America 250: The Declaration of Independence · Resources

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Summary

On the eve of America's 250th, Kent Keller spends an evening inside the Declaration of Independence — who wrote it, what they actually believed, and where a sentence like "all men are created equal" could possibly have come from. He argues the founders were no deists, shows the Declaration following the shape of an ancient covenant, and does not flinch from slavery as the national birth defect. He also says the first thing plainly: he loves his country and worships only God.

Sermon Outline

1. 1

   Why We're Doing This Tonight ▶ 0:00

   Kent explains sixteen or seventeen years of reading American history for the pleasure of it, and what he hopes you will see on the 250th anniversary of the founding.

2. 2

   A Word from the Middle East ▶ 1:29

   Pastor James Drake, deployed and unable to be there, opens with a fact most people get wrong — the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized American independence in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — and prays for the evening.

3. 3

   I Love My God. I Do Not Worship My Country. ▶ 4:25

   Before anything else, the disclaimer: God is perfect, the country is not, and the American flag is not the cross of Christ.

4. 4

   Fifty-Six Men: A Birth Certificate or a Death Warrant ▶ 6:21

   They gathered in the Pennsylvania State House to sign a document that amounted to open rebellion — and all of them lived within one lifetime and a carriage ride of Philadelphia.

5. 5

   Three Great Crises, and Three More ▶ 10:59

   Larry Arnn's list — independence, the Civil War, progressivism — plus the three Kent would add, ending with a generation taught to despise its own history.

6. 6

   The Declaration Is Our Genesis 1 ▶ 16:40

   A mission-trip analogy: the Declaration is the cornerstone and the Constitution the corner stack, and a cornerstone off by a centimeter throws the whole wall out by the end.

7. 7

   Not a Bunch of Deists ▶ 23:37

   The country was 98 percent Protestant at its founding, 54 of the 56 signers belonged to mainline Protestant churches, and even Jefferson served as a vestryman — while Locke's treatises cite the Bible 102 times.

8. 8

   What Civil Government Is Actually For ▶ 25:35

   Romans 13 gives it three jobs: promote the common good, restrain evil, punish evildoers — and guarantee equality of opportunity, not of outcome.

9. 9

   Your Rights Come From God, Not the Government ▶ 41:37

   Government exists to secure rights it did not grant. Officials are public servants, we are citizens rather than subjects, and elections are how a free people recall them.

10. 10

    A Covenant in a Form Nobody Knew Until 1950 ▶ 46:56

    Ancient Near Eastern treaties follow a fixed shape — preamble, prologue, stipulations, blessings and curses, ratification — and so does the Declaration, though scholars did not identify that form until nearly two centuries after Jefferson wrote.

11. 11

    Slavery: The National Birth Defect ▶ 52:00

    Condoleezza Rice's phrase, and Kent's refusal to paper it over: inexcusable, explainable in its context, ended here faster and at a higher cost — 625,000 dead — than anywhere else.

12. 12

    Questions from the Floor ▶ 58:30

    The room takes over: socialism, what else caused the Civil War, where a judge thinks rights come from, and how to be a citizen of two kingdoms at once.

Key Points

• The founders were not deists. The country was 98 percent Protestant at its inception, and 54 of the 56 signers were members of mainline Protestant churches.
• "The laws of nature and of nature's God" brought reason and revelation together in a national founding document for the first time in history.
• Romans 13 assigns civil government three tasks — promote the common good, restrain evil, punish evildoers — and not the provision of every need and want.
• Rights come from God, not from government. Government exists to secure them, which is why officials are public servants and not overlords.
• Two nations in history have been founded on covenants: Old Testament Israel and the United States. The Declaration follows the ancient covenant form scholars only identified in the 1950s.
• Slavery is the nation's birth defect — inexcusable and inherited from a world that practiced it everywhere, and ended here by a civil war that cost 625,000 lives.
• Will Durant: history is to a nation what memory is to a person. A country taught to hate itself will not defend itself.

Quotable Moments