An American Covenant for the New Millennium

By J. Michael Sharman, 23 December, 2006

An American Covenant for the New Millennium<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

J. Michael Sharman

"In the name of God, Amen" are words we would expect to hear at the end of a prayer, but instead those were the beginning words of the Mayflower Compact.[1]
As a nation we have always known that if we govern our individual and national lives in agreement with God's Word, we will be protected through that covenant relationship with God.
When the Virginia Company began sending its ships to <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Jamestown, their corporate charter made the commitment that: "the principal Effect which we can desire or expect of this Action, is the Conversion and Reduction of the People in those Parts unto the true Worship of God and Christian Religion"[2]
The Virginia Company's Ordinance for Virginia bookended the Company's goals for their colonies by stating they were: "first and principally in the Advancement of the Honour and Service of God and lastly, in maintaining the said People in Justice and Christian Conversation amongst themselves."[3]
            On the very first day that Jamestown's newly elected leaders met as the House of Burgesses, they began in covenant with God: "for as much as men's affairs do little prosper where God's service is neglected, all the Burgesses took their places in the Choir till a prayer was said."[4]
            Our first Continental Congress was opened with this prayerful request: "Be Thou present; O God of Wisdom, and direct the councils of this Honorable Assembly: enable them to settle all things on the best and surest foundations: [let] Truth, and Justice, Religion, and Piety prevail and flourish among the peopleand crown them with everlasting Glory in the world to come. All this we ask in the name and through the merits of Jesus Christ Thy Son and Our Savior."[5]
Our foundational documents identify that God is the divine Author of our existence[6], the Creator[7], Almighty God,[8] and our gracious Redeemer[9]. He is "the Holy author of our religion."[10]
When Benjamin Franklin asked Congress for daily prayer, he identified the God of the Bible as our nation's "Superintending providence" and simply as our "powerful friend." [11]
            George Washington called God the "the great Author of every public and private good."[12] God, Washington said, is "that great and glorious Being who is the beneficent author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be."[13]
In the throes of our country's bloodiest conflict, Abraham Lincoln proclaimed: "[I]t is the duty of nations as well as of men, to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and transgressions, in humble sorrow, yet with assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon; and to recognize the sublime truth, announced in the Holy Scriptures and proven by all history, that those nations only are blessed whose God is the Lord."[14]
"We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But," Lincoln cried, "We have forgotten God. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us!" [15]
President Lincoln called upon our nation in that time of desperate trial, "to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness." [16]
Six centuries before the Civil War, John Wycliffe gave this prologue to the first English translation of the Bible: "The Bible is for the government of the People, by the People, and for the People."[17]
As the humbled Lincoln stood bowed before the thousands of newly buried men in the cemetery at Gettysburg, he echoed Wycliffe's prologue and relied on God's covenant of grace when he prophesied that, "this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and that this government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." [18]
Now, a century and a half later, we are in a new time of war and desperation that requires a renewed commitment and a fresh covenant with God.
Each person, every family, each church, every town, each county, every state needs to make that renewed covenant with God to let Him know that we are still one nation under God.
Even now, America's motto must be "In God We Trust."

--END--