If you had to provide the actual date for America’s first official day, what would you list it as?
Of course, one could easily argue that it was July 4, 1776, when 56 men, representing 3 million people back home in 13 different colonies of British North America, agreed by voice vote the final wording of the Declaration of Independence. We celebrate America at 250 because of that famous July 4th.
But I would submit a different candidate as the first official day as a nation, as noted below.
Interestingly, this last Sunday was Pentecost Sunday, which coincided as the Sunday before Memorial Day. Pentecost marks the beginning of the Church (worldwide). Memorial Day marks the day we remember those men and women who died in service to their country, so we could retain our freedoms.
The Day of Pentecost, which took place 2,000 years ago, may not seem of interest to many Americans. But I submit that the Bible and the Christian faith played such a pivotal role in the creation of America that we would not have a country without it – certainly not one with as much as freedom and prosperity.
J. Vernon McGee, whose radio broadcasts, “Through the Bible with J. Vernon McGee,” have edified millions, said this about the Day of Pentecost: “Five minutes before the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, there was no church. Five minutes after the Holy Spirit came on the Day of Pentecost, there was a church. In other words, what Bethlehem was to the birth of Christ, Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost was to the coming of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit became incarnate.”
America began officially on April 30, 1789, in New York City, our capital at the time, when George Washington was officially sworn in as our first president under the Constitution. (Other presidents had preceded him under the failed document, The Articles of Confederation, 1781-1789.)
I made a short video for Providence Forum, that focuses on Dr. Peter Lillback’s insights on our first official day, the last day of April in that year. And although we hear things like “separation of church and state,” (words not found in the Constitution), the founders certainly did not practice “the separation of God and government.”
Washington was sworn in on the Holy Bible, a custom of the day and a custom used by every president since that day. You can see that Bible at a place near Wall Street. The large statue of George Washington still towering on Wall Street is around the area where he was sworn in.
According to Dr. Lillback, with whom I co-wrote, “George Washington’s Sacred Fire,” on that first Inauguration Day the Bible was opened to Genesis 49, where Jacob was blessing his sons. Here, said Lillback, was the father of our country, blessing his sons in the nation, including the ones yet to come, like you and me.
Then, as eyewitnesses noted, Washington bowed down and kissed the Bible. D. James Kennedy once remarked on that act: “Why, that’s enough to give the ACLU apoplexy.”
Our first president was sworn in saying, “So help me, God” – an Anglican custom of that day and a custom used by every president since that day.
Then he delivered his Inaugural Address, in which he mentioned his gratitude to God repeatedly, using his respectful Baroque terms for Deity. Washington said, “It would be peculiarly improper to omit in this first official act my fervent supplications to that Almighty Being who rules over the universe.”
He also noted in that same speech, “No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States. Every step by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency.”
He then led everyone to a church nearby, St. Paul’s Chapel (Anglican), where they had a two-hour Christian worship service – dedicating the new nation to God. Included in that was Holy Communion, where Washington participated. Today you can still visit St. Paul’s Chapel and see George Washington’s box pew.
Because America began as a Christian nation, people of all faiths or no faith are welcome here. But we should never forget it was the Bible that gave us our freedoms.
I’m grateful to be an American. But I’m that much more grateful to be in Christ – thanks to the work of the Holy Spirit that began on the Day of Pentecost.
As George Washington himself said to his troops in 1778, in the aftermath of the cruel winter at Valley Forge: “To the distinguished character of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to laud the more distinguished character of Christian.”
