Endowed by Our Creator

The Declaration of Independence proclaims that “all men are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.” For generations, those hallowed words inspired not only Americans, but millions around the globe. Yet today many Americans are skeptical or confused about the Declaration’s key claims. In this timely book, political scientist John G. West explores the original meaning of the Declaration and shows how its propositions drew support from both the Bible and early modern science. He then documents how science was later misused to overturn the Declaration’s teaching on equality, subvert its understanding of liberty, and justify the creation of a technocratic state that regulates us from cradle to grave. Finally, he reveals new scientific discoveries that are pointing us back to the truths expressed in the Declaration — and he explains why it is urgent that our culture recover them.

Praise

John West has performed an important role for our 250th birthday as a country. He reminds us that the Founding Fathers meant that our rights come from our Creator. They understood the radicalism of rights coming from God and not secular authority. Our current crisis of culture and spirit will only be healed by the return to those Creator-endowed rights.

Newt Gingrich, Speaker, US House of Representatives (1995–1999)

The Declaration of Independence has been obscured by two-and-a-half centuries of lies, confusion, and cultural decay. John West masterfully peels back the layers of debris to reveal the truth and beauty of America’s founding document to a new generation that desperately needs it. An essential primer on the greatest political document in human history—and the Darwinist worldview that tried to kill it

Joel Berry, Managing Editor, The Babylon Bee; co-author of The Postmodern Pilgrim’s Progress

What could be more important on our celebration of 250 years as a nation than to understand the basis of our divinely blessed founding? This book gets us back to bedrock.

Sam Brownback, former United States Senator and Governor of Kansas and former US Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom

John West has written an important and wide-ranging book, examining America’s founding ideals and the gradual but consistent assault on them through the years. He urges a rededication to the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and underscores our responsibility to pass down these ideas to future generations. His thoughtful work forces us to examine our founding principles from a variety of perspectives and issues, including religion, race, human rights, science, and governance. It couldn’t be timelier as we approach America’s 250th anniversary celebration.

David Limbaugh, New York Times bestselling author of Jesus on Trial, Crimes Against Liberty, and other books

If you have waited for a book that offers a moral foundation combined with political responsibility compatible with modern science, wait no longer. John West has done it. This masterful work begins with the Declaration of Independence and traces the fundamental truths therein through the complete development of modern scientific culture, along the way settling Darwin in his proper niche and reviving the “consent of the governed” as the bedrock of good government.

William B. Allen, Emeritus Dean and Professor of Political Philosophy, Michigan State University; former Chairman, United States Commission on Civil Rights

In Endowed by Our Creator, John West grasps and wields the redemptive key to prosperity: human creativity in the image of the Creator.

George Gilder, author of Life After Capitalism and Wealth and Poverty

It is a strong claim to say that America was born in 1776. Why not 1620 with the Mayflower Compact, 1783 with the Treaty of Paris, or 1788 with the ratification of the Constitution? As John G. West eloquently explains, America is founded on a set of ideas, ideas articulated in the Declaration of Independence.  Our nation’s commitment to these ideas has served us well, but this commitment has been undermined by problematic “scientific” claims (as opposed to true advances in the natural sciences). Dr. West helps us understand how and why this has happened, and he calls upon his fellow citizens to recommit ourselves to the Declaration’s principles.

Mark David Hall, Professor, Regent University; author of Did America Have a Christian Founding?

Endowed by Our Creator is required reading for every adult citizen and resident of America.  It is required reading for every student in our public, private, and home schools as well as colleges and universities. Dr. John West has done the Herculean task of elucidating the meaning and eternal importance of the foundational creed of the United States of America—the Declaration of Independence. And in doing so, West has elegantly and convincingly shown that America’s life or death is contingent on our embodiment or rejection of what Abraham Lincoln called “that immortal emblem of Humanity—the Declaration of American Independence.” Endowed by Our Creator is a call to remember the exceptional founding of our nation and take action to preserve it for the blessing of future Americans and the world.

Gerson Moreno-Riaño, President, Cornerstone University and Cornerstone Theological Seminary

In Endowed by Our Creator, John West masterfully exposes how science, philosophy, theology, and political theory have been misused to portray the Declaration of Independence as antiquated and misleading. He demonstrates instead that these disciplines, rightly understood, strongly reinforce the Declaration’s original meaning and enduring intent. West’s argument decisively restores the Declaration to its proper place: a document—indeed, a creed—whose ideals outlast the flaws of its framers and that remains as sound, inspiring, and aspirational today as it was in 1776.

William A. Dembski, author of The Design Inference

John West supplies a succinct analysis of the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. He also shows how contemporary science may supplement and even fulfill those principles against clashing claims from social and natural scientists. Even skeptics may find inspiring the approach he recommends for understanding the 250-year-old document that even now at our best moments guides our national life.

Ken Masugi, Lecturer in Government, Advanced Academic Programs, Johns Hopkins University (2009–2025); co-editor of The American Founding: Essays on the Formation of the Constitution

I am too theologically modest to declare how much of the Declaration of Independence should be attributed to divine Providence, but John West is right to direct our attention to the way in which our rights, duties, and free government itself were “endowed by our Creator,” and must draw their understanding from “the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” Further, he notes that the Declaration was the object of “veneration” in the deepest sense from the moment it appeared in 1776, which then gets us to the main point—why it still deserves our veneration today, on its 250th anniversary.

Steven F. Hayward, Visiting Professor, Pepperdine University School of Public Policy; author of The Age of Reagan: The Fall of the Old Liberal Order and The Age of Reagan: The Conservative Counterrevolution