David Barton

“In the name of the great Jehovah, and the Continental Congress!” It was this phrase, and the capture of Fort Ticonderoga, which earned Ethan Allen a place in Statuary Hall.

General Lew Wallace is perhaps best known, however, not for his military or political accomplishments but rather for his literary accomplishments. He was the author of the forever immortalized classic, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ, the novel about the life of Judah Ben-Hur. That work, first printed in 1880, swept not only the nation but also the world, being translated into numerous languages.

The impetus for that famous work began in 1876 when General Wallace conversed at length with Robert Ingersoll, a co-officer from the Civil War. Ingersoll, titled by the press as “The Great Agnostic,” was the national evangelist for atheism. In his conversation with General Wallace, Ingersoll first forcefully asserted that there was no God, no Devil, and no afterlife, and then challenged Wallace to try to prove that Jesus was the Son of God. 42 Wallace was disturbed by the conversation and found himself ashamed of his own ignorance about the topics raised by Ingersoll, especially his own lack of knowledge about the life of Jesus.

Wallace therefore set out to research the life of Christ, as well as the Jewish and Roman cultures of that day. He studied numerous works, including those by Josephus and Edward Gibbon, and he eventually made a trip to the Holy Land to trace the steps of Christ. As a result of his research, two things happened to General Lew Wallace: one, he became a Christian; and two, he wrote the book that, even today, remains an international classic.

Consider also signer Richard Stockton. Like the others of the signers, he pledged his life, fortune, and sacred honor for the cause of American independence; and like the others, he kept his promise. In fact, he was one of nine signers of the Declaration who did not survive the American Revolution.

Richard Stockton was captured by the British and, as an American prisoner of war, was tortured and severely abused. Incidentally, during the American Revolution, it was actually safer for an American soldier to be on the battlefield facing British muskets than to be captured and placed in a British prisoner of war camp. Thousands more Americans died from British prisoner of war camps than from British bullets. 18 hopkinson’s hymnal (left) and the twenty-third p

The Americans eventually were able to arrange for the release of Richard Stockton through a prisoner exchange; but his health was so crushed that he never recovered; he was dying and he knew it. Understanding this, he placed his temporal affairs in order and penned his last will and testament. Notice his strong Christian faith evident in that document:

[A]s my children will have frequent occasion of perusing this instrument, and may probably be particularly impressed with the last words of their father, I think it proper here not only to subscribe to the entire belief of the great and leading doctrines of the Christian religion, such as the being of God; the universal defection and depravity of human nature; the Divinity of the person and the completeness of the redemption purchased by the blessed Savior; the necessity of the operations of the Divine Spirit; of Divine faith accompanied with an habitual virtuous life; and the universality of the Divine Providence: but also, in the bowels of a father’s affection, to exhort and charge [my children] that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, that the way of life held up in the Christ

 There is no doubt that this Founding Father – who sacrificed his life for our freedom – was a strong Christian; and he has been honored in the Capitol with a statue, located in East Central Hall.

Consider also signer Thomas McKean. He was one of America’s leading legal authorities and was responsible for a 1792 Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States of America. Thomas McKean, in addition to signing the Declaration of Independence, also helped author the constitutions of Pennsylvania and of Delaware and served as governor in each of those States.  Additionally, he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania.

In the case Respublica v. John Roberts 20 (a trialover which Chief Justice McKean presided), John Roberts was sentenced to death after a jury found him guilty of treason. (In those days, a sentence of death meant that the prisoner had just a few days left on earth, not fifteen to twenty years.) After reporting the jury’s decision and delivering the sentence, Chief Justice McKean then offered these words of wisdom to John Roberts:

You will probably have but a short time to live. Before you launch into eternity, it behooves you to improve the time that may be allowed you in this world: it behooves you most seriously to reflect upon your past conduct; to repent of your evil deeds; to be incessant in prayers to the great and merciful God to forgive your manifold transgressions and sins; to teach you to rely upon the merit and passion of a dear Redeemer, and thereby to avoid those regions of sorrow – those doleful shades where peace and rest can never dwell, where even hope cannot enter. It behooves you to seek the [fellowship], advice, and prayers of pious and good men; to be [persistent] at the Throne of Grace, and to learn the way that leadeth to happiness. May you, reflecting upon these things, and pursuing the will of the great Father of light and life, be received into [the] company and society of angels and archangels and the spirits of just men made perfect; and may you be qualified to enter into the joys of Heaven – joys unspeakable and full of glory!  

If one accepts the current ridiculous charges that our Founders were not religious, then this is the account of an alleged deist Founding Father giving a very Christ-centered altar call in a courtroom. Hardly! Signer of the Declaration Thomas McKean was another of our many Founding Fathers who was a strong Christian.

Begin with John Witherspoon. He was an ordained minister of the Gospel, published several books of Gospel sermons, and played major roles in two American editions of the Bible, including one from 1791 that is considered America’s first family Bible.

The Rev. Dr. Witherspoon wrote the introduction for this Bible, and although the Bible’s text is essentially the same as that of the King James version, it does not carry that title. After all, the Americans – including Dr. Witherspoon – had just fought a war to be free of kings, so why attach the name of a king to an American edition of the Bible? Therefore, this Bible describes itself only as “The Holy Bible” because, as Dr. Witherspoon pointed out, this was God’s Word, not the word of a king!

John Witherspoon, signer of the Declaration and minister of the Gospel, helped produce America’s very first family Bible. Consider next Charles Thomson. Charles Thomson was the Secretary of Congress, and he and John Hancock were the only two to sign the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. Charles Thomson is another Founder responsible for an American edition of the Bible. That Bible – called Thomson’s Bible – was the first translation of the Greek Septuagint into English. It took Charles Thomson twenty-five years to complete his translation, but even today that work is still considered one of the more scholarly American translations of the Bible.

Consider also signer Charles Carroll of Carrollton. Charles Carroll was the last of the fifty-six signers to pass away, dying in 1832 at the age of 95. A strong and unequivocal declaration of his Christian faith appears in numerous writings, including a letter he wrote on his 89th birthday in which he declared: “On the mercy of my Redeemer I rely for salvation, and on His merits; not on the works I have done in obedience to His precepts.In other of his writings, Charles Carroll explained that his Christian faith was one of the chief reasons that he had entered

In earlier years, charges of the non-religious nature of our Founders were immediately dismissed because citizens knew about our individual Founders. For example, the textbook from 1848 pictured on the right, was used in classrooms for decades. It provided  a brief biography of each of the 56 signers of the Declaration and was quite candid about the strong Christian faith of so many of them.

In a return to the practice of these earlier schoolbooks, let’s examine some of the religious beliefs held by Founders depicted, for example, in the painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

Realize that every individual in the painting had an impact on the Declaration of Independence, even though not everyone pictured actually signed it. Why? Because even though Congress approved the Declaration on July 4th, 1776, it was then signed only by the President and Secretary of Congress. The final engrossed version of the Declaration was not signed by most representatives until August 2nd; and during that intervening month, some who had voted for the Declaration were called away to the service of their country before they could sign.

For example, George Clinton voted for the final draft of the Declaration on July 4th, but before he could sign, he was called to assume military leadership in New York. And even though Robert Livingston was on the five-man committee charged with writing the Declaration, he was recalled to serve in his State legislature before he could sign the very document he had helped draft. George Clinton and Robert Livingston, even though they ultimately did not sign the Declaration, are both in the Rotunda painting of the signing of the Declaration and each is so significant that he has been honored with a statue at the Capitol.

John Trumbull served as an officer during the American Revolution, and what makes his paintings so meaningful is that he personally witnessed much of what he painted and personally knew many of those whom he painted in the pictures. Because of his commitment to artistic accuracy, the faces in his paintings in the Rotunda are probably about as close as is possible to having photographs of our Founding Fathers.

John Trumbull came from a family of outspoken Christians, and other members of his family are also honored in the Capitol. For example, his brother Jonathan, who was a colonel during the Revolution as well as an officer on George Washington’s staff, is included in the painting of the surrender of Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown.

After the Revolution, Jonathan became Governor of Connecticut; and while Governor, he issued several proclamations – with strong evangelical language – calling his entire State to extended times of prayer. It is not surprising, however, that he issued such evangelical proclamations, for they reflect his very nature. In fact, Jonathan Trumbull was one among the overwhelming majority of our Founding Fathers and early leaders who were strongly and openly religious.

There are many today who dispute this fact. Rather than acknowledge that Christianity played an important role in the formation of  this nation, or that there is a deep and rich religious heritage attached to the Capitol building, or that most of our Founding Fathers were strongly and openly religious, they instead claim just the opposite. For example, one prominent historian amazingly asserts, “The Founding Fathers were at most deists.” And in an article entitled “America’s UnChristian Beginnings,” the writer forcefully claims that “The early presides and patriots were generally deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the relevance of the Bible.” Another author similarly charges, “[M]ost of our other patriarchs were at best deists, [not] believing in . . . the God of the Old and New Testaments.” 9 And the title of one book seems to say it all: The Godless Constitution.