Judeo-Christian nation or not?
Mark Greathouse
(1/2022) The United States of America is not a Judeo-Christian nation. Nope. It’s founded on Judeo-Christian principles, but we are not a theocracy. Our Founding Fathers made certain of that. Of course, they surely never intended for our nation to stray so far from the morals grounded in those Judeo-Christian principles.
What do we mean by Judeo-Christian? The term Judeo-Christian can be best explained as an adjective that describes the common basis of morality, law, and ethics found in Christianity and Judaism and which in turn has shaped the socio-cultural bedrock of many Western nations, especially the United States.
The Founders were so concerned that there be no state religion imposed on the citizens that they emphasized in the very first amendment to the Constitution our freedom to practice the faith of our choice. Along with free speech, freedom of religion was a key ingredient in our nation’s formulation. The Founders felt that it was critically important for us that certain essential natural rights be protected from being imposed upon citizens by the national government. They wanted no repeat of the theocratic predations of King George under his Church of England.
Much is made of Thomas Jefferson’s exchange with the Danbury Baptists and his "wall of separation" as justification for keeping religion out of the public square. It ostensibly defined separation of church and state. Yet it’s notable that the very Congress that passed the Constitution in 1787 also passed the Northwest Ordinance which held in its Article 3 that, "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged." Even George Washington reemphasized the precepts of the Northwest Ordinance in his farewell address.
Notably, Thomas Jefferson’s wall of separation metaphor was distorted by the Supreme Court to meddle in issues concerning religion at the state level whereas Jefferson’s "wall" was intended to only apply at the federal level. In his second inaugural address. Jefferson clarified state jurisdiction, "In matters of religion, I have considered that its free exercise is placed by the Constitution independent of the powers of the general government."
Religious principles represent the heart and soul, the bedrock, of America’s undergirding political philosophy, drawing from John Locke, Sir William Blackstone, and other great thinkers to inseparably weave together religion and freedom…to place them on equal footing.
It's less about Judeo-Christianity and more about protecting citizens from an overbearing government, whether by religion or a host of other incursions upon our rights. It’s also notable that Ben Franklin and Thomas Jefferson among others saw Magna Carta as a symbol of liberty and natural (not government given) rights of man against an oppressive or unjust government. This thinking was woven throughout our Declaration of Independence.
Why are morals and ethics grounded in Judeo-Christian principles so critically important to our nation? Because they do exactly that: establish morals and ethics on solid bedrock. They place a premium on individualism, private property, freedom of thought, and seizing opportunity to achieve success. Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations stands as testimony to capitalism, noted, "Religion, even in its crudest form, gave a sanction to the rules of morality long before the age of artificial reasoning and philosophy."
However, the corruption of Judeo-Christian principles through overt efforts at secularization are rather spectacular in their utter conceit. The frequent outcome of an amoral secularized society tends to be a profusion of lies, deceptions, and myths. Slowly over time, secularization and resulting corruption of the Judeo-Christian faiths has seeped into America’s ideology-driven politics. Philosopher Ayn Rand, who escaped Soviet Russia in 1925 and is famed for her seminal novel Atlas Shrugged, noted the importance of morality in her 1963 essay, "Racism." Rand noted, "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It is the notion of ascribing moral, social, or political significance to a man’s genetic lineage – the notion that a man’s intellectual and characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged, not by his own character and
actions, but by the characters and actions of a collective of ancestors." Reminds me a bit of Rev Martin Luther King’s later quote, "…live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character…" Rand goes on to say that by this determinism, "…a man’s convictions, values, and character are determined before he is born, by physical factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the doctrine of innate ideas – or of inherited knowledge – which has been thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of, by, and for brutes." Judeo-Christian principles place the natural principles of reason and choice or of mind and morality over some chemical predestination embedded in our DNA.
The fabric of Judeo-Christian principles in recent decades in the United States has been slowly wearing thin. According to Christian pollster George Barna, U.S. "born again Christian" adults declined from 44 percent between 2006 and 2010 to fewer than 36 percent today. Only 27 percent of Democrats claim to be born again and 45 percent of Republicans. For the curious among readers, 33.3 percent or 2.6 billion of the world population is Christian, while 21 percent is Muslim, 13.3 percent Hindu, and 14 percent non-religious. Pew Research tells us that 70 percent of Americans (233 million) claim to be Christian, while 23 percent are atheist or unaffiliated. That leaves a very small number divided among other faiths.
I find it of particular note that the slipping of the Judeo-Christian faiths into secular beliefs went into overdrive with Supreme Court decisions like McCollum v. Board of Education District 71, Engel v. Vitale, and Wallace v. Jaffree driving religious practices from the public schools and nearly stopping religion itself from being taught as part of history curricula. The venerable flag of the "Establishment Clause" has been waved high repeatedly to exclude anything resembling religion from the public square. Even the establishment clause has sown confusion. A proposed curriculum designed by teachers in a local Pennsylvania school district a few years back actually defined the establishment clause as "the government established religion." Sad but true. The error was caught by school board members and corrected. Religious faith is but a generation away from being lost, and there are ever fewer places for our children to learn of it as our
core values and beliefs are attacked and eroded.
The Constitution, the same governing document that some folks want to significantly change to "keep up with the times," makes it clear that we are not a Judeo-Christian nation, as that would effectively be establishing religion. However, we are quite clearly a nation founded upon Judeo-Christian principles that we deny at our peril. While morals and resulting ethics are bellwethers of the application of Judeo-Christian principles, the element that perhaps matters most is hope, hope for the future. People must know.
Read past edition of the Tumbleweeds
Read other articles by Mark Greathouse
