Religion and the Public Square

At present, a war is being waged for the soul of American culture. Liberal revisionists and secular historians are attempting to rewrite the pages of United States history, replacing all references to God and Judeo-Christian influences with bland references to "deism" and "Enlightenment thought." While many Christian and conservative voices decry the removal of prayer from schools, or the lawsuits brought against manger scenes in public squares, a more subtle assault on our heritage has commenced. Liberals are attempting to simultaneously label any public acknowledgment of God as "theocracy" and to further assert that America is not, and never has been a Christian nation. In order to turn back the coming tide of secularism, it is vital that we refute these false claims.

The first step towards restoring the primacy of the Judeo-Christian ethic is to debunk the false claim that acknowledging our religious roots is tantamount to "theocracy." The straw man of theocracy is often used by proponents of secularism to club dissenting voices into silence.

Theocracy can be defined as "A government ruled by or subject to religious authority."[i] Iran is a theocracy; while there is an elected president, he is little more than a mouthpiece. The Revolutionary Council, made up of Islamic clerics and headed by the Supreme Ayatollah, calls the shots (including which names make it on to the presidential ballot). Saudi Arabia is deeply theocratic (if less explicitly so): the Saudi royal family's "right to rule" rests upon their status as defenders of Mecca and Medina, the holy cities of Islam, and the tacit approval of the ulama, the religious leaders. For much of the medieval period, theocratic power was the only constant in Europe; political power was transient, shifting. The pope commanded armies, humbled kings, and launched crusades.

Given standards by which to identify theocracy, how does America measure up? At the national level, the president commands the military, and Congress authorizes war. Both the president and Congress are elected by the citizens. During such elections, religious leaders and organizations may not even endorse candidates without jeopardizing their status as tax-exempt organizations.[ii] Churches and religious leaders hold no political authority over our political leaders, and conversely, our government is barred from restricting religious practices.[iii]
Elements on the political left may claim that " America is heading towards theocracy,"[iv] but when compared to bona fide theocratic governments that exist today, such claims are pretty thin gruel.

While the United States is not, and never has been, a theocracy, there is something to the fears of the secular left: Judeo-Christian precepts are embedded in this country's DNA. From the moment the Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts, religiosity has occupied a cherished place in American life. French Huguenots, fleeing the Catholic-Protestant wars, Puritans, Anabaptists, Lutherans, and Catholics--all came to American shores seeking to practice what the Constitution now promises: the free exercise of religion. In fact, while the Church of England was handing down ever more rules and regulations to citizens of the British Empire, Roger Williams was founding the colony of Rhode Island on the principle of religious freedom.[v]

A common charge often leveled against America 's Christian heritage is the claim that many of the Founders were not Christians at all: many of the founders were guided by philosophical precepts of the Enlightenment, and many students of the Enlightenment found the "Clockmaker God" of Deism attractive. While it is known that Jefferson, Washington and Franklin were deists,[vi] that is hardly the whole picture. Out of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention, there were 29 Anglicans, 16 Calvinists, 2 Methodists, 2 Roman Catholics, and 2 Lutherans.[vii] All of these men professed to be practicing Christians.

Furthermore, even the Founders who considered themselves to be deists believed that God had a hand in the formation of the United States. The deist Thomas Jefferson declared that "I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man."[viii]The deist George Washington expressed his belief that "It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."[ix] The deist Benjamin Franklin told the Constitutional Convention "the longer I live, the more convincing Proofs I see of this Truth -- That God governs in the Affairs of Men."[x] It speaks strongly to the nature and circumstances of this nation's founding that even those Founding Fathers who were not Christians saw God's hand guiding events.

There is another more subtle, yet even more fundamental link between Christianity and the founding of the United States : the concept of natural law. While the concept of natural law began with the Greek philosophers and was later adopted by St. Thomas of Aquinas, it later formed the backbone of much of Enlightenment thought. To many Enlightenment philosophers, engaged in the search for objective and absolute Truth, the idea that God laid down immutable and overarching laws that governed human behavior was a natural accompaniment.

Thus, when the Founders assembled to sign the Declaration of Independence, their list of grievances against the king was an issue of kingly vs. divine authority; as Jefferson stated, the signers believed that "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights."[xi] The king's violation of the rights of his own citizens flew in the face of the precepts of natural law, which had been laid down by God Himself.

When the Founders gathered to list the king's slights as justification for revolution, they were appealing to a higher authority: that of God. John Locke, an English philosopher whose writings on life, liberty, and property had a profound influence on Jefferson 's own writings, had this to say: "The Bible is one of the greatest blessings bestowed by God on the children of men. It has God for its author; salvation for its end, and truth without any mixture for its matter. It is all pure."[xii]

It is important to guard against the dangers of theocracy; that leads to corruption of religious vitality and erosion of individual freedom. Yet that is a distant threat--the United States has always been a world apart. Religion occupies a prominent place in theocracies because the government orders it to be so; in the United States , religious expression has always been a spontaneous expression of devotion to God; it is freely practiced by its citizens. Greater still is the danger that we will forget
where we came from and how we got here. The United States has prospered for over two centuries by holding its Christian heritage close, for the Founders were right: it is from God that our freedoms spring. So long as He is foremost in our thoughts, they cannot be taken from us.