One Nation Not Under Secularism
What Did the Founders Really Mean?

By Chuck Colson

January 29, 2004

In “One Nation Under Secularism” (Jan. 8, 2004) New York Times writer Susan Jacoby argues that America was founded, and must remain today, as an explicitly secular state. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose birthday we just celebrated, would have been astonished to hear this. His entire campaign to abolish unjust laws was predicated on his belief that civil laws must square with the lawgiver God.

As he knew—and most scholars agree—for the first time in history, two ideological streams partially converged in America, one coming from the Judeo-Christian tradition, the other from Enlightenment thinkers. Adherents to both traditions agreed (for different reasons) that the new government should neither establish nor interfere with the church. But this did not mean that Americawas to be a nation free of religious influences.

Washington himself was explicit: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports.”  Anticipating the Jacobys who would restrict religion to the private sphere, he said, “In vain would that man claim that tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness.”   

Theologian Michael Novak contends that the faith of the Founding Fathers was deeply rooted in the writings of ancient scripture, particularly the Jewish covenant. As he puts it, secularists typically cut off “one of the two wings by which the American eagle flies.” That cut-off wing is America’s “compact” with the biblical God. They understood, with Thomas Jefferson that “No nation has ever yet existed or even been governed without religion. Nor can be.” Why? Because, in the Founders’ estimation, virtue was the precondition for liberty. 

While the Founders admittedly did not use the word God in the Constitution, they didn’t need to.  The “laws of nature and nature’s God” had already been appealed to in the Declaration of Independence, which provided the context for the constitutional debate. 

Jacoby suggests Christians have exaggerated their role in the great moral debates in history, particularly in the abolition of slavery.  The fact is that there has never been a campaign against slavery not undergirded by religious faith.

The first was ignited over 200 years ago by England’s William Wilberforce. A committed Christian, Wilberforce challenged Britain’s immensely profitable slave trade as an offence against God.  For twenty years Wilberforce and a group of fellow Christians known as the Clapham sect roused the church and nation to action.

Interestingly, Wilberforce was confronted by the same arguments Ms. Jacoby raises today.  Lord Melbourne rose on the floor of the Parliament to denounce the abolitionists, complaining that “things have come to a pretty pass when religion is allowed to invade public life.” 

Well, thank God religion did invade public life. It led to the abolition of slavery in the British Empire by 1833. The movement then crossed the Atlanticwhere Christians (indeed aided by secularists and indeed in some cases working against desperate interests in their own religious bureaucracy) worked to end to slavery in America.

Jacoby personifies those who take offence at religious values being “imposed” even through public debate. She has plenty of historical company.  Against whom did Americans first hear the complaint that a leader was attempting to “impose” religious values?  Jerry Falwell? Pat Robertson?   No, the complaint arose during the 1860 presidential campaign by speakers attacking Abraham Lincoln.

What about the campaign for women’s suffrage? Sojourner Truth is often held up as a cultural hero because of her work for abolition and women’s rights. Overlooked is the fact that the former slave was an avid evangelical Christian. She believed God directed her to change her name from Isabella Van Wagenen to Sojourner Truth “because I was to travel up and down the land, showing people their sins, and being a sign unto them,” she declared.

When President Bush spoke at Whitehall during his recent trip to England, he traced America’s moral zeal to “the tireless compassion of Lord Shaftesbury [and] the righteous courage of Wilberforce.” Americans are a religious people, Bush added, in part because the ‘Good News’ was “translated by Tyndale, “preached by Wesley, [and] lived out in the example of William Booth.”

His point was that no one could understand America’s concern in the world today without understanding the spiritual heritage which informs our conviction.

This spirituality informs the current President, as well. Would Jacoby suggest this is wrong? When the President, aided by evangelical groups, works to provide relief to Africans suffering from AIDS, lobbies for tough laws to eliminate international sex trafficking, or applies diplomatic pressure to end Sudanese slavery, are his efforts invalidated if they arise from his deep religious conviction?

No one made the case better than Martin Luther King, Jr.:   “One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws,” King wrote. “But conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”  How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? The answer would likely make Jacoby and her fellow secular ideologues cringe.  “A just law, King said, “Squares with the moral law of the law of God. An unjust law . . . is out of harmony with the moral law.”

America as a secular state?  Don’t tell that to the gentlemen farmers who founded America—or to those who honor and respect the legacy of Martin Luther King.