American Government and Christianity - America's Christian Roots

Probe Ministries ^ | 2004 | Kerby Anderson

[Tailgunner Joe]

John Adams was the second president of the United States. He saw the need for religious values to provide the moral base line for society. He stated in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts:

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.{1}

In fact, John Adams wasn't the only founding father to talk about the importance of religious values. Consider this statement from George Washington during his Farewell Address:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.{2}

Two hundred years after the establishment of the Plymouth colony in 1620, Americans gathered at that site to celebrate its bicentennial. Daniel Webster was the speaker at this 1820 celebration. He reminded those in attendance of this nation's origins:

Let us not forget the religious character of our origin. Our fathers were brought hither by their high veneration for the Christian religion. They journeyed by its light, and labored in its hope. They sought to incorporate its principles with the elements of their society, and to diffuse its influence through all their institutions, civil, political, or literary.{3}

Religion, and especially the Christian religion, was an important foundation to this republic.

Christian Character

It is clear that the framers of this new government believed that the people should elect and support leaders with character and integrity. George Washington expressed this in his Farewell Address when he said, "Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports."

Benjamin Rush talked about the religious foundation of the republic that demanded virtuous leadership. He said that, "the only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid on the foundation of religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty, and liberty is the object and life of all republican governments."{4}

He went on to explain that

A Christian cannot fail of being a republican . . . for every precept of the Gospel inculcates those degrees of humility, self- denial, and brotherly kindness which are directly opposed to the pride of monarchy. . . . A Christian cannot fail of being useful to the republic, for his religion teaches him that no man "liveth to himself." And lastly a Christian cannot fail of being wholly inoffensive, for his religion teaches him in all things to do to others what he would wish, in like circumstances, they should do to him.{5}

Daniel Webster understood the importance of religion, and especially the Christian religion, in this form of government. In his famous Plymouth Rock speech of 1820 he said,

Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted on any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits. . . .Whatever makes men good Christians, makes them good citizens.{6}

John Jay was one of the authors of the Federalist Papers and became America's first Supreme Court Justice. He also served as the president of the American Bible Society. He understood the relationship between government and Christian values. He said, "Providence has given to our people the choice of their rulers, and it is the duty, as well as the privilege and interest of our Christian nation to select and prefer Christians for their rulers."{7}

William Penn writing the Frame of Government for his new colony said, "Government, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as governments are made and moved by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore governments rather depend upon men, than men upon governments. Let men be good, and the government cannot be bad."{8}

The founders believed that good character was vital to the health of the nation.

New Man

Historian C. Gregg Singer traces the line of influence from the seventeenth century to the eighteenth century in his book, A Theological Interpretation of American History. He says,

Whether we look at the Puritans and their fellow colonists of the seventeenth century, or their descendants of the eighteenth century, or those who framed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, we see that their political programs were the rather clear reflection of a consciously held political philosophy, and that the various political philosophies which emerged among the American people were intimately related to the theological developments which were taking place. . . . A Christian world and life view furnished the basis for this early political thought which guided the American people for nearly two centuries and whose crowning lay in the writing of the Constitution of 1787.{9}

Actually, the line of influence extends back even further. Historian Arnold Toynbee, for example, has written that the American Revolution was made possible by American Protestantism. Page Smith, writing in the Religious Origins of the American Revolution, cites the influence of the Protestant Reformation. He believes that

The Protestant Reformation produced a new kind of consciousness and a new kind of man. The English Colonies in America, in turn, produced a new unique strain of that consciousness. It thus follows that it is impossible to understand the intellectual and moral forces behind the American Revolution without understanding the role that Protestant Christianity played in shaping the ideals, principles and institutions of colonial America.{10}

Smith argues that the American Revolution "started, in a sense, when Martin Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenburg." It received "its theological and philosophical underpinnings from John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion and much of its social theory from the Puritan Revolution of 1640-1660.{11}

Most people before the Reformation belonged to classes and social groups which set the boundaries of their worlds and established their identities. The Reformation, according to Smith, changed these perceptions. Luther and Calvin, in a sense, created a re- formed individual in a re-formed world.

Key to this is the doctrine of the priesthood of the believer where each person is "responsible directly to God for his or her own spiritual state.... The individuals who formed the new congregations established their own churches, chose their own ministers, and managed their own affairs without reference to an ecclesiastical hierarchy."{12}

These re-formed individuals began to change their world including their view of government and authority.

Declaration of Independence

Let's look at the Christian influence on the Declaration of Independence. Historian Page Smith points out that Thomas Jefferson was not only influenced by secular philosophers, but was also influenced by the Protestant Reformation. He says,

Jefferson and other secular-minded Americans subscribed to certain propositions about law and authority that had their roots in the Protestant Reformation. It is a scholarly common-place to point out how much Jefferson (and his fellow delegates to the Continental Congress) were influenced by Locke. Without disputing this we would simply add that an older and deeper influence -- John Calvin -- was of more profound importance.{13}

Another important influence was William Blackstone. Jefferson drew heavily on the writings of this highly respected jurist. In fact, Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England were among Jefferson's most favorite books.

In his section on the "Nature of Laws in General," Blackstone wrote, "as man depends absolutely upon his Maker for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, conform to his Maker's will. This will of his Maker is called the law of nature."{14}

In addition to the law of nature, the other source of law is from divine revelation. "The doctrines thus delivered we call the revealed or divine law, and they are to be found only in the Holy Scriptures." According to Blackstone, all human laws depended either upon the law of nature or upon the law of revelation found in the Bible: "Upon these two foundations, the law of nature and the law of revelation, depend all human laws."{15}

Samuel Adams argues in "The Rights of the Colonists" that they had certain rights. "Among the natural Rights of the Colonists are these: First, a Right to Life; second, to Liberty; third, to Property; . . . and in the case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. When men enter into society, it is by voluntary consent."{16} This concept of natural rights also found its way into the Declaration of Independence and provided the justification for the American Revolution.

The Declaration was a bold document, but not a radical one. The colonists did not break with England for "light and transient causes." They were mindful that they should be "in subjection to governing authorities" which "are established by God" (Rom. 13:1). Yet when they suffered from a "long train of abuses and usurpations," they believed that "it is the right of the people to alter or abolish [the existing government] and to institute a new government."

Constitution

The Christian influence on the Declaration is clear. What about the Constitution?

James Madison was the chief architect of the Constitution as well as one of the authors of the Federalist Papers. It is important to note that as a youth, he studied under a Scottish Presbyterian, Donald Robertson. Madison gave the credit to Robertson for "all that I have been in life."{17} Later he was trained in theology at Princeton under the Reverend John Witherspoon. Scholars believe that Witherspoon's Calvinism (which emphasized the fallen nature of man) was an important source for Madison's political ideas.{18}

The Constitution was a contract between the people and had its origins in American history a century earlier:

One of the obvious by-products [of the Reformation] was the notion of a contract entered into by two people or by the members of a community amongst themselves that needed no legal sanctions to make it binding. This concept of the Reformers made possible the formation of contractuals or, as the Puritans called them, "covenanted" groups formed by individuals who signed a covenant or agreement to found a community. The most famous of these covenants was the Mayflower Compact. In it the Pilgrims formed a "civil body politic," and promised to obey the laws their own government might pass. In short, the individual Pilgrim invented on the spot a new community, one that would be ruled by laws of its making.{19}

Historian Page Smith believes, "The Federal Constitution was in this sense a monument to the reformed consciousness. This new sense of time as potentiality was a vital element in the new consciousness that was to make a revolution and, what was a good deal more difficult, form a new nation."{20}

Preaching and teaching within the churches provided the justification for the revolution and the establishment of a new nation. Alice Baldwin, writing in The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, says,

The teachings of the New England ministers provide one line of unbroken descent. For two generations and more New Englanders had . . . been taught that these rights were sacred and came from God and that to preserve them they had a legal right of resistance and, if necessary a right to . . . alter and abolish governments and by common consent establish new ones.{21}

Christian ideas were important in the founding of this republic and the framing of our American governmental institutions. And I believe they are equally important in the maintenance of that republic.

Notes

1. John Adams, October 11, 1798, in a letter to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts. Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams - Second President of the United States: with a Life of the Author, Notes, and Illustration (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1854), Vol. IX, 228-229.
2. George Washington, Farewell Address (September 19, 1796). Address of George Washington, President of the United States, and Late Commander in Chief of the American Army. To the People of the United States, Preparatory to His Declination.
3. Daniel Webster, December 22, 1820. The Works of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1853), Vol. I, 48.
4. Benjamin Rush, "Thoughts upon the Mode of Education Proper in a Republic," Early American Imprints. Benjamin Rush, Essays, Literary, Moral and Philosophical (Philadelphia: Thomas and Samuel F. Bradford, 1798), 8.
5. Ibid.
6. Webster, The Works of Daniel Webster, 22ff.
7. John Jay, October 12, 1816, in The Correspondence and Public Papers of John Jay, Henry P. Johnston, ed., (New York: G.P Putnam & Sons, 1893; reprinted NY: Burt Franklin, 1970), Vol. IV, 393.
8. William Penn, April 25, 1682, in the preface of his Frame of Government of Pennsylvania. A Collection of Charters and Other Public Acts Relating to the Province of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia: B. Franklin, 1740), 10-12.
9. C. Gregg Singer, A Theological Interpretation of American History (Nutley, NJ: The Craig Press, 1964), 284-5.
10. Page Smith, Religious Origins of the American Revolution (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1976), 1.
11. Ibid, 2.
12. Ibid., 3.
13. Ibid, 185.
14. William Blackstone, "Of the Nature of Laws in General," Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book 1, Section II.
15. Ibid.
16. Samuel Adams, "The Rights of the Colonists" (Boston, 1772), The Annals of America, Vol. II, 217.
17. John Eidsmoe, Christianity and the Constitution (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1987), 94.
18. James H. Smylie, "Madison and Witherspoon: Theological Roots of American Political Thought," American Presbyterians, 112.
19. Smith, Religious Origins, 3.
20. Ibid., 4
21. Alice M. Baldwin, The New England Clergy and the American Revolution (Durham: Duke University Press, 1928), 169.

[NCPAC]

I agree with everything you said, Risk. Believe me, I am not a Christian basher - and I believe NO organ funded by the Government should slam Christians. These programs and/or agencies should be abolished anyway.

However, I am not going to be trashed because I don't share the beliefs of any one Religion - even if the trashing is cloaked in the best of intentions. It simply astounds me that (apparently) so many Christians believe it is a given that America must - MUST - reflect their interpretations of Christianity.

[Long Cut]

"It simply astounds me that (apparently) so many Christians believe it is a given that America must - MUST - reflect their interpretations of Christianity."

Simple as all get-out, NC. Read AF's posts...to him and others like him, their version of Christianity is the "One Truth". However, they don't like the fact that others do not recognize this...it hurts their egos or something. Thus, they want the government to FORCE those others to recognize their "superiority".

Like AF said, they'll start small if they have to. Part of it is wishing, hoping, and rationalizing America as a "Christian Nation", in the desire that someday, somehow, a court or a legislature will agree. Then, unfettered, they can begin to shape all laws thusly.

Of course, they'll have the fun of pointing their gnarled fingers at the rest of us and saying, "UNBELIEVERS! We're BETTER than you!"

[nopardons]

We don't live in a theocracy!

Do you want to "punish" Jews as well as Muslims and atheists? What about Buddhists?

Should only certain sects of Christianity be allowed to practice?

[nopardons]

So did Free Masonry play a HUGE part in our founding;yet there's a group here,that attacks Masons and all they stood/stand for,all the time,posting lies,calumny,drivel,and tinfoil garbage about them.

[risk]

Actually, there is

What a long-shot. They wrote the equivalent of "A.D." when describing the date, and you're saying that justifies dogmatic laws in this country?

Every time anyone writes a Gregorian date he's doing exactly the same thing. With comments by our Founding Fathers abounding that indicate their deep and well-reasoned concern about keeping religion and government separate, such as the following two, I find no basis for an argument that depends on a Gregorian representation of a date as proof that they intended our Constitution to be Christian in nature.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for is faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church and State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties. --Thomas Jefferson's Letter to the Danbury Baptists

And

The civil Government, though bereft of everything like an associated hierarchy, possesses the requisite stability, and performs its functions with complete success, whilst the number, the industry, and the morality of the priesthood, and the devotion of the people, have been manifestly increased by the total separation of the church from the State.(1819). --James Madison

The revisionists are the ones who would either divest our culture of Christianity with laws, or who would (re)Christianize it. Both are in fierce violation of our Constitution. There are partisans on both sides who exaggerate the fears of their constituents based on either camp's wishes.

It's only all too unfortunate that we can't ask our Founding Fathers to help us resolve these conflicts.

We have to think them through for ourselves. Christianizing our government is such an obvious mistake to any student of the reformation and the enlightenment, and yet we must confinually defend the notions of John Locke, John Milton, and Jean Rousseau -- all three of whom were passionate defenders of government without the power to impart religious establishment on their people.

Freedom in government is all about representation. That is where it always goes awry. A Christian government would exclude a massive segment of the population from true representation. Any taxes for them would suddenly be onerous. The intercessions of their clergy/officials would susdenly be tedious and oppressive. Furthermore, many Christians would suddenly disagree about dogmas represented in the government. Europe's history is of one religiously motivated war after another. All of that was made obsolete when we finished our American revolution against the English crown and its onerous championship of Anglicanism against Catholicism.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> That's a very long piece of nothing. If it were as important as you say it is, then it would have been there. Instead they were very concerned about religious civil war, and knew better than to include anything about a particular religion.

You see my dilemma. I either believe you, or I believe a long history of founding father letters and activities, congressional resolutions, and supreme court rulings, from the beginning of our nation until 1947. It is a tough decision.

[risk]

You sir, are the revisionist. Read Jefferson's letter to the Danbury Baptists. Read the greatest thinkers of the Enlightenment, on whose thought our government was built, in letter after letter espousing the ideas of Locke, Milton, and Rousseau. The reformation and the enlightenment set us free from men who would use government as a tool to push their religious agendas. We're not going back to the dark days before all of those changes moved us toward the freedoms we enjoy now. I'm defending the status quo, and I'm not about to let it go. Neither are millions of other Americans of all faiths who understand why our government's protections for their religious practices is so brilliant.

[Long Cut]

"The truth is that prior to the usurpation by the ACLU-influenced, Hugo Black supreme court of 1947 the states had power over religion (from the 10th Amendment), and many allowed Christianity to be taught and nourished in public schools."

You just can't live without your religion being taught to other people's kids, or using their tax money to pay for it, can you, Phil?

If states were using public monies to fund the teaching of ONE religion in schools which were supported by EVERYONE's tax dollars, then stopping that was a GOOD thing.

[I got the rope]

huh? Have you bothered reading the Bible? Our laws (were) based on Judeo-Christian principles.

[Modernman]

To represent all religions equally would doom this country to secularism. If you truely feared the LORD, you would acknowledge the neccessity for Protestant doctrine in this country's legal system. Otherwise, you open the floodgates to homosexuality, prostitution, paganism, darwinism, satanism, etc.

A large percentage (pretty soon a majority) of this country is not Protestant. Following your logic, once another religion (say, Catholicism) becomes the majority, we should enshrine their religious principles into law.

I have a better idea: Let's keep government out of religion, and vice versa.

[Modernman]

Damn pagans. We can't allow them. People would think this was a free country or something.

Forget it. Irony is lost on some people.

(Still licking my wounds from the Bush Twins/Texas Women thread)

[risk]

My biggest frustration with these religionists is that they frighten the electorate away from good politicians like Senator Frist and George W. Bush who have a solid understanding of our constitutional separation of religion and state.

The televangelists and the other nabobs of Christian revisionism play right into the hands of leftist propagandists. See, they cry, the religious right wants to undo two hundred years of religious freedoms in our country! They do, but our current crop of Christian politicians is more interested in protecting all Americans than in pushing for a religious agenda in government.

Every time a PF or a T7 gets online and chants about Christ in our government, it probably turns of 1,000 voters, some of them Christians who fear religious oppression that would come through dogma's encroachment on government neutrality.

We end up with judges like the 5th and 9th circuit courts who are confused about the second amendment because they were appointed by politicians who appeased the fears of the people who worried about the Christianists. And so it goes. What a destructive lot.

[Long Cut]

See post #14. Perhaps you have an answer to that question.

You'll, of course, have to leave out the areas. like representative government and democratic elections, as those were Greek and Roman in origin.

And he's absolutely right about the Constitution not having any reference to Christianity or the Bible in its laws and the BOR's.

It DOES mention religion, if only to proscribe a state-sponsored one.

[risk]

Show me where the Constitution of your state or the Federal government's laws were based on the bible (and not just inspired). You've been watching too much 700 club, haven't you?

[I got the rope]

right to bear arms

Luke 22:36

http://www.gunowners.org/fs9902.htm

I do like a challenge;^)

[k2blader]

Must read later bump. :-)

[Modernman]

By your logic, we should tolerate any deviant behavior such as sodomy or atheism as long as they don't interfere with our own day-to-day lives.

You don't have to tolerate deviant behavior. However, so long as such behavior does not injure your person or property, you have no right to demand that government ban it.

Yes it does bother me if a muslim moves in next door to me, .

Too bad. Unless it is your property, you have no say as to who lives there.

Everyone insists on their right to define their own morals and "life my life as I choose so long as I don't interfere with my neighbor's right to do the same."

And you have a problem with this why?

What about our right to live in a country free from pagans and terrorists?

Terrorists are one thing, but you have no more "right" to live in a pagan-free country than you do to live in a judenfrei nation.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Actually the Founding Fathers were all Aesir worshipers. The honored the Gods of the Aesir by the names they used for weekdays. (Okay, perhaps a few were Sun, Moon, or Saturn worshipers.)

[risk]

Your logic is short-circuited. The bible is a well-reasoned commentary that many agree came from God's own hand. Our laws sometimes agree with the bible. That doesn't make our laws bibilcal. It makes them resonate with bibilical teaching. To make our laws comply with bibilical teaching would require a theocracy, and a doomed attempt to build a heavenly kingdom on earth. We are better of explaining ourselves and persuading each other why laws are good and have merit using the tools of reason and logic than we are in applying a biblical template. Our founding fathers understood that few would be able to agree on dogmatic templates anyway. Europe's history proved that!

[risk]

Whatever and whoever they worshiped, they didn't plan on forcing me to do the same. Nor did they permit future lawmakers to cut out legal stencils out of Aesir's (or Jehovah's) texts and blindly apply them. They required logical and reasoned discourse.