Excerpts

"What were the core precepts of our Founding Fathers that modern-day society has lost? In a word . . . God. A fundamental and overriding belief in a Supreme Being, Who created and guides the universe, and from Whom all of our natural rights flow. A conviction that we derive our rights and liberties not from government, but from One greater than ourselves, and that our freedoms transcend government because they come from a Source higher than any government.”
— From In Their Own Words

Volume 1

“Religion and Virtue are the only Foundations; not only of Republicanism and of all free Government: but of Social Felicity under all Governments and in all the Combinations of human Society.”

— John Adams

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for, among old parchments, or musty records. They are written, as with a sun beam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.”

— Alexander Hamilton

“Sensible of the importance of Christian piety and virtue to the order and happiness of a state, I cannot but earnestly commend to you every measure for their support and encouragement. . . . [T]he very existence of the republics . . . depend much upon the public institutions of religion.”

— John Hancock

“The Religion and public Liberty of a People are intimately connected; their Interests are interwoven, they cannot subsist separately; and therefore they rise and fall together. For this Reason, it is always observable, that those who are combin’d to destroy the People’s Liberties, practice every Art to poison their Morals.”

— Samuel Adams

Volume 2

“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 His notice, is it probable that an Empire can rise without his aid?”

— Benjamin Franklin

“There must be religion. When that ligament is torn, society is disjointed, and its members perish. . . . But the most important of all lessons is, the denunciation of ruin to every state that rejects the precepts of religion.”

— Gouverneur Morris

“The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in Religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments.”

— Benjamin Rush

“God grant that in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable, and that the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both.”

— John Witherspoon

Volume 3

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. . . . And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion.

— George Washington

The god who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time: the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.

— Thomas Jefferson

[T]his belief in a God Allpowerful wise & good, is so essential to the moral order of the world & to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it can not be drawn from too many sources, nor adapted with too much solicitude to the different characters & capacities to be impressed with it.

— James Madison

Refiners may weave as fine a web of reason as they please, but the experience of all times shews Religion to be the guardian of morals—; And he must be a very inattentive observer in our Country, who does not see that avarice is accomplishing the destruction of religion, for want of a legal obligation to contribute something to its support.

— Richard Henry Lee