America has been a faith-based initiative from the beginning
When one surveys America’s history, she has been a faith-based initiative from when the first Pilgrims landed in Massachusetts Bay in 1620. The pursuit of becoming the “city on a hill” lighting the way for the Old World captured the imagination, will, and purpose of what became the American Experiment.
The Puritan vision so captured the essence of the American Experiment that the wonderfully observant British author G.K. Chesterton described America as a nation “with the soul of a church!”
The deeply engrained belief that America was a cause, as well as a country is deeply engrained in the American DNA. Alexis de Tocqueville noticed this as part of the American experience in his Democracy in America in the 1830s.
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During the colonial era of the original 13 colonies (later states) nine developed tax-supported, official “state” churches.
One of the lesser-known stories of America’s colonial history is that both England and her American colonies were seriously challenged by Enlightenment rationalism in the 18th Century which, in turn, produced the Great Awakening in Britain and Colonial America in response. In the mid-18th century, many Englishmen and Americans feared Christianity’s demise as a dominant societal influence. Wilberforce’s attempts at moral reform were also part of the faith-based response to this serious threat.
In America, the Great Awakening and the War of Independence were inextricably intertwined. Among Baptists, for example, historians can only find one clergyman who did not support the Revolution. And he was a missionary who came to America as a 34-year-old adult.
America’s colonial experience convinced our founding fathers that a country could not successfully maintain liberty and freedom without citizens who were religious and moral. In 1798, John Adams, America’s second president, declared:
“We have no Government armed with Power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and Religion. Avarice, Ambition, Revenge or Gallantry, would break the strongest Cords of our Constitution as a Whale goes through a Net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (John Adams, Address to the Massachusetts Militia, October 11, 1798).
However, by the successful completion of the Revolutionary War, Americans had reached the collective decision at the federal level that an official, organic partnership between the government and religion was a bad idea and should be banned in the new U.S. Constitution (i.e., the First Amendment, there shall be “no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….”).
This was never intended to mean the separation of religious and moral beliefs from governance. The founders deliberately designed a government whereby any and all American citizens could bring their ultimate moral convictions to bear on the moral issues of governance, whether they are based on religion or secular philosophy.
And the American people have behaved accordingly. Virtually all the early anti-slavery movements were founded and led by people of religious conviction. The same history is true of the civil rights movement of the mid-20th century, a movement impossible to comprehend without the peerless leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., an ordained Baptist minister.
Polling and sociological analysis indicate there is very little enthusiasm for America to embrace the failed government-religious partnerships of the colonial era. As a Southern Baptist, I am not surprised studies show that as the largest Protestant denomination, they would overwhelmingly reject government partnership with religion. They understand, as do most Americans, that religion going into an alliance with the government is like getting hugged by a python—you end up dying from asphyxiation.
The vast majority of Americans of religious faith reject government sponsorship of religion. However, they do feel impelled by their religious convictions to come forward and insist that their government provide protection for our unborn citizens. God is not a Republican, but He is pro-life.
Christians and other people of religious faith have the right, and the obligation, to bring their beliefs and convictions to bear on public moral issues and to try to influence their fellow citizens to enact laws that reflect “public virtue.”
As President John Adams once explained, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.”
Dr. Richard Land, BA (Princeton, magna cum laude); D.Phil. (Oxford); Th.M (New Orleans Seminary). Dr. Land served as President of Southern Evangelical Seminary from July 2013 until July 2021. Upon his retirement, he was honored as President Emeritus and he continues to serve as an Adjunct Professor of Theology & Ethics. Dr. Land previously served as President of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (1988-2013) where he was also honored as President Emeritus upon his retirement. Dr. Land has also served as an Executive Editor and columnist for The Christian Post since 2011.
Dr. Land explores many timely and critical topics in his daily radio feature, “Bringing Every Thought Captive,” and in his weekly column for CP.
