Thank you all for commenting. Sorry I can’t reply individually, but this generated more discussion than I anticipated.
Few of you actually read the post. That’s your prerogative certainly - and if the shoe fits wear it - but many of you are accusing me of saying things I specifically refuted, or not saying things that were in fact said.
Read it or don’t, but here is a synopsis:
The secularists are wrong, period. Even the non-Christian founders thought biblical morality essential to liberty. None would countenance the rank secularism employed today in their names.
But to say that because we were a Christian culture that we are a Christian nation is to cheapen the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Lowering the bar on what constitutes Christianity to incorporate Jefferson and other beloved Founders profanes the Gospel to the point of idolatry.
Biblical Christianity is more than a mere system of morals.
Yes the colonies were founded on Christianity. Yes the Declaration has strong religious undertones and the War of Independence was seen as an eschatological culmination of the Great Awakening. The Constitution does not.
But to say we are a Christian nation risks elevating patriotism over faith in Christ.
My response:
“NO.
It was founded on Christian principles by a majority of Christians”
I don’t think we are at odds.
But you invited the discussion
Well said, billflax.
To "lower the bar on what constitutes Christianity" in order to declare our beloved Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, et al., as specifically "Christian Founders" seems a bit of an overreach. Jefferson declared on innumerable occasions his total devotion to Jesus Christ; but one suspects only as the greatest Man who ever lived, not because He was the Son of God. He also recompiled the New Testament, leaving out all the "spiritual" parts. Jefferson's Bible is totally denuded of Spirit.
Jefferson, like Franklin, Madison, others of our Founding generation, were children of the Enlightenment. Newton's (1643–1727) great Principia came out in the preceding century, and subsequently rocked the world. Descartes (1596–1650), Kant (1724–1804), and Leibniz (1646–1716) had published remarkable new theories in natural philosophy, preeminently regarding the "mind–body problem." These Founders were aware of the scientific revolution going on in Europe. I imagine they were deeply sympathetic and interested in its progress. (Indeed, Franklin himself was regarded as a leading scientist in his day.)
But all these men, in addition to being children of the Enlightenment, were children of Judeo-Christian culture. (The "God is dead" movement didn't get going for another century.) These Founders believed that our natural rights cannot be secure unless they are understood to be direct grants of the Creator God that are inseparably parts of our own individual God-given human nature. They declared this understanding to be "axiomatic." (That is, inseparable into lesser constituting logical elements.) All believed in the God of the Judeo-Christian Holy Scriptures (although, as noted, Jefferson tended to omit the supernatural elements — e.g., that Jesus Christ is both the Son of Man and the Son of God — as possibly did Franklin.)
All of these men embraced religious toleration. None of these men saw a role for the federal government in religious matters — they were oh so very wise!
For one thing, the Constitution they made leaves religious matters up to the several States and the People: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Indeed, since many of the original States already had established churches at the time of the Framing of the Constitution, probably the document would not have been ratified, unless it had been made crystal clear that the federal government was prohibited from establishing its own preferred church, and that the free exercise of religious conscience is guaranteed to We the People.
America was then a Christian nation, by shared mores, morals, ultimate world view, as passed down the generations. Christianity was then the great unifying principle of the Body Politic. And our Founders to a man shared in all this, and encouraged the flourishing of religious liberty and religious duty.
Just some thoughts, billflax. Thank you so very much for your wonderfully perceptive and thought-provoking article.
Howdy Bill. Respectfully, I think you are splitting hairs...Christian principles=Christian nation.
Think medieval....think Christendom. Those nations of the Christain culture. France, Spain and Italy are Roman Catholic. Greece Orthodox, etc....the Old USA is a protestant Christian nation with the most developed understanding of liberty and man’s superior standing in the state as opposed to its subject.
Rex Publica....Republic. The people are king. We are a confederation of kings because of Christ in the Calvinistic/Knoxian tradition.
The litany for any believer goes God then country...just like Christ required God before family. To say one belongs to a Christian family does not elevate the family over God....just that the family tries to live by Christ’s teaching and New Covenant.
The old USA however, like Israel of old, has fallen away. Many of the people still hold the faith of Christ and hold to the Christian principles in the Declaration and governed mechanically by the Constitution/Bill of Rights....but much or of leadership has become apostate...even many of those who claim to be our “Christian” leadership.
As it is always noted on FR....keep posting and I am just saying.