Is the Declaration of Independence a Christian document?
Christianity Today
October 15, 2026
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Illustration by Christianity Today / Source Images: Getty, Westminster John Knox Press
In July 2020, Louisiana congressman Mike Johnson penned an op-ed celebrating American independence. “A century ago,” he stated, “the great English writer G.K. Chesterton famously observed that ‘America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence.’”
## In God We Trust: Was America Founded as a Christian Nation?
John Fea (Author)
Westminster John Knox Press
163 pages
$18.64
Johnson elaborated further on Chesterton’s idea: “That creed, that central idea, is what sets us on course to become the freest, most powerful, most prosperous nation in the history of the world.”
And then he made a provocative theological claim: “I believe Thomas Jefferson was divinely inspired when he drafted the Declaration.”
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Since he became speaker of the House in 2023, Johnson has referenced the Declaration of Independence, often in the context of the Chesterton quote, multiple times. He invokes the “unalienable right” of “life” when he gives speeches about abortion. He uses the phrase “nature’s God” to defend the religious liberty of his fellow evangelical Christians. Our rights, Johnson argues, do not come from governments—they come from God—and thus governments cannot take those rights away.
Roughly three years after Johnson’s op-ed, Jerry Newcombe, the director of Providence Forum, argued that the Declaration of Independence was grounded in God’s created order, the future judgment of Jesus Christ, and the “Biblical God who superintends the affairs of men.”
David Barton of WallBuilders claims that “the Declaration of Independence formed all of the principles of Christianity into our form of government.” His son, Tim Barton, said that the second paragraph of the Declaration, with its references to “nature’s God” and the “Creator,” is “the American philosophy of government.” The younger Barton suggested that the ideas in the paragraph were uniquely American.
Was the Declaration of Independence a Christian document? Was it meant to be an American “creed” or an overarching political philosophy?
Christian commentators tend to focus their interpretations of the Declaration of Independence on the document’s four references to God. Those passages in the Declaration include the idea that the right to declare independence from England comes directly from the “laws of nature and of nature’s God”; the notion that the “unalienable rights” of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are “endowed by” the “Creator”; the appeal to the “supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions”; and the closing reference to the “firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence.”
Focusing too heavily on these passages, however, neglects the 18th-century motivation behind the writing of the Declaration. In other words, it misses the original intent of the document. For all the effort conservative legal scholars place on discerning the original intent of the US Constitution, little effort has been made to understand the meaning and the purpose of the Declaration of Independence as the founders intended it.
The Declaration of Independence was not a theological or religious document, but neither was it designed primarily to teach Americans and the world about human rights. In fact, very little about the Declaration is exceptional. Americans have become so taken by the second paragraph of the document that they miss the purpose of the Declaration as understood by the Continental Congress, its team of authors, and its chief writer, Thomas Jefferson. In the context of the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence was just what it claimed to be: a declaration of independence from England and an assertion of American sovereignty in the world.
Historian David Armitage has convincingly argued that the Declaration of Independence was written primarily as a document asserting American political sovereignty, with the hope that the newly created United States would secure a place in the international community of nations. In fact, Armitage asserts, the Declaration was discussed abroad more than it was at home. This meant that the Declaration was “decidedly un-revolutionary. It would affirm the maxims of European statecraft, not affront them.”
The writers of the Declaration of Independence and the members of the Second Continental Congress who endorsed and signed it did not believe that they were advancing, as historian Pauline Maier has put it, “a classic statement of American political principles.” This was a foreign policy document, drawing on the norms of early modern statesmanship.
But in the hands of 19th-century abolitionists, women’s suffragists, and especially Abraham Lincoln, the Declaration became “American Scripture.” Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison appealed to the Declaration’s assertion that “all men are created equal” in his defense of the immediate emancipation of slaves. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848 used it to proclaim the rights of women. And Lincoln, in the opening lines of the Gettysburg Address (“four score and seven years ago”) made a direct connection between the Union cause in the Civil War and the Declaration of Independence.
These American reformers were in search of a usable past—an interpretation of the American founding that they could employ in their 19th-century settings to promote human rights and equality. The original intent of the Declaration was not as useful as the famed second paragraph asserting the “self-evident” truth that people were “created equal” and possessed “certain unalienable rights.”
This kind of historical revisionism continues today among those who uphold the belief that the Declaration of Independence was a Christian document. While the Declaration clearly affirms, for example, that human rights come from the “Creator,” the original intent of the founders was not to write a theological document, a system of government, or a treatise on American values, or even declare that human rights came from God. The original intent of the Declaration of Independence was something much more practical. It was written to announce the birth of the United States to the rest of the world.
Unlike the US Constitution, the Declaration does make appeals and references to God. The first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence begins,
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Here, Jefferson is affirming that the justification for separation from England comes from natural law and from God, the author of such natural law. “Nature’s God” was a term used often by 18th-century deists who upheld the belief that God created the world; instilled it with natural laws of science, morality, and politics (rights); and allowed it to function based on those laws without any further divine interference.
Jefferson’s choice of the phrase “nature’s God” is a vague one. It reflects his belief that God is indeed the author of the natural right to separate from tyranny. “Nature’s God” is a phrase that all the founders and most of the American people could accept. Deists, freethinkers, Unitarians, and Enlightenment liberals such as Jefferson would have had no problem affirming the idea that natural rights come from God. Though they might prefer to have this reference to God be more explicit, Christians could also affirm this belief.
The next reference to God occurs in the second paragraph: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”
The reference to the self-evident truths being “endowed by their Creator” was not part of Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration. It was added later by Benjamin Franklin, a member of the writing committee. Jefferson’s original wording was “that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.” Franklin’s change to the text makes clear that he and the Continental Congress wanted to affirm the belief that the unalienable rights of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” found their origin in God.
Yet like Jefferson’s use of the phrase “nature’s God” in the first paragraph, Franklin never elaborated on the attributes of this Creator. Such a vague reference to God could be embraced not only by Christians but also by deists, Unitarians, and freethinkers as well.
References to God do not appear again in the Declaration until the final paragraph. Here we find the statement “We … appealing to the supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states.”
Once again, this appeal to the “supreme Judge of the world” was not included in Jefferson’s original draft but was added on the floor of Congress during the editing process.
Unlike the references to “nature’s God” and the “Creator,” the phrase “supreme Judge of the world” moves our understanding of the God of the Declaration of Independence closer to a Christian framework. Unlike the rather passive God of the first two paragraphs, “supreme Judge of the world” suggests that the God to whom Congress is appealing will one day judge humankind.
While we normally think of God judging his creation as part of Christian theology, it was indeed possible for one to reject some of the central tenets of Christianity, such as the deity of Christ or his resurrection, and still believe that human beings would be judged in the next life for their moral conduct in this one. So while Congress’s use of the phrase “supreme Judge of the world” certainly tells us a bit more about the attributes of the God of the Declaration, it does not definitively identify this God as uniquely Christian.
The same might be said for the last reference to God in the Declaration: “And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.” Here we learn even more: The God of the Declaration of Independence not only is the author of natural rights and the judge of the world but also governs the world by his providence.
Providence, as used in the 18th century, implied an active God who is sustaining the world through his sovereign power. By mentioning providence, Congress was affirming its belief that God would watch over America and protect it in this time of uncertainty, trial, and war. It reflects a view of God held by most of the representatives seated in the room during the Philadelphia summer of 1776. Whether these men embraced all the tenets of orthodox Christianity or not, most could affirm the providence of God.
In the end, some Christians may be disappointed with the way in which Jefferson, his committee, and the Second Continental Congress refused to be overtly Christian in writing the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration never mentions Jesus Christ, nor does it quote the Old or New Testament. It fails to move beyond vague descriptions of God. We would be hard-pressed to describe the Declaration as a uniquely Christian text.
Yet from a historical perspective, we should be careful to avoid turning this document into something it was never intended to be. Unlike Congress’s proclamations for days of fasting and thanksgiving during the lead-up to independence and the Revolutionary War, the Declaration was not a religious document. In fact, it was not intended to be a document that said anything new or uniquely American about human rights. But those who wrote and signed the Declaration did affirm a God who is the author and creator of those rights, who presides providentially over his world, and who will one day judge humankind.
Excerpted from In God We Trust by John Fea. Published in permission with Westminster John Knox Press, 2026.
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