Coral Ridge Ministries Dr. D. James Kennedy, FounderTRUTH # 1 - America Was Begun As A "Church Relocation Project"
Historical records show that this country’s founding was deeply and inextricably rooted in the Christian faith.
Christopher Columbus attributed his discovery of the New World to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. In Columbus’ own words: It was the Lord who put into my mind (I could feel His hand upon me) the fact that it would be possible to sail from here to the Indies. There is no question that the inspiration was from the Holy Spirit…. Our Lord Jesus Christ desired to perform a very obvious miracle in the voyage to the Indies, to confront me and the whole people of God.
Some modern historians claim that Columbus embarked on his voyages only in pursuit of fame and wealth, but Columbus’ own writings reveal something different. Writing in his Book of Prophecies, Columbus explained that his greatest motivation for sailing across the vast Atlantic Ocean was rooted in “the fact that the Gospel must still be preached to so many lands…. [T]his is what convinces me.” When Queen Isabella described Columbus’ expedition to the Pope, she explained that Columbus was attempting “to bear the light of Christ west to the heathen undiscovered lands.” Indeed, when Columbus first discovered an uncharted island, he did not name the island after himself or the Spanish monarch or the new land’s potential wealth. Rather, Columbus named the island San Salvador, or “Holy Savior.”
Likewise, the first attempts to colonize the territory which is now the were expressly undertaken for the advancement of Christianity.
Jamestown Settlers Claimed Land for Christ
Consider the establishment of Jamestown, the colonies’ first settlement. Upon arriving in the New World, the first thing these pioneers did was to erect a cross on the beach and claim the land for Jesus Christ. Dr. Peter Lillback, president of The Providence Forum, has explained, “It is most remarkable that when these British settlers came to this new place … they didn’t put up a picture of the king. They put up an emblem of the King of Kings, the cross of Jesus Christ.”
The First Charter of Virginia stated that the purpose for establishing Jamestown involved the “propagating of [the] Christian religion to such people as yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God.” One of the most celebrated events in the life of the community was the baptism of Pocahontas (a friendly Native American) into the Christian faith. The rotunda of the U.S. Capitol building still features a beautiful painting depicting that event. Two groups that exerted the most influence upon the founding principles of American government were the Pilgrims and the Puritans—whose zeal for the Christian faith was exemplary.
Pilgrims Seek Freedom to Worship
King James I had refused to allow the Pilgrims to worship freely without the “trappings, traditions and organization of a central state church.” James vowed to “make them conform themselves [to the Church of England], or else I will harry them out of the land, or else do worse!” So the Pilgrims fled to Holland for relief, but they did not find a happy home there. There were economic hardships, and the Pilgrims feared that their children would lose their English identity. After ten years in the Netherlands, the group began to think of venturing to the New World. Like Columbus and the first settlers in Jamestown, they also had the great hope, as their governor, William Bradford, later wrote, “for the propagating and advancing the gospell of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world.” In 1617 they set their sites on settling in the colony of Virginia.
Dr. D. James Kennedy, founder of Coral Ridge Ministries, often stated that “America began as a church-relocation project.” Indeed, this was the stated reason for their migration. William Bradford, elected governor of the Plymouth Colony in 1621, explained that the Pilgrims chose to separate from the Church of England because they wanted to see the “churches of God revert to their ancient purity and recover their primitive order, liberty and beauty.”
In his book entitled The History of Plymouth Plantation, Governor Bradford wrote, They shook off this yoke of antichristian bondage, and as the Lord’s free people, joined themselves by a covenant of the Lord into a church estate in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all His ways, made known unto them, according to their best endeavors,whatsoever it should cost them....
The Mayflower Compact
During their long voyage to America, a storm providentially blew the Pilgrims off course, and their ship landed north of their original Virginia destination. Because this placed them outside of that colony’s jurisdiction, the Pilgrims took a bold step and wrote their own covenant charter for self-government, the Mayflower Compact. This unprecedented document proclaimed: In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten … Having undertaken, for the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian Faith … do by these presents solemnly and mutually in the presence of God and one of another, Covenant and Combine ourselves together into a Civil Body Politic.”
Shortly after settling in Plymouth, the Pilgrims planted another church in Salem, Massachusetts. William Brewster, one of the Pilgrim leaders, declared, “The church that had been brought over the ocean now saw another church, the first-born in America, holding the same faith in the same simplicity of self-government under Christ alone [emphasis added].” The Pilgrims’ concept of “self-government under Christ alone” was radically different from anything the world had ever seen. Yet they viewed themselves, as Bradford wrote, “even as stepping-stones unto others for the performing of so great a work.” The words etched into Governor Bradford’s gravestone still challenge us to remember the heritage these brave men and women have passed down to us: “What our fathers with so much difficulty attained do not basely relinquish.”
“A City Upon a Hill”
Unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans were not Separatists from the Church of England. Nonetheless, they traveled to America seeking freedom from the corruptions that existed within the Church of England. Reverend Francis Higginson, a famous Puritan minister, declared, “We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England, though we cannot but separate from the corruptions of it; but we go to practice the positive part of church reformation , and propagate the Gospel in America!"
As their name suggests, the “Puritans” sought to restore purity in the faith and practice of the Church of England. They knew that the world would be watching—looking for every opportunity to slander the name of Christ if their settlement in New England failed. The seriousness of their intent was expressed by John Winthrop, governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who declared: For we must consider that we shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us; so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken and so cause Him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world, we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God.
The Puritans’ influence on America’s future government would be immeasurable. As we will see in the next chapter, because they saw that God is the source of both liberty and law, they were able to establish a civil society that was governed not by the whims of rulers or kings, but by law.
Coral Ridge Ministries. Copyright 2008. All Rights Reserved.
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