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Samuel Adams, the Father of our American Revolution, stated,

“Let each citizen remember at the moment he is offering his vote that he is not making a present…to please an individual—or at least that he ought not so to do; but that he is executing one of the most solemn trusts in human society for which he is accountable to God and his country.”

(Samuel Adams, The Writings of Samuel Adams, Harry Alonzo Cushing, editor (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), Vol. IV, p. 256, in the Boston Gazette on April 16, 1781.)

Why did America’s Founders teach that voting was so important?  First of all, they believed that the Bible taught it.  Indeed, in Genesis 1:26, where God tells why He made man, one of His three reasons was that man might “have dominion.”  “Having dominion” means, first of all, that we rule over our own desires.  We call this “internal self-government” (America’s Founders often called it “virtue”).  But that internal self-government must be allowed to grow out into the culture.  We must also “take dominion” in the institutions of the culture.  I refer to the home, the church, and civil government—for those are the three structural institutions by which God builds every nation.  If we do not lead in those institutions then those who do not know and walk in the truth of the Scripture will lead; they will “take dominion” and lead us Continue reading →