The secret of America's success was instead a religion of humility, love, self-control and righteousness: Christianity. Posted on 07/08/2007 11:40:49 AM PDT by wagglebee
In this day and age when the founding principles--and the Christian origin of those principles--of the United States are under attack from liberals, secularists, humanists, socialists, and Marxists, it is more important than ever to maintain familiarity with the facts and truths of where we came from. If someone is able to rewrite the past, he is also able to rewrite the present and alter the course of the future.
In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville, a French historian, traveled America as it was coming into its own as a nation. He wrote down his observations about this unique new country in Democracy in America. In some ways, his account of American society may be even more valuable than some of the Founders writings as a tool for accurately seeing our history as it was. After all, he wasn't just some super-patriotic American who might be accused of glossing over details. He was a Frenchman, coming from a European nation that had gone through a bloody secularist revolution.
This classic provides unique insight into what made America such a rapid success; indeed, the explosive growth of our infant country was bewildering to those old European empires.
It wasn't our natural resources (the old empires had access to those), and it wasn't a huge population (this rugged continent was sparsely populated), and it wasn't a huge military built over centuries (we were barely half a century old when Democracy in America was published). It was none of the things we might think essential to a great nation.
The secret of America's success was instead a religion of humility, love, self-control and righteousness: Christianity.
Even back then, they examined the dynamics of church and state. What de Tocqueville found going on in America was not what elitist wisdom expected:
The philosophers of the eighteenth century explained the gradual decay of religious faith in a very simple manner. Religious zeal, said they, must necessarily fail, the more generally liberty is established and knowledge diffused. Unfortunately, facts are by no means in accordance with their theory. There are certain populations in Europe whose unbelief is only equalled by their ignorance and their debasement, whilst in America one of the freest and most enlightened nations in the world fulfils all the outward duties of religious fervor.
Upon my arrival in the United States, the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention; and the longer I stayed there the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things, to which I was unaccustomed. In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other; but in America I found that they were intimately united, and that they reigned in common over the same country.
Remember that this is not an official joining, as would truly constitute a theocracy, but an informing of public policy by the religious faith of those who represent the government of the people in shaping that public policy. There is no established relationship between church and state in America, yet as George Washington and others have pointed out, "religion and morality are indespensible supports" to the political health of a nation.
How did such a revolutionary civilization begin? de Tocqueville says of American settlers:
...they brought with them into the New World a form of Christianity which I cannot better describe than by styling it a democratic and republican religion. This sect contributed powerfully to the establishment of a democracy and a republic, and from the earliest settlement of the emigrants politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved.
de Tocqueville also found no "theocracy" in America's Christian heritage; only harmony with our free form of government:
It may be asserted that in the United States no religious doctrine displays the slightest hostility to democratic and republican institutions. The clergy of all the different sects hold the same language, their opinions are consonant to the laws, and the human intellect flows onwards in one sole current.
Were these Americans that de Toqueville observed a secular people, a society that believed religion should be safely locked away except for Sunday morning?
...there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America; and there can be no greater proof of its utility, and of its conformity to human nature, than that its influence is most powerfully felt over the most enlightened and free nation of the earth.
de Toqueville also reveals the "secret" of how American was founded by Christians on Christian principles, yet not a "theocracy":
In the United States religion exercises but little influence upon the laws and upon the details of public opinion, but it directs the manners of the community, and by regulating domestic life it regulates the State.
In a theocracy, laws are constructed to operate in rigid conformity to religious orthodoxy. In America, our laws have historically been written by men and women who are either Christians or generally ascribe to a Christian cultural influence; accordingly, the laws they propose and approve have for most of our history been influence by Christian principles and have been generally harmonious with Christian principles, while affording general freedom to all citizens regardless of their religion.
de Toqueville finds that even though religion does not have a direct role in the government of the United States, it nevertheless is believed to be indispensable to our free form of government:
Religion in America takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must nevertheless be regarded as the foremost of the political institutions of that country; for if it does not impart a taste for freedom, it facilitates the use of free institutions...I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions. This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party, but it belongs to the whole nation, and to every rank of society.
He also found that rather than seeing Christianity as a threat to a free nation, it was inseparable from freedom and inconceivable that they should be separate:
The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds, that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other
He found that people were leaving their homelands in other countries to come to America for the purpose of furthering Christianity, even as settlers spread across the continent:
I have known of societies formed by the Americans to send out ministers of the Gospel into the new Western States to found schools and churches there, lest religion should be suffered to die away in those remote settlements, and the rising States be less fitted to enjoy free institutions than the people from which they emanated. I met with wealthy New Englanders who abandoned the country in which they were born in order to lay the foundations of Christianity and of freedom on the banks of the Missouri, or in the prairies of Illinois.
de Toqueville even identifies the relationship between Christianity, it's support of the sanctity of marriage, and ultimately this effect on a stable, peaceful society:
There is certainly no country in the world where the tie of marriage is so much respected as in America, or where conjugal happiness is more highly or worthily appreciated. In Europe almost all the disturbances of society arise from the irregularities of domestic life. To despise the natural bonds and legitimate pleasures of home, is to contract a taste for excesses, a restlessness of heart, and the evil of fluctuating desires...Whilst the European endeavors to forget his domestic troubles by agitating society, the American derives from his own home that love of order which he afterwards carries with him into public affairs.
Notice also how de Toqueville finds that America's Christian culture not only promotes a peaceful society, but also protects against the decadent tyranny that always results from unrestrained freedom (the freedom where individuals do not restrain their own behavior):
Hitherto no one in the United States has dared to advance the maxim, that everything is permissible with a view to the interests of society; an impious adage which seems to have been invented in an age of freedom to shelter all the tyrants of future ages. Thus whilst the law permits the Americans to do what they please, religion prevents them from conceiving, and forbids them to commit, what is rash or unjust.
de Toqueville recognized, as did most learned men of that day, that the self-disciplining effect of religion, Christianity in particular, was essential in preserving freedom and democracy. When a society of men can exercise self-discipline and restraint, fewer laws are needed and less government is necessary. In a society where men will not discipline themselves, more laws and more government are required to maintain order and public safety. In such an environment of flourishing government, the atmosphere is ripe for tyranny--by the one or by the oligarchy. Thus, he who attacks the Christian foundations of our nation and society attacks the chief support of our liberty.
What does de Tocqueville think of those who oppose or minimize the role of religion in the public life of America?
When these men attack religious opinions, they obey the dictates of their passions to the prejudice of their interests. Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. Religion is much more necessary in the republic which they set forth in glowing colors than in the monarchy which they attack; and it is more needed in democratic republics than in any others. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie be not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? and what can be done with a people which is its own master, if it be not submissive to the Divinity?
Call for the secularization of America are myopic and self destructive. Demands that Americans leave their faith in the pew when they leave at noon on Sunday are not only at odds with the First Amendment, they strike at the very heart of what has made America great.
There is a reason why no other nation enjoys the freedom, the affluence, the political prosperity, the stability and the military might of America. It has little to do with natural resources, geographical location, and not even ultimately with the political form of government. Many other nations have these assets, yet fall far short of our success.
No other nation (except ancient Israel) has ever been founded, as stated by the Mayflower Compact and other founders, for the glory of God.
Though the quote is not in Democracy in America and is difficult to verify with certainty, de Tocqueville is usually given credit for a quote that is certainly in keeping with the findings in this great book. It is a quote that we should consider carefully, and heed the wisdom of:
America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.
No other nation (except ancient Israel) has ever been founded, as stated by the Mayflower Compact and other founders, for the glory of God.
Amen!
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