The most famous phrase of the Declaration of Independence contains something of a contradiction, or at least an inconsistency. Happily so for Christians. There is a theological claim hiding there. Not hiding, actually; it is there in plain sight:
“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.”
That “all men are created equal” is not self-evident. Certainly not as it is commonly understood today.
In the context of the Declaration, the claim was being made that the right to govern belonged not to a king, however anointed, but to the people — “from the consent of the governed.” Most of the Declaration then goes on to enumerate the ways in which the British sovereign had governed unjustly, therefore justifying the independence of the American colonies.
“Created equal” is understood today in terms of equality of all before the law, rooted in the belief that all persons are created equal in dignity and rights. That was certainly not “self-evident” in 1776.
Even leaving aside the slaveholding of Thomas Jefferson, principal author of the
