By Barry Waugh - Posted at The Heidelblog:
Published November 27, 2025
Over four-hundred years after the Pilgrims celebrated God’s preservation of their lives through a difficult winter and his gracious gift of an abundant harvest in the spring of 1621, the United States will once again have its annual holiday of Thanksgiving on November 27, 2025. As this holiday is remembered, it is timely to recount the founding of the nation and its relationship to American Presbyterians and the Christian influences on the nation as seen in the body politic known as the Pilgrims of Plymouth. A key factor common to both the nation and the Presbyterian Church is that each is governed by a constitution. According to Noah Webster’s American Dictionary of the English Language, 1828, a constitution is—The established form of government in a state, kingdom or country; a system of fundamental rules, principles and ordinances for the government of a state or nation. In free states, the constitution is paramount to the statutes or laws enacted by the legislature, limiting and controlling its power; and in the United States, the legislature is created, and its powers designated, by the constitution.
Webster expressed the definition well as it was understood within his historical context. He described the political aspects of the term which emphasize that a constitution defines and limits what legislators can do, but then he goes on to give alternate definitions:
A particular law, ordinance, or regulation, made by the authority of any superior, civil or ecclesiastical; as the constitutions of the churches; the novel constitutions of Justinian and his successors. [then the next alternate] A system of fundamental principles for the government of rational and social beings.
A constitution is the source of authority for the government of rational and social beings whether in a political, ecclesiastical, or any other body of individuals desiring government limited by a definitive and final authority. There are republican similarities between the political body that is the United States government and the ecclesiastical body that is the Presbyterian Church. Elders rule within the sessions of ecclesiastical parishes and gather for meetings in Presbyteries and Synods that constitute the General Assembly. The General Assembly then deliberates issues of common church interest; senators and representatives gather in their respective chambers for legislative purposes while representing their political parishes.