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It was November 11th, 1620.  After sixty-six days at sea, with over half that time in violent storms, they were more than ready to get off the ship.  The Mayflower had just dropped anchor inside Cape Cod Bay.  They had been blown off course by the storm, and deposited here, much farther north than they had intended.  But they came to believe that the storm was the Lord’s way to get them to settle in this place.

These “Pilgrims”, as they called themselves, had come to America to have the freedom to teach their children the Bible; and to them that meant much more than teaching them how to be born again.  It included teaching to their children reading, writing, and all the other academic subjects.  Their Pastor, John Robinson, had taught them how to establish from the Bible the institutions of education, government, and economy.  These Pilgrims were Christians who believed the Bible was true and that its teachings could be lived out in this present world.  Thus, they were intent on creating a community which agreed that their children would be taught the Bible, and all the academic subjects from the principles of the Bible; and they had agreed on establishing a Biblical economy to fund that teaching; as well as a Biblical government to protect that education system and that economic system so they could accomplish the Pilgrim vision.

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One of the men who helped to found our nation, but is almost completely unknown today, was Noah Webster.  He wrote our first dictionary, a work of twenty years in the making, which he published in 1828.  He published his Blue Backed Speller, which sold millions of copies over the following 100 years.  It was an entire learning course compacted into a small book, which the pioneers used to educate their children.  In 1832 he published his History of the United States and included a “brief exposition of the U.S. Constitution” because he wanted young people to know early that our nation was a republic, not a democracy; and that our Founders got the ideas for its purpose, structure, and spirit of operation from the Bible.  Keep in mind that when he uses the term republican, he’s not talking about a political party, but rather a particular form of government.

He stated it this way:

“The brief exposition of the constitution of the United States, will unfold to young persons the principles of republican government; and it is the sincere desire of the writer that our citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament…”

(Webster, Noah. History of the United States (New Haven: Durrie & Peck, 1832), pp. 273-274, 300, paragraph 578 | Verna M. Hall, The Christian History of the American Revolution (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1976), p. 10.)