This year marks the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding and of one of the most important documents ever written, the Declaration of Independence.
This year marks the 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding and of one of the most important documents ever written, the Declaration of Independence. In The Great Controversy Ellen G. White referred to the Declaration of Independence as “that grand old document which our forefathers set forth as their bill of rights.” She went on to state that “the Declaration of Independence . . . sets forth the great truth that ‘all men are created equal’ and endowed with the inalienable right to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’”[1] Defending the right to religious liberty, and human rights more generally, has always been an important part of our Adventist heritage. Ellen White and our Adventist pioneers correctly recognized that the Declaration of Independence provides the definitive statement of our nation’s founding principles, including the “great truth” of human equality from which all rights are derived.
In an 1859 letter to Henry L. Pierce, Abraham Lincoln succinctly described the profound importance of the Declaration:
All honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.[2]
Lincoln believed that the abstract principles of the Declaration transformed what might have been “a merely revolutionary document” into something much more significant. Percy Tilson Magan, a Seventh-day Adventist physician, educator, and writer shared Lincoln’s view of the Declaration. In his 1899 book The Peril of the Republic, he argued:
The advent of the United States upon history’s stage broke the dawn of a new era, not alone for the Old Thirteen, but for all mankind. The principles of freedom enunciated in the immortal Declaration of Independence were pregnant with weal for tens of thousands in other climes, and for millions then unborn, as well as for the embattled farmers who fought at Lexington and Concord.[3]
The Declaration of Independence turned what might have been merely another political rebellion into the “dawn of a new era” in world history.
Magan’s friend, Alonzo T. Jones, an Adventist minister and prominent religious liberty advocate, expressed similar views. In his The Two Republics, published in 1891,he writes:
Then came the American Revolution. . .establishing for the enlightenment of all nations, THE NEW REPUBLIC.
According to Jones, this revolution “did not consist in the establishment of a government independent of Great Britain but in the ideas concerning man and government that were proclaimed and established by it.” The ideas announced and established by “this grand revolution” were proclaimed in what Jones refers to as that “immortal document” the Declaration of Independence.[4] Jones would contend that “the national Constitution. . .is but the complement of the Declaration”[5]and that “the Constitution of the United States as it is, stands as the sole monument of all history representing the principle which Christ established for earthly government.” Under it, “in liberty, civil and religious, in enlightenment, and in progress, this nation has deservedly stood as the beacon light of the world, for more than a hundred years.”[6] Jones believed that “[t]he Declaration of Independence. . .announces the perfect principle of civil government.” [7]
This is why, in 1897, the principles of the Declaration were explicitly identified and openly proclaimed as one of the fundamental principles of the Seventh day Adventist Church.
That, according to the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal;” that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights;” that among these rights is the liberty for every one to worship God according to the dictates of one’s own conscience, without molestation from the government, unless the equal rights of others are encroached upon; that, consequently, all religious laws on our civil statute-books are void, as being not only contrary to the Constitution of the United States, in its first amendment, but contrary to the higher constitution of the law of God.[8]
It may seem remarkable that the abstract truths of the Declaration were recognized as one of the fundamental beliefs of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. I know of no other Christian denomination in which the Declaration has played such an important role. Yet perhaps this should not be considered surprising if one considers that Adventists grasped the significance and authority of the Declaration because its universal principles were not only accessible to human reason but also supported by divine revelation. The Declaration rests upon social compact theory which recognizes that universal human equality requires the enlightened consent of the governed. “The government of God in the beautiful world to come” writes P.T. Magan “will be a government of love, a government founded on the consent of the governed.” This is why “the great principles of the Declaration of Independence. . . are coeval with time, and they will be commensurate with eternity.”[9]
Perhaps it is time for Seventh-day Adventists to rediscover “the great principles of the Declaration of Independence” and reclaim an important part of our heritage.
[1] Ellen G. White, The Great Controversy (Nampa, ID: Pacific Press, 2005), 295, 441.
[2] Abraham Lincoln, Letter to Henry L. Pierce, April 6, 1859, in Abraham Lincoln (New York: The Sun Dial Classics Co.1908), 142.
[3] Percy T. Magan, The Peril of the Republic, (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), 9.
[4] A.T. Jones, The Two Republics: Or Rome and the United States, (Eugene, Oregon: Adventist Pioneer Library, 2023),479. Originally published by the Review and Herald Publishing Co. and the Pacific Press Publishing Co. in 1891.
[5] Ibid., 480.
[6] Ibid., 502.
[7] Alonzo T. Jones, Rights of the People: or Civil Government and Religion (Oakland, CA: Pacific Press, 1895), 54.
[8] “Fundamental Principles of Seventh-Day Adventists,” Words of Truth (Battle Creek, MI), no 5, July 1897, 8. (Available at James White Library, Andrews University, Berrien Springs, MI)
[9] Magan, The Peril of the Republic, 17.
Dr. Gary Wood is the Associate Professor for Political Science at Andrews University.