2026 is the 250^th  anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and the founding of our country as a Christian nation. In the Declaration Thomas Jefferson stated:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness …”

This is what made America great in the first place. We are founded as a Christian nation!   

The National Monument to the Forefathers, located in Plymouth, is called the “Matrix of Liberty” and displays the principles our country was founded on with five statues that highlight the love the Pilgrims had for God and by extension for each other. They made a voluntary covenant with God and each other to walk in all His ways and to be steppingstones for generations to come by spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ the Savior of the world. They knew that this was the only true path to liberty. We hope you will join us as we gather for prayer, worship, and our annual renewal of the covenant. Each year we focus the event on faith, liberty, education, law, and morality, all found on the monument.

Leo and Nancy Martin, Co-founders and Directors of The Jenney

We are a covenant country based on covenants the Pilgrims made with God and each other. A covenant is a promise made between us and God or between each other with God as our witness. The Pilgrims made a covenant with God when they formed a church in England that opposed King James and the church of England where King James was thought of as God’s representative on earth and therefore all laws he made were from God and had to be followed. You had to belong to his church and follow him as if he were God.

The Pilgrims, being a product of the reformation, wanted to follow Jesus Christ as Lord so they separated from the church and had church in their homes. When they did this, they formed a church covenant called the Scrooby Covenant of 1606:

“As ye Lord’s free people joined themselves by a covenant of the Lord into a church estate, in ye fellowship of ye gospel, to walk in all His ways, made known or to be made known to them according to their best endeavor, whatever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. “

This covenant led to the “Mayflower Compact” which was a civil covenant that formed the civil government that we have today. Chiltonville Congregational Church is one of the few churches that still operates under the “Scrooby Covenant”. What better place to have this years “National Day of Prayer.”