Jul 27, 2026 · 6 min · 5 segments
Ask what inspired American government, and you’ll hear the usual answers: Greece, Rome, the Enlightenment. The Founders studied them all. But none of them fully explains why America rejected kings…
And to understand how the Bible shaped America, you have to place yourself on a cold, storm-tossed ship called the Mayflower.
Instead of reaching Virginia, where they would have simply submitted to the king's colonial government, the ship's captain told his passengers they would have to disembark in the wilderness of Massachusetts.
Of the 102 passengers on board, no one had been appointed by the King of England to take charge under these unforeseen circumstances.
How could commoners possibly survive, let alone thrive, without a royal master to tell them what to do? To solve this dilemma, the Pilgrims did something revolutionary.
Before setting foot on the New World, they drafted a short document known to history as the Mayflower Compact.
The early settlers of America, and later the Founding Fathers, were intimately familiar with the Hebrew scriptures.
For several hundred years after the time of Moses and Joshua, the Hebrew Republic was governed by laws given by God, administered by local leaders, and guided by judges who rose up during times of trouble.
They looked at the pagan nations surrounding them and said, "We want a king to rule over us so we can be like everyone else." The prophet Samuel warned the people what would happen if they traveled down this path.
And to understand how the Bible shaped America, you have to place yourself on a cold, storm-tossed ship called the Mayflower.
Instead of reaching Virginia, where they would have simply submitted to the king's colonial government, the ship's captain told his passengers they would have to disembark in the wilderness of Massachusetts.
Of the 102 passengers on board, no one had been appointed by the King of England to take charge under these unforeseen circumstances.
How could commoners possibly survive, let alone thrive, without a royal master to tell them what to do? To solve this dilemma, the Pilgrims did something revolutionary.
Before setting foot on the New World, they drafted a short document known to history as the Mayflower Compact.
The early settlers of America, and later the Founding Fathers, were intimately familiar with the Hebrew scriptures.
For several hundred years after the time of Moses and Joshua, the Hebrew Republic was governed by laws given by God, administered by local leaders, and guided by judges who rose up during times of trouble.
They looked at the pagan nations surrounding them and said, "We want a king to rule over us so we can be like everyone else." The prophet Samuel warned the people what would happen if they traveled down this path.
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