When the military conflict of the American Revolution came to an end in March, 1783, few doubted that the end of the war assured not only the birth of a great nation, but a new era in the life of man. The task of reforming European churches to apostolic purity and simplicity had proven impossibly difficult, but America offered the perfect opportunity to make a fresh start and immediately restore the primitive Christianity described in the New Testament. Congress had placed on the new nation’s great seal the Latin motto, Novus Ordo Seclorum, A New Order of the Ages. This phrase, taken from Virgil’s celebration of the Roman Empire’s beginning at the time of Augustus, shows clearly the grand vision which America’s founders had of her future. It also expressed rich religious associations, since well-educated Americans would have known that Christian writers had regularly applied Virgil’s words to the birth of Christ and the coming of His kingdom. America was meant to be both New Rome and New Zion. America offered liberty, democracy, and hope. This story of the Christian Connection begins in Vermont in the last decade of the eighteenth century, and it should be noted that nowhere were these three great gifts more generously and generally bestowed than in the green mountains of Vermont.
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