FAITH OF THE FOUNDERS: Benjamin Rush on Christianity and the Republic

(QUICK READ) — Dr. Benjamin Rush was among the most interesting characters among the Founders of the United States of America, playing a key role in the Revolutionary War, was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and was active in the constitutional era that began in 1789.

Among much else, Rush was an early Abolitionist, provided medical services to the colonial army under Gen. George Washington and, after independence was won, became a major influence on the American medical scene.

Rush was also a devout Christian and one who thought carefully and seriously about the relationship between his faith and the political principles he upheld and literally fought for as a young doctor. In the following words, Rush explains why he believed being a Christian logically led one to be a republican (not the GOP, but the form of government):

“A Christian cannot fail of being a republican. The history of the creation of man, and of the relation of our species to each other by birth, which is recorded in the Old Testament, is the best refutation that can be given to the divine right of kings, and the strongest argument that can be used in favor of the original and natural equality of all mankind.
“A Christian, I say again, cannot fail of being a republican, for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self-denial, and brotherly kindness, which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy and the pageantry of a court. A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teacheth him, that no man ‘liveth to himself.’

“And lastly, a Christian cannot fail of being wholly inoffensive, for his religion teacheth him, in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.” — Benjamin Rush, Of the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic (1798)

PREVIOUSLY ON FAITH OF THE FOUNDERS:

Justice Joseph Story on the God Question for America

James Madison on the Duty of Every Man

John Adams on the Sources of the American Revolution

 

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