Battle For Freedom
The Battle for Freedom Continues
The American Revolution is not over. The ideals enshrined in the (Declaration of Independence) for which the founders fought and died - ideals of law, justice, equality, liberty in alienable rights, self-government – are barely understood in America today, much less in the rest of the world. We have all but forgotten what the words mean and what America is all about.
We think that the American Revolution ended with the peace treaty of 1783. But it had not ended for American blacks as equal creation and inalienable rights under God were systemically denied for 200 years. It had not ended when Abraham Lincoln heard Jefferson Davis and southern secessionists deny the ideals of the Declaration and deny that it had any relevance for American law. And it had not ended when Martin Luther King stood in Washington DC, among monuments to the founding fathers, to declare with them that “all men are created equal.”
The American Revolution was more than a contest with England. It was and is a war of ideas, a contest for the hearts and minds of man. It was and is a war to defend a vision about law, rights, justice, and the God-given dignity of man. The vision was inspired over time by the words of the Bible and the teachings of Christianity but applies to all men everywhere regardless of their faith.
At different times in different lands, men saw different parts of the vision. Parts of it were even put into practice in some of their countries, but never before 1776 had all of its ideas been implemented at one time. The American Revolution is unique because it began by declaring all these ideas as part of the foundation of a nation. A new political order was born on the earth.
Now, however, the ideas of the declaration are scoffed out by philosophers, misrepresented by historians, attacked by clergymen, ridiculed by law professors, held in contempt by power-hungry politicians, and ignored by the people. As long as this continues, the American Revolution is not over.
We understand that the communist revolution did not end in the 1920s. It is a world revolution driven by a vision for world domination. Many such ideologies are abroad today. But we fail to see that the American Revolution is also a world revolution, guided by a view of the world and man which exchanges the iron heel of statism for the rod and staff of justice.
So, it is important, particularly for Christians, to know that the Declaration stands in the Judeo Christian stream of political theory. Its legacy must be defended since it is different both in degree and in kind from its secular counterparts, the French revolution. Its legacy must be proclaimed since political liberty is a corollary of spiritual liberty in Christ.
The American Revolution, then, will not be finished until in Tiananmen Square, Red Square, and all the town squares of the nation’s freedom ring as it did in July 1776.
