The Charlie Kirk memorial in Phoenix highlighted the religious drive of Kirk’s, and many Americans’, politics. Like everything else in our politics, religion elicits polarizing jibes that deepen the gulf between red and blue, which deepens mutual alienation in a vicious cycle.
The Constitution separates church and state in the U.S., but not, as Matthew Continetti points out, because the founders weren’t religious. The Constitution, and the Declaration of Independence, are rife with deferential references to and invocations of God. The creed in which the nation was conceived, voiced in the Declaration, cites unalienable rights, equally endowed in all by their Creator, with a capital “C.”
What the Declaration explicitly defines into our national DNA is the person’s right to the pursuit of happiness, of which the pursuit, comfort, inspiration, and guidance of ultimate meaning would likely rank as the highest. John Locke conceived freedom as necessary to “true and saving religion.” The founders did not really secede from Britain for Locke’s sake, but their thought clearly sanctions people’s religious pursuits, and the Declaration’s appeals to God show the fundamental value of religion to the Revolutionaries.
The point of the First Amendment, and of the Declaration’s deliberate citation of a divine but unspecified “Creator,” is to leave those pursuits of ultimate meaning in the hands of free individuals. The founders did believe a God-fearing people, carrying the Christian virtues, were essential to the Constitution. But they put belief and pursuit of the holy beyond civic authority.
Quite likely the signers did not expect some of the implications of this separation. The nation now officially protects religions with practices very different from Protestant Christianity, including newly articulated ideas, and atheism. It is probably no coincidence that almost all of them share some common ethics, notably the “Golden Rule” in various languages. While many confessions see different meanings that humans must accept from the divine sphere, most also see a social contract. The civic constraint on state intervention works for them.
Not everyone feels that this is the case. The advent of modern science and its findings, the disruptions (alongside the benefits) of technology, and the growing connections among very different societies, all make for a messy picture of society. Reassertion of the venerable disciplines of traditional church and family offers a powerful path to fixing much of the disorder.
A tension arises in some quarters, where the Christianity of the founders is taken to define America as a specifically Christian, even Protestant, entity. Pastor Douglas Wilson asserts that “… some type of morality is built into every government, and it’s just a question of whose morality will reign. America … was built on Protestant values from its start and should return to them. ‘We were, in fact, a Christian Republic at the founding…’” His language in this formula, oddly, carries a Realpolitik idea, that power is the currency of public discourse.
As noted by David Brooks, this view indicates a strong evangelical Christian “discipling” within their communities, but a weak discipling for the civic setting. There is a line between practice among the faithful and aiming to convince, even evangelize, others and, on the other hand, seeking to enforce enumerated practices and rules on civil society. True, some issues must be resolved in politics. The disputes can be deep, volatile, and absolutist from both sides, witness the politics of gender. But a line is clear in spirit. Zero-sum, power-focused, partisan advocacy, especially in today’s discourse, turns the advocate’s preferred religious doctrine into a political interest, drawing on the former to energize the latter. This makes religion look like a means to a political end, and lowers religion into the battlegrounds of a state of nature. And “unrestrained faith and unrestrained partisanship are an incredibly combustible mixture.”
As to America’ identity, this means, yes, we are free, yes, we believe in God. It also means we as a nation are not bound to any prescription of any particular doctrine. Our religious practices are chosen by “me” as “I” join a church and espouse my faith.
As it happens, this freedom of choice equips our society to adapt to findings such as the Big Bang. Many theocracies cannot explain challenges to their dicta without risking their authority, but we as citizens are free to join the confessions that figure out how to reconcile new discoveries with spiritual Truths. The nation is not at risk as each of us wrestles through the questions.
In any case, America’s national identity comes from our creed. Every American is free to make their personal identity by their own chosen lights, and we do know that the highest pursuits of happiness will lead us to our reckonings with the divine.
Common Conviction 