America’s Religious Roots

QUESTION OF THE WEEK: Why do church people speak of America as a “Christian nation”? Read Chuck Colson’s response below, taken from Answers to Your Kids' Questions: The founding principles of America were strongly influenced by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Rather than call America a “Christian nation,” which may imply a church-dominated state, it’s more accurate to say that America is a nation profoundly influenced by Christian principles. Americans’ beliefs have become far more diverse than they were in the days of the nation’s founding, but the Christian principles still at work in our democratic institutions are the prime reason that those institutions do indeed work. Our country’s Judeo-Christian and classical Greek heritages influenced what governmental institutions were designed to do and not do. They provided the background for our understanding that the nation must be one of “laws, not men,” as Oliver Wendell Holmes put it. Even the ideal of the “pursuit of happiness” comes from the Judeo-Christian tradition: The phrase describes the founders’ longing for a society of corporate justice, not individual license. “Happiness,” as used in the Declaration of Independence, means the pursuit of virtue (that is, goodness), not hedonism. Another example: America’s founding fathers were also influenced by the Judeo-Christian teaching about the human tendency to abuse power. So they adopted the principle of the separation of powers. Within the government, power was diffused through a system of checks and balances so that no one branch could dominate another. The founders also assumed that what was then America’s Christian consensus would be the most powerful brake on the natural avarice of government. Because of its Judeo-Christian heritage, America has avoided the worst effects of humankind’s obsession with power. Two other ideas—equality and the rule of law—are central to Western democracy, and they can be traced directly to our culture’s Christian heritage as well. Take equality. As every schoolchild knows, the United States was, in the words of Abraham Lincoln, “dedicated to the proposition that ‘all men are created equal.’” Where did that idea come from? Christianity, of course. The Christian tradition is the reason that the founders believed in something called “natural rights,” that is, a belief that we possess certain rights simply because we are human beings endowed by our Creator with these rights. The founders enumerated these rights as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” which they saw as belonging to personhood itself. These rights are not dependent on the whim of a ruler—whether a king or a legislature—and they are not conferred on the people by themselves. They cannot be given or taken away, only honored or violated. The idea of equality also proceeded from a Reformation doctrine known as coram Deo, which means “the face of God.” Reformer John Calvin taught that all men and women, regardless of social status, live their lives in the face of God. This meant that individuals did not have to approach God through either the church or the state. It relieved them from the oppressive power of tyrants. They stood before God in their full dignity as humans. Crucially, the notion of coram Deo led to the insistence that the state’s role was limited. The state’s role wasn’t to rule over everybody but simply to ensure that the structures ordained by God—such as the family and the church—function properly. This idea of limited government was another core value of our democracy. In Western democracy, equality means, more than anything else, equality before the law. And that brings us to the other great contribution of Christianity: the rule of law. In the mid-seventeenth century, the Scottish clergyman Samuel Rutherford wrote a book that at the time was earth-shattering; It was titled Lex Rex, which means “the law is king.” Rutherford argued that ruler and ruled alike were subject to the same transcendent laws of God. It’s impossible to overstate how essential this idea is to American democracy. We are a nation of laws and not men. That is, we are governed by the laws to which we consent, and the law applies to everyone equally. These two Christian ideas, coram Deo and lex rex, influenced the founders and enabled them to break free from the tyrannical rule of King George III. These ideas helped the founders establish a model of government—of ordered liberty—that has been the envy of the world ever since. When church people call America a “Christian nation,” they mean that Christian ideas are at the heart of our democracy. This is true. But it’s more accurate to say that America is a nation influenced by Christianity because the American state has never been controlled by the church and should not be. Religion in Americatakes no direct part in the government or society, but it must, nevertheless, be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country.—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America.

08/20/07