America is the freest most prosperous nation in the world. The opportunities offered to people of all faiths, nationalities, races and ethnicities are unprecedented in the history of nations. This is evidenced by the continuing efforts of millions to risk life and limb to come to America.
Understanding the nature and origin of this Republic should be important to all those interested in freedom and equality. I assert that the Judeo-Christian roots of America’s Founders were critical in the crafting of the documents that set the foundation for the American experiment. I further suggest that a culture that largely embraces those religious values was and continues to be necessary for the success of the Republic. Notice that I suggest embracing the values not a particular faith or any faith. People don’t need to be religious to practice and advocate similar values.
America’s Founding Fathers were students of the Bible. The Five Books of Moses and the New Testament had a profound influenced on virtually all of the signatories of the Constitution. The bedrock of the laws that govern America can be sourced to the Biblical values of its authors.
The Founding Fathers analogized crossing the Atlantic Ocean seeking freedom in America to the journey of the Jews from slavery in Egypt to the Promise Land. Whether or not one is religious or believes in God has no bearing on a historical record replete with examples of the Biblical values that influenced the crafting of America’s founding documents. To discount that impact is to ignore a well documented record and the cultural essentials a society will need in order to establish a representative democracy.
If we want to properly assess the problematic nature of past efforts to create democracies elsewhere, we need to understand how and why the American experiment has flourished.
Although the Founders were believers in an eternal source of freedom, there would be no state religion or religious test for citizens. People from all faiths and no faith were on an equal footing. Many fled to America as religious reformers having suffered religious persecution. They understood that there could be no state religious orthodoxy in a free nation. Hence, the creation of a secular government led by people aspiring to uphold the religious principles that inform their values. It was an act of political genius. The Bible would not be a substitute for the Constitution but it was certainly a source of wisdom for its authors.
The First Amendment’s simple elegance is as follows: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Religious, speech, press and protest rights all wrapped up as primary among the essentials of liberty.
Key words with reference to religion are ‘establishment’ and ‘exercise’. There would be no single or official national religion (establishment). Nor would there be laws prohibiting the practice of any or no religion (free exercise).
“Therefore render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” Mathew 22:21.
Thus we find the Biblical insight of separation but not exclusion. One need only tour Washington D.C. to discover government monuments and buildings adorned with religious symbolism and quotations. Many were carved into stone in the original Hebrew. These dedications memorialized the concepts that best represent the nation. Biblical references are common. Chief among them was the Ten Commandments.
Without Judeo-Christian principles to guide the Founders there would be no Declaration of Independence, Constitution or Bill of Rights. The critical point of historical conflict between loyalty to the King and to one’s religion was solved with exquisite simplicity. One does not negate the other but each in its proper place. They acknowledged God above all else, but imposed no religious test.
The primary governing principle emphasized individual freedom ensured by limiting government power. Limiting the reach of government protected individual freedom from the heavy hand of centralized power. Government power was treated with great skepticism. It was limited to what was clearly sanctioned in the Constitution. The Constitution put a governor on the ever-present tendency of power to corrupt. Men empowered by unchecked high office act like teenage boys given access to five hundred horsepower race cars. They often exploit that power resulting in some very unhappy endings.
The Tenth Amendment was clear on this point. “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people”
Rights were sourced to God thus fundamentally limiting government over-reach. Freedom was not credited to government benevolence. Government was mandated to uphold liberty or be deemed illegitimate. Its powers were specific and limited. The Declaration of Independence was crystal clear on these points “… Laws of Nature and Nature’s God… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
It was the laws of “Nature’s God” not the laws of men that bestowed rights.
The bedrock of the nature of freedom as understood by the Founders was clear. These are bear minimal criteria for a sustainable republic offering freedom and equality. The Declaration of Independence is a document evidencing intent and motive. As such it is our guide to understanding the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The First Amendment is all about “make no law” to abridge the rights necessary for an individual to exercise his or her freedom.
These freedoms did not apply to women or Blacks at the Constitution’s inception. Those troubling imperfections should never be used as rationale to impugn the American experiment in democracy. The failure to include Blacks and women generated a cognitive dissonance with the core values as enshrined in the words of the Declaration of Independence.
“… that all Men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”
It is not by coincidence that Christians led the abolition movement. The abolition movement was but one of many examples of religious principles that translated into legal crusades. The impassioned arguments against slavery were littered with references to God and God’s law and the obvious implication of the words in the founding texts.
It was a Reverend, Martin Luther King, whose speeches making the case for equality by infused arguments of Biblical reference. There was a straight line of Biblical reasoning running from the Founders, through the Presidents to MLK moving the nation in the direction of equality for all.
The road from exclusion to inclusion was not smooth or easy. Slavery had been a stable of human existence around the world. Much blood was spilled to end that horrific institution in a young nation. But the obvious and clear extension of rights applying to all men and woman had to be the inevitable outcome because of the foundational principles that established this new Republic. America was a union in pursuit of freedom not a union of perfected freedom.
If one judges America based on a utopian vision she will always come up short. If however she is judged in comparison to all other nations, she will look a whole lot more like that “shining city on a hill” described by President Ronald Reagan.
It is neither jingoistic nor arrogant to assert the exceptional nature of the American republic. If properly taught ‘exceptionalism’ is both aspirational and humbling. Properly understood it entails duty and responsibility to understand the nature of freedom and equality: and work to sustain them. Indeed, many Americans have not been taught this history or their responsibility as citizens. Without an accurate knowledge of how this Republic was established and the legacy of freedom, that freedom can be lost.
Young people need to be taught that American freedom and equality are both precious and fragile. America is precious because freedom and equality is so rare, and fragile because they can be easily lost. That which we do not appreciate we are doomed to lose. Appreciation and acting on that appreciation requires the knowledge of how and why America has succeeded.
Some say that many of the Founding Fathers were not religious They are absolutely correct. But the Founders were almost unanimously believers in a source of life and freedom above and beyond man or government. Secularists and non-believers may choose to avoid the clear historical record to rationalize their own lack of faith. But the record of influences and motivations of those who designed the American republic exists nonetheless. Not all the Founders were churchgoers. But almost without exception they coalesced around the Judeo-Christian values they were weaned on.
With so many millions of people living without freedom and prosperity around the world, it would seem reasonable to study the philosophy of those who wrote America’s founding texts.
As evidence I offer a small sample of the words of Founders and Presidents.
“We beseech [God] to pardon our national and other transgressions…” George Washington, Thanksgiving Proclamation 1789
“…that all may bow to the scepter of our Lord Jesus Christ and that the whole Earth may be filled with his glory.”
John Hancock, as Governor of Massachusetts 1791
“The rights of the colonists as Christians…may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the Great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament.” Samuel Adams
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” John Adams
“There is a book [the Bible] worth all the other books ever printed.” Patrick Henry
“The Bible is the best of all books, for it is the word of God and teaches us the way to be happy in this world and in the next. Continue therefore to read it and to regulate your life by its precepts.” John Jay
“Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.” Benjamin Franklin
“We have staked the whole future of our new nation, not upon the power of government; far from it. We have staked the future of all our political constitutions upon the capacity of each of ourselves to govern ourselves according to the moral principles of the Ten Commandments.”
James Madison
“For my own part, I sincerely esteem it a system which without the finger of God, never could have been suggested and agreed upon by such a diversity of interests.” Statement after the Constitutional Convention, Alexander Hamilton
“God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.” Thomas Jefferson, Jefferson Memorial
“Education is useless without the Bible. The Bible was America’s basic textbook in all fields. God’s Word, contained in the Bible, has furnished all necessary rules to direct our conduct.” Noah Webster
“I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law … there never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations.” Supreme Court Justice Joseph Story, Harvard Speech, 1829
“[The Bible] is the rock on which our Republic rests.”?
Andrew Jackson
“Whereas, the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the Supreme Authority and just Government of Almighty God, in all the affairs of men and of nations, has, by a resolution, requested the President to designate and set apart a day for National prayer and humiliation…”
Abraham Lincoln
“The fundamental basis of this Nation’s law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul.” Harry S. Truman
“The United States is founded on the principles of Christianity.” Franklin D. Roosevelt
“…the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the had of God.” John F. Kennedy
“The Congress of the United States, in recognition of the unique contribution of the Bible in shaping the history and character of this Nation, and so many of its citizens, has by Senate Joint Resolution 165 authorized and requested the President to designate the year 1983 as the ‘Year of the Bible.” Ronald Reagan
“I believe that God has planted in every human heart the desire to live in freedom. And even when that desire is crushed by tyranny for decades, it will rise again.” George W. Bush
Thomas Jefferson suggested the following for the Seal of America: “The children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. For the reverse side of the seal: Hengist and Horsa, the two brothers who were the legendary leaders of the first Anglo-Saxon settlers in Britain.”
Tension among competing factions concerning the true intent and meaning of the Founders would be debated and ruled on by the Supreme Court. Justice’s opinions would ebb and flow from new interpretations to strict construction of the words in the Constitution. As I write America is divided into two schools of thought. One is a “progressive” view that the words of the Constitution need continual redefinition or interpretation to accommodate changing times. The other is an “originalist” view that the Founders insights were not intended to change based on the popular vagaries of the day.
The fine balance struck between liberty and equality is also under assault. American traditions have leaned in the direction of liberty and equality of opportunity. However, the European concept of equality of outcome is gaining a foothold in America. How this struggle is resolved will have a profound impact on the state of liberty in America.
With this brief outline I hope I have piqued your interest in a subject of great importance. Both the future of America and the free world depend on a strong democratic America whose people cling to their founding principles.
There has been an American sentiment drifted away from what has distinguished American from among the nations. Liberty and the role of government as envisioned by the Founders are under assault. This is why I feel compelled to spread the word about the origins of America.
I look forward to future opportunities to share perspectives with all of you. These are big topics that can’t be fully flushed out in one discussion or seminar.
References:
American Gospel, Jon Meacham
The Faith of Our Founders, Alf J. Mapp, Jr.
The Real Benjamin Franklin, National Center For Constitutional Studies
Miracle At Philadelphia, Catherine Bowen