One Nation Under God

French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) traveled to the United States in 1831 to study its prisons and returned with a wealth of broader observations that he codified in “Democracy in America” (1835), an unbiased reflection on the great American experiment in self-government. De Tocqueville cited the First Connecticut Code as an example of the strong connection between faith and civil law in America.

In May of 1650, the General Court of Connecticut adopted what became known as the First Connecticut Code. The code was the result of work undertaken by Roger Ludlow, who, in 1646, set out to amend the preexisting Capital Laws of 1642, which were mostly borrowings from those of neighboring Massachusetts. In De Tocqueville's own words... 

"Nothing is both more singular and more instructive than the legislation of this period; there above all one finds the password to the great social enigma that the United States presents to the world in our day. Among these memorials, we particularly distinguish, as one of the most characteristic, the code of laws that the little state of Connecticut passed in 1650."

De Tocqheville noted that the legislators of Connecticut occupied themselves first with penal laws; and, to compose them, they conceived the strange idea of drawing from sacred texts... 

“'If any man [after legal conviction], shall have or worship any other God but the Lord God,' they say to begin with, 'he shall be put to death.' There follow ten or twelve provisions of the same nature, borrowed from the texts of Deuteronomy, Exodus, and Leviticus. Blasphemy, sorcery, adultery, and rape are punished by death; insult done by a son to his parents is struck with the same penalty. In this way they carried the legislation of a rude and half-civilized people into the heart of a society whose spirit was enlightened and mores mild; so one never saw the death penalty laid down more profusely in the laws, or applied to fewer of the guilty."

When he considered the development of civil laws here in America, De Tocqueville cited the actions of the pilgrims' belief that they were citizens and subjects of God first, and of the king of England second...

"Thus it is often difficult, in running through the first historical and legislative memorials of New England, to perceive the bond that attaches the emigrants to the country of their ancestors. One sees them at each instant performing an act of sovereignty; they name their magistrates, make peace and war, establish police regulations, give themselves laws, as if they came under God alone."

America has always prospered when we all agreed and lived as "One nation under God". Praying for revival is praying for a personal and nation return to the indispensable Biblical truth...

"For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ" - Philippians 3:20