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The Divided States of America.
Today, that is what we seem to be. One needn’t look far to see it.
Our politics is ugly. Antisemitism is on the rise. The culture wars rage. Protestors fill the streets. Hate abounds. And the media has lost its way; indeed, it now foments the divisions amongst us, acting as partisan pugilists rather than neutral journalists.
We barely talk to each other anymore. And when we do, our ears are closed—we don’t listen. We have forgotten how to debate—or even discuss—the serious issues of the day. How to have a respectful discourse. How to disagree without being disagreeable.
Our noses are instead buried in our electronics, and our eyes only come to rest on sites that reinforce our pre-existing attitudes and positions. We see everything through the lens of whatever group seems to define us. And we have become polarized as a result.
Dialogue has been stifled. Civil exchanges have given way to unreasoned accusations, invective, cries of racism, fascism, and threats to democracy. Disagreements no longer beget discussion, reevaluation, and compromise; they instead immediately transform into vilification and contempt. Those with differing ideas automatically become the enemy. Everything is Us v. Them.
Never mind that those espousing tolerance are often the most intolerant of all. And that of all the nations in the world, America has done the most to heal the racial divisions that once permeated our society.
That is why socialists and communists—who incredibly have now taken over the modern Democratic party—stoke class warfare. Without it, they and their warped ideology simply cannot survive. They need a bogeyman.
That is why Antifa and its ilk have taken over the streets in many of our once-great cities. It is only by sowing mayhem that their vision of anarchy can become a reality.
That is why organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center have been funding the very hate groups they convinced their donors they were fighting against. After all, an army is only necessary if there is a threat to the homeland.
Trump Derangement Syndrome demands a reflexive opposition to anything remotely Trump, and indeed it has fueled multiple presidential assassination attempts.
The young children of a martyred Charlie Kirk are left growing up without their beloved father.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
And, indeed, it wasn’t always this way.
To be sure, there has long been conflict in the world. Indeed, it wasn’t long after the serpent began sowing discord in the Garden of Eden that humankind’s first martyr—Abel—was murdered by his own brother Cain.
Discord certainly also existed at the time of America’s founding. Indeed, it was our longstanding frictions with Great Britain that united the colonies in their quest for independence. And even at that time, politics was ugly. Who can forget that Alexander Hamilton was mortally wounded in a duel with Aaron Burr?
But there was something different about those times.
Something that modern-day America has lost.
Something that we need to rediscover.
There was a common thread amongst our Founding Fathers, even when they disagreed.
It was their universal belief in God, in a Creator greater than ourselves, the great Legislator of the universe who endowed us with our unalienable rights and liberties. At the heart of America is this core understanding that it was God who gave us life, it was God who bestowed us with the Blessings of Liberty, it was God from whom our unalienable rights flow, and it is God who enables us in the pursuit of happiness. God, not government, is the source of it all.
This is what made America different from any nation that came before it. It is what enabled American exceptionalism. A nation that—because of its First Principles—could stand as a shining city on a hill, a beacon of hope for all who share its values, for now a quarter of a millennium.
The authors of our independence embodied a God-led spirit that was ignited by those who came before them. Men like John Winthrop, who along with his fellow Pilgrims sought religious freedom in the New World, and who spoke of “the precepts of the moral law” and of “the cause between God and us.” Said Winthrop:
For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.
America, of course, has been divided before. Abraham Lincoln famously delivered a speech in 1858 declaring that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
Lincoln’s words related specifically to the divisive issue of slavery, but they had divine origins.
● “Jesus knew their thoughts and said unto them, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand.’ ” Matthew 12:25.
● “If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand.” Mark 3:24-25.
● “Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them: ‘Any kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and a house divided against a house will fall.’ ” Luke 11:17.
Later, as President of the United States, Lincoln issued a Proclamation declaring “Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting, and prayer.” President Lincoln’s words should resonate with us today as they did then:
We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth, and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us.
A century later, Ronald Reagan delivered an address years before he was elected to the presidency. It was January 25, 1974. Then, as now, and as in Lincoln’s day, America was facing difficult and uncertain times. We then found ourselves in the throngs of a Watergate scandal that would, just months later—and for the first time—cause a sitting American president to resign from office. America was also embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam. It was an uncharacteristic losing effort that would soon see the world’s greatest military and economic power departing the scene with its tail seemingly between its legs.
So, on January 25, 1974, then-California-Governor Reagan hearkened back to America’s founding and to the core principles that have always united us as Americans. He recalled that our Founding Fathers, despite their diverse backgrounds and the disparate and conflicting interests of the colonies they represented, came together in unity to sign the Declaration of Independence and, later, the United States Constitution.
He spoke of his belief that there was a “divine plan that placed this great continent between two oceans, to be sought out by those who were possessed of an abiding love of freedom and a special kind of courage.” He noted that, instead of simply replacing one regime with another, “this had been a philosophical revolution. The culmination of men’s dreams for 6,000 years, and they formalized those dreams with a constitution. And that, too, was something of a miracle. Probably the most unique document ever drawn in the long history of man’s relation to man.”
He contrasted the United States Constitution with other nations’ constitutions, noting a critical distinction. “Those other constitutions say government grants you these rights and ours says you were born with these rights. They are yours by the grace of God and no government on earth can take them from you.” And he quoted Pope Pius XII: “The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish action. Into the hands of America, God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind.”
On January 20, 1981, seven years after Reagan delivered this address, he took office as the 40th President of the United States. In his inaugural address on that day, President Reagan pledged to work to toward an “era of national renewal” that would better the lives of ALL Americans.
And Reagan again invoked a reliance on the faith of those who founded America: “We are a nation under God, and I believe God intended for us to be free. It would be fitting and good, I think, if on each Inaugural Day in future years it should be declared a day of prayer.”
Four years later, in his second inaugural address, President Reagan urged the restoration of “our values of faith, family, work, and neighborhood” and called for Americans to “stand as one today—one people under God, determined that our future shall be worthy of our past.” And he pledged for that future to be one of “golden years” that would embrace all Americans: “Let us resolve that we, the people, will build an American opportunity society in which all of us—white and black, rich and poor, young and old—will go forward together, arm in arm.”
President Reagan described the “American sound” as “hopeful, big-hearted, idealistic, daring, decent, and fair. That’s our heritage, that’s our song. We sing it still. For all our problems, our differences, we are together as of old. We raise our voices to the God who is the Author of this most tender music. And may He continue to hold us close as we fill the world with our sound—in unity, affection, and love—one people under God, dedicated to the dream of freedom that He has placed in the human heart, called upon now to pass that dream on to a waiting and hopeful world.”
But there is one thing that should unite us all: God, as the giver of our rights and liberties, and as the purveyor of our many blessings. As President Donald Trump declared on July 4, 2026—the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:
This American flag still waves. Proud and free and beautiful. We have thrived and flourished because our founders were great. Our cause was just. Our people are brave. Our culture is exceptional. And our destiny is written by God.
In this spirit, and in the spirit of Lincoln and Reagan and our great Founding Fathers, we must once again instill in all Americans a renewed appreciation for the core principles of America’s founding and re-embrace our Founding Fathers’ God-centered worldview. Only then can we again come together in unity and collaboration. It is that worldview that will enable us to renew the shared values and principles that our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us 250 years ago.
Indeed, it is only by once again becoming One Nation under God, that we can come together again as the United States of America.
This essay will appear in the forthcoming publication America, the Shaken Foundation, authored by Dr. Stephen Phinney and Judge Mark T. Boonstra. All contributors and readers are respectfully reminded to observe applicable copyright laws.
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