On Sept. 17, 1787, the Founding Fathers at the Constitutional Convention, led by George Washington, signed the greatest political document in human history. We celebrate this day still as Constitution Day.
The Constitution Center calls it “the most influential document in American history,” and that is not an exaggeration. Of course, it was not perfect, for no human document is perfect. The Founders themselves quickly realized they needed to add a Bill of Rights, for instance, and though some Founders, like Washington and Alexander Hamilton, were proud that the words “slave” and “slavery” never appeared in the Constitution, it nonetheless allowed the continuation of slavery for some time. Still, it represented the first time in history when a country was founded not on geography or ethnicity or conquest or a specific set of cultural practices, but rather on moral and philosophical ideals.
Below is the preamble to what former slave and rhetorician Frederick Douglass called a “glorious liberty document:”
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Those words electrified not only America but the entire world, and they have been doing so ever since.
The Founders, indeed, drew specifically from Judeo-Christian principles in founding America. John Adams famously observed, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” George Washington warned, “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.” Hamilton cautioned that without Christianity, “the world would be a hellish place.” One might say, in fact, that the Founders applied the Parable of the Talents (Matthew 25:14ff) to the political and economic spheres, for the first time ever.
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Judaism and Christianity teach that every soul is created by God and is infinitely valuable. Jesus clarified in his parable that God gives to each man a certain set of talents, which he must use to reach heaven. And yet, throughout most of Christian civilization, governments and societies were still based around a class structure that did not allow individuals to use their talents, except within certain strict parameters imposed by birth, unless the person joined the Church and became illustrious through sanctity. The Founders instead made sure that every American, at least in theory, could use his gifts as God intended without being held back by his birth.
It took us over a century to implement the ideas more fully, since, for too long, race and sex were held as barriers, despite no such restrictions in the Constitution, the underlying philosophy of which was always the same. It has only to be put into practice.
On this Constitution Day, reread this great document and celebrate the gift of being American. But we must also be dedicated to defending liberty harder than ever in the future. As Ben Franklin said, we have a republic, if we can keep it.
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