President Calvin Coolidge acknowledged in his address at the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, in Philadelphia, July 5, 1926:
“The principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence … are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live.
They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit …
Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government …
In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country …
In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the colonies …” |