Carrying the Torch: Faith, Liberty, and America at 250

America’s 250th anniversary is not only a celebration of what we inherited, but a summons to understand, steward, reform, and faithfully carry the principles of liberty, equality, and constitutional self-government into the next 250 years.

On September 22, 2026, I completed Carry the Torch: Igniting Patriotism for the Next 250 Years, a ten-module course produced by Regent University through its Center for Christian Thought & Action. For me, completing the course was more than earning a certificate. It was an exercise in Christian civic formation at a moment when the United States is celebrating 250 years of independence and confronting a more difficult question: What principles are worthy of carrying into the next 250 years?

The Center for Christian Thought & Action exists to engage cultural, political, social, and theological questions through a distinctly Christian worldview. Its stated approach emphasizes thoughtful dialogue, reasoned argument, fact-based analysis, and the conviction that the lordship of Jesus Christ extends into every area of human life. That framework made Carry the Torch especially meaningful to me because it approached American history not merely as a chronology of events, but as a conversation about moral responsibility, political philosophy, constitutional government, human dignity, and Christian leadership.

The course was made possible through a grant from the U.S. Department of Education and its American History and Civics Education Initiative. It brought together scholars associated with Regent University, the Bill of Rights Institute, Christopher Newport University, the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation, The Woodson Center, and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. That range of institutions gave the course an interdisciplinary character, bringing history, political theory, constitutional thought, theology, economics, and civic education into conversation with one another.

The ten modules moved deliberately through the intellectual foundations of the American political tradition. The course began with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and their impact on America. It then examined the religious origins of resistance to tyrannical authority, the enduring lessons of George Washington’s Farewell Addresses, Abraham Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, and the challenge of preserving constitutional government. From there, the course explored the Declaration’s promise that human beings are created equal and what that promise has meant for Black Americans throughout our history. It examined the economic principles of the American political order, the complicated question of whether America can properly be described as having a Christian founding, Christianity and the meaning of American patriotism, natural law and the Constitution, and finally the relationship between science, technological development, and the American regime, extending the discussion from Benjamin Franklin’s inventions to artificial-intelligence agents.

What I appreciated most was that the course did not reduce patriotism to emotion, symbolism, or nostalgia. Patriotism, properly understood, demands intellectual and moral seriousness. To love a country responsibly, we must understand what it claims to represent. We must study the ideas underlying its institutions. We must acknowledge the moments when the nation failed to live according to those principles. We must also understand how Americans across generations have appealed to those same principles to expand the promise of liberty and equality.

That distinction is especially important within Christian leadership. Christianity does not permit the nation to become an idol. Our ultimate allegiance belongs to Jesus Christ. But Christian discipleship does not require withdrawal from public life either. The Center for Christian Thought & Action draws upon the famous formulation of Dutch theologian and statesman Abraham Kuyper, who argued that there is no area of human existence outside Christ’s sovereignty. That conviction creates a demanding standard for civic leadership. Political engagement must be accountable to truth, justice, human dignity, moral responsibility, and love of neighbor. Christian citizenship therefore requires more than winning arguments or defeating political opponents. It requires the discipline to distinguish principle from partisanship, conviction from anger, patriotism from nationalism, and political loyalty from theological faithfulness.

The modules dealing with equality, natural rights, and Black American history were particularly important to me. The Declaration of Independence gives Americans a standard against which the country itself can be judged. The American story cannot be intellectually honest if we celebrate liberty while ignoring slavery, segregation, disenfranchisement, or other instances in which Americans were denied the full application of principles the nation claimed to embrace. Yet the story is equally incomplete if those failures are treated as evidence that the ideals themselves were meaningless. One of the most powerful features of the American political tradition is that generations of reformers have taken the language of equality, natural rights, citizenship, and constitutional government seriously enough to demand that America live according to it. The principles became instruments through which Americans challenged the country to become more consistent with its own promises.

That lesson connects directly with my work through Anchor 250 and ANCLA 250. I created these initiatives around the conviction that America’s 250th anniversary should be more than a birthday celebration. It should become an opportunity for civic education, reflection, reform, and renewal. Through Anchor 250, and through ANCLA 250 for Spanish-speaking audiences, I want to help people engage questions surrounding immigration, justice reform, mental health, economic opportunity, energy, constitutional government, and civic belonging within a framework that is historically informed, practically grounded, and accessible. The guiding idea behind Anchor 250 is simple: Conserve what is good. Reform what is broken. Restore what has been lost. Carry the Torch strengthened the intellectual foundation behind that mission. It placed contemporary political questions inside a much longer conversation about natural rights, ordered liberty, constitutional self-government, religious conviction, equality, economic freedom, and civic responsibility.

It also reinforced something central to my understanding of a Master of Arts in Christian Leadership: leadership is fundamentally stewardship. Leadership is not merely influence, visibility, authority, or possessing a platform. The Christian leader receives truths, institutions, responsibilities, relationships, opportunities, and traditions that he did not create. He then becomes accountable for what he does with them. Some things should be preserved. Some things must be reformed. Some things that have been neglected must be restored. And everything must ultimately be evaluated beneath the authority of Christ.

That is why the title Carry the Torch feels especially appropriate. A torch is not a trophy to possess. It is something entrusted to one generation so that it can illuminate the path of the next. Completing this course reminded me that America’s 250th anniversary is not only an occasion to look backward toward 1776. It is an invitation to ask whether we understand our inheritance well enough to carry its best principles responsibly toward 2276. For me, that work continues through faith, scholarship, Christian leadership, civic engagement, Anchor 250, and ANCLA 250.

As Virginia lawmakers prepare for the 2027 General Assembly, I invite readers to explore my ongoing advocacy on Question 3 and my call to reclassify Virginia Code § 18.2-370.1 by visiting my Call for Action⁠ page and reviewing the reforms I am asking policymakers to consider.