Twice in a Lifetime: Paideia and America 250
This July 4th was the day on which we, as a nation, celebrated the 250th Anniversary of America’s founding on July 4, 1776 with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. How blessed we are that our originating document gratefully acknowledges the Creator Who endowed us with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness!
I personally feel very blessed to have lived to see this day! I am doubly blessed to have lived to see the celebration of America’s Bicentennial in 1976, the year I graduated from high school. But, given that I’m now 68 years old, I know that I will certainly not live to see the day in July 2076 on which my beloved America will celebrate our nation’s Tricentennial. That means that the blessing of living to see these national milestones is likely to occur only twice in most Americans’ lifetimes.
Nevertheless, I am already starting to look forward to America’s Tricentennial – not for myself, but for our students at Paideia Classical Christian School. As I do so, I pray not only that America will still exist as a nation in 2076, but more importantly that America will still be the same kind of nation it was originally created to be: a representative republic founded on Judeo-Christian principles enshrined in a Constitution protected by a just system of laws.
But from the beginning, our Founding Fathers recognized that such a republic would not be easy to preserve intact. They read the Bible, so they knew just how very sinful fallen humanity is. Consequently, they recognized that order quickly lapses into chaos and republics rapidly fall into anarchy when the citizenry loses its religious foundations and moral commitments. Ben Franklin was the Founding Father who warned of this threat very pointedly when, as delegates to the Constitutional Convention left Philadelphia’s Independence Hall in September 1787, a woman in the crowd asked him, “Well, Doctor, what have we got -- a republic or a monarchy?” And he replied, “A republic, madam, if you can keep it.” Republics are difficult to acquire but easy to lose. Maintaining them requires constant vigilance.
Founding Father and second United States President John Adams was acutely aware of the peril that would threaten the infant American republic if this critical balance should be lost. As he wrote in September 1798 to the Massachusetts Militia, “[W]e have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . . .Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
These words ring absolutely true to me. Therefore, the question becomes, how can we produce future generations of moral and religious citizens capable of preserving our priceless Constitutional republic? Perhaps the best answer is staring all of us in the face in the form of Paideia Classical Christian School! Our School was founded to provide today’s children with the same education the Founding Fathers received: the education necessary to produce generations of godly disciples, scholars, and citizens!
May our students be blessed to live to see America’s Tricentennial, as the moral and religious people who will be capable of preserving our cherished Constitutional republic!
Marne Kendrick, July 2026