government in America, but self-government that was faith-based," Gragg explained.
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