Category: Law and Policy

I found this video while prepping my Cybersecurity Law syllabus for next semester.  Chilling.

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.

On the way in to work this morning, I heard an interview on BBC Newshour that included Jordan Sekulow, Deputy Director of Public Affairs at the American Center for Law and Justice.  The ACLJ has been a leading voice of the religious right concerning the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”  The presenter asked Sekulow whether the plans for the muslim cultural center near ground zero is a religious liberty issue.  Sekulow dodged the question in what seems to me a bizarre fashion:  he responded that while we have great religious liberties in the United States, this implies great responsibilities for religious organizations.  The implication was that, if you’re Muslim and you want the freedom to build a cultural center, you’d better not build it in an otherwise lawful location that really upsets some people. 

The last time I checked, if religious liberty means anything, it means the freedom to do and say otherwise lawful things that some people will find uncomfortable or even infuriating.  The “responsibility” implied by religious liberty is not the “responsibility” to dilute a religious message or buckle under the pressure of fear and prejudice.

The presenter then asked Sekulow whether the same reasoning applies to the plans of a Florida church to hold a Qur’an burning on September 11.  Sekulow dodged again.  This is an issue that has been blown out of proportion by “the media,” he explained.  It is one small church of only 50 people and doesn’t represent the feelings of most Christians.  What’s good for the goose apparently isn’t good for the gander. 

The truth is that the stock “blame the media” response is disingenuous.  There is a horrible fear and ignorance about Islam in many corners of evangelicalism in the United States.  It extends beyond one small crazy little church.  I once witnessed a Sunday morning sermon in a 2000-member church, which was part of a national tour by prominent evangelical leader Norman Geisler, about why Islam is a violent religion that must be opposed, including militarily (a deputy of Geisler preached at the service I attended, but Geisler himself preached at other services).  The sermon ended with a Powerpoint slide juxtaposing Osama bin Laden and Mother Theresa.  Osama is what you get with Islam, the preacher said, and Mother Theresa is what you get with Christianity.  (Nevermind that the Senior Pastor of this particular church thought most Catholics were trying to earn salvation by works and therefore were heading for Hell…).  People ate it up.  I got in lots of trouble with the church leadership for complaining.

Lest my critics jump all over me, I am not suggesting that all or even most evangelicals hate Muslims.  The generally conservative evangelical church I now attend would never, never sponsor such outrageous trash as that Geisler Powerpoint show.  There are prominent evangelicals involved with groups like the Institute for Global Engagement, which is doing brilliant work on religious freedom and respect between Christians and Muslims.  I am an evangelical, and I don’t hate Muslims.  But at the same time, ignorance and fear are certainly not confined to a few radical little fundamentalist churches.   It is a cancer that, in my view, is part of a disease of reactionary posturing that has afflicted us since at least the fundamentalist-modernist controversy of the early twentieth century.

Hypocrisy is a strong word.  Sometimes it needs to be said.

From Mayor Bloomberg’s recent Iftar dinner speech:

if we say that a mosque and community center should not be built near the perimeter of the World Trade Center site, we would compromise our commitment to fighting terror with freedom.

We would undercut the values and principles that so many heroes died protecting. We would feed the false impressions that some Americans have about Muslims. We would send a signal around the world that Muslim Americans may be equal in the eyes of the law, but separate in the eyes of their countrymen. And we would hand a valuable propaganda tool to terrorist recruiters, who spread the fallacy that America is at war with Islam.

Exactly.

Professor Russell Pearce also weighs in with a thoughtful post.