7 Times Faith Shaped America

America has always been a bit of an odd duck on the international stage. The United States was unusual in its time for being able to point definitively to a birth date. Most nations at the time, such as England and France, had existed for so long that no one could really state when they had actually taken on their present forms. America was one of the first nations to cast off the yoke of colonialism and stand as a country in its own right. When it did so, it remained rough and unpolished. The nation tripped and stumbled and, at times, made a fool of itself. Despite that, the great democratic experiment continued to survive. Even when war broke out and split the nation in half, America managed to sew itself back together and limp forward. Just shy of a century later, the country built by persecuted religious leaders, backwoodsmen and the refuse of a hundred nations faced down the closest thing to pure evil the world has ever seen and remained victorious.

It seems a bit of a strange journey to go from rebellious colony to international superpower in less than two centuries, but the United States managed it. The nation, however, did not do it alone. At pivotal moments, America was lucky enough to be headed by those who had God’s ear and listened to His words in turn. Without those people and their religion, the world would look very different indeed. Here are seven times faith shaped America.

Initial Discovery and Colonization

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The earliest Europeans to land on the shores of what would one day become the United States and stay there permanently were a diverse group. Some came seeking economic prosperity, but many headed for the New World in an attempt to escape religious persecution in Europe. The famous Puritans who settled in what would become Massachusetts had been chased out of Germany and later England. The Quakers who were given leave to live in modern Pennsylvania were the subject of scorn and ridicule in Europe. The very name “Quaker” was originally meant as an insult, and Pennsylvania was also home to several Jewish communities. Catholics, who were loved by Catholic nations such as Spain, were loathed by Protestant countries such as England. Yet, Catholics settled in Maryland colony where they were sandwiched between predominantly Anglican Virginia, Quaker-dominated Pennsylvania and Lutheran Delaware. From its beginnings, America had a diverse mix of religious inclinations. Mixing denominations of Christianity without bloodshed may not seem like much today, but remember that the Thirty Years War was fought in Germany between different denominations and killed almost a third of the population. During those same 30 years, almost half of the original 13 colonies were founded with a wider mix of denominations and even a mix of religions. Before America was a nation, it was already understood that people of different religious inclinations would be allowed to settle and live there peacefully.

Declaration of Independence and Constitution

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Perhaps the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This statement is central to the document that created America as a nation. It is also unusual in that it declares that the basic rights of human beings come not from the government but from God Himself. Previous documents in Europe and the Americas had often stated or implied that rights were given by the government. What the government gives, however, the government can take away. So, the Declaration of Independence made it clear that the most basic rights were not something with which humans could interfere. Those rights came from God.

God also appears in the U.S. Constitution in one of its most important amendments. The First Amendment reads in part that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” The most basic law of the land declared that anyone could practice any religion they wanted in public so long as they did so peacefully. The government could neither outlaw nor favor one religion or religious practice over another.

First and Second Great Awakening

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Both shortly before and shortly after the Revolutionary War, religious fervor swept through America. These two enormous revivals were called the First and Second Great Awakening. Both were characterized by camp revivals and charismatic, theatrical preaching in which listeners were moved to spontaneous expressions of religious ecstasy. Both also fed sentiments that resulted in two of the only wars fought on American soil.

The First Great Awakening took place in the 1730s and 1740s. It emphasized that anyone can be saved from hell if they confess their sins to God in order to seek forgiveness and that all people can have a direct connection with God. It also called for casual and personal religion rather than formal and institutionalized versions. This emphasis on individuality led to an expression of Christianity that was decidedly different from Europe and supported burgeoning feelings of nationalism in the colonies. The focus on individuality and individual rights also played a role in the sentiments that would lead to the Revolutionary War.

The Second Great Awakening swept through America from the 1790s through the 1830s. It once again gave American faith a completely different focus. Evangelism was given a new focus and innovative organizational techniques were used to adapt American spirituality for the expanses of the frontier. The Second Great Awakening also focused more on the ability of humans to change their own situations and attain salvation. This increased sense of empowerment, as well as a rising number of women and blacks in public roles, caused more Christians to take a greater interest in the issue of slavery and fanned the flames of the growing abolition movement.

Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln

The Civil War was America’s darkest hour. The country way less than a century old, but it was tearing itself apart over the greatest stain on its history, slavery. Brother turned on brother, and America was soaked in blood. During this tragedy, Abraham Lincoln worked unendingly to save the nation he loved.

Lincoln and Washington compete in the hearts of Americans for the title of the greatest president the nation has ever seen, and either one would be a worthy winner. Washington helped create the country, and it was Lincoln who saved it. As the Union and Confederate armies fought, Lincoln leaned heavily on his Christian faith. He referenced God in many of his speeches and private letters. He also publicly framed slavery as a crime against God, giving the Union the moral high ground in the Civil War and helping to make Europe wary of entering the war on the side of the Confederacy. Then, on January 1, 1863, Lincoln made the most famous declaration of his career and the statement he had wanted to make for decades. He signed the Emancipation Proclamation. When told of the celebrations and near worship he was receiving from freed slaves, Lincoln responded “in a solemn voice, ‘It is a momentous thing to be the instrument under Providence for the liberation of a race.’”

Lincoln, like many abolitionists, was motivated to decry slavery by his faith. Though philosophers had opposed slavery, it was Christian activists who initiated and organized the abolitionist movement. In fact, the Second Great Awakening has sometimes been credited as the beginning of a true movement for abolitionism. The movement faced serious opposition in the United States, but it continued to grow over the years. “Quaker” become almost synonymous with “abolitionist,” and many abolitionists were also preachers and evangelical leaders.

General Patton and Desmond Doss

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World War II saw some incredible events come about because of what could only be divine intervention. The Dunkirk evacuation was rightly described as a miracle, and the plans for the M-9 anti-aircraft guns that eventually brought down Nazi V-1 buzz-bombs literally came to a young man who worked with recording equipment in a dream. The U.S. carriers were kept from returning to Pearl Harbor in December 1941 due to an unexpected storm, and the USS Enterprise was at one point the only active U.S. carrier in the Pacific but managed to survive so much damage, including multiple bomb hits and a broken rudder, that the Japanese called her the “Grey Ghost.”

Two of the best known moments of faith, however, belonged to two people about as far apart on the chain of command as possible, General George S. Patton and Private Desmond Doss. General Patton is not someone most people would picture when asked about a devout man, but Patton apparently had God’s ear during the Battle of the Bulge. Called Patton’s finest hour, Patton turned his troops nearly 90 degrees in order to rescue trapped American Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe and his troops in Bastogne. Patton, however, was stymied by truly horrid weather. In a move straight out of the Bible, Patton ordered Third Army chaplain Colonel James O’Neill to draft a prayer that would break up the weather. O’Neill, somehow, managed. His prayer was printed on hundreds of thousands of wallet sized cards and distributed to the soldiers. Impossibly, the weather cleared. Had Patton not been able to retake Bastogne, the Allied forces would have faced a significant setback and stopped their advance to the west. Simultaneously, the Allied logistic base would have been crippled, and German units would have been able to stop battling the Allies to the west and instead attack the Soviets to the east. Instead, Patton, with a bit of divine help, barreled into the Germans with 200,000 men and 200 tanks.

Private Desmond Doss was less important in terms of affecting the overall war, but his story is no less stunning for its show of faith. Doss willingly entered military service but refused to kill enemy soldiers due to his religious beliefs. Instead, he entered the battlefield without a weapon to serve as a medic. During the Battle of Okinawa, he saved between 50 and 100 wounded infantrymen by himself while atop Maeda Escarpment, also known as Hacksaw Ridge.

Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

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Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is perhaps the best know Civil Rights activist to ever live. The title of activist, however, has often meant that people forget that his initial training and passion was religious. King did not set his faith aside in order to join the Civil Rights movement. Instead, echoing abolitionists from a century past, King’s activism was driven by his faith. He quoted the Bible repeatedly in his speeches, including his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. He also based his commitment to nonviolent and patient approaches to racial issues and oppression despite being criticized by fellow activists who were agitating for swifter results and who wanted retribution and revenge for the horrors done to them. King, however, stated that “[Jesus] does not say, ‘Like your enemy.” There are a lot of people that I find it difficult to like. I don’t like what they do to me…but Jesus says love them. And love is greater than like.” What the Civil Rights movement would have looked like without Martin Luther King, Jr. at its head is uncertain, but America would certainly be very different and likely far worse off.

Ronald Reagan and the Fall of Communism

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When Ronald Reagan took office, many people had simply accepted that the Soviet Union would be a part of life. The communist country was simply too powerful and too dangerous to threaten. Peaceful coexistence was both possible and preferable, despite the gross atrocities that were part of day to day life in the U.S.S.R. Reagan, however, was not satisfied with this. He called the Soviet Union what it was, an “evil empire.” He viewed the conflict between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A. as a battle between good and evil, freedom and fear. As such, it was the duty of America to win that Cold War. Many people both in the international community and at home in the United States felt Reagan was mad when he said his stated goal with the Cold War was, “We win. They lose.” Reagan, however, proved to be good to his word. He leaned on his faith and reinvigorated both America and the international community when it came to pushing back the Soviet Union. He forced the Soviet Union onto the edge of economic collapse, and mere months after his administration ended, the Berlin Wall fell in Germany.