As Americans prepare to celebrate Flag Day and the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, historian William Federer says the nation’s founding ideals cannot be separated from its longstanding belief that rights come from God, not government.
In an interview with The Christian Post ahead of Flag Day on June 14 — commemorating June 14, 1777, when the Continental Congress passed a resolution adopting the first official United States flag — Federer reflected on the religious themes woven throughout American history, including the addition of “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and “In God We Trust” to U.S. currency during the Cold War era.
According to Federer, those changes reflected an effort to distinguish the U.S. from the atheistic communist ideology embraced by the Soviet Union.
“We just came out of World War II, and the Cold War was starting up with atheistic communism,” Federer said. “We were contrasting our form of government, with rights from a Creator, to the Soviet Union.”
Federer pointed to a campaign led by the Knights of Columbus that culminated in Congress adding “one nation under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance in 1954. President Dwight Eisenhower signed the legislation into law, reinforcing what many Americans viewed as the spiritual foundation of the nation’s political system.
During the interview with CP, Federer recited from a 192-page book published by the U.S. Printing Office, titled The Capitol — A Pictorial History of the Capitol and of the Congress (1979), which states:
“This pledge attests what has been true about America from the beginning. Faith in the transcendent, sovereign God was in the public philosophy. The American consensus, America’s story opened with the first words of the Bible: ‘In the beginning, God.’”
It also includes a quote from former U.S. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, who asserted, “We are truthfully one nation under God and our institutions presupposed a divine being.”
The book further maintains, “Only a nation founded on theistic presuppositions would adopt a First Amendment to ensure the free exercise of all religions or none. The government would be neutral among the many denominations, and no one church would become the state church, but America and its institutions of government could not be neutral about God.”
Federer also reflected on the significance of the U.S. flag and the Judeo-Christian roots of the U.S. ahead of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
“Franklin D. Roosevelt, on Flag Day 1942, said, ‘The belief in man created free in the image of God is the crucial difference between ourselves and the enemies we face today.’
“We ask the German people still dominated by the Nazi whip masters whether they would rather have the mechanized hell of Hitler’s new order or, in place of that, freedom of speech and religion,” Roosevelt proclaimed at the time. “We ask the Japanese people trampled by their savage lords of slaughter whether they would rather continue slavery and blood or in the place of them, freedom of speech and religion.”
Roosevelt added, “We know that man born to freedom in the image of God will not forever suffer the oppressor’s sword.”
The then-president also recited a prayer saying, “God of the free, we pledge our hearts and lives today to the cause of all free mankind. I grant us victory over tyrants who would enslave all free men and nations, grant us patience with the deluded and pity for the betrayed.”
Federer summarized Roosevelt’s statements as an acknowledgment that “we’re unique in the world; we have rights from a Creator, [and the] government’s purpose is to guarantee to us our Creator-given rights rather than some dictator granting the rights or some socialist state granting the rights.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
