AT THE BEGINNING, WE CREATED SOMETHING NEW. A NEW NATION—CONCEIVED IN LIBERTY—WAS BORN IN THE FIRE OF REVOLUTION. IDEALS FOUNDED IN ETERNAL TRUTH WERE WRITTEN ON PARCHMENTS, DECLARATIONS THAT WOULD CHANGE THE WORLD FOR GOOD, FOREVER. A FURIOUS MOMENT IN HISTORY IS REVERED FOR ITS INTRINSIC TRUTH, AND ITS BEAUTY.

But what one generation establishes, another reinvents, reframes, or even rejects. How did we get here? We were warned about political factions, divisive arguments wrecking the soul of the country. And yet, today we divide—not because our ideals are a wedge, driving apart two sides, but because we’ve forgotten the depth of the founding ideals we proclaim. We fight for liberty, but our knowledge of liberty has ceased to endure. 

We need a new story, a new narrative. We need a new definition of liberty, for our day, for our time. Liberty transcends time, and it’s bigger than every single one of us. It was for liberty (Latin, libertas) that the Truth has set us free. Propter quod Veritas libertate nos liberavit. 

The Truth came to earth with reckless abandon, offering us life, abundantly. There is no greater story than this; this story shatters all we have known, breaks apart our categories, changes our world forever. It is good news: where we are lost, we are found; where we despair, we have hope; where we are abandoned, we are adopted; where we are broken, we are healed; where we are afraid, we are strengthened; where we are despised, we are loved; where we are dying, we will live. 

Over time, a firm reliance on this Divine Providence has been usurped by a cultural war over its meaning. In the fighting, we’ve forgotten that faith lived centuries before us loses its significance if it doesn’t change us today. But Redemptive Truth, in its beauty, demands an answer. We can choose to let fall away a culturally moral society, sinking deeper into the freedom of intimate relationship with our Creator. We can refuse to believe in our hearts that we will preserve an America unshakable until the end of time for the relief of looking beyond the end of time to an unshakable Kingdom in which our hearts can live forever. 

From the Great Story, a seed is planted: how can the gospel impact Capitol Hill? What if, in the answering, we found that our entire political construct—like the souls creating it—needed to be reborn—a new birth of freedom? A rebirth—not by force or ownership of culture, but by freely offering a better narrative than the one we are reciting: this is our calling.

Abraham Lincoln said in 1864 that “The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one”. And so the prognosis becomes clear: what if we could think of liberty as that for which the Truth has set us free? What if our story of liberty were to transcend time, drawing us onward to the day when the Kingdom of Heaven is established on a restored earth, and all things have been made new? What would setting our affections on this infinite pursuit not change about our politics, and our identity? 

From these questions, we find an answer—not one that’s new, but one that’s age-old, yet undiscovered in its fullness.

Like the awakened energy of an ocean wave rolling to shore, captivating everything by its strength, we are awakened to a new identity. Like the breathless awe of a runner racing across a great wide-open plain toward a vast, unmovable mountain sierra, we are strengthened to endure. And like the enraptured excitement escorted by the lighting of an Olympic flame, our light burns, an inextinguishable torch of hope in the darkness around us, until the rising of the sun, the new dawn when we are fully alive, when we are fully healed, when we are set free.

If it was for libertas that we were set free, then libertas is the creative pursuit of truth and beauty. 

Creative, because we were hard-wired for creativity by our Creator. Pursuit, because our work in the Kingdom is an infinite adventure. Truth, because he is the one who set us free and created all things. Beauty, because we were placed in it to live, and without it, truth is no longer true. Like inseparable parts of a whole, beauty, likewise, without truth is no longer beauty. And in this pursuit, we will find the fullness of that for which we have been looking, or more likely, it will find us, and leading us home, we will never let the former longing lead us to wandering again. 

We were created for libertas, and turning away from it, enslaved. But we were redeemed to live its story again.

Our method therefore, is to redefine liberty for our age.

Our vision, our destination in this new story we tell, is healing through freedom.  

Our anthem: LIBERATUS—we are set free.