When America’s second president, John Adams, and America’s third president, Thomas Jefferson, both died on the same day in 1826 – and that day was none other than the Fourth of July – it was seen as a sign of God’s favor on the United States.  As historian David McCullough notes in his widely-acclaimed biography of Adams, it “could not be seen as mere coincidence.”  It was a ‘visible and palpable’ manifestation of ‘Divine favor,’ wrote John Quincy in his diary that night, “expressing,” McCullough adds, “what was felt and would be said again and again everywhere the news spread.”

The idea of “choseness” and “special blessing” from God has been a constant theme throughout the history of the United States, beginning with the Puritans and their “shining city on a hill.”  In more recent times, the vision of a Christian America was popularized in the late 1970’s by Evangelical authors Peter Marshall and David Manuel in The Light and the Glory.  Marshall and Manuel held that America was founded as a Christian nation and flourished under the benevolent hand of divine providence, arguing further that America's blessings will remain only as long as America is faithful to God as a nation.  In 1989 a team of Evangelical historians (Mark Noll, Nathan Hatch, and George Marsden) attempted to lay this somewhat dubious thesis to rest, but it continued as a popular framework for viewing American history among contemporary American Evangelicals.

Whether we were founded as an explicitly Christian nation or not, to many, the idea of God’s favor being removed from our land seems prescient.

As a recent Associated Press article suggested, “everything seemingly is spinning out of control,” with the article going on to note how Midwestern levees are bursting; polar bears are adrift; gas prices are skyrocketing; home values are abysmal; air fares are beyond reach; wars without end rage in Iraq and Afghanistan.