John Adams mused: "Posterity, you will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope that you make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent to heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."
The founders risked everything germinating a republic to blossom freedom and prosperity, while acknowledging that earlier republics failed because they lacked the moral seedbed to sustain them.
The founders believed the free exercise of religion would nourish the ground for national morality to grow in. They recognized that a single state religion or just a few cannot adequately trim the disparate passions of the people, who the founders believed needed moral cultivation to voluntarily maintain civic order.
John Adams declared: "We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions, unbridled by morality and true religion . . . Our constitution is made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."
The founders resolved that religion must be free to grow as many offshoots necessary to inspirit the people. They were persuaded that many religions could more effectively pollinate morality into a large and diverse population. But they feared that too many competing religions might choke the union.
In his timely 1776 book, "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations," Adam Smith reassured the founders by positing that competition among many religions would rarely cause conflict. Disorder, he advised, is caused when there are too few religions competing with each other.
Smith instructed further that religious competition fosters rigorous religions with active and persuasive leaders who can effectively motivate their adherents—the moral and religious people requisite to sustain a free and prosperous republic.
With this understanding, the founding husbandmen of this nation planted the acorns of morality and religious freedom together to sprout the twin oaks buttressing the revolutionary republic. Tragically, many today, including those among the judiciary, perceive morality and religious freedom as noxious to the ecosystem of their sexual stratagem. They are laying an ax to the oaks of the republic, trying to clear-cut them off the landscape of America.
President George Washington presciently warned them: "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of happiness ... reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less to every species of free government. Who, that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?"
Only a republic, supported by the twin oaks of morality and religious freedom, can provide the necessary shade for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" to flourish. For this cause, the founders, "with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, mutually pledge[d] to each other [their] lives, [their] fortunes and [their] sacred honor."
The founders' devotion and sacrifices echo through time that it is we, not John Adams, who needs to repent to heaven for what is being done to the republic.
Stuart C. Reid is a Utah state senator representing Ogden.
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