Covenanter critiques centered on two interrelated themes. The first was the absence of Jesus Christ in the Constitution: an affront to God’s name and an open statement of rebellion against his reign over the people. The second was human slavery and its long wake of American racism: a desecration of God’s image. Even as America changed and as life in America changed the Covenanters, these arguments maintained a remarkable continuity among their religious adherents in both the North and the South, spanning the years from the Early Republic to the Civil War era and Reconstruction and into the twentieth century. . . . The Covenanters’ insistence on God in the law and humanity’s equality before it gave purpose and energy to their fight against America’s twin founding sins (Joseph S. Moore, Founding Sins: How a Group of Antislavery Radicals Fought to Put Christ into the Constitution, 2).