We are just two weeks away from celebrating the 250th anniversary of our founding document and the creation of the United States. While the U.S. Constitution is our law, the Declaration of Independence is our purpose and, in many ways, our goal. With so much to say about this document, I wanted to break it into two parts and today focus on the phrase, “endowed by their Creator.”
As with so many things today, even the celebration of America has become controversial. Loving the nation is often viewed as partisan, and flying the flag is frequently seen as an indicator of political affiliation. In this debate over American exceptionalism, one of the recurring arguments concerns religion and whether America was established on religious principles.
While I personally believe God had a hand in the creation of the United States, as a historian, I also recognize that the Constitution was written as an Enlightenment document and contains no mention of God or any deity. I do not believe that was a mistake or an oversight, especially since references to God appear in many state constitutions. However, the same cannot be said of the Declaration of Independence.
In his original draft, Thomas Jefferson wrote, “We hold these truths to be sacred & undeniable; that all men are created equal & independent, that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent & inalienable, among which are the preservation of life, & liberty, & the pursuit of happiness.”
Most people can immediately recognize the difference between this version and the final text.
Before the Committee of Five introduced the Declaration to Congress, they revised the passage to read, “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.”
Many historians believe the change to “endowed by their Creator” was made by either John Adams or Benjamin Franklin, just as Franklin is often credited with changing “sacred and undeniable” to “self-evident.” Yet references to a Creator were not foreign to Jefferson himself. While it is easy to argue that two Deists, Jefferson and Franklin, were simply referring to Nature, or “Nature’s God,” as Jefferson wrote in the first paragraph of the Declaration, I think it is instructive to jump ahead a few years to the Constitutional Convention and a famous speech delivered by Franklin.
The Convention was struggling to accomplish anything and had been searching history for answers when Franklin introduced his well-known resolution calling for prayer:
“In this situation of this Assembly groping as it were in the dark to find political truth, and scarce able to distinguish it when presented to us, how has it happened, Sir, that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? At the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered … I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without [H]is notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without [H]is aid?”
While I do believe the use of the word “Creator” reflects our Founders’ belief in and reliance upon God, there is even more significance to the phrase. The Founders could have chosen other words. They could have said nature, reason, or natural law. Instead, they used a word that pointed to a moral authority above government. It places human rights, dignity, and moral worth above human institutions. It says that human beings possess value and rights not because governments approve of them, but because they originate from God.
In Christianity, human beings are understood to be created intentionally and in the image of God. That belief gives human life sacred value. If rights come from a Creator, then they are not temporary political privileges. They are part of the moral structure of creation itself.
This leads directly to the next clause in the Declaration, “All men are created equal.” When this was written, the United States did not extend these rights equally. Enslaved people, women, and many others were excluded. Yet the principle itself, that rights are universal and inherent, became something later generations could use to challenge injustice.
Clearly, Jefferson did not view all people as equal. What Jefferson was challenging with this line was the traditional European view that society was naturally divided between kings, nobles, and commoners. The Declaration rejected the idea that some people were born to rule while others were born to be ruled. So, if we take what Jefferson wrote at face value, that just all white men were created equal, that in and of itself was extremely revolutionary. There was no other place on the face of the Earth that believed in this idea.
But the principle goes even deeper than that. If our rights and self-worth come from a Creator, then government cannot define them. Legitimate government exists to secure those God-given rights, not to grant them. The Declaration establishes a moral standard by which governments are judged and reminds us that liberty requires both conviction and courage.
Viewed in this light, the Declaration of Independence became a powerful weapon against slavery and segregation. As Justice Clarence Thomas noted in a recent speech, Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. used the principles of the Declaration to fight injustice, not to support it. The Declaration is one of the greatest antislavery documents in history because it established the principle that all people possess equal rights bestowed upon them by God. The ideas of equality and liberty were so powerful that America could not permanently maintain slavery and segregation without contradicting its own founding principles. In this view, both the Civil War and the civil rights movement were efforts to make America live up to the promises contained in the Declaration.
Now, 250 years later, that promise remains unfinished. Every generation is called upon to ask whether we are living up to the ideals proclaimed in Philadelphia in 1776. Our Declaration does not claim that Americans had achieved perfect equality or perfect liberty; it declares what ought to be true and establishes a standard against which the nation can measure itself.
James Finck is a professor of American history at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma. He can be reached at james.finck@swoknews.com. Thanks to the Southwest Ledger and the Lawton Constitution for sharing his column.
