Did the Founders belong to a
time when a Sacral Christian consensus still reigned? Of course. And yet, they were
of many different stripes and persuasions and a jumble of ideas came together
in what they produced. The Sacral consensus of the Middle Ages and Reformation
was beginning to crumble and the Founders were men of their day. They imbibed
(as we all do) from a variety of sources of worldviews, everything from English
Common Law to Locke and others.
Interestingly Jefferson
detested the famous Blackstone commentaries on English Common Law, which is
often something Christian America advocates point to when trying to build their
case for the Founders attempting to establish a Christian state. While it may work
with someone like John Adams, they won't find an ally in the author of the
Declaration of Independence.
If the Founders weren't
specifically Theonomic, looking to form a civil polity based on Scripture, then
they had to be imbibing ideals from the surrounding culture. Of course I would
argue even the Theonomists do this. They too bring cultural baggage and it
shapes how they read Biblical Law. Their 'pure' reading is fiction. They too
are shaped by context. There are ways to divorce one's self from this trap, but
it will destroy any overarching meta-narrative that has been created and
perhaps take you where you did not originally intend to go.
When it comes to the issue of
Biblical Law and how it applies to the civil sphere, the Puritans were definitely
Theonomic in their outlook, even if not specifically advocating the exact
theses of Rushdoony, North or Bahnsen. Democracy was abhorrent to them Puritans,
not just in principle, but in practice. Their Christian anthropological
outlook, their doctrine of sin alone would have made them hesitant in trusting
in a system that looked to the common man to do what was right and good.
Needless to say they viewed
proto-Capitalist economics in the same fashion. All these systems functioned on
Pelagian assumptions regarding the nature of man...that he could and would do
good. The Puritans did not believe that, and on that point they were right.
They believed that possessing a right understanding and application of
Scripture, they 'could' do right and hold power without being corrupted. And on
this point a Christian ethical reading of history would call that assumption
into question.
While the Pilgrims did not wish
to create a North American Christendom with an Established Church, they more or
less operated with the same ideas about sin, Scripture, and man's place in the
world.
This is quite a different
understanding of man, society, law and the world than what we find with the
later American Founders.
To try and blend their ideals
with the Mayflower Pilgrims and/or Puritans is just plain dishonest or horribly
ignorant. And again in the Cameron film, the interpretation of the 'monument'
is not an interpretation of history, but an interpretation of art that was
itself interpreting history. It's flawed from the beginning.
It's interesting because
historically all the states and kingdoms within Christendom consciously formed
their states in Sacral terms. Kings ruled 'by the grace of God' or by 'Divine
Right', and often had been crowned by prelates demonstrating
Divine/Ecclesiastical sanction. Crosses and other Christian symbols were woven
into the nation's symbolism, on flags and seals.
In the past Protestants shrugged
off most of this as being 'Catholic' and thus not really Christian. The
contemporary embrace of Catholicism has driven many to reassess this, but how
disappointed they must be when they come to the founding of the United States!
I've heard many Evangelicals in
the past suggest America was the first and has been the only 'Christian' nation
on the Earth. Besides being loaded with false assumptions and undefined
concepts, if they now embrace Catholicism as Christian, then how would they
defend such a statement in light of the Middle Ages, Charlemagne, the Holy
Roman Empire, or Byzantium?
In the Declaration of Independence
Jefferson doesn't appeal to Biblical law...he appeals to self-evident truths,
at best Natural Law with a Lockean spin. Life, liberty and the pursuit of
happiness are hardly Biblical concerns, at least you won't find that construct
anywhere in the Bible. You'll notice many Dominionists will say, 'life, liberty
and property' because that better suits their understanding, but once again the
phraseology comes from Locke!
It's echoed in the both the 5th
and 14th amendments to the Constitution, but I'm not sure
Theonomists would want to venture into those waters. The 14th
amendment is an expansion of the 5th amendment and empowers and
tasks the government to proactively insure these rights for all citizens. They
can invoke the language, but as it stands and is used in Constitutional law it
goes against their use of the phrase. This will be discussed later in the
essay.
The pursuit of happiness is
hardly a goal of New Testament Christianity which calls us to suffer and to
gain victory by being slaughtered as sheep. Joy and Happiness are fruits of the
Spirit, not rights derived from or even secured by the state.
The wording in the Declaration
is in reality an anthropological expression regarding man's need. It reflects
an epistemology rooted in British Empiricism, not Christian Theism. Knowledge
and thus ethics are derived from sense perception. How we define good is not
determined by an Eternal Lawgiver, but by what we know to make us happy. That
is what is good. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness are reflections of
the supreme good in that, such a state of being fulfills the desires of
man...pleases his senses. It's a secularist worldview trying to express its version
of Utopia, or heaven on earth.
Jefferson doesn't appeal to
power as being Divine or derived from God, but from the 'consent of the
governed' which not only goes completely against Theonomic and Dominionistic
understandings of government, law, and society, it was socially revolutionary
for the time.
Rather than the United States
being formed as a 'Christian' nation in the Sacral sense....in all actuality it
was the first Western nation formed since the fall of Rome that explicitly was
NOT Christian.
As an anti-Sacralist I
celebrate this fact, and would wish for something along those lines once
again...not because I share the philosophical worldview but pragmatically because
I believe a non-Sacral political structure allows for a Composite (versus
Monistic) society. Social pluralism is desirable and does not necessitate the
embrace of Theological Pluralism. The one is pragmatic and the other
ideological.
Sacralism in all forms
(especially Christian) means persecution for the faithful who will not join
with the Sacral project. A composite society holding democratic power has a
much harder time forming into a Sacral Project. The Babel Impulse is diluted
and in the United States, this has largely proven to be true from a domestic
standpoint. Though we're permeated with idolatrous patriotism, the state up
until recently has been hindered in its attempts to forge (by force) a social
monism. Now outside the boundaries of America, that's a different story. The
Imperial Beast has raged and left a trail of blood, carnage, and suffering.
There are only a few empires in history that surpass the United States in terms
of murder and death.