As America prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, it is important to acknowledge the faith and sacrifice of the signers to understand that this nation was founded upon Judeo-Christian principles and religious freedom.

Most of the 56 signers were professing Christians and all of them knew the potential risks for signing this miraculous document which maintained that the 13 American states were free of British rule. In fact, nine signers never lived to see the freedom for which they pledged their lives.

A few months before signing the Declaration, Patrick Henry, a Founder who served as the first and sixth post-colonial governor of Virginia, addressed the Virginia Convention and declared: “We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.”

John Hancock, the presiding officer over the Second Continental Congress, became the first representative to sign the Declaration on July 4, 1776. If the Revolutionary War was lost or he was caught, Hancock would have been hanged by the British. Yet Hancock said, “Principally and first of all, I give and recommend my soul into the hands of God that gave it: and my body I recommend to the earth. Nothing doubting but at the general resurrection I shall receive the same again by the mercy and power of God.”

All 56 patriots who signed the Declaration took their duties so seriously to the people of the new nation that they made a promise “with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.” They signed the Declaration of Independence knowing that the penalty would be death if they were captured, and that pledge could literally cost them their lives and fortunes.