An important lesson from history is lost when we don’t recognize the significance of America’s founding principles. We should not think that America was founded as a Christian nation as some people try to say. However, the founders did look to a unique source for political authority. The Declaration of Independence declares that proper human government stems from “the laws of nature and of nature’s God.” It was their intention to establish political authority based on Judeo-Christian tradition without establishing state approved church.
What the American founding fathers created was something
unknown in human history. All ancient civilizations were theistic, and they
believed their gods ruled over their daily lives. If they had a poor harvest,
it was because their god was not pleased. If they lost a war, it was their god
who was defeated by the rival god. We see vestiges of this in the Old Testament
when Israel’s God “defeated” the various Egyptian gods as demonstrated by the
ten plagues. We see it again when the Philistines captured the Israelite’s
“god” and took the Ark of the Covenant into their temple. If you remember, that
didn’t work out too well for their god, Dagon.
At the time of Christ’s advent, the Roman emperor held his
position as one of the gods his subjects were required to worship. Political
and religious authority were invested in one man. When Christianity spread
throughout the empire, a conflict arose because Christians refused to worship
the emperor. That issue was solved when Theodosius made Christianity the state
religion in 380 AD. With the fall of Rome to the Barbarians soon after, the
Roman church, led by its pope, inherited both civil and religious authority.
That situation continued throughout Europe almost
universally until the Protestant Reformation. The church wasn’t the only thing
that got reformed in the sixteenth century; when the Roman church was weakened,
local authority rose to fill the vacuum. Many of the European states chose a
brand of Protestantism to continue the church/state rule that Rome had modeled
for centuries. It was revolt against those state churches that brought many of
the first pilgrims to America in the seventeenth century.
In 1776, the descendants of those early pilgrims rejected
the right of English rule the colonies in America. While their revolution was
not based entirely on religious principles, they realized the need to form a
government that would not perpetuate the errors of the Europeans. They did not
deny the need for religious principles as a foundation for civil government;
they simply wished to prevent the government from insisting on a certain type
of religious observance. It was John
Adams who said that the experiment he and his peers were embarking on would
not succeed without moral and religious citizens.
Now we have come two centuries later to a situation where a
faction of government is again trying to dictate a certain type of religion:
secular humanism. The proponents of this modern religion may flinch at the
assertion that their policies are religious, but the fact remains that the
progressive political agenda has all the trappings of religion. They demand
adherence to a dogma known as DEI: diversity, equity, and inclusion. They
espouse critical
race theory. They believe they can alter human nature by supporting gender
reassignment. They attack traditional family values by approving same-sex
marriage. They consider opposition to their mandates to be heresy. They call
anyone who differs with them haters.
These practices are reminiscent of the totalitarian
religions of the past. They are also in direct conflict with the principles
which our founding fathers enshrined in our Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution. The task facing Christians in America today is not to form a
Christian government. That would be Christian
Nationalism, and it is not what the founders of this country wanted. What
they wanted, and what we must fight for, was identified by Glenn Ellmers in a recent
speech at Hillsdale College. “The American Founders’ invocation of the
transcendent moral authority of nature is one of the most remarkable acts of
statesmanship in human history.” Bear in mind that Ellmers considers “nature”
to be the creation of God, and its “moral authority” to be Bible based.
It is often said that you can’t legislate morality. While
that is true, it does not preclude the establishment of a legal framework that
dictates moral boundaries. Legislation that follows the last six of the Ten
Commandments, for example, commend moral behaviors and are not unique to
Judeo-Christian thinking. Aristotle recommended very similar things, quite
apart from any religious framework. You can go as far back as the Code of
Hammurabi and find the same injunctions. These things are true and right
because they comport with what Ellmers called “the moral authority of nature.”
What we need in our leaders and our laws is respect for some
type of moral authority. They don’t have to be “Christian” to meet those
criteria. For over two hundred years, America has prospered while remaining
tied to that kind of authority. Jews and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists and
Sikhs have come to this country and prospered under that kind of
authority. What we have endured for that
last few decades is an attempt to abolish any sort of moral authority and the
establishment of a kind of moral and even civil anarchy. I do not believe that
granting religious freedom goes as far as condoning anarchy – civil or moral.
I believe that John Adams was correct: we cannot survive as
a country without moral citizens. You don’t have to be religious to appreciate
that need and to fight for it. However, as Christians, we should be
“religiously” committed to seeing the tradition of American religious freedom
maintained. If the country keeps going in the direction the progressive element
in America is headed, our freedom to practice our religion will be outlawed and
replaced with the tenets of secular humanism. All that is necessary for that to
happen is for “good
men to do nothing.”
As they were preparing to enter the Promised Land, Moses
told the Israelites, “Observe [God’s laws] carefully, for thus will you give
evidence of your wisdom and intelligence to the nations, who will hear of all
these statutes and say, ‘This great nation is truly a wise and intelligent
people.’” (Dt. 4:6 NAB) They used to say that about America. Not so much
anymore, I think.
Related Posts: Christian
Nationalism; How
to Pray for America; The
Best of Times; The Worst of Times; Diogenes
Shrugged; Critical
Race Theory
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