-Caveat Lector-
The Federal Constitution, Product of a Christian Ethos
by Andrew Sandlin
Is the United States Constitution the product of a Deistic conspiracy
breaking covenant with our Sovereign Lord? Alternatively, is it a
reflection of godly Christian men whose intent was to establish a Christian
republic? My opinion is that the historical data will permit neither
conclusion, and that the truth lies somewhere between them.
Historical survey
There can be no dispute that the colonial Puritan commonwealth had petered
out by the eighteenth century. And while the First Great Awakening may have
revived individual devotion to Christ, it did not restore the Christian
weal. Deism had been introduced into the intelligentsia and other upper
classes, especially in New England, and both Anglicanism and
Congregationalism had grown cold and rationalistic.
It would be a mistake, however, to suppose Deism and Enlightenment were
notions widely disseminated in the populace, or that the American society
had become largely indifferent to the Faith. Admittedly, Enlightenment
fascinated many American intellectuals (even the stalwart Jonathan Edwards
was mesmerized by Isaac Newton), but at that nascent period of our
country's history, most did not perceive that secularization is the logical
conclusion of Enlightenment and therefore they often tried to fit the newer
Enlightenment ideas into the older Christian mold (modern Reformed writers
like Kuyper, Van Til, Rushdoony, and Hills have exhibited now futile this
attempt really is).
Religion of the founders and the founding
The Federal Constitution was forged in just such an ideational atmosphere.
While it would be overreaching to call it a Christian document, it is
equally erroneous to conclude that just because it does not explicitly
recognize Christ's authority, it exhibits a patently anti-Christian bias.
This latter view is expressed, and often quite cogently, in works like
James R. Wilson's Prince Messiah's Claims To Dominion over All Governments
and the Disregard of His Authority by the United States, In the Federal
Constitution. I am ambivalent about the thesis of works like these, because
while I endorse entirely the thesis that Christ exercises mediatorial
dominion over the nations, and that that dominion should be publicly
recognized, I do not agree that the United States Constitution was
intentionally designed to subvert that authority. The data just will not
bear out these accusations. I especially draw the reader's attention to M.
E. Bradford's "Religion and the Framers: The Biographical Evidence,"
Benchmark, Fall, 1990, IV; John Eidsmoe's Christianity and the
Constitution: The Faith of Our Founding Fathers; Stanton Evans's The Theme
is Freedom: Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition; American
Political Writing During the Founding Era, edited by Charles S. Hyman and
Donald S. Lutz; and R. J. Rushdoony's This Independent Republic and The
Nature of the American System.
If the framers generated an intentionally anti-Christian document, it was
certainly in spite of their individual Christian convictions. The extensive
investigations of Bradford, Eidsmoe, Evans, Rushdoony and others, as well
as an examination of the source documents of that era, reveals that the
majority of the founders of the nation and framers of the Federal
Constitution were professedly Christian men who deemed impossible a just
civil order not anchored in godly faith. They made statements to this
effect again and again. It is quite a stretch to conclude their omission of
explicit recognition of Christ's authority, shortsighted though it may have
been, reflects an assault on Christian orthodoxy.
The real problem with the Federal Constitution
The main problem with the framers of the Constitution was not, in fact,
that they pulled off a Deistic or secularist coup d'e tat, but that they
lacked the foresight to realize the possibility of the emergence of an
anti-Christian ethos capable of employing a chiefly procedural political
document to undermine the Christian Faith. The Federal Constitution, in
fact, is largely such a procedural, rather than substantive, document.
While all procedures imply a substantive presupposition (which for the
Constitution is Christian), it is evident the framers were only interested
in marking out the bare guidelines of a federal system of government, and
while presuming the covenantal or contractual character of civil
government, did not position themselves to create a formal covenant with
God similar to the Scottish Solemn League and Covenant. Recall too that at
this time the various states were almost little countries, and the union
essentially a confederation of these states. Significantly, most of the the
states' constitutions required a religious (Christian) profession for
office, and thus the framers' intent in writing the Constitution was not to
explicate their religious views but to fashion the guidelines of a federal
system of government. The point is not that a state or constitution can be
religiously neutral (the great secularist illusion of our times), but that
the framers did not feel obliged (rightly or wrongly) to explicate their
religious convictions in what they saw as a procedural document. If I draw
a map for another theonomic Christian, giving directions to a church at
which I am preaching or lecturing, I do not place at the top, "And recall
we must always follow the law-word of God in all our travels, wherever they
may be." Theonomic Christians already know this.
Religious test oaths
Much has been made of Article Six of the Constitution, requiring the
abolition of religious test oaths for any federal or state office: "[N]o
religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or
public trust under the United States." This sentiment is found also in
Federalist 52, that political office is open "without regard ... to any
particular profession of religious faith." On the surface, this appears
like an intentional blow to Christian society, but only on the surface.
It must be recalled that the profession of the Christian Faith was dominant
in the colonies and the early United States-even though it had lost its
seventeenth-century Calvinistic virility. There were established churches
in most of the states at the time-and even two well into the nineteenth
century (which puts to lie the common secularist charge that the First
Amendment was designed to prohibit all religious establishments of any kind
in the country). There were likewise religious test oaths (usually
Protestant) in some of the states.
While we cannot be absolutely sure of the meaning of "religious" or
"religious faith" as used in the Federal Constitution, it likely meant
"within the Christian Faith." In other words, the framers were prohibiting
religious test oaths among professing orthodox Christians. Thus, one could
not be disqualified from office merely because he was Roman Catholic or
Quaker (a handful of whom were members of the Constitutional Convention).
The framers did not seem to imply that one may not be disqualified for
office if he were irreligious-that is, opposed to the Christian Faith. The
tenacity with which many of them embraced Christian convictions and the
frequency with which they held that religion is an absolute essential to
just civil government militates against that conclusion. Almost certainly
they were assailing what they perceived as sectarianism, not orthodox
Christianity. The founders were clearly suspicious of sects, but, by and
large, not of the orthodox Christian Faith. This view is borne out by the
comments of Dr. David Ramsay in his classic text on the American Revolution
first published in 1789. He observed of the state constitutions and the
Articles of Confederation:
It was one of the peculiarities of these new forms of [United States]
government, that all religious establishments were abolished. Some retained
a constitutional distinction between Christians and others, with respect to
eligibility to office, but the idea of supporting one denomination at the
expence [sic] of others, or of raising any one sect of protestants to a
legal pre-eminence, was universally reprobated. The alliance between church
and state was completely broken, and each was left to support itself,
independent of the other.
That is, the state may support the Christian religion, but not one church,
denomination or sect over another. The "broken alliance" between church and
state (contra the British scheme) did not imply a severance of the state
from orthodox Christianity, however. What Ramsay depicts of the state
constitutions and the Articles of Confederation is no doubt equally true in
spirit of the Federal Constitution. While unlike some of the state
constitutions it employs the generic term "religion," it nonetheless
assumes the officers' affirmation of the orthodox Christian Faith. The
Federal Constitution was not designed to overthrow Christian orthodoxy by
permitting professed unbelievers into public office. The fact that
succeeding generations (re)interpreted the document so as to effect that
subversion of orthodoxy is a testimony to lack of foresight, not intent of
malice.
A Christian ethos
Conversely, there can be no question that the Federal Constitution reflects
a Christian-and specifically Calvinistic-ethos. In other words, it
explicitly repudiates sectarianism while implicitly (and perhaps even
unwittingly) presupposing a Calvinistic way of thinking. This point is made
most cogently in Fountainhead of Federalism: Heinrich Bullinger and the
Covenantal Tradition by Charles S. McCoy and J. Wayne Baker. They conclude
from their extensive research and evidence:
Though ignored by most historians of the Constitution, there is a tradition
of [Calvinistic] federalism that pervaded the entire colonial era,
developed in distinctive ways apart from European thinking, and formed the
background of experience upon which the leaders of the Revolution and new
nation relied as they shaped the institutions of what became the United
States of America.
In historical inquiry, often the most compelling evidence of the ethos of
an era is that which is not expressed at all, or expressed only casually.
In many disputes of any kind what is frequently most significant is what
both sides presuppose and therefore do not discuss. This is the case with
the Christian Faith in colonial America and the founding. As Harold O. J.
Brown notes in explaining why God is not overtly acknowledged in the
Federal Constitution: "[A]t the time the Constitution was adopted the
majority of Americans took it for granted that God should be acknowledged,
honored, and worshipped." Today, however, we Christians are alert to the
lack of reference to God, Christ and the Bible and their authority in
society. This is not surprising, since we have lived to experience the
bitter dregs of secular Enlightenment thought. But this was less evident in
the eighteenth century. Surely the evils of Deistic thought were apparent;
they were combatted by orthodox ministers throughout America. Yet
orthodoxy, albeit generic and effete, was then still the status quo,
meeting the claims of a new opponent. We cannot expect that the founders,
most of whom were professing Christians and themselves products of the
Christian ethos, would have felt as keenly as we moderns (adrift in a sea
of secularism) the need to express the Faith in the public sphere.
Anti-Christian elements
I imagine no responsible historian would deny the existence of influences
hostile to orthodox Christianity in the late eighteenth century and the
founding of the United States. Harold O. J. Brown enumerates some of these.
I disagree with both Brown and North, however, that "America made a mistake
in the year 1787. Officially, government (the federal government first,
later all the states) broke with Christianity." Rather, the evidence seems
to indicate that they broke with national- or federal-sanctioned
sectarianism. Knowing from the seventeenth century and in some cases
first-hand the evils of nationally-sanctioned sectarianism in Britain, they
were trying to come to grips with a legitimate form of pluralism.
Ultimately, they failed. But their failure is not the result of
conspiratorial intent.
What we really observe in the late eighteenth century is a slice of a
period of great theological transition from orthodox Calvinism to generic
Christian orthodoxy to Enlightenment rationalism to pantheistic
Transcendentalism to mechanistic naturalism to secular humanism-a
transition that occurred later in the United States than in Europe. I
chronologically pinpoint the founding somewhere between generic Christian
orthodoxy and Enlightenment rationalism.
Where do we go from here?
Where does this leave us today? We know where the omission of a recognition
of the claims of Christ the Ruler of the nations has left U. S.
jurisprudence and legislation this century: with an open invitation to
secularize the civil government while claiming Constitutional sanction.
Christians, however, should work less urgently for the amendment of the
Federal Constitution to acknowledge the Lordship of Christ over the nations
(desirable though that proposition is) than for the election of godly
representatives whose Faith will require them to adopt legislation in
harmony with Biblical law and, eventually, amend the Federal and state
constitutions, bringing them into greater conformity to Biblical law.
This is a bottom-to-top strategy presupposing a large bloc of active
Christian voters; this large number in turn presupposes the effectiveness
of the message of the gospel and of Christian activism. Trying to alter
legislation and the Constitution apart from such an activistic bloc is not
futile merely because it could not happen in the first place; but also
because, even if somehow miraculously it did, there would not be a
sufficient Christian citizenry to sustain such godly changes for long.
Legislative and Constitutional improvements cannot survive if there is no
significant Christian citizenry to undergird them. We live in a republic,
or constitutional democracy. Therefore the morality of the law cannot, in
the long run, rise higher than the morality of the citizenry.
Conclusion
The thesis of this essay will be greatly disputed. Nonetheless, I hope that
whatever our view of the relation of Christianity to the United States
founding, we Christian reconstructionists, theocrats, national
confessionalists, and advocates of "Christian America" should work together
to advance the Faith now and in the future, pressing the Crown Rights of
our King in the political, and, indeed, every sphere.
Copyright © 1997 The Chalcedon Foundation, all rights reserved.
-------------
"The highest glory of the American Revolution was
this: It connected in one indissoluble bond, the
principles of civil government with those of
Christianity."
-John Quincy Adams
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