Declaration of What?
January/February 2026December last year brought a flood of explicitly Christian Christmas greetings from official government social media accounts—messages that angered some Americans and delighted others.
The Department of Homeland Security posted a video with the caption “Merry Christmas, America. We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior.” Defense secretary Pete Hegseth posted, “Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on his official X account that “the joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ.” Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins posted a video that credited “the very best of the American spirit” to “the very first Christmas, when God gave us the greatest gift possible: the gift of his son and our savior, Jesus Christ.” Education secretary Linda McMahon wished Americans “a day filled with lasting memories as we celebrate the birth of our Savior.” The Department of Labor posted a message to its X account: “Let Earth Receive Her King.”
The cumulative message was clear: America is a Christian nation. As Vice President J. D. Vance put it, somewhat confusingly, in a December 21 speech: “I’m not saying you have to be a Christian to be an American”; but “we have been and, by the grace of God, we always will be a Christian nation.”
For those who believe that Americans do indeed “share a nation and a Savior,” the Declaration of Independence is a cornerstone document. Unlike the U.S. Constitution, which not only fails to mention the Christian faith but prohibits religious tests for public office, the Declaration references a Supreme Being four times: ”Nature’s God,” unalienable rights endowed by a ”Creator,” and appeals to the ”the Supreme Judge of the world” and ”the protection of Divine Providence.” Many Americans believe, as lieutenant governor of Indiana Micah Beckwith suggested, in a recent interview, that the Declaration of Independence is the vision statement of America, providing its “Judeo-Christian” charter.
But does it?
The ”Finger of Providence”
America has a long tradition of deifying its founding documents and personalities. Consider the nation’s response to an extraordinary coincidence that took place on July 4, 1826. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two giants of the founding generation, both died on the same day, just hours apart, exactly 50 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Patriotic fervor swept the nation over the following weeks. In cities and towns, from Indiana to Georgia to Massachusetts, citizens tolled bells, lowered flags, gathered for public speeches, mourning Jefferson and Adams with eulogies and mock funeral processions.
The timing of these two deaths seemed miraculous. Historian Merrill Peterson calls it a coincidence that ignited a “dramatic moment” in the growth of American self-consciousness—it supercharged the development of our national mythology.
Then-president John Quincy Adams captured the overwrought mood of the nation when he issued an official proclamation, declaring: “In this most singular coincidence, the finger of Providence is plainly visible! It hallows the Declaration of Independence as the Word of God, and is the bow in the Heaven, that promises its principles shall be eternal, and their dissemination universal over the earth.”
Unfortunately, this surge of national harmony, centered on the Declaration of Independence, was short-lived. The deaths of Jefferson and Adams came at the very tail end of the so-called Era of Good Feelings—a long period of relative political calm after the War of 1812. Bitter feelings soon replaced good feelings. The corrupting presence of slavery, along with persistent disputes over states’ rights, nudged the nation steadily toward the rupture of 1861.
The Battle to Define America
Today we’re again celebrating a landmark anniversary of the Declaration of Independence against a backdrop of national strain. During a year that should be focused on celebrating the remarkable 250-year history of the American republic, that history has instead become a battlefield. And in this conflict the current presidential administration has identified America’s apparent Christian character as one of its key objectives.
In one way, this is simply the most recent skirmish in a continuing battle. What’s new, however, are the increasingly extreme positions being staked out on either side of the conflict.
On one side are those who imagine a founding generation that was entirely skeptical—if not downright hostile—toward Christianity; who intended the public space to be stripped bare of any trace of religious expression. They ignore the historical record showing that America’s Founders, as a group, were neither irreligious nor antagonistic toward faith. Even Jefferson, perhaps the least conventionally religious of the Founders, had a healthy respect for the power of religion to instill civic virtue.
On the other extreme, however, are those who seek to create the Founders in their own image—as twenty-first-century American Christians in powdered wigs and knee breeches. They twist and turn the historical record until they can see in it a reflection of their own religious views and political wishes. In this cherry-picked version of history, the Great American Experiment is as much a spiritual as political project, and its Founders are saints as well as statesmen.
As the conflict continues, each side retreats further into its ahistorical foxhole.
A Matter of Emphasis
During this anniversary year I’d encourage you to take time to reread the Declaration of Independence; to note the unapologetic references to “Providence” and “Creator” in the document’s framing sentences. But to note, also, that a straightforward reading of the Declaration clearly shows its one great, unambiguously political purpose: to justify to a watching world the actions of American colonists in casting off their God-appointed sovereign. We, in the twenty-first century, may resonate with Thomas Jefferson’s eloquent invocation of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” but that was not what captivated eighteenth-century readers of the Declaration. They were electrified, awestruck, by what followed—the list of 27 grievances against King George. This, for them, was the guts of the document. For any educated reader of the time, Jefferson’s laundry list of complaints was an unmistakable appeal to Enlightenment philosopher John Locke’s revolutionary dictum that a tyrant “is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”
John Quincy Adams was wrong. Neither the Declaration of Independence nor any other founding document is an addendum to the Word of God. To suggest otherwise is at best arrogant and at worst sacrilege.
Claiming the mantle of a Christian nation suggests the impossible: that we can discern and express the will of the infinite God through our fallible political arrangements and our all-too-imperfect attempts to administer justice and secure liberties. When public officials claim Christianity as the creed of the American nation, the loudest protests should come from followers of Christ.