A Nation of Trailblazers

A Nation of Trailblazers

By NGU President Dr. Gene C. Fant Jr.

I travel a lot in my job as the President of North Greenville University. This spring and summer, I decided to capture some thoughts about the 250^th anniversary of our nation’s founding on video, creating video log or vlog for the occasion.

In 1976, during the nation’s Bicentennial, I was 13 years old. Our family had moved to Tidewater Virginia two years previously, and I was a massive history nerd—my favorite books were the “You Are There” series that recounted historical events—and couldn’t believe that I lived in the land of so much Colonial and Civil War history. The big celebration captured our attention. My mom even bought a set of Ethan Allen furniture for our house, marking our patriotic décor in time for the events. I had more red-white-and-blue in my wardrobe than ever. It was an amazing season of life.

I can remember thinking ahead to 2026 back then, to the 250^th, and wondering what that might be like. I couldn’t fathom that I would be 63 then (incredibly elderly in my early teenaged mind) or what I would be doing (university president? Ha!). But I assumed we would be celebrating that extra half century.

This past January, I was surprised to feel like the 250^th was feeling a little like an afterthought. For universities such as mine, July 4 is in the middle of the summer, so it’s hard to do much of a celebration on the deadest week of the summer break. I think the pandemic also sucked a lot of energy (and resources) away from many institutions that had been making plans. But I felt like I wanted to do something to celebrate.

While in Charleston—that amazing city that is so beautiful and has such a complicated history—I was surveying my spring and summer calendar and realized that I could create this vlog. I have about a dozen videos I’ll be posting, with longer blog posts on the NGU site I use to post thoughts from time to time.

Special thanks to Stuart Floyd, my executive assistant, and the NGU media folks for their assistance in moving this project forward. Just for fun, Stuart and I played with a little AI editorial and research assistance from Claude on some of this but the posts are my thoughts and my final edits.

None of these posts will be earth-shattering, but I hope you will check some of them out and be reminded of some foundational elements of our nation worth celebrating. Because America is a nation of firsts. America is a nation of trailblazers.

America’s Holy City: Charleston, Religious Liberty, and a Church That Helped Shape a Nation

Charleston, South Carolina has earned many nicknames over its long history, but none is more fitting than the one locals perhaps treasure most: the Holy City. Stand anywhere in the historic district and you’ll understand why. Steeples punctuate the skyline in every direction, each one a testament to a community that took its faith seriously enough to build something beautiful and lasting. This is a city that has always believed the life of the soul and the life of the city belong together. 

Nowhere is that conviction more tangible than on the corner where the First Baptist Church of Charleston still stands. The congregation itself predates the current building by well over a century — its roots reach back to the 17th century, making it one of the oldest Baptist congregations in the American South. The striking Greek Revival structure visible today dates to around 1820, a period when the young republic was still working out what it meant to be a nation where faith and freedom could coexist. That the building has stood for two centuries, through war and storm and social upheaval, feels like its own kind of statement. 

What makes First Baptist Charleston more than a beautiful landmark is its history as a champion of religious liberty. At a time when the relationship between church and state in America was still being negotiated — when the founders’ bold experiment in ordered freedom was far from guaranteed — this congregation was an active voice in the fight for the principle that no government should dictate a person’s conscience. That legacy matters today just as much as it did then. 

The founders understood something that is easy to forget in a secular age: that a free people cannot be sustained by law and institutions alone. Religious life, they believed, was not a private hobby to be kept separate from civic responsibility. Faith was meant to shape how citizens think, how they treat their neighbors, and what kind of community they choose to build together. Charleston’s churches — hundreds of them, from grand historic sanctuaries to small neighborhood congregations — are a living argument for that vision.

 
As America approaches its 250th birthday, places like this are worth more than a passing glance from a car window. They are reminders that the liberties Americans enjoy did not arrive automatically. They were argued for, prayed over, and sometimes paid for at great cost by people who believed they were doing something that would outlast them. They were right. 
America has always been a nation of firsts — a trailblazer that dared to try something the world had not seen before. The steeples of Charleston stand as quiet, enduring proof of that. 

Further reading:

• The Baptists in America by Robert A. Baker and Paul J. Craven Jr. — a thorough history of Baptist life in the United States, including the pivotal role of Southern congregations like First Baptist Charleston in shaping the nation’s commitment to religious liberty. 
• Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Religious Freedom in America by Edwin S. Gaustad — an accessible exploration of how the principle of religious liberty developed from colonial times through the founding era and beyond. 
• Charleston: The History of an American City by Walter J. Fraser Jr. — a definitive account of one of America’s most storied cities, tracing how its faith communities, architecture, and civic life have intertwined across four centuries.

Endowed by Our Creator: What Jefferson Knew About Rights

I visit Washington DC almost every year on business. Most visits find me arriving near sunset, weary after a long drive or flight, so I love to head over to the Tidal Basin to stretch my legs and sometimes grab a quick hot dog at one of the kiosks. Without fail, I love to visit the Jefferson Memorial.

I grew up in Virginia and was taught to call him “Mister Jefferson,” so I have a particular affinity with the Palladian overtones of the dome and colonnade. In the center is the nineteen-foot bronze figure of Thomas Jefferson, gazing out across the Tidal Basin toward the White House.

I find myself drawn back to this spot again and again, not because Jefferson was a flawless man—he certainly was not—but because of his reputation as a man of broad learning and science. He was in many ways American’s great Renaissance man, a combination of scientist, architect, philosopher, and statesman, all merged into one mind and one life.

As compendious as his learning was, it was how he applied it to the emerging nation that earns him a place in this memorial. My academic training is in Elizabethan and Jacobean literature, which was steeped in the presumption that the King governed at God’s behest. Rights came from the King. Punishments and rewards likewise derived from the Crown. When Jefferson lobbed a one-sentence hand grenade into the political landscape, he was shifting our understanding of the source of our rights: “. . . all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” He would rather be treasonous against the King than treasonous against God Himself. God gives us our rights and the government, rightly understood, is the God-ordained guardian of these rights.

This view inverses the old paradigm where the King gains rights from God and distributes them to subjects. Instead, the citizens gain their rights from God and implement a government to serve those needs. In this were sown the seeds of future understandings of everything from abolition to women’s suffrage to the checks and balances of our federal system. I don’t think that even Jefferson understood the full scale and scope of what he wrote. He was writing for an occasion that was emotional and dangerous. Two and half centuries have now revealed the wisdom and breathtaking revolution that he was articulating. He helped us to prepare intellectually for the revolution that was ahead. A revolution that would create a nation of firsts. A nation of trailblazers.

For those who would like to dig further into Jefferson’s life and the ideas behind the Declaration, I would recommend the following: 

• Alf J. Mapp. Thomas Jefferson: A Strange Case of Mistaken Identity (Madison Books 1995). The late Prof. Mapp was one of my favorite professors in my creative writing track at Old Dominion University. His writing process deeply impacted me just as the book itself influenced my thinking about Jefferson.              
• Jon Meacham.  (Random House 2013). Meacham is eminently readable, unfolding the life and complexities of Jefferson’s private and public life.
• Joseph J. Ellis. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson (Vintage 1998). A National Book Award winning look at Jefferson’s convictions and contradictions.
• Monticello has incredible online archives.
• The National Archives’ online exhibit on the Declaration of Independence, which walks through the drafting process and the language of unalienable rights in Jefferson’s own hand. 

A Nation of Laws, Not Whims: Reflections from the Capitol

I have only been inside the U. S. Capitol building a handful of times, but each visit has been fascinating. My most recent visit was hosted by a US Senator from another state—we have mutual friends and I was in a fairly large group—and he provided a deeply personal tour.

It was moving to hear him talk about the humbling privilege of serving his state. He told us he had never wanted to be in politics, but the opportunity came his way and he followed what he thought was a way to serve his fellow citizens back home.

In our coarse political culture, public servants are usually mistaken for private mercenaries, accruing power, prestige, and maybe even some personal gain along the way. Politics and power go together like, well, peanut butter and jelly. Up close, however, I have found that most of our political figures actually do love their home districts and their neighbors. They really do carry a weight of service and a desire to do the right thing.

The Capitol is an architectural articulation of the Constitution’s federal structure. In the building we have the two chambers, House and Senate. On significant occasions, such as the President’s State of the Union Address, both chambers meet together (along with much of the Supreme Court, so all branches are represented, with a designated survivor or two squirreled away elsewhere). But the chambers are separate, with each functioning differently. Likewise the Supreme Court is nearby but not in that building; the White House is across town. Their buildings are separate, just as their functions and spheres are separate.

Delegates—Representatives and Senators—are sent by their districts and states to represent their views and interests and pass the laws that govern us. The President, elected by the people through the electoral college system, chooses to sign or veto those laws. If those laws produce disputes, the courts can intervene and the Supreme Court can assert a final ruling on Constitutionality.

It’s worth noting that we are a republic, not a democracy. We vote for representation. The majority gets its voice, but minority views are still considered and can influence how legislation and representation are unpacked. This is by design, understanding that a large-scale pure democracy can cater to the basest of mob self-interests. It’s part of the system that was designed around protecting rights, even those of the less powerful voting groups.

In Congress, our representatives are sent to deliberate and to vote on our behalf, not to simply transmit the passing mood of the public in real time. That structure was built to slow things down, to force deliberation rather than impulse, to make law the product of debate and compromise rather than whim. We hold elections at regular intervals, power changes hands with regularity, and people move in and out of office and back into ordinary life. That regularity, that willingness to submit to a calendar rather than to force, is one of the most distinctive features of the American experiment. 

I have come to think of it as something more than a clever political design. It is, in a real sense, a philosophical, anthropological instinct as well, this conviction that no single person or office should hold unchecked power, because every person, ruler included, is fallen and in need of restraint. We need public servants who not only possess political instincts, but also the kind of wisdom that can protect our freedom and liberty. 

We built a system of laws rather than a system of whims, because we built is with the humility to know that it needed checks and balances and the conviction that those who serve in these halls are worthy of our prayers, even when they are worthy of our criticisms. This is because America is a nation of firsts. America is a nation of trailblazers.

For those who want to think further about the structure and spirit of American government, I would recommend: 

• The Federalist Papers, particularly Madison’s essays on the separation of powers and the dangers of concentrated authority.
• A Republic, If We Can Keep It by Neil Gorsuch, a reflection on the rule of law from a sitting Supreme Court justice. 
• The U.S. Capitol Visitor Center’s online resources on the legislative process, which walk through how a bill becomes a law from introduction to signature.
• I can’t omit the famous cartoon “I’m Just a Bill” from my childhood! Amazing civics education!

A Nation of Firsts

Growing up in Tidewater Virginia, near the Colonial Triangle, the July 4^th celebration always meant fireworks over large bodies of water. I watched them over Hampton Roads, the Hampton River, the James River, the York River, and the Chickahominy River. When Lisa and I married, we marked her family’s annual celebration watching fireworks over the harbor in Edenton North Carolina, home of a tea party (link) that approximated Boston’s more famous one. There is even a tea pot monument in that waterfront neighborhood.

I have always thought about the irony and maybe even a little warped humor involved in celebrating the start of a war by launching pyrotechnics. I suppose they are a sign that our power and resources are used for peacetime rather than destruction. And that’s a good thing.

My family always marked July 4^th as time together. Dad usually grilled burgers and hot dogs. Sometimes we would camp and go fishing. The pace was slow and the day would be filled with laughter. It was always one of my favorite holidays of the year.

Lisa’s mom’s family—the Lowes—has celebrated a family reunion for over 50 years near Edenton, at Rocky Hock Landing. Last year we were able to attend for the first time in man years. Her 100 year old Aunt Gray was there and it was a joy to hear her sing one of the old songs. These gatherings are filled with hugs, home cooking, old time singing, and lots of memories of the departed.

I am a direct descendant of Capt. Daniel Hankins, of the Virginia militia, with many other Revolutionary War veterans on my Fant side. I was brought up to be proud of this heritage, a heritage that is underscored and emphasized each year on this special day.

Many of my friends attend family gatherings that include matching t-shirts. Sometimes in parks you can see these gatherings, made distinctive by their color coordination. If you take a step back, though, on most July 4ths you will see that most Americans are coordinated with red, white, and blue outfits or flag embroidered caps or other emblems of the day. And that’s all good too, but in reality we are all a huge family celebrating together. At the end of the day, when we watch the fireworks, we all look up in the same direction and utter the same oohs and ahhs, sharing the moments. This is a nation that loves to celebrate. Because America is a nation of firsts. America is a nation of trailblazers.

The Forgotten Founder: George Mason and the Rights That Restrain Government

Near the Jefferson Memorial is another monument to a Founding Father. I stumbled across it while parking a few years ago, having to walk around it to get to my more famous destination. The District has so many statues and monuments that it’s easy for them to become visual white noise as we move around from attraction to attraction.

George Mason and Thomas Jefferson were friends and overlapped in many areas of public service. The contrast in their monuments’ scale tells you something before you even read the inscription. Jefferson gets a domed rotunda on the Tidal Basin. Mason gets a quiet garden statue, seated, almost approachable, the kind of memorial you could walk past without noticing. It’s like the Ronald McDonald sitting on a bench for photos kind of statue (though it’s a pretty large statue!). That is fitting, in its own way, because Mason has long been called the forgotten founder, and there is a story behind why. 

Mason was a Virginian, like Jefferson, and the two collaborated on a number of documents over the years. But Mason’s own most important contribution was the Virginia Declaration of Rights, which he wrote in 1776, just weeks before Jefferson finished the Declaration of Independence. Many scholars believe that Mason’s Virginia document became the template that Madison and others would later draw on for the United States Bill of Rights. In other words, the language we now take for granted, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, protection from cruel punishment, traces back in large part to Mason’s pen and advocacy.

And yet Mason is remembered, when he is remembered at all, as one of only three delegates at the Constitutional Convention who refused to sign the finished Constitution. He withheld his signature because he believed the document, as written, did not contain a strong enough declaration of rights. He had seen in person what a clear statement of rights could do for the law, and he was not willing to settle for anything less than an explicit federal Constitution where rights were concerned. History eventually proved him right; the first Congress moved quickly to add the Bill of Rights precisely because Mason and others had pressed the point so hard. 

What strikes me most about Mason’s insistence is the philosophical principle underneath it. He believed that rights are not something government extends to citizens as a favor. They come from God, and they exist prior to government, which means government’s proper role is to be restrained by them rather than to be the source of them. That is a sharp departure from the older view, that the king grants rights, or the landowner grants rights, or whatever authority happens to hold power grants rights. Mason understood that every person carries the image of God, and that dignity is not the government’s to bestow or withdraw. The government’s job is to honor it. 

There is a major university in Virginia that bears Mason’s name today, but I find the small monument here more moving than any building could be. It is a reminder that the founders who shape a nation’s deepest convictions are not always the ones who receive the grandest memorials. Mason, like Jefferson, like Washington, reminds us that America is a nation of firsts. America is a nation of trailblazers, even when the trailblazer ends up in a quiet corner by himself. 

For those who want to learn more about Mason and his legacy, I would point you toward: 

• George Mason: Forgotten Founder by Jeff Broadwater, the standard biography that restores Mason to his rightful place in the founding story.
• The Virginia Declaration of Rights (1776) itself, widely available through the Library of Congress and Virginia’s state archives.
• The Bill of Rights Institute’s resources on the origins of the U.S. Bill of Rights, which trace its debt to Mason’s Virginia document.