The founding of the United States of America as a constitutional republic in which liberty and righteousness flourished was the direct result of the Great Awakening, in which faithful pastors preached Christ and him crucified for the salvation of sinners and the Spirit of God saved many and transformed them to turn from sin and lawlessness to love life, liberty, righteousness, and peace.
For 150 years the primary educational influence for the colonists was through the faithful preaching of God’s Word through pastors such as Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Jonathan Mayhew, Samuel Davies (pastor of Patrick Henry), John Witherspoon (signer of the Declaration of Independence), Jonas Clark, and Peter Muhlenberg. These and many others led many colonists to think biblically, desire a land with liberty and justice, and be willing to fight for the cause of Christian civilization on the North American continent.
According to Yale historian Harry S. Stout, “Over the span of the colonial era, American ministers delivered approximately eight million sermons, each lasting one to one-and-a-half hours. The average 70-year-old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime, totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening.
This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without ever repeating the same course!” John W. Thornton wrote, “To the pulpit, the Puritan pulpit, we owe the moral force which won our independence.”
Witherspoon tutored James Madison, architect of the Constitution and U.S. President, Vice-President Aaron Burr, nine cabinet officers, 21 U.S. Senators, 39 Representatives, 3 Supreme Court justices, 12 state governors, and numerous ministers, lawyers, judges, and other public officials. Five of the 55 members of the Constitutional Convention were his students. He nurtured a whole generation of statesmen with the Biblical view of civil government. He was elected as a delegate from New Jersey to the Continental Congress and served for five years. He was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence, and during his period in Congress he served on over 120 committees.