I recently saw a notice from a local church promoting “a new series called Sermons that Shaped America. It’s a look back in history to understand how Christianity helped shape our Founders as well as our early public documents.” The first sermon will feature an interview with a conservative Republican Congressman who represents the church’s district.
Thankfully this isn’t something that would happen at my church. I suspect that an interview with a Congressman of either political party during a worship service is not something the founders of the New Testament Church — the folks we Christians should really consider “our Founders” — would have found sanguine. Indeed, I think the writer of John’s Apocalypse would have had a nasty metaphor or two on offer (consorting with the Whore of Babylon, perhaps?).
But what about the broader claim suggested by this sermon series? Were America’s founding documents shaped by Christianity?
I’ve had the opportunity to study this question, both as a lawyer and as an undergraduate (my history thesis project was on the philosophical roots of the U.S. Constitution). My answer is that our founding documents surely were “shaped by” Christianity, in the sense that everything in 18th Century America participated in or responded to a culture of Calvinist-evangelical protestantism. However, the key documents (including the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution) were most directly informed by Enlightenment liberal political thought derived from John Locke and related sources, most of which was not particularly “Christian.”
I coincidentally received yesterday a copy of a new book by Messiah College historian John Fea, Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? A Historical Introduction (WJK 2011). From a brief review, I think Fea offers a wonderfully fair and balanced account of the people and documents that shaped the Republic — and along the way, provides helpful instruction on what it means to think historically. I wish every preacher tempted to offer a sermon series on the American founding would read it.
A good example is Fea’s discussion of the Declaration of Independence. According to Fea, the Declaration was not originally a grand, novel statement about human rights. It was a “foreign policy document” intended to justify America’s place in the community of European nations, all of which already subscribed to the general statements about human rights (meaning, of course, the rights of white males) in the Declaration. The Declaration only became a more broad “human rights” document later in the nation’s history (for example, in the hands of Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War). Ironically, the Declaration is a such a grand statement today only because it is a “living” document.
What about the references to God in the Declaration (it refers to “Nature’s God,” the “Creator,” and the “Supreme Judge of the World” and “divine Providence”)? These are neither “Christian” nor “Deist” references. They do not incorporate Christianity’s Triune God or any reference to Christ, but they refer to God as “Judge” in a way that suggests something more than Deism’s indifferent watchmaker. They can properly be considered, Fea suggests, as generally theistic references that are consistent with the broad presuppositions of most 18th Century Americans and Europeans.
The Declaration was neither a “Christian” document nor a “secular” or “Deistic” one. It was a foreign policy statement that reflects the complex and broadly theistic culture of its day. This sort of conclusion isn’t satisfying to polemicists on either side of the culture wars. It doesn’t “preach.” But it does bear the virtue of truth, which is ultimately more interesting and edifying than propaganda.