THE DECLARATION of Independence is a little odd. It claims not only that all people are created equal but also that they have a self-evident, God-given right to the pursuit of happiness. If it is indeed self-evident, why did no one even mention it until 1776? God did not guarantee anyone the right to pursue happiness in the sermons of Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford or the great Puritan ministers Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards, and it is impossible to imagine any of those stern preachers arguing its merits. Just read the gruesome text of Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and you’ll agree. The challenge there is to avoid the everlasting torments of hell; Edwards certainly does not think that you’ll escape them by spending your days on earth chasing after happiness.
Implausible as the declaration is, however, at least in this respect, the members of the Continental Congress accepted and signed it. Then the Continental army fought its way to victory, turning independence from assertion into reality. Now that the Americans were free of Britain, what would be the relationship between this right to pursue happiness and the God who had given it to them? On the whole, it was positive. In the decades after the Revolution, growing numbers of Americans attended revivals, joined churches, founded new denominations and blended godly fervor with the pursuit of their worldly goals.
