Unclean Lips

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When you take an inventory of all the individuals who have earned a prominent position in our nation’s history, it’s inevitable that you find in each one of them a character flaw of some sort.

  • George Washington is the father of our country, yet he was a slaveowner.
  • John Witherspoon was a powerful preacher, the President of the University of New Jersey (Princeton), and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Yet, he was a slaveowner as well.
  • Gouvernor Morris wrote the Preamble of the Constitution and spoke more on the Convention floor more so than any other delegate.1 While his faith in God isn’t something you could easily define as orthodox, he belonged to a denomination that believed in a Triune God and his approach to government was obviously informed by a biblical worldview.2 And yet, Morris was involved in several illicit affairs, including those with married women.3

How do you reconcile the way in which history honors these men with the fact that they were fundamentally flawed at some level?

We don’t honor Witherspoon because he owned slaves anymore than we honor Moses for murdering an Egyptian. We don’t respect Morris because he was an adulterer anymore than we applaud David for being in the same category and then went as far as having Bathsheba’s husband killed.

Both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution represent a brilliant approach to human rights and the structure of government. We don’t evaluate either one of them according to the character flaws of the men who wrote them. Rather, we evaluate them according to the substance of the documents themselves.

In a similar fashion, we don’t honor these men because of the inconsistencies that exist between the doctrine they subscribed to and the way that same doctrine failed to manifest itself in their approach to certain issues. Instead, we honor them because of the sacrifices they made to champion those principles that resulted in the freedoms and the rights we’re able to enjoy today.

When the prophet Isaiah was first commissioned by God, Isaiah is in the Lord’s Presence and instantly becomes aware of how he compares to the standard of God’s Perfection.

He says…

5 “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.” (Is 6:5)

Anyone who believes themselves to be “qualified” to be used by God in any capacity is inevitably humbled once confronted by the depravity that characterizes themselves along with every member of the human race.

What makes sin so toxic isn’t just the sin itself as much as it’s Who you’re sinning against (Is: 40:12-14; 45:9-10). When you take an honest inventory of Who God is, the idea that a human being would have the audacity to disobey Him or to rebel against Him is unconscionable, and yet…

…that’s what we do all day, every day (Rom 3:23).

It’s not the instrument, but rather than One working in and through that instrument that produces the results that are worthy of our respect and admiration. We applaud our Founding Fathers, not because they were beyond reproach, but because of their willingness to obey and be used by God in a crucial moment when compromise or rebellion would’ve been a far easier path to take.

The assessment that concludes that our Founding Fathers were wrong in the way they viewed certain topics, is neither inaccurate nor inappropriate.

But to dismiss what they accomplished, assuming that any dirt on their hands soils the integrity of the Truth they proclaimed or the substance of the sacrifices they made is to invoke a standard that is not only nonsensical, it is also hypocritical.

1. “Christianity and the Constitution”, John Eidsmoe, Baker Books, Grand Rapids, MI, 1987, 2003, p179
2. Ibid, p189
3 “National Endowment for the Humanities”, “The Confessions of Gouverneur Morris: An interview with Melanie Randolph Miller”, https://www.neh.gov/article/confessions-gouverneur-morris, accessed March 21, 2026

Twenty Five Inconvenient Realities

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The Separation of Church and State is a phrase often used by people who want to insist that Christianity had no real role in our nation’s founding – cerntainly nothing that had any significant influence on those that articulated our cause, created our Constitution and fought the battles that culminated in the surrender of Great Britain.

You see this in comments like what you see below from the “Freedom From Religion” website:

The Christian Right is trying to rewrite the history of the United States, as part of their campaign to force their religion on others who ask merely to be left alone. According to this Orwellian revision, the Founding Fathers of this country were pious Christians who wanted the United States to be a Christian nation, with laws that favored Christians and Christianity.

Not true! The early presidents and patriots were generally Deists or Unitarians, believing in some form of impersonal Providence but rejecting the divinity of Jesus and the absurdities of the Old and New Testaments.

You have to be very selective in the information you use to validate such a statement. At the same time, you have to be willfully oblivious to the specific references to God and Christ that punctuate the relevant events and documentation that established the United States.

Below is a brief yet potent list:

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March 20, 1781

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During the Revolutionary War, Congress issued sixteen proclamations calling for a National Day of Prayer, Fasting and Humiliation.

Take a look at the table below. You can click on the “page one | page two” links in the “Journals of the Continental Congress (1774 – 1875)” column to see the image of the text as it’s preserved in the Library of Congress and you can click on the “text” link to view a more “readable” version of the text.”

Date / Proclamation Journals of the Continental Congress (1774 – 1875) text
July 20, 1775 page one | page two text
March 16, 1776 page one | page two text
December 11, 1776 page one text
November 1, 1777 page one | page two text
March 6, 1778 page one | page two text
November 16, 1778 page one text
March 20, 1779 page one | page two text
October 14, 1779 page one | page two text
March 11, 1780 page one | page two text
October 18, 1780 page one | page two text
March 20, 1781 page one | page two text
October 26, 1781 (British Surrender) page one | page two text
March 19, 1782 page one | page two text
October 11, 1782 page one text
October 18, 1783 page one | page two text
August 3, 1784 page one | page two text

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The Black Robe Regiment

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Dissenting Clergy

Peter Oliver was a lawyer and by the time of the Revolution had risen to the position of chief justice of the Superior Court in Massachusetts. He was incredibily wealthy, served in a variety of community and church positions and was fiercely loyal to the crown.

His perspective on the Revolutionary War was that of a Tory. Unlike the way in which most historians present John Adams and other such Patriots as noble statesmen, Oliver saw them as deluded troublemakers.

Not long after Cornwallis’ surrender, Oliver published a book entitled, “Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion: A Tory View.” What makes his perspective valuable is that he has nothing to gain by glamorizing or exaggerating any one aspect of the American effort to win their independence, in that he views all of it as a form of sedition.

At one point, he sets aside an entire section of his text to describe the “Black Robe Regiment,” or what he refers to as the “Black Regiment.”

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