Birthdays typically prompt us to look back on our lives and take stock of how far we have come, where we stand, and what we would like to do with the time we have left.  As the 249th birthday of our nation approaches, Americans would do well to do the same, remembering the rich religious heritage and ideals upon which our nation was founded and considering how our future might be shaped if that heritage is revived — or forgotten.

President Donald Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” has become more than an applause line in a stump speech.  It has become a political movement and policy agenda.  But making that meme an enduring reality requires a deep understanding of and commitment to what made our nation great in the first place.

Many pundits, media personalities, preachers, and politicians now espouse the dangerously misguided view that religious pluralism equates to relativism...and therefore subjective morality and public policy are incompatible.  This approach is not only constitutionally apocryphal, but biblically illiterate — and, frankly, the source of many of our nation’s troubles.  Too many of our fellow citizens have forgotten the foundational idea of our republic, which was informed by faith and the belief that men must be good to be free.

Our Founders understood that freedom and morality are inextricably linked.  If you have freedom but no morality, and each man is free to do what is right in his own eyes, the strong will inevitably oppress the weak.  The rich will take advantage of the poor.  The well connected will use their advantage over the powerless.  The governing will play by an entirely different set of rules from the governed.  The proper role of religion in a free, civil society is to restrain the fallen nature of man.

Three common misconceptions have contributed to many Americans’ rejection of our religious heritage and the role of religion in a free society: Thomas Jefferson’s “wall of separation between church and state,” our “Godless Constitution,” and the folly of “legislating morality.”

Jefferson’s Wall

The perception of a wall of separation between church and state comes from a phrase in a letter President Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1802 to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut.  In answering their concerns that a state-sponsored church would infringe upon their religious liberty, he wrote, “Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with solemn reverence that act of the whole American people which declared their legislature should ‘make no law respecting the establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between church and state.”

Seen in context, this wall exists to protect the church and the individual’s conscience from interference by the state, not to protect the state from being influenced by people of faith or to scrub all vestiges of public life from anything that could be considered religious.

Our “Godless” Constitution

Although it is true that the name of God is not written in our Constitution, when secular humanists speak haughtily of our “Godless Constitution,” they reveal how little they know of God or the Constitution.  The Constitution must be considered in the context of the Declaration of Independence (many of the same men signed both); the latter mentions God four times.  Its final paragraph submits the entire document as a prayer appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world and relying on the protection of Divine Providence.

In a study published in the American Political Science Review, Donald Lutz surveyed the political literature of the American founding, looking to see whom Americans were citing in these documents.  He reported that the Bible was cited more frequently than any European writer or even any European school of thought, such as Enlightenment liberalism.  The Book of Deuteronomy alone was the most frequently cited work, followed by Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws.  Deuteronomy — which includes, among other things, instructions for governing a nation “under God” — was referenced nearly twice as often as John Locke.  The Apostle Paul was mentioned about as frequently as Montesquieu and Blackstone, the two most cited secular theorists.

The Founders considered the entire purpose of government to be the protection of God-given liberty. They understood that the power to protect liberty can be abused by those entrusted with it to oppress those from whom their power was justified by consent.  The fundamental features of the American constitutional design — covenantal relationships among free men and between men and God, limited government, separation of powers, checks and balances, the rule of law, due process and equality under the law, and consent of the governed — are deeply rooted in biblical principles.  Some may refer to these ideas as principles of the Enlightenment era, but they were enlightened precisely because they were biblical.

And finally, the text of the preamble states the purposes of the Constitution, including “to form a more perfect union.”  Not perfect, but more perfect than what Americans had enjoyed under the Articles of Confederation.  The Founders did not succumb to the utopian delusion that, given enough power, a government could create a perfect society.  Instead, owing to their knowledge of man’s nature, they humbly set about to improve upon their previous efforts “to secure the Blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

Some say seeing is believing, but some things must be believed to be seen.  God’s name may not be seen in the text of our Constitution, but His truth enlightened the times, His word inspired the authors, and His blessing of liberty has been successfully secured by the government formed and bound by the document.  The very success of our Constitution defies any claim that it is Godless.  As the Psalmist said, “unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.”

Legislating Morality

It is also true that passing a law does not make people moral, but the law establishes the guardrails for how free men live among free men.  The law is the collective expression of what society accepts and rejects, of what one can and cannot do, of what differentiates right and wrong.  All laws, then, reflect morality.

In 1924, President Calvin Coolidge stated in a speech on authority and religious liberty, “Men do not make laws.  They do but discover them.”  He went on to say, “Laws must be justified by something more than the will of the majority.  They must rest on the eternal foundation of righteousness. ” Coolidge was familiar with the concept of Natural Law, which says that just as there is a natural physical order to the universe, there is a natural moral order to the universe.  An inherent notion of morality is present in humanity as image-bearers of God.  But with free will, men may choose to defy what they instinctively know to be true.

Just as the physical laws of the universe, like gravity, were not written by men, but discovered, the moral order of the universe is not written by men.  And morality, like gravity, cannot be defied for long without dire consequences.  Do today’s lawmakers understand the difference between an attempt to create laws and to discover them?  Do they understand that any law enacted will primarily impact law-abiding citizens, for those with no respect for the rule of law will not obey it?

America’s policy, legislation, and regulatory environment should make it easier — not more difficult — for those attempting to live peaceful, morally upright lives.  Our law should reflect the Founders’ vision of ordered liberty: I should be unencumbered to do as I should rather than (in the Ron Swanson notion of freedom) what I want.  That view is more in line with the French Revolution than the American.

Edmund Burke, in writing his observations on the revolution in France, stated, “Men are qualified for civil liberty, in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their appetites. ... Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without.  It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free.  Their passions form their fetters.”

A quick look at headlines or a walk around downtown in any major city will reveal all too many Americans whose passions have become their fetters.

“Our constitution was written for a moral and religious people,” John Adams famously wrote.  “It is wholly inadequate to the governing of any other.”  The challenge our nation faces today is a constitution, written for a moral and religious people, whose ideals and intentions are being strained by the effort to govern those who are not.

How to remedy that?  Pastors, rabbis, and leaders of faith must lead the way in qualifying men for liberty by teaching them to place moral chains on their appetites — or else forfeit their freedoms while government places those restraints for them.  For, as President Ronald Reagan said, “when government expands, liberty contracts.”

Lawmakers, in turn, must protect the innocent, establishing justice and the rule of law in a way that respects the First Amendment right of free speech and enables the influence of religion and morality to make men good enough to remain free.

In his second inaugural address, Reagan said, “I recognize we must be cautious in claiming that God is on our side, but I think it’s all right to keep asking if we’re on His side.”

As we celebrate the birth of our republic, there is no better time to revisit Reagan’s question and act accordingly, so that the benevolent light of religion may keep us good enough to remain free...and the light of the great city on a hill may burn brightly into the future.

Lathan Watts is vice president of public affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom (@ADFLegal).

Image: Pashi via Pixabay, Pixabay License.

Source link