United by a Common Creed: Why Preserving Our Heritage is Key to American Greatness

By Emily Wood Hawley

A nation is strong when its citizenry has a shared national identity, love of country, and an understanding of its heritage and values system. When a nation forgets who it is and where it comes from, it becomes a shadow of its former self.

On a recent trip to Europe, my family and I were struck by this as we witnessed opposing, and even antithetical, ideologies ushered in by mass migration, juxtaposed against the timeless beauty of European architecture forged over centuries. It’s chilling to walk the streets of England, the birthplace of some of the greatest minds of the West, and see a mosque occupy a church building. It is a clear mark of conquest and civilizational decline when a culture so historically prominent in the spread of Christianity has forgotten God.

So much of England, steeped in a rich history of helping shape the Western world, has become a shell of its former glory. This is not about “tolerance,” or “multiculturalism,” or “progress”; this is letting bad ideas take root and usurp the very institutions that built a civilization. In the United States, we are experiencing the labor pains of what much of the European continent already faces with our own mass migration crisis that, too, threatens the fabric of our very nation.

America on the Brink

A video circulating on social media recently shows the extent of the illegal immigrant invasion into the United States, measured by a swarm of little red dots (each representing 100 illegal immigrants) that swept the U.S. map from 2020 to 2024, blanketing our nation virtually overnight. One group estimated there were as many as 18.6 million illegal immigrants living in the U.S., as of March 2025. In 2023, “anchor babies,” children born to illegal immigrant or temporary legal status mothers, accounted for almost one in 10, or about 9%, of U.S. births.

The marks of American greatness that defined our rise over the past two-and-a-half centuries are fading and being replaced by opposing ideologies and antithetical cultures, flying in the face of the American Dream. This inevitably causes a cultural shift and is a dilution of the distinctly American values that define our nation.

Rome didn’t fall in a day. It was a long, slow, pernicious fade into oblivion. Western civilization, and the America we love, is also on the brink if it rejects the ideals upon which it was founded.

This is why we must be reminded of these very ideals that gave rise to the greatest nation on earth. We, as a nation, need to remember our national heritage, believe in American exceptionalism, and carry on the legacy of those who forged the freedoms we take for granted.

An aesthetic that could be described as “Americana nostalgia” is trending across young, conservative social media, and it’s no surprise why. Quintessential American scenes — neighborhood children safely playing outside from dawn until dinnertime, families worshipping in full church pews, vast farmland untouched by developments or data centers, bustling small-town squares with clean streets, and even busy shopping malls in the 1990s — serve as the remnants of a past (not so long ago) but seemingly out of reach. These picturesque images remind us of what America once was, and what we can be again.

Bound by a Common Creed

As for the United States, what is our heritage? Put simply, we are a constitutional republic established by predominantly Christian men upon the foundation that all men are created equal and have intrinsic rights given by God, not government.

America is a Christian nation founded as one nation under God, and it was never intended to be anything else. America is not a subjective “idea” that shifts with the times; nor are we bound by race or ancestral origin. Instead, America is a people and a place bound by a common creed.

After his first visit to the United States in 1921, English writer and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton observed this in his book What I Saw in America: “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature. It enunciates that all men are equal in their claim to justice, that governments exist to give them that justice, and that their authority is for that reason just.”

The preservation of our American heritage is not a passive task. In the words of Benjamin Franklin, we have a republic, “if you can keep it.” This requires active participation from all of us who have a vested interest in preserving our national identity by reclaiming ground, winning back institutions, and stewarding well the corner of the world with which we are entrusted.

Two hundred and fifty years ago, our Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to form the United States of America. To them, America was more than a mere dream or idea; it was a homeland worth sacrificing for, for themselves and their posterity. The 13 original colonies would unite under a common creed to break free from tyranny, achieve independence, span an entire continent, emerge as a global superpower, and serve as a beacon of liberty worldwide.

This is our heritage and what binds us today — and it is worth preserving.

First published by the Standing for Freedom Center.

For more from Emily Wood Hawley, click HERE.