I was flying by a religio-politico show on the radio today and happened across someone complaining about something having to do with discriminating against Christians in America and as usual someone piped up with, "When are people gonna realize the country was founded on Christian beliefs and values?" Normally I just ignore this but every once in a while I think it is important to go over why this is not true. Since the Constitution is very specifically secular (no mention of God at all) the document most folks turn to is the Declaration of Independence, specifically the preamble, and so I will focus there.
When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
The phrase most people appeal to is "they are endowed by the Creator...." and yet this is one of the most non-Christian phrases in the preamble which is itself basically a long diatribe against Christian thought.
How so? you may ask.
Simple. Classic Orthodox Christianity teaches that government is instituted by God and it is the responsibility of the governed to give honor to the king even if the king is unjust. For example Matt 22, Mark 12 and Luke 20 all tell us Jesus told his followers to pay taxes. Paul told people in Romans 13 to pay taxes and honor the emperor and Peter said the same in 1Pet 2. The history of the Church in arguing against her own persecution in this manner can be found in the writings of Justin of Lyon who in his Apologia argued that the civic honor of the Church was displayed by their behavior and loyalty to Caesar. (Side note: for those who think themselves Christian and will not give honor to Obama, the emperor in question in the letters of Paul and Peter was Nero, and until the President starts dipping Christians in pitch impaling them alive and burning them to light the White House lawn you probably are on shaky ground complaining about him.)
So if you want to rebel against a duly appointed monarch and the Christian Faith says such a thing is sinful then you have to do something inventive to get around the problem. Hence the appeal to "nature and nature's God" as a source of human rights; include the declaration that rights are "certain" and "inalienable" then close with the notion that "governments are instituted by men" and you may have one of the great achievements in human history but you most certainly have not produced a Christian document.
Here's why...
First off in classic Christian thought there is no such thing as natural law. What men call natural law is rather our ability to notice the way God usually does things. Scripture teaches that the universe is upheld by the will and power of God and a "law" which exists apart from that constant governance is a deist idea, and consequently not a Christian one since Christianity is by definition a theist religion. btw the best example of deism is the notion of the "cosmic watchmaker" that God creates and winds the watch and then lets it go. Of course a lot of American Evangelicals in this post-enlightenment/ 18th century liberal/ modern culture will think the "cosmic watchmaker" is what the Bible teaches, but that is because the American/Western European Church is atheist in nearly all of its teachings and so are its adherents. This should not be surprising seeing as how our most treasured document is also deistic and therefore also atheistic just like its writers.
So any appeal to natural law is atheist. So why appeal to an atheist idea? Because the theists in the room were telling us that to rebel against the king whom God had placed over you was to rebel against God himself. This argument is of course absolutely sound and so theism and the theists' God has to leave so we can legitimize our claim to freedom. Of course the framers then say that our rights derive from nature, meaning nature itself guarantees our rights this is flatly an antichristian idea from back to front. Then we are told that these rights are certain (that is sure above reproach) and inalienable (that is no one not even God can revoke them) this is also a flatly antichristian idea. Then we close with the idea that governments are created by men and by men's consent and the Bible says exactly 180 degrees the opposite making this a thoroughly antichristian idea as well.
Add it all up and you have a, at best, deist document and deism is not a Christian worldview, and at worst a document which kicks the Christian God out into the street because the Bible is very inconvenient to our little experiment.
Of course there are those who will say, "Well if God allowed it to happen it must have been OK and America has done lots of good in the world."
A few problems with this. First God allowed Satan and Adam to fall and I don't think either of those things qualifies as 'good'. Second to say it all worked out is pragmatism, also a uniquely American philosophy and also an utterly antichristian one as well, and if you think America has been a source of great good well... read history (think Lakota/ Cherokee or Philipino/ Chillean/ Panamanian people on this one) and watch the news and see what American culture is doing in the world today.
Just a few thoughts...
Have a nice day.
God Bless
