When the US made God king

It's popular today to credit the secular Enlightenment with the creation of the United States. But the founders didn't see it that way, especially Samuel Adams. 

Adams said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence on August 1, 1776: “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient. He reigns in Heaven, and with a propitious eye beholds His subjects assuming that freedom of thought and dignity of self-direction which He bestowed on them. From the rising to the setting sun, may His kingdom come!”

What did Adams mean by, "We have this day restored the Sovereign..."? He was referring to the Torah portion of the Hebrew Bible, or what Christians refer to as the first five books of the Old Testament. There, God established the only government he would create and made himself king. The government of Israel before the monarchy had no human executive, legislature or taxes. It had only courts to adjudicate the civil portion of God's 613 law. God was king and very angry when Israel demanded a human king (1 Samuel 8). 

Adams helped write the Articles of Confederation, the original supreme law of the U.S. before the Constitution. He viewed that government as eliminating rule by humans and restoring God to his rightful place as king of the United States. Adams opposed the Constitution, fearing it created too strong of a central government, and championed a Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments. 

Thomas Jefferson called Adams the "patriarch of liberty." In a letter to Adams, Jefferson wrote in 1801 concerning a speech he had made recently, "...in meditating the matter of that address, I often asked myself, is this exactly in the spirit of the patriarch of liberty, Samuel Adams? is it as he would express it? will he approve of it?"

Adams was a founding father of the U.S., a leader of the movement that became the American Revolution, a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, as well as an architect of the principles of American republicanism that shaped the political culture of the United States. He is the best representative of the political and religious thought of the founding fathers and he was an unashamed fundamentalist Christian.

Happy Independence Day!