A Nation Like No Other (11 page)

 

Perhaps the most revolutionary concept espoused by America's Founders and enshrined in our Declaration and Constitution was that
every
life has equal value and worth. It is the same ideal that motivated the Founders to go to unprecedented lengths to protect religious liberty.

Indeed, our entire American system of government is premised upon a deeply religious ideal. The proposition that “all men are created equal” expresses a profound religious principle that recognizes God as the ultimate authority over any government. Men are only equal if they are, in fact,
created
. Only if we assume we have a Creator can we assert that our
rights have been “endowed” to us by God—and only then are those rights “unalienable.”

While these concepts may seem commonplace features of our government today, constituting a government based upon them was radical for the Founders' generation.

If all men are created equal, then not even the most powerful man, group, or government on earth has the power to infringe or trample upon your rights.

If all men are created equal, then all human beings are equally flawed and equally susceptible to the appeal of power and to the inherent temptation to dictate how others should live their lives. Thus, the best government is a limited one; one that restricts the rule of man by instituting the rule of law, which applies to everyone from presidents to parking lot attendants.

If all men are created equal, then every person is equally accountable to God and to his fellow man to live a life of virtue, productivity, and personal responsibility. This life can only be realized in a society in which each person has the freedom to choose between right and wrong. For freedom to endure, it is vital to cultivate the values that make it possible to sustain such freedoms.

If all men are created equal, then each and every individual has equal dignity and inherent worth, regardless of his or her station in life, ethnic background, political beliefs, or personal failures or achievements.

If all men are created equal, then every life is, in fact, as valuable as any other person on planet Earth—whether youths from the Gainesville State detention facility or the family of Faith Christian fans who cared enough to cheer for someone else's child and to call them by name.

The story of Coach Hogan illustrates two key truths about American Exceptionalism: the dignity of the individual—the idea that every person does indeed matter—and the centrality of God and faith in American families and communities.

An America that openly rejects faith and the faithful will undermine the surest supports of human dignity in American life. That anti-religious America would soon cultivate a utilitarian culture that elevates the
powerful and crushes the weak. But an America that continues to welcome faith and the faithful as integral to American public life will transmit to the poorest and most forgotten segments of society the hope that they too have a right to the American Dream.

The Founders knew that religious vibrancy in a free society is the surest bulwark against government corruption. And yet their method of promoting and protecting religious vibrancy was an exception to historical precedent. To understand why, one must first recall just how deeply and fervently committed the Founders were not to an abstract notion of faith, but to a faith that was explicitly Christian. Consider the following quotes by some of our most notable Founders, who not only openly articulated their own commitment to Christianity, but their belief that it was
only
a moral and religious people who could sustain a government of, by, and for the people:

The Founders' distinctively Christian faith is well documented, as is their conviction that government must be infused with Christian principles. But they resisted the inclination to establish a Christian sect as the official church of the new nation or to impose religious tests to enforce an established church.

Why would men who believed the truths of Christianity were essential to living a moral life and were indispensable to a healthy civil society go to such great pains to ensure the institutions of religion remained
separate
from government?

History reveals two reasons. First, Christianity, particularly as understood in the post-Reformation era, teaches that every individual is endowed with the solemn dignity and free will to choose either to believe or not to believe. To the Christian, God “stands at the door and knocks”;
⁵
He does not break the door down and forcibly enter. Truth is something that is offered to man and made available for him to voluntarily seek and discover. It is never something he is compelled to accept. It follows that a human government should aspire to do nothing more or less.

Thus our Founders believed that a government is not legitimate unless it is grounded in the principles of individual sovereignty and free will, which begin with freedom of conscience and religious liberty. Only a society that protects the dignity of every person—his ability to believe or not to believe, to speak freely about his beliefs or to remain silent; his right to act according to the dictates of conscience; and ultimately, his prerogative to remain personally accountable to his Creator in each of those areas—could be considered just or morally legitimate.

Second, the Founders knew that whenever there is a state-sponsored religion, the government tends to encroach upon, to increasingly regulate, and finally to dictate religious belief and expression. The government may do this directly, by usurping the right to conscience belonging solely to the individual, church, or religious institution, or indirectly, by gradually eroding the pillars of religious life that generate and strengthen the social vibrancy and moral commitments of a self-governing republic.

Government control over religion historically resulted in a system of “crony clericalism” in which professional clergy fell prey to the temptations of unchecked power and personal greed. This typically led to tyranny, the suffocation of religious liberty, and the snuffing out of every other freedom, as the Founders understood. Paul Johnson described how the first Americans utterly rejected this model:

Instead of looking to entrenched clergy to define religious doctrine, early Americans studied the Bible themselves to learn spiritual truth first-hand. To defend this tradition, they needed a political system that protected the right to discover truth, to openly exchange ideas, and to dissent. This is the foundation of freedom of conscience, which protects believers and non-believers alike.

For this reason, more than any other American habit of liberty, religious liberty is the cornerstone of American freedom and the guiding force that makes America exceptional. The freedom to know and pursue God is not a Republican or Democratic value; neither is it liberal or conservative. It is a universal thirst written into the heart of every person.

Only when a government is firmly committed to the defense of this liberty can religious vibrancy and moral strength be cultivated in a nation. A government that fails to respect the dignity of every person, beginning
first and foremost with their freedom of conscience and religious liberty, surrenders its rightful authority to govern, if it ever had it in the first place.

It bears noting that a commitment to religious pluralism—or affording every individual's religious beliefs the equal protection of the law—is not the same as saying all beliefs are equal. Tolerating a differing opinion does not make that opinion true, but it does respect the right of the individual to possess it, and it trusts in the equal ability and right of every person to discern truth for himself.

Radical secularists often seek to undermine the moral legitimacy of America's religious heritage by pointing to occasions in our history when we Americans have failed to live up to our own ideals—whether in the case of slavery, the denial of civil rights, or other instances in which our historic commitment to liberty for all was radically compromised by other political agendas and pursuits.

But in each of these instances, it was our very commitment to moral and religious principle, to an authority and law higher than our own, that impelled us to self-correct and to use our greatest mistakes as the greatest opportunities to reassert the dignity of every human being and the cause of human freedom.

America has indeed endured moments that tested our commitment to freedom and individual dignity, and other moments when we abandoned those core principles in exchange for a more expedient or utilitarian course. But much of what makes America an exceptional nation is that it was in some of those darkest times that America reclaimed its self-evident truths and redeemed, sometimes at great cost, the principle that
all
people are indeed created equal and endowed with equal dignity and worth.

Almost every middle school student receives at least a tacit introduction to American history, often beginning with the Revolutionary War. But few students are taught to appreciate the religious convictions that motivated those first Americans to risk everything, and often to pay the
ultimate price, to secure that freedom. And fewer still are taught the actual origins of so many of the ideas that produced the American Revolution.

Beginning in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, more than four decades before the Revolution, a moral, spiritual, and cultural renewal spread throughout America. Like small brushfires flaring up throughout a vast, parched land, sparks of renewed religious fervency began to catch fire in the minds of first hundreds, then thousands of colonial settlers. Galvanized by the fiery sermons of George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and others, these revivals—which held no name or label at the time—tended to begin not in a church or city center, but in the open air of the countryside, eventually evolving into the camp-meetings that were a prominent feature of American frontier life for the following two centuries.

As touched upon in chapter one, the Great Awakening democratized and personalized religion. Such open-aired meetings were accessible not only to the wealthier, long-established patrons of traditional churches, but also to the most humble laborers, farmers, and pioneers, many of whom had no other opportunity to access spiritual teaching. Itinerant preachers recited a Gospel that was deeply individualized, centered on a personal knowledge of truth and a personal relationship with God. Crucially, they encouraged individuals to read the Bible and discern these principles for themselves.

Though occasionally referring to worldly affairs, the preachers' message was not inherently political. Yet their declaration of personal salvation, personal knowledge and study of Scripture, and man's equality before God had enormous political ramifications that are still evident in the American character today, especially in the commitment to personal responsibility over every aspect of one's religious, family, and social life—that is, to self-government.