The Christian Foundations of America

For several posts, I've been processing the Christian trajectory of Europe, culminating in America.

• Did Constantine and Theodosius make Rome Christian?
• When did Europe become Christian?
• Theories of Western decline
• A more dialectical view
• Wesley, Arminius, and the Enlightenment
• Judeo-Christian Values of America

You often hear that America was founded as a Christian nation and on Judeo-Christian values. I'm not a master of this discussion so I'll just give my hunches on this issue.

1. Many of those who first came to America from England came for religious reasons, to escape the religious pressures of Europe. The Pilgrims were Separatists who just wanted to be left alone. The Puritans were Anglican Calvinists who wanted the power to make their community observe Christianity their way. The Quakers came to be left alone.

Of course these weren't the only ones who came to America. No doubt there were also criminals who came, trying to escape the eye of society. de Tocqueville, coming to America a few decades before the Civil War, had nothing good to say about the south: "No noble views, no spiritual thoughts presided over the foundation of these new settlements" (41). Writing in 1835, no doubt the institution of slavery heavily filtered his assessment.

Many of the colonies were officially Anglican, including the upper crust and the "power layer" in America. George Washington, James Madison, James Monroe were officially Anglican in the Episcopal church, although perhaps more deist in reality. They were generally dubious of organized religion and saw Jesus more as a great moral example than as anything like the second person of the Trinity. John Adams was more or less a unitarian, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Paine strongly deist. Thomas Jefferson was also more deist than theist.

2. So while the Declaration of Independence references God, it does not reference the Bible. And the only place where the Constitution mentions God is in the phrase, "the year of our Lord," a conventional way of referencing the date. These documents are most directly based on Enlightenment philosophy, especially John Locke and Montesquieu. The inalienable rights of "life and liberty" come from Locke. The three branches of government comes from Montesquieu.

The Puritans of a century earlier did not design a system of government like the US Constitution, especially after the Bill of Rights was added. Puritan New England was more like when the majority in Egypt tried to use democracy to vote in Islamic law as the law of the land. It's a democracy in the sense that the majority are voting on things, but if you are Roger Williams or Anne Hutchinson, it's not a particularly pleasant place to live. It's not who we were when the US was actually born, thankfully so.

3. So was America founded as a Christian nation? Clearly its population overwhelmingly identified as Christian and, given the unique situation of its origins, it probably had a significantly higher percentage of devout believers than Europe in general, at least at the beginning. I hesitate to say that its philosophical foundations were deist, because that might have a negative connotation, so let me put it this way.

America was founded on the notion that God had created the world with a certain moral structure to it. Most of the founders and the philosophers on which they drew did not think much about God's regular action or involvement in the world. But, like Newton, they believe God had infused the world with a certain natural law that had implications for how society might best be structured.

What were these features of natural law?

a. "All men are created equal."
I would argue that the Western world--and America first--has played out a system of government that embodies the Christian sense that all people are created in the image of God better than all of history previous. Indeed, biblical Israel did not play out this value as well as the United States. The Roman Empire of New Testament times absolutely did not play out this value.

We have not played out this principle perfectly, to be sure. There remains great disparity in America. Slavery was not abolished until 1865, and the premature death of Lincoln resulted in the complete race mess that we are still struggling with 150 years later. His vice-president, Andrew Johnson, to me the worst president in American history, let the south mangle the integration of slaves into society.

b. "inalienable rights"
The real genius of American democracy, in my opinion, is that it goes beyond mere democracy to the protection of individuals within that democracy. (Someone always reminds me at this point that we are technically a republic. Yes, yes, I know.) The Bill of Rights is an incredibly important addition to the Constitution because it prevents the majority from voting out the rights of a minority. It can be said to be biblical in the sense that all people deserve to be treated with love because all people are created in the image of God.

The Puritan was not interested, however, in giving freedoms of this sort. Their ideal world was one where the Christian majority forces everyone to follow Christian laws. As an Arminian, I prefer a land where the laws have a basic moral character (don't kill, don't steal), but on specific issues individuals are "given up" to choose whether to be moral or not, as long as they do not harm others.

Of course I could come up with some passages (Romans 1, 14). Freedom of religion, though, is not something all Christians would agree with, especially those of a Puritan stripe. As a Wesleyan, however, I have more admired Roger Williams in his early days.

c. human freedom
I'm not sure how I would argue that human freedom is a primary biblical value, even though it is an essential element in my theology. As an Arminian, I believe that God has given it to us. I believe God lets us choose. This is a long-standing Christian interpretation, of course. Augustine's explanation for the problem of evil starts with Adam's freedom.

IMO, these discussions go beyond what the Bible explicitly says. It is Christian processing of the Bible, especially the notion that God is love. The Enlightenment, with its American and French revolutions, took the notion of freedom to the next level. In my theology, it reflects to some extent the character of God as I understand him. But there is a lot of Enlightenment in my understanding too.

d. centrality of truth and reason
I'm not sure how I would argue that a commitment to reason and objective truth or a commitment to an empirical view of the world is biblical. Certainly there are many presuppositionalists today who would more or less argue to the contrary. I personally don't think it is unbiblical. I think it is unavoidable if we wish to perpetuate the great successes of the West.

But this is a key aspect of America's philosophical founding and, perhaps more than anything, it is one of the key aspects of America that I fear may be decline. The majority of Americans of course have never been Enlightenment thinkers. But the best thinkers and leaders of America have been. Although I have learned from postmodernism, this is its greatest potential casualty--it has threatened to erode the rational foundations of society and empowered the presuppositionalists.

4. I don't know if I will keep posting on this subject, but I do have a line of thinking here. Christians have been saying that America was in moral decline since it started, it seems to me. Didn't they say that in the Great Awakening? Weren't the Princeton Fundamentals saying that in the 1920s? Didn't Richard Weaver say that in 1948, at what some consider the height of Christian America? Wasn't Francis Schaeffer saying that in the 1970s? James Dobson in the 1980s? Any Republican candidate today?

Could it be that each Christian generation has a tendency to idealize the American Christianity of the past and that we're all alarmed to find that, in our generation, it's only about 20% of America that is really Christian in any meaningful sense? Could it be that even my sense of "Enlightenment decline" is really just a slightly different version of the same?

So is America now finally, for real this time, losing its moral foundations?

Truth and Justice are the American Way

I think that truth and justice fit with Christianity, so that makes it easy for me to be an American as a Christian. I believe it could also be the case for someone who is Muslim as well... or a Buddhist, or some other religion.

But I'm reading some of a high school world history textbook. Take this line: Islam's "fundamental teaching that all Muslims are equal within the community of believers made the acceptance of conquerors and new rulers easier" (176). It's talking about the military conversion of parts of Africa to Islam in the 1000s.

I almost laughed. Now think of ISIS. Imagine they come to town and say, "We're going to come in here and take over your cities. But if you will convert to Islam, we will consider you all equal and that will make it okay." Of course not if you're a Christian or Hindu. Of course not if you're a woman.

I am of course not wanting a textbook that is biased against Islam either. What I'm wanting is a real commitment on the part of objectivity and truth, thinking that ardently strives neither to be biased one way or another. I don't want to walk on eggshells around someone who holds to a Black Athena theory or around Ken Ham or around some person who skews the history of Islam. I want to be able to say, this is just a mess of special pleading.

The American way is truth based on evidence and logic, approached as objectively as possible. America was forged by Enlightenment thinkers. An objective approach can fit with all these religions, including my own Christianity. The goal is to find what God truly thinks, not what my tribe wants him to think.

Give me truth, not collectivist thinking!

Enlightenment Epistemology

Dave Ward was kind enough to let me teach an evening philosophy class this semester. My long worked on philosophy textbook, by the way, is almost out in electronic form. Whether it ever takes on print form depends on the market. Times, they are a changing.

In any case, below is 30 minute video I did overviewing Enlightenment epistemology. Although we're meeting for class on Adobe Connect tonight, most Thursday nights you could follow some of our banter by the Twitter hashtag #180cphilosophy. Tonight, though, we're online in a more private environment.

Quote on Protestantism and the problem of biblical theology

What do you make of this quote?

"The Protestant Reformation rejected allegorical interpretation because allegory had allowed the medieval church to go beyond the original meaning in ways they rejected.  The Reformers wanted to peel back developments in the catholic tradition and used sola scriptura as the method.  But what they really wanted to do was peel back developments to about 450CE, and their sola scriptura unintentionally set Protestantism on a trajectory that would eventually undo the glue of the first five centuries and, after the Enlightenment, the books of the Bible began to fall apart from each other.  This is the problem of biblical theology."

What I like about the Enlightenment...

The "Enlightenment" has become a dirty word. It is a dirty word among postmodernists because it presumed that you could neatly divide me as a knower of the world from the world that is the object of my knowledge. The Enlightenment was so bold as to think that I could think objectively about the world and arrive at a kind of God's eye view of what was true and what was false about it.

Christians have both intentionally and unintentionally basked in the unravelling of Enlightenment objectivity. Those who call themselves post-conservative (like Roger Olsen) or post-liberal (like William Placher) or radically orthodox (like James K. A. Smith) have all enjoyed the idea that Christianity can no longer be tested against reality because, after all, there is no objective reality to which we have access against which to test it. Individuals like Nicholas Wolterstorff have taken their place in the halls of places like Yale because, in a world where there is no objective truth, why not have an evangelical in the zoo along with everyone else.

I recognize the value of the postmodern critique of objectivity.

BUT here are some concerns I have:

• The idea of Truth forced us to look beyond ourselves for the possible correction of our ideas. The postmodern Spirit of the age has pushed us back toward intellectual tribalism and individualism... and that among a vast majority who have never passed through the fires of modernism to get there.


• In religion, it has given us no path by which to distinguish God from the gods of our tribes and individual making. Religions, denominations, and the whims of individual "believers" have no basis by which to arbitrate between each other.


• In society, we are moving away from the individual social contract that made the United States a land of freedom (at least on paper) and to a society of tribes and interest groups.


• When it comes to issues like global warming and evolution, people do not sincerely ask the question, "In what direction does the evidence seem to lie." Rather, with no competence in the relevant disciplines, they make a vigorous judgment based on the tribe to which they belong.

I affirm Augustine's "faith seeking understanding" and "I believe in order to understand." But if our views, even our faith, is not at least potentially modifiable in the face of clear evidence and good thinking, then how can we call God a God of truth? Otherwise God begins to look more and more like a trickster who plays games with us or perhaps we begin to get a nagging feeling that He doesn't actually exist.

Postmodernism has indeed made it rational to chose a conclusion that does not match the current lay of the evidence. But it need not lead us into a world where there is no real difference between fantasy and fact (one possible outcome). It can also free us up to be honest with where the chips lie--as best we can tell with each passing day.

Then we can openly affirm faith over and against the current look of the evidence--if it comes to that. But we can honor God with honesty as we do it.