The first “official” fight of the Founding Fathers was about faith.
The opening session of the Continental Congress – the group that would ultimately call for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence – convened in Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, on September 6, 1774.
Thomas Cushing, a lawyer from Boston, moved that the delegates begin with a prayer.
Both John Jay of New York and John Rutledge of South Carolina objected.
Really? The men steering the direction of our not-quite-yet-a-nation at that perilous hour couldn’t even agree on whether to pray.
What’s interesting is that neither Jay nor Rutledge were skeptics. Both were committed church leaders.
John Adams later wrote to his wife, “Because we were so divided in religious sentiments, we could not join in the same act of worship.”
John Meacham asserts in his book American Gospel, “Whatever Jay’s and Rutledge’s motives, their objection, if successful, had the power to set a secular tone in ceremonial life at the very outset of the American political experience.”
In other words, whatever happened next was definitely going to matter.
Interestingly, Samuel Adams, who was no believer (and presumably had no idea he would one day lend his name to 60 unique varieties of beer), said he would gladly hear an honest person read prayers to the assembly.
Adams had heard positive things about a certain Episcopal clergyman in Philadelphia. Would he be willing to open the session the following morning? The motion was seconded and approved.
The atmosphere was heavy. Everyone feared the outbreak of war. The American colonies were finding themselves increasingly at odds with Great Britain.
It turned out that the reading assigned by the Episcopal Church for September 7 that year was Psalm 35. It included these words: “Plead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me. Fight against them that fight against me. Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand for mine help.”
John Adams later wrote that he was stunned and moved. “I never saw a greater effect upon an audience. It seemed as if heaven had ordained that psalm to be read on that morning.”
As James Madison later pointed out, faith shaped our nation. But it did not strangle it.
God was not absent from the Revolutionary era. But neither was America established as a nation where a particular set of spiritual views were automatically elevated above all contenders.
More than 250 years after that first meeting, Americans are still in the middle of a fascinating, ongoing discussion about the power and presence of God.
And ours remains a country where every day we are free to begin with a morning reflection.
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