Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
6 Quotes: Calvin Coolidge on religion and the Declaration of Independence
6 Quotes: Calvin Coolidge on religion and the Declaration of Independence
Apr 12, 2026 4:25 AM

Tomorrow, for the 243rd anniversary celebration of Independence Day, President Trump will give a speech on the National Mall. As with all such addresses in the modern age, Trump’s remarks will pared to the presidential gold standard for Fourth of July speeches—Calvin Coolidge’s speech on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

Coolidge was so famous for his taciturnity that he earned the nickname “Silent Cal.” But when he did speak he could be moving and profound. Such was the case in his speech in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on July 5, 1926. Here are six quotes you should know from the speech about God, religion, and the Declaration.

1. “The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.”

2. “While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise. It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his “best ideas of democracy” had been secured at church meetings.”

3. “When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature’s God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say, ‘The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven.’”

4. “No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when e to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.”

5. “Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.”

6. “Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought. Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who paratively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power. No other theory is adequate to explain prehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people.”

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Things are getting (even) worse for religious believers in China
There’s more depressing news from China. Its Religious Affairs Office has announced that, not only must all religious organizations get state approval for any activity they undertake, they are also expected to “spread the principles and policies of the Chinese Communist Party.” Given the basic irreconcilabilities between, say, small “o” orthodox Christianity and the philosophy of Chinese Communism – which, after all, includes a mitment to atheism – this can only be seen as an escalation in the Chinese regime’s...
The NHS: The god that failed
In 1949, half-a-dozen ex-Communists wrote a book about their former faith, dubbing socialism The God that Failed. As the UK’s revered National Health Service enters its worst spiral on record, it seems to have earned that title. News broke Thursday morning the NHS had its worst month in history in December 2019. The number of people who waited more than four hours for treatment in its Accident & Emergency (A&E) rooms broke all previous records. In 2010, the UK government...
What are the unintended consequences of economic nationalism?
Protectionist policies are, on the surface, attractive. Through state means, they promise to protect industries and workers as well as boost a country’s industrial production. But like most top-down solutions, there’s a catch; the government has a knowledge deficiency. “No one knows what technological innovation or entrepreneurial insight will upend the present economic landscape in America—or any other country,” explains Samuel Gregg in an article in Law & Liberty. “Nor can such developments be anticipated by economic nationalist policies.” Evidence...
Richard Reinsch on Rubio’s ‘materialistic’ industrial policy
Last November, my colleague Dan Hugger ments by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) about his desire for mon good capitalism” informed by Roman Catholic social teaching. Generally speaking, this is an aspiration that many at the Acton Institute share, but the specifics of what that would look like are where the real differences lie. At the least, this demonstrates how people of good will, of the same (or similar) religious and ethical tradition, can still have divergent opinions about policy. Shared...
Acton Line podcast: Remembering Gertrude Himmelfarb with Yuval Levin
On this week’s episode, we pay tribute to Gertrude Himmelfarb who passed away last Monday, December 30th, at the age of 97. Gertrude Himmelfarb was a historian and leading intellectual voice in conservatism. Throughout her career, she wrote many books about Victorian history, morality and contemporary culture. The New York Post named her one of America’s greatest minds, and the National Review called her the “paragon of intellectual plishment.” What did her work contribute to the conservative movement and how...
How California’s new ‘gig-work’ law threatens local artists
Capitalism is routinely castigated as an enemy of the arts, with much of the criticism pointed toward monsters of profit and efficiency. Others fret over more systemic features, worried mercialization and consumerism will inevitably detach artists from healthy creative contexts. Among progressives, such arguments are quickly paired with vague denunciations of “corporate greed” and advocacy for “corrective” or “protective” policies, from cultural subsidies to wage controls to “artist lofts” and beyond. The irony, of course, is that such solutions have...
Doug Bandow: China exports its ‘social credit’ system to Venezuela
China’s social credit system seeks to tie each individual’s credit rating and privileges to his support for the Communist regime. Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Nicolás Maduro, has moved to import “perhaps the creepiest tool of repression” to his own country, writes Doug Bandow in this week’s Acton Commentary. Bandow, a senior rellow at the Cato Institute and former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, writes that the metastasizing Big Brother program proves that government surveillance is an integral feature of socialism:...
Gertrude Himmelfarb: Teacher of the Free and Virtuous Society
Since the passing of Gertrude Himmelfarb I have been reflecting on just how much she taught me through her voluminous historical scholarship. In this week’s Acton Line Podcast I interviewed Yuval Levin, Resident Scholar and Director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at AEI, who was also her student. Levin’s recent essay in the National Review, “The Historian as Moralist,” is the best introduction I have ever read to Himmelfarb’s intellectual project, her major works, and her lasting influence. My...
Tyler Cowen’s “State Capacity Libertarianism”: A Straussian Reading
On a recent episode of the excellent podcast Conversations with Tyler the economist Tyler Cowen reflected on the direction his and co-author Alex Tabarrok’s blog Marginal Revolution has taken over the last ten years: [I]n 2009 I was still experimenting in some fresh way with blogging as a new medium and what it meant. In some ways the blog was better then for that reason. Whereas now, Marginal Revolution, it’s a bit like, well, the Economist magazine plus a dose...
Alejandro Chafuen in Forbes: Corruption, not globalization, is to blame for poverty
When discussing globalization, advocates of the free economy usually start by stressing the large number of people who have risen out of extreme poverty in the last three decades. This period of poverty reduction showed a parallel growth in globalization. But it has not been even. Those who try to prove that we are living in the best of times usually use monetary statistics – they count the number and percentage of people who earn less than $1.90 per day....
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved