By Quin Hillyer at PJ Media;

Two hundred forty-one years ago today (yes, today, July 2), 56 very courageous men passed a resolution (officially promulgated two days later) dedicated to liberty, which they ended thusly: “With a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” They did so, they had written, while “appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the rectitude of our intentions,” to defend rights to which they are “endowed by their Creator.”

These were not irreligious men.

The appeals to a single God were not mere rhetorical flourishes. They were heartfelt expressions of both faith and duty, made with a firm belief that, as the second-most-active author of the Declaration was to say at another historically fraught conference 11 years later, “God governs in the affairs of men.”

Yet there are those who spread the falsehood that the nation founded by these people was intended to be hostile to faith in the public square.

This is nonsense.

There is a straight line of reverence for one true God that runs from the settlers writing the Mayflower Compact to the patriots of liberty declaring independencefrom the mighty British Empire, and from thence to the statesmen who hashed out the Constitution of the new United States.

They were declaring the independence of a nation whose most famous early settlers began their foundational document “in the name of God: Amen….Having undertaken, for the Glory of God, and advancements of the Christian faith and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in [what became Massachusetts]….”