More of chapter 4 in the series, "What Would Jesus Vote?" The chapter began by showing how the US Bill of Rights tries to protect individuals against the whims of the majority.
Here is the series so far:
2.1 (He would vote) As a Kingdom Citizen
2.2 We're citizens in two kingdoms
3.1 (He would vote) for love of neighbor and enemy
3.2 (He would vote) for the greater good
Test Case: Health Care (under revision)
4.1 (For the greater good) ... Without Hurting the Rest
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... But would Jesus "vote" for it [the US Bill of Rights]? We've talked about how the US system balances out the greatest good for the greatest number with protections for individuals. How does this secular system compare with Jesus' kingdom way of looking at people in the world?
Rights versus the Image of God
4. It seems to me that both Christian values and the US Constitution get to a similar destination, but they get there by a different path. In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson wrote that God has endowed all humanity with "certain inalienable rights." He speaks especially of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." He is saying that every human being has a right to his or her life. Every human deserves to be free to pursue whatever he or she wants.
Obviously, he didn't mean that these freedoms were absolute or without exception. For example, Jefferson believed in the death penalty. Similarly, Jefferson didn't believe I was free to kill whomever I wanted.
How is Jefferson's vision for human rights the same and/or different from Jesus'? The very heart of the difference is that Jefferson's vision of rights is "me" and human-centered. Me-me-me. I have a right to my life. I have a right to do whatever makes me happy. It's a freedom for me.
By contrast, for the Christian, human value is always derived from God. We have value because we are created in the image of God. Every human life is valuable because it is a reflection of God. God loves every human life. Therefore, every human life has dignity.
There is a good deal of overlap here. In both approaches, every human life must be protected. However, the secular version detaches us from the reason why we are valuable. Jefferson was a deist who only saw God as the creator. He did not see God in a current relationship with the world. He had no real concept of God's love for us today.
But Jesus is still very much in contact with the world! God still loves the world. God still wants the world to be reconciled to him. Apart from God, we are nothing. Yet even the most hardened criminal is still tethered to God as created in his image and loved by him. God did not create us for the pursuit of happiness in separation from him.
As a Christian, I prefer not to speak in terms of human rights. I'm not saying that Christians can't use this language. It is just easy to lose sight of why "rights" exist and where they come from. Any sense of human rights should ultimately point back to God. If we speak of rights apart from God, we can begin to get who we are out of perspective. We become the center of things. We become the goal of everything rather than God.
Further, on what basis could we speak of human rights apart from God? If we strictly think of America as a social contract, then my rights are simply something we have all agreed on. Apart from God, those rights aren't real. They're just something we've shaken hands over.
In this way, a Judeo-Christian grounding of human rights both gives them substance and makes clear that they ultimately point back to God's love for us. We are created in God's image, and that is what makes every human life valuable. We get to the same destination by a slightly different path.
But, in separation from its Christian grounding, our talk of rights will gravitate toward self-centeredness. For Jesus, human value is a result of God's love. It is a gift, not something we can demand or that we have coming to us. It's not strictly ours. It's God's value in us.
Secular versus Christian Freedom
5. That brings us to another question. Is American liberty the same or different from how Jesus might conceive of our freedom?
Let's start with how Christian faith looks at human freedom. There is actually some disagreement among Christians on human freedom. On the one hand, orthodox faith holds that all human beings are fallen. Historic Christian faith believes that none of us can come to God in our own power or by our own merit. Many Christians use the language of "total depravity" for the default state of fallen humanity. From the standpoint of historic Christianity, we do not have "free will" by default.
Beyond that, Christians are divided into two broad groups on whether God has acted to restore some degree of freedom in us. On the one hand, some believe that God determines everything, and everything that happens is scripted by God. "Everything happens for a reason." Everything is predestined or determined to happen. This group in effect does not believe we have any real freedom at all. We are simply God's puppets. [1]
The other group -- into which I fall -- believes that God empowers us to have some degree of freedom restored to us. The first group heavily consists of what we might call "Calvinists." This group, following the teaching of John Calvin (1509-64), does not believe that we have any real freedom at all. My own tradition, the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition, would be an example of those who believe God empowers us to choose to receive his grace. God empowers our freedom.
Textbox: I believe that God empowers us to choose to receive his grace. God empowers at least some degree of true human freedom.
These underlying views of human freedom can play significantly into our views of how our Christian faith should engage the culture around us. We often have unexamined assumptions about how we should act in the world without even knowing it. Yet these assumptions are fundamental to how we behave politically.
The "Take Over" Mindset
6. When John Calvin set up shop in Geneva, Switzerland in the 1500s, his understanding of God and his laws became identical with the laws of Geneva. If you lived in the city, you not only had to be a Christian, you had to be a Calvinist Christian. This is a model that Richard Niebuhr called "Christ over culture." [2] It assumes that the goal of the Christian is effectively to take over the state. At the very least, Christians should try to make the laws of the land mirror the laws of the Bible (called a "theonomic" view). [3]
This is a pattern we have seen in various Calvinist groups over the last five hundred years. You frequently hear people say that the Puritans came to America in pursuit of religious freedom. But this is misleading. They did not advocate religious freedom. They believed everyone should worship God the way they did. They only wanted freedom for themselves -- who had all the right answers that everyone else needed to agree with.
In the mid-1600s, the Puritans took over England under Oliver Cromwell and immediately tried to make everyone in England follow their understanding of the Christian faith. For example, they tried to abolish the celebration of Christmas and other things like sporting on Sundays.
Once they became established in New England, the Puritans similarly expected religious conformity to their understanding. In 1636, they kicked Roger Williams out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony because he didn't conform to Puritan values. Two years later, in 1638, they similarly kicked Anne Hutchinson out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony because she didn't conform to their views on women. The situation in New England would eventually force them to be more tolerant of others, but it was never their preference.
Here we get to a fundamentally different view of America's founding. Some today have what I might call a neo-Puritan view of America's founding. They see these Puritans with their ideologies as effectively the real founders of the United States. Making America great again is to get back to something like an idealized Puritan America. David Barton is probably the best-known history writer to argue that the founders of America intentionally founded America on biblical principles as a Christian nation. [4] This is a minority view. [5]
7. Another example of the "Christ over culture" approach is that of the "New Apostolic Reformation" (NAR) movement with its "Seven Mountains" mandate. Rather than coming from a hard Calvinist angle, this movement has grown out of the charismatic movement and the work of Peter Wagner in particular. [6] Taking a somewhat "postmillennial" view, this movement looks for Christians to infiltrate and effectively take over seven "mountains" of culture (based on Revelation 17:9). [7] These are religion, family, education, government, media, arts and entertainment, and business.
You can see an overlap between those sometimes called Christian nationalists and those who might consider themselves part of this movement. However, it would be possible to distinguish these from those some we mentioned in chapter 2 who might inadvertently worship America. This group wants Christ to take over America and make it Christian -- their understanding of what "Christian" is. While they may or may not think that America was ever the America of their vision, they want to make it now into their understanding of what a Christian America should be. They want to change America.
The "Let Them Go" Mindset
8. On the surface, the idea of taking over America for Christ may sound ideal. Then we could set up a "theocracy" where God rules the country in a new Israel, if you would.
The problem is that it never turns out this way. With the exception of Moses and Joshua, God is never the real ruler in earthly theocracies. For example, there is always someone who is interpreting what God says. It's a great gig for a priest. The priest (or priests) come to the people and say, "Here's what God wants us to do." It's actually the kind of setup that they have in Iran, with an Ayatolla to interpret the will of Allah.
This is one of the subtle facts about the Bible that a lot of people don't fully reckon with -- it has to be interpreted. We give ourselves great authority when we say, "This is what the Bible says." If we're not careful, we might forget that what we're really saying, "This is what I or we think the Bible means." The same of course goes for this book.
Whenever the state and religion get too aligned, bad things seem to happen. For the Roman Empire, when Christianity became the official religion of the empire, all the non-Christian religions and forces within the empire simply went underground and pretended to be Christian. The result was "syncretism," when elements that are actually contrary to Christianity get fused with Christianity. We talked about syncretism in chapter 2.
In the days following the Protestant Reformation, the fusion of the church and state led to the oppression of Christians who had a different view from the particular Christian group in charge somewhere. Roman Catholics burned Protestants at the stake. Anglicans and Presbyterians burned Roman Catholics at the stake. Calvinists put non-Calvinists to death. Followers of Zwingli put Anabaptists to death. The Puritans also put to death those who didn't tow their line.
It may not be an authentic quote, but there is a story about Charles Spurgeon being asked why the Baptists never burned anyone at the stake. In the story, his answer was that the Baptists were never in charge. In other words, the story insinuates that they would have if they had ever been in charge.
9. My own tradition has a different view of how God interacts with the world. In my view, the most serious problem with hyper-deterministic ideologies is that, for all intents and purposes, they make God directly responsible for every evil that has ever happened. Technically, you can speak of first and second order causes, but there is no resistance between the two. It is like me doing something with a broom and blaming the broom.
Calvin himself at least believed that Satan and Adam had a free choice, and thus that the evil choices of all who have followed are the inevitable consequences of depravity. But originally, humanity had something to do with the choices we now inevitably make. But in hyper-deterministic versions of Calvinism like that of John Piper, God is always the hand in the puppet.
If "everything happens for a reason," then God's hand makes the puppet be a serial killer or rape a child. Name the most horrific act you can imagine and a fully deterministic system makes God responsible. In fact, Satan himself is simply God's puppet, doing everything God commands him to do down to the very last detail. In this scenario, the problem of evil is insurmountable, and any concept of God's love is mutated beyond recognition. God doesn't really love the world. He just loves the elect.
Jacob Arminius (1560-1609) recognized these potential problems with Calvinism in the early 1600s and proposed a modified understanding. In particular, he proposed that, while humanity was powerless to do good by default, God empowered us potentially to respond positively to his grace. Thus, we have the potential to have a God-empowered freedom to live righteously if we allow God's Spirit to fill us.
Both Calvin and Arminius were arguably filling in the blanks of the New Testament with regard to human freedom. Calvin supposed that those parts of the Bible that make it sound like we are free are not really how it works. We only think we are free. Arminius supposed that those parts of the Bible that make it sound like we are determined are not really how it works. God has predetermined the plan, not the destiny of each individual.
This latter approach helps rescue the so-called "free will theodicy." A "theodicy" is an explanation for how a good God can allow horrific evil to persist. In the free will or Augustinian theodicy, God allows evil to continue because he has given humanity a choice (especially Adam). But if God gives humanity a choice, some will make the wrong choice and there will be evil and suffering. It is not a perfect explanation, but it is far better than God dictating all the evil that happens directly.
In this Arminian approach, God allows the wicked to persist for a time -- often for centuries. In his sovereignty, he allows the world he created to disobey him. He does not force anyone to come to him. As in Romans 1:28, God lets the wicked spiral out of control to their own ultimate demise. He "let's them go."
10. This Arminian model fits very nicely with the way the US Constitution sets out the relationship between religion and the state. As with our discussion of American rights above, it gets to a similar destination by a different means. It is no coincidence that John Wesley (1703-91) -- a chief promulgator of this view of human freedom -- lived during the Enlightenment period out of which the US Constitution also came.
You could argue that, to a large extent, the US Constitution presents a model that "let's us go." The state is a kind of neutral zone. It's not supposed to take sides on specifically religious matters. It gives all individuals the freedom of religion and forbids itself from establishing a particular religion for the country.
... while protecting the rest. For example, your religion is not allowed to sacrifice other human beings. My freedom of religion cannot impinge on the "rights" of others. If my religion says that you cannot work on Sunday, I am free to practice my religion that way and not work on Sunday. But I can't force everyone else not to work on Sunday because that would be to force a specifically religious view on others.
If we follow this line of thought out, it can get tricky for Christians. For example, if we are to pass legislation that is opposed to gay marriage, we will have to do it without using Christian beliefs as the basis for it. If we are to pass legislation prohibiting abortion from the moment of conception, we will have to do it without using Christian beliefs as the basis for it. In this understanding of the Constitution, we are free to practice our specific religious beliefs as we choose. But the Constitution would not allow us to make them into law unless we can justify them by other than religious means.
A popular way of expressing this concept is to say that you "cannot legislate morality." But this is not exactly right either. After all, the law prohibits things like murder and stealing, which from a Christian standpoint is legislating morality. However, from a secular standpoint, these laws are enforcing the social contract rather than enforcing morality. The basic social contract of the US involves an agreement that I will not kill you or take your stuff. We both have tacitly agreed to this set up. [8] From the standpoint of the Constitution, these laws are simply part of the arrangement we have agreed upon.
I would argue that this is how God governs the world most of the time. God allows the people of the world to disbelieve in him. This does not threaten his sovereignty because it is his choice. Don't tell him that he can't do it! God allows people to disobey him to a point. Eventually, he hits the reset button for humanity's own good. More on restraining evil in the next chapter.
This is a different sense of God and America than the Calvinist one. The Calvinist approach tends to force conformity to God's will and believes that is how God himself relates to the world. The Arminian approach believes that God draws all people to him (John 12:32). He gives them a choice. Similarly, this approach to governance gives people freedom as long as they do not violate the basic social contract.
Separation of Church and State
11. You can see that we are building a case for the separation of church and state. Most historians would say that the founders of the US were keenly aware of the tendency of a state religion to oppress and persecute those who were of a different stripe. In the background of the thirteen original colonies, you had states with a Puritan background (Massachusetts), Catholic-leaning states (Maryland), Anglican states (Virginia), states with a Reformed background (New York), and even Quaker-founded states (Pennsylvania). The "non-establishment clause" in the First Amendment suggested that the US should be a neutral zone in which all of these could coexist.
And of course, there were non-Christians whom this non-establishment clause allowed to live peacefully here. For example, New York and Rhode Island had a significant Jewish population. As many as 70-90% of the American population may not even have practiced any religion at all prior to the Great Awakening in the 1730s. At the time of the Revolutionary War, as much as 50-60% of the American populace did not attend church.
The diversity of religion today in America is thus more different in degree rather than kind from the original situation. It is true that some in America have made the idea of the separation of church and state an almost anti-religious sentiment. That also goes against what the founders intended. Rather the goal would seem to be peaceful coexistence of different religions and Christian denominations. The goal is not to eliminate religion from the public sphere but not to enforce one religious perspective over another.
According to most historians, America was founded to be this way. True, many of the key founders of the United States were Christians (e.g., John Jay). But most of the key players were deists who believed God created the world but was not much involved with it at present (e.g., Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington). The majority view is that these founders were strong advocates for a separation between the church and the state, an expression that comes from Thomas Jefferson.
[1] Determinists can speak of freedom, but it is a perceived freedom not a real freedom. That is, we think we are free even though we're not. This is a distinction without a difference because I still have to do everything I do and cannot possibly choose otherwise.
[2] H. Richard Niebuhr, Christ and Culture (Harper & Brothers, 1951).
[3] The theonomic view 1) largely ignores the way the New Testament applies the Old Testament through the lens of Christ, 2) does not see that much of the Old Testament teaching is not applied to Gentile believers and 3) does not read Old Testament law against the backdrop of its ancient Near Eastern context. It thus fails 1) as a Christian reading of Scripture, 2) to listen to the New Testament, and 3) as a contextual reading of the Bible. The most important modern voice behind such theonomic readings of the Bible was R. J. Rushdooney, The Institutes of Biblical Law (Chalcedon, 1973).
[4] E.g., David Barton and Tim Barton, The American Story, 2nd ed. (Wallbuilder, 2020).
[5] A good example of push back against this understanding would be Steven K. Green, Inventing Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding (Oxford University, 2017). Another example is Gregory A. Boyd, The Myth of a Christian Nation (Zondervan, 2007).
[6] C. Peter Wagner, Churchquake: How the New Apostolic Movement Is Shaking Up the Church as We Know It (Baker, 1999). More recently, see Lance Wallnau and Bill Johnson, Invading Babylon: The 7 Mountain Mandate (Destiny Image, 2013).
[7] Revelation 17:9 was obviously about Rome in its original context. Anyone in John's day in Asia Minor hearing about kings on seven hills would automatically think of Rome and its emperors. In fact, these verses may be the "decoder ring" to dating the book of Revelation.
[8] This is John Locke's concept of "tacit" or silent consent. If you live here, you agree to the rules even though you never signed up for them.
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