{"id":5550,"date":"2026-07-02T09:33:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:33:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5550"},"modified":"2026-07-02T09:33:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:33:19","slug":"an-opening-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/an-opening-prayer\/","title":{"rendered":"An Opening Prayer"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

The first fight of the Founding Fathers was about faith.

The inaugural session of the Continental Congress \u2013 the group that would ultimately call for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence<\/em> \u2013 convened in Carpenter\u2019s Hall, Philadelphia, on September 6, 1774.

Thomas Cushing, a lawyer from Boston, moved that the delegates begin with a prayer.\u00a0That seemed entirely reasonable. But both John Jay of New York and John Rutledge of South Carolina objected.

The men chosen to steer the direction of our not-quite-yet-nation at that perilous hour couldn\u2019t even agree on talking to God. \u00a0

What\u2019s interesting is that neither Jay nor Rutledge were skeptics.\u00a0Both were active church leaders.\u00a0John Jay, in particular, was an enthusiastic follower of Jesus. John Adams later wrote to his wife Abigail, \u201cBecause we were so divided in religious sentiments, we could not join in the same act of worship.\u201d\u00a0

John Meacham asserts in his book American Gospel<\/em>, \u201cWhatever Jay\u2019s and Rutledge\u2019s motives, their objection, if successful, had the power to set a secular tone in ceremonial life at the very outset of the American political experience.\u201d\u00a0

Whatever happened next was going to matter.

As it turned out, Samuel Adams (a man with a lively faith, but whose chief legacy these days seems to be the 20 Samuel Adams varieties of beer) said that he would gladly hear an honest person read prayers to the assembly.\u00a0He had heard positive things about a particular Episcopal clergyman in Philadelphia.\u00a0

Would that pastor be willing to open the session the following morning?\u00a0The motion was seconded and approved.

The atmosphere was heavy with the fear of the outbreak of war.\u00a0The American colonies were finding themselves increasingly at odds with Great Britain.\u00a0

It turned out that the reading assigned by the Episcopal Church for September 7 that year was Psalm 35.\u00a0It included these words:\u00a0\u201cPlead my cause, O Lord, with them that strive with me.\u00a0Fight against them that fight against me.\u00a0Take hold of shield and buckler, and stand for mine help.\u201d

John Adams, who was no believer, later wrote that he was stunned and moved.\u00a0\u201cI never saw a greater effect upon an audience.\u00a0It seemed as if heaven had ordained that psalm to be read on that morning.\u201d\u00a0

The American experiment began with a reading of Scripture. As James Madison was later to say, faith shaped our nation.\u00a0But it did not strangle it.

Conservative Christians insist that the Revolutionary era was fundamentally a religious event.\u00a0Secularists look back on our nation\u2019s founding as the ultimate act of establishing a society where free opinion is valued more highly than religious sentiment.

Both are right.\u00a0But neither is completely right.\u00a0

God was not absent from the Revolutionary era.\u00a0But neither was America established as a nation where a particular set of spiritual views were required, by law, to be elevated above all others.

In his book American Creation,<\/em> historian Joseph J. Ellis points out that there were two \u201cfounding moments\u201d during the Revolutionary era. The first was 1776, which declared American independence. The second was 1787-88, which declared American nationhood.

\u201cThe Declaration of Independence<\/em> is the seminal document in the first instance, the Constitution in the second. The former is a radical document that locates sovereignty in the individual and depicts government as an alien force, making rebellion against it a natural act. The latter is a conservative document that locates sovereignty in that collective called \u2018the people,\u2019 makes government an essential protector of liberty rather than its enemy, and values social balance over personal liberation.\u201d

Ellis then notes something that makes our country\u2019s earliest years astonishing.

It\u2019s rare for a group of revolutionaries (who are chiefly motivated to tear something down) to come together and successfully build something up.

But that\u2019s exactly what luminaries like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Madison, Franklin, and Hamilton accomplished.

What they avoided at every turn was identifying a set of religious beliefs or political ideologies and then declaring, \u201cThis is the final word, so don\u2019t ask questions \u2013 just believe.\u201d

Instead, the Founders established a way for the new nation to have an ongoing conversation, grounded in the Declaration and Constitution, in which hard questions and diverse opinions would be welcome. So far, that national conversation has gone on for 250 years.

There are days in which the existence of America seems almost miraculous. There are also days in which our fondest dreams of national goodness and integrity seem on the verge of being thwarted.

But consider this:

What the Founders accomplished was the creation of a political and social framework in which a retired Presbyterian pastor can send five emails a week to a mixed crowd of Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, Pentecostals, Catholics, Orthodox, atheists, agnostics, and even a few New England Patriots fans\u2026and no one raises an eyebrow.

Now, that falls into the category of miracle.
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here The first fight of the Founding Fathers was about faith. The inaugural session of the Continental Congress \u2013 the group that would ultimately call for the drafting of the Declaration of Independence \u2013 convened in Carpenter\u2019s Hall, Philadelphia, on September 6, 1774. Thomas Cushing, a lawyer from Boston, moved that the… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1142,754,179],"class_list":["post-5550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-american-revolution","tag-conflict","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5552,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5550\/revisions\/5552"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}