Although no question mark will be found in his magnificent speech, still, Abraham Lincoln expressed a disquieting uncertainty in his Gettysburg Address: ". . . whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." While his immediate concern was the Civil War, his implicit question is as relevant today as it was on November 19, 1863. The United States of America, as a nation, has no guarantee of perpetuity.
Imagine being included as a participant in a highest-level, off-the-record discussion of the long-range prospects of the United States within the president's National Security Council. Some of the nation's most astute minds would range in two directions, external and internal. Their overarching concern would focus on world peace. While the superpowers have maintained a nuclear stand-off for decades through a policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, what, they would debate, are the possibilities of a world blackmail? With the Cold War over and current threat centered in the Arab world's grab for power through control of oil supplies, what potential menaces to peace do they foresee in the next five, ten, or twenty years?
Sooner or later, the president's counselors would turn to the all-important internal issue for the future, the health of the nation's economy. If they were wise, NSC
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senior staff would do well to call in Treasury's top experts. Discussing whether the free market system will prove adequate for tomorrow's challenges is no topic for international experts alone. It would not be long before the dialogue would turn to topics like the United States' own burgeoning national debt, the inability of many Third World nations to repay their debts, severe problems in America's banking system including the savings and loan industry, trade imbalances, international monetary affairs, and the effects of high taxation.
But if weighty matters such as peace and prosperity comprised the total of that day's conversations, the NSC and their friends from Treasury would have missed the most important issue of all.
A deceptively simple mathematical problem will illustrate my point. Suppose you wish to average sixty miles per hour for a two mile trip. If at the one mile point you have averaged just thirty, how fast must you drive the second mile in order to average sixty?
The obvious answer is ninety, right? Wrong. Sure, 30 + 90 = 120, divided by two yields an average of sixty, but that answer is incorrect. Ahhh, you say, I get it. If I drive the first mile at half the speed I hope to average, then I must drive the second at double that speed, so the answer is 120. Right? Wrong again.
The fact is that solving our little problem requires inserting into the equation a completely different factor -- time. If you average thirty on the the first mile, you have already used up two minutes -- the total time required to average sixty over two miles. Your hope of averaging sixty is impossible.
In the same way, when the subject is the durability of the United States of America, another completely new factor must be introduced into the equation -- not time, but eternity. The NSC folks should have called in a theologian! God Almighty, the maker of heaven and earth, "will judge the world in righteousness."1 The God before whom "the
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nations are like a drop in a bucket . . . as dust on the scales"2 will "judge all the nations on every side."3 A look at the Old Testament reveals how the Lord of the nations judges nations within history. Even with Israel, there is a cycle: rebellion, retribution, repentance, restoration.
Those who understand and believe biblical teaching know that the God who "sets up kings and deposes them"4 may one day call down judgment upon our nation. Our national security and longevity are ultimately under his control. For that reason, it is critical to ask: Are we "one nation under God" as we say we are when we pledge allegiance to the flag?
The average American is far too ignorant of his spiritual heritage. But the fault may lie with others. Textbook writers have cut from the pages of history facts either considered too controversial or unappealing to the educational elites who prefer sanitized books for America's classrooms.
Consider the first half of the Mayflower Compact of 1620, as printed in the Teacher's Guide for the high school history text Triumph of the American Nation, published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich in 1986:
We whose names are underwritten, having undertaken a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do solemnly and in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic . . .5
Blown off course by storms and arriving in Massachusetts, where their landing is today marked by Plymouth Rock, the Pilgrims came with a much deeper purpose than admitted in that deceptive account, which deletes almost every reference to God. Here, in contrast, is the actual opening of the Mayflower Compact, all words restored (although not in olde English spelling):
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of
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the Faith, etc., having undertaken for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith and honor of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic . . .
The vision realized by our founding fathers -- that of "one nation under God" -- was a vision revised in the mid-twentieth century, and today or tomorrow may well be a vision revived.
The Vision Realized
The new nation was conceived with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The fledgling nation in turn was born with the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787. These dates mark the period when our founding fathers realized their vision.
In Deuteronomy, Moses reminded Israel of four historic realities regarding their national relationship to God. I will show that America's founding fathers believed those realities applied to their new nation. Now, I do not suggest there is an exact parallel here. The United States of America is no contemporary equivalent of Israel, God's chosen people of the Old Testament era (and, in the judgment of most evangelicals, a people with whom God still has a special covenant relationship). There is a biblical passage that assuredly does apply to the United States, however. A universal spiritual principle, it pertains to any nation or individual:
From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.6
Here are the historic realities of God's dealing with Israel as a nation:
• Their preservation by God.7 This had been an enslaved people, led out of oppression and through a terrible
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wilderness, preserved through miraculous events. While Moses was their leader, he humbly acknowledged that God brought them out.
• The providence of God.8 They would not find their new land through scouting and exploring skills or by chance, but God would bring them to it by his own hand. The land would bring them to it by his own hand. The land would have an adequate water supply, a good growing climate, and mineral wealth for making agricultural implements.
• Their prosperity from God.9 They would eat well, have time to settle in and build find homes, and see their flocks and herds reproduce. The land would even include silver and gold for trading and later a monetary system. Beyond all that, God would give them the ability to produce wealth.
• The punishment of God.10 This fact would always be on the horizon, perhaps only as foreboding as a cloud the size of a man's hand, but always there. The people of Israel are clearly told that if they do not honor God, if they flout his will by ignoring or violating his commands, laws, and decrees, then they will be destroyed as a nation. Moses is faithful to declare God's will as straightforwardly as that.
Now let me turn from Israel's sacred text to America's most venerable document, the Declaration of Independence. It is no mere coincidence that the four historic realities recognized by Moses are reflected in the Declaration.
• Their preservation by God.
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 . . .
The history of the present King of Great Britain is a
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history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world . . .
There follows the major body of the Declaration, a list of charges against the king, but the major thrust of these words is that, like Israel, Americans had suffered injustice and tyranny from which they had been preserved. Both natural law and the laws of God in Scripture entitled them to exist separately. As Israel came out of Egypt, our forefathers came out of Europe. Their "wilderness" was a dangerous Atlantic Ocean.
• The providence of God.
And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
No explanatory comment is needed about this final sentence of the Declaration, which uses the very theological word in question.
• Their prosperity from God.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable 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 founding fathers knew that it would be foolhardy and impossible for government, in and of itself, to provide happiness. However, citizens of this free land would have the right to pursue happiness because of their prior rights to life and liberty -- all of which were God-given. That being the case, no government could legitimately claim to grant such rights, but only to guarantee or secure them. Thus, those citizens who pursued financial success in their quest for happiness should literally attribute their prosperity to God.
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• The punishment of God.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States . . .
As they separated from the English crown, our forebears called upon God to examine the integrity of their motivation. They tacitly acknowledged that if their intentions were not righteous, they could not expect God's blessing upon their new venture. It is well-nigh impossible to envision a piece of legislation coming from Congress in the 1990s with a respectful call for God to evaluate it. In those days, such words were not surprising.
Can anyone doubt that the authors an signers of the Declaration by common consent acknowledged their political creation to be "one nation under God"? For any skeptics, let us call Thomas Jefferson as a witness. Out third president proposed a national seal portraying Moses leading the chosen people into the promised land, and, in his second inaugural address, in 1805, Jefferson was specific:
. . . I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life; who has covered our infancy with His providence and our riper years with His wisdom and power . . .
Rep. Guy VanderJagt (R-MI), at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 1980, stated: "Our Declaration of Independence is first of all a declaration of dependence on God." The Founding Fathers would have stood with him. After six months as president, George Washington issued a Proclamation for a National Thanksgiving, including these expressions:
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Whereas it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor . . . And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations, and beseech Him to pardon our national and other transgressions . . .11
Hear part of Washington's first Inaugural Address:
. . . No people can be bound to acknowledge and adore the Invisible Hand which conducts the affairs of men more than those of the United States . . . We ought to be no less persuaded that the propitious smiles of Heaven can never be expected on a nation that disregards the eternal rules of order and right which Heaven itself has ordained . . .12
Recall Washington's Farewell Address:
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports . . . Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instrument of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge in the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle . . .13
John Adams would become our first vice president and then succeeded Washington as our second president. As independence neared, he wrote to his wife Abigail in 1775:
It is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. A patriot must be a religious man.14
Not long after Washington's inauguration, Adams wrote:
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Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.15
Speaking to the first meeting of Congress in Washington, in the original Capitol in 1800, Adams said:
It would be unbecoming the Representatives of this nation to assemble, for the first time, in this solemn temple, without looking up to the Supreme Ruler of the Universe, and imploring his blessing. Here, and throughout our country, may simple manners, pure morals, and true religion flourish forever!16
Thomas Jefferson, later to become our third president, in 1781 asked:
Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God? That they are not to be violated, but with His wrath?17
Critics of attempts to demonstrate the biblical beliefs of our founding fathers sometimes dismiss them with a wave: "They weren't really Christians, just a bunch of deists." Through meticulous documentation, John Eidsmoe has demolished the myth that these were mostly secular men in his book, Christianity and the Constitution -- The Faith of Our Founding Fathers. Reading his in-depth studies of thirteen major founders of our nation, I conclude that in today's terminology eight should be called evangelicals, three would be termed Christians in a broader sense, and only tow were deists, Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. The latter two moved closer to historic Christianity in later years, and some Christian beliefs (of which they might not have been conscious) colored their speech and writings.
Deism is sub-Christian in its "clockmaker" view of the universe, namely, that God created it like a clock already wound up, and then left the world to run down on its own. With that in mind, Jefferson was, at best, an inconsistent deist. His own words, inscribed on the wall of the
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Jefferson Memorial, bear witness that he believed in a God of justice who acts in history:
Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever . . .
The author of the Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment with its religion clauses, became our fourth president. This was James Madison's conviction:
Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe.18
Except for four vice presidents who came into office on the death of a president and who therefore made no formal inaugural remarks,19 every president of the United States has sought divine help in his inaugural speech. The tendency today is to downplay such words as a formality, but the kind of strong sentiments uttered by the first four presidents have been sincerely echoed by our most recent presidents, Ronald Reagan and George Bush -- and by other twentieth century presidents not of their political ideology.
The fundamental basis of this nation's law was given to Moses on the Mount. The fundamental basis of our Bill of Rights comes from the teachings which we get from Exodus and St. Matthew, from Isaiah and St. Paul. I don't think we emphasize that enough these days. If we don't have the proper fundamental moral background, we will finally wind up with a totalitarian government which does not believe in rights for anybody except the state.
No greater thing could come to our land today than a revival of the spirit of religion -- a revival that would sweep through the homes of the nation and stir the hearts of men and women of all faiths to a reassertion of their belief in God and their dedication to His will for themselves and their world. I doubt if there is any problem -- social, political or economic -- that would not melt away before the fire of such a spiritual awakening.20
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The first may sound like a quotation from Pat Robertson, but the words were Harry Truman's. The second may resemble comments by Ronald Reagan, but it was Franklin Roosevelt who spoke them.
America's founding fathers did not form a Christian state, but they clearly established their new nation on Judeo-Christian principles found in the Bible.21 And it's just at this point that I would expect someone to level a charge meant to destroy my case: "God is not even mentioned in the Constitution."
But have these folks actually read the Constitution? After Article VII, I read:
Done in Convention by the Unanimous Consent of the States present the Seventeenth Day of December in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven . . .
To be technical about it, the name of God is there after all. Let's be fair, however. That was the standard way of signing official documents in those days. Otherwise, God is not mentioned by name. But no matter. The Constitution is the means to secure a specific objective expressed in the Declaration: "That to secure these [God-given] rights, Governments are instituted among Men." The Constitution and its foundational document, the Declaration, cannot be separated.
For the record, John Eidsmoe lists nine cases to buttress his statement that "The Declaration has been repeatedly cited by the U.S. Supreme Court as part of the fundamental law of the United States of America."22
The Vision Revised
A 1947 decision appeared to provide the Supreme Court an opportunity to "baptize" into the Constitution a phrase that had never been there -- and in so doing, to revise our forefathers' vision of "one nation under God." It is not necessary to know the details of Everson v. Board of Education, but rather to learn that, in Everson, the court
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for the first time said that the Non-establishment clause of the First Amendment "was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and state.' " Enlarging on the concept, Justice Black wrote: "That wall must be kept high and impregnable."
Everson became the pivotal case for establishment issues, for four decades influencing the court's decisions in a direction not in accord with historic facts. While the pendulum has begun to swing back in recent years, the interpretation and imagery of a high and impregnable wall of separation has guided the court toward secularizing the United States, often creating an impression of hostility toward religion.
Seven years later, however, Congress appeared to challenge this view of separation when it added to the words of the pledge of allegiance the phrase "under God." What possible secular purpose could that 1954 action have had? The Congress compounded its challenge by ordering the inscription "In God We Trust" to be placed on all currency and coins in 1955, and by making the phrase our national motto in 1956 -- an admission that the state is not sovereign unto itself, but accountable to a higher authority.
Was court or Congress correct? The historical documents and facts do not lead to the conclusion that the framers of the First Amendment and the Congress responsible for its adoption into the Constitution intended a wall of absolute separation between church and state. However -- and this is a critical point -- there are those who contend that what the framers intended is oftentimes impossible to determine, and in any case not binding for today. Some of them are Supreme Court justices.
The 1983 case of Marsh v. Chambers illustrates the issue. The High Court considered the constitutionality of Nebraska's paying a minister to serve as chaplain to its legislature, to open each session with prayer. Happily, by a six-to-three vote the court approved the practice. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Burger pointed out that the first Congress authorized the appointment of paid chaplains
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for both the Senate and House just three days before it reached final agreement on the language of the Bill of Rights. "Clearly the men who wrote the First Amendment Religion Clause did not view paid legislative chaplains and opening prayers as a violation of that Amendment," he wrote. Incidentally, James Madison, author of the First Amendment, served on the congressional committee of six that recommended the chaplain system.
As important as was the affirmation in Marsh, the three dissenting votes are extremely significant. In this case, all the justices had been made aware of the historical sequence above, so that it was not necessary to engage in conjecture about the intent of the founders. Nonetheless, three justices were willing to say, in effect, that paid chaplains in state legislatures should be held unconstitutional. To them, what the framers intended was beside the point. They were willing to substitute their personal predilection for a strict interpretation of the Constitution -- an act of judicial activism.
Renowned constitutional attorney William Bently Ball candidly condemns the activist approach by which judges seek to correct what they see as abuses in the system, which legislative bodies have failed to remedy. Said Ball: "The Constitution must govern our judges, and not the reverse." Judges who share that attitude bring judicial restraint to the bench, seeing their job only as interpreting the Constitution. Think of the consequences if the Supreme Court should have a majority of activists. Unanchored as they would be, five non-elected justices, serving for life, could create a sociological revolution in American society. Some would say the court already has.
To grasp once and for all the importance of judicial philosophy, think of an analogy: What the Bible is to Christianity, the Constitution is to the United States -- in both cases the absolute, final, written authority. If you take a liberal view of the Bible, by which the words are not necessarily binding and the intent of the author is irrelevant, then the form of Christianity that you develop may bear
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little resemblance to the intent of the Founding Father in heaven. By the same token, if you take a liberal view of the Constitution, the nation that you shape may not resemble the intent of America's founding fathers. In that light, anyone can see how it has been possible for the court to revise the founders' original vision. The original intent of the framers must be determined whenever it can be. Further, we must realize the great importance of selecting presidents, because they appoint judges.
One loose end remains. Where did the "wall of separation" concept originate, and how did it play out in the originator's life? In 1802, President Thomas Jefferson interpreted his understanding of the First Amendment to the Danbury Baptist Association of Connecticut. He was writing eleven years after the First Amendment was approved, and not as a jurist. While he probably was not suggesting that religion be walled off, his terminology caught on and came to be accepted as what the Constitution implied.
Now for the second part of the question. How did Jefferson apply his own concept of the "wall"? In 1803, a year after the Danbury letter, President Jefferson made a treaty with the Kaskaskia Indians in which he pledged federal money to support their priest and to build them a Catholic church.23 Later that year he sought funds from Congress to finance the obligations of the treaty. It is more than mildly astounding that the author of the "wall of separation" concept asked Congress to fund religious activity in his own time. It is, therefore, unthinkable that Jefferson would have allowed his country to be sanitized of religiously-based values so that it could no longer be considered "under God."
The Vision Revived
In the opinion of some thoughtful political analysts, a movement to revive the "one nation under God" vision of the founding fathers began to develop in the last decade. "Forget nuclear freezes and yuppies," wrote New Republic
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senior editor Fred Barnes. "The most important political development of the '80s is the emergence of the evangelical voting bloc."24
Millions of evangelicals might not have been able to analyze the reasons for their unprecedented involvement in politics, but they were responding either to the calls of respected Christian leaders or to a growing uneasiness in their own minds. The nation's moral codes were being revised, aided, and abetted by the courts and the Congress. Government agencies seemed to be getting their noses under the tent of the churches' religious liberty.
Moreover, the bottom line for evangelicals' burgeoning political interest is the conviction that God's commands are for our good. Individually, those who violate God's laws are sure to be hurt. That is true of both spiritual and physical laws. Try defying the law of centrifugal force by turning into your driveway while tooling along at fifty miles per hour. If you don't overturn your car, you must live on an estate with a long entry road. Nationally, when a nation flouts God's moral and spiritual principles, it is in for tough times. One Old Testament chapter devotes sixty-eight verses to the blessings of national obedience and the curses of national disobedience.25
Even if some of their fellow citizens do not appreciate it, evangelicals are not self-consciously serving their culture by devoting themselves to political values consistent with their understanding of the Bible. They are eager to see their nation willingly acknowledge itself to be "one nation under God." Having read some of the founders' convictions earlier in this chapter, they will be delighted to find themselves in such distinguished company as the first presidents.
What is more, evangelicals are strengthening our national foundations from a sociological standpoint as well as a spiritual one. In an article on "Democracy and Religion," the Brookings Institution's James Reichley explored the relation between democratic and Judeo-Christian values.26 He took issue with many of his peers:
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The Founders, who included among their number some of the most acute political theorists the nation ever produced, did not share the disinterest in religion of more recent generations of political scientists.
Apparently they knew something today's academics have missed. Reichley summarizes the secular sources which can be expected to support democratic institutions. He finds three:
[1] Social habit, conveyed through custom and tradition . . . But habit separated from belief in the objective reality of the assumptions out of which habit grows will eventually run dry.
Since the Enlightenment, social and political theorists who distrusted religion, or regarded it as unbelievable, have tried to develop secular philosophies that would give democratic societies enough cohesion to function, while at the same time preserving moral imperatives upholding freedom and equality. This effort has proceeded along two main tracks. Some social philosophers, mostly British and American, have built on the tradition, originated by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke in the seventeenth century, of deriving all social values from [2] rational pursuit of individual self-interest . . . Others, mostly central European, following routes blazed by Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, have produced doctrines offering personal emancipation through [3] submergence of the individual in an idealized general will . . .
History teaches that there are serious flaws in these philosophies. Reichley can only conclude that
. . . the Founders' conviction that republican government needs the guidance and support of religious principles remains persuasive . . . Democracy, for its part, depends, now and for the foreseeable future, on values that have no reliable source outside religion.
The conclusion of Will and Areil Durant, in their monumental Story of Civilization, is similar to Reichley's. They
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assert that, without a standard of public morality, no society has survived. Corollary to that, no moral standard has survived without a religious sanction.
Evangelicals have cause to be deeply concerned about Lincoln's haunting question, "whether that nation or any nation so conceived or so dedicated can long endure." If they and many of their fellow Americans cannot revive the vision of the founders, their nation will be in jeopardy. Given the loss of our moral consensus and the serious deterioration of out culture in the United States today, it is tragically evident that we are not "one nation under God." But we could be.
Table of Contents || Chapter 8
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