The Bell, the Bible, and the Battle for Liberty

By David Lane

“So you are to consecrate the fiftieth year and proclaim liberty in the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be your Jubilee, when each of you is to return to his property and to his clan.” —Leviticus 25:10, BSB

In Philadelphia stands a bell that no longer rings.

Its bronze body is weathered. A jagged crack runs through its side. Its voice, once heard above the streets of colonial Philadelphia, has been silent since 1846.

And yet the Liberty Bell may be speaking more loudly to America today than at any time in our history.

The Bell was ordered in 1751 for the Pennsylvania State House—the building now known as Independence Hall. It once hung above the chambers where the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution would later be debated and signed. Around its crown were cast words taken directly from the Bible:

“Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof.”

The words come from Leviticus 25:10. The Bell’s biblical inscription was not added after the American Revolution to make the nation appear religious. It was there before Lexington, before Concord, before the Declaration of Independence and before the United States of America existed.

Before America spoke to the world about liberty, the Word of God was speaking over America.

But we must understand what Scripture means by liberty.

Leviticus 25 does not describe a society in which every person does whatever seems right in his own eyes. It does not proclaim freedom from God, freedom from moral restraint or freedom from responsibility to one’s family and neighbors.

Biblical liberty begins with these words: “Consecrate the fiftieth year.”

Consecration comes before proclamation.

The people were first to recognize the authority of God. They were to set the year apart as holy, fear the Lord, refuse to exploit one another, restore property and release those who had fallen into servitude. The Jubilee proclaimed that neither wealth, power, poverty nor misfortune could erase the truth that God was the ultimate owner of the land and the sovereign ruler of His people.

Liberty, therefore, was not independence from God. It was life properly ordered under God.

That distinction may mark the difference between the America our forefathers envisioned and the America now emerging around us.

Modern secularism wants to proclaim and seize the benefits of liberty without the consecration. It wants liberty without truth, rights without responsibilities, government without God, citizenship without virtue and freedom without moral boundaries.

But liberty detached from righteousness eventually destroys itself.

When appetites rule men, men cease to rule themselves. When men cannot govern themselves, the government will increasingly govern them. Laws multiply, bureaucracies expand, surveillance grows and the state assumes responsibilities once entrusted to families, churches and local communities.

The greater the moral disorder of a people, the greater the political control required to contain it.

The American experiment in self-government has always depended upon the existence of citizens capable of governing themselves. Independence Hall represents more than a successful rebellion against a distant king. It represents the conviction that ordinary citizens, under ordered laws, could exercise the responsibilities of liberty.

Yet above the lawmakers who met in that building hung a Bell bearing the Word of God.

That image should not be lost on us.

The Bible stood above the political assembly.

The Word of God stood above the words of men.

The Bell called legislators to their duties, but its inscription reminded them that human law remains accountable to a higher Lawgiver.

America did not always live up to those words. At the time of the nation’s founding, liberty had not yet been extended to all its inhabitants. But the biblical inscription remained, confronting the nation with its own inconsistency.

In the 1830s, abolitionists adopted the Bell as a symbol of their campaign against slavery. They looked at the words “all the inhabitants” and recognized that these were not merely decorative words from an ancient religious book. They were a judgment against human bondage and a summons to national repentance. The abolitionists were among the first to call the old State House bell the Liberty Bell.

The Bible did not merely comfort America. It corrected America.

That is precisely what the Church must recover today.

The Church’s responsibility is not to baptize every action of a political party. The pulpit must never become the property of Republicans, Democrats or any other political organization. Political parties, platforms, candidates and governments must all be measured against the unchanging standard of God’s glorious Word generously extended to the world.

But the pulpit must not become a hiding place either.

For too long, many Christians have behaved as though retreating from the public square were a mark of spiritual maturity. While believers withdrew, secularists occupied the institutions that shape the nation—government, education, law, media, business and culture.

Someone’s values will govern.

Someone’s understanding of marriage will be written into law. Someone’s view of human life will determine whether the unborn are protected. Someone’s understanding of male and female will be taught to our children. Someone’s definition of justice, freedom and human dignity will direct our courts and institutions.

The question is never whether morality will influence government. The question is whose morality will influence it.

The crisis confronting America is therefore spiritual before it is political. Politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from religion. What a nation worships will eventually determine how that nation governs.

Pastors and Christian citizens must once again enter the rough-and-tumble of civic life—not because politics can save America, but because faithfulness requires us to love our neighbors in every sphere where their lives are shaped.

Believers should serve on school boards, city councils, county commissions and state legislatures. They should become judges, teachers, business leaders and public officials. They should bring biblical wisdom, personal integrity, courage and servant leadership into institutions increasingly starved of all four.

The Liberty Bell is cracked.

America is cracked as well.

We see the fracture in our families, our schools, our churches, our communities and our government. Yet the crack in the Bell did not erase its inscription. The Bell has lost its audible voice, but the truth written upon it remains.

Consecrate the 50th year. Consecrate the 250th year!

Consecrate the pulpit.

Consecrate the family.

Consecrate the classroom.

Consecrate the courthouse.

Consecrate the halls of government.

Then proclaim liberty—not the counterfeit liberty of personal autonomy, but the ordered liberty that flourishes under the authority of Almighty God.

The Bell can no longer ring.

The Church still can.