The opening quote from Orwell's 1984 provides an appropriate warning to those who would read many, but not all, Christian renderings or Christian approved renderings of American history:
'Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past'
That quote alone explains the actions of Republicans like Ron DeSantis as they try to censor what American history will be taught in the Florida public schools. For people like him, the only American history that is allowed in those schools are those that inspire the kind of patriotic feeling that he wants Floridians to have.
And so we come to a review article written by a Northwood University professor Glenn Moots (click here for information). And we might find that Orwell's quote applies to both Moots's article and the book that Moots reviews. We will simply review the article by Moots and the only comments about the book we will be about those comments that occur in Moots's article. In his article, Moots reviews a book about America's founding titled The Classical and Christian Origins of American Politics: Political Theology, Natural Law, and the American Founding by Kody Cooper from the University of Tennessee Chattanooga and Justin Dyer from the University of Texas Austin.
Moots's article (click here for his article) reviews and endorses their book. For the book tries to make a point that he favors regarding the founding of America. That America, according to Cooper and Dyer has firm Christian roots as well as based on Classical and Christian Natural Laws without being a slave to either. In addition, as many Christians boast, our ideas of justice and equality are said to come from these sets of Natural Laws. And so regarding our nation's founding on the dependence observed on Christian Natural Law, it shows the Christian character of the nation. And thus America's founding, and America itself, is recognized as the child of reason and revelation.
In addition, a significant amount is made about the Founders' references to God's Providence without signifying whether that is the providence of the Christian God. So here it is unclear whether that is a more evidence that points to how much America's founding is based on Christianity.
The contributions of Classical and Christian National Laws are emphasized in Moots's article to illustrate how Cooper and Dyer talk about the Christian character of America from how someone like David Barton has described America as a Christian nation. The book is also seen as a defense against those who would denigrate America or claim that it started as a Deist or even secular venture.
Moots favors the book by Cooper and Dyer because he seems to see it as serving as both an apologetic for claiming that America has Christians roots and a polemic against those who would challenge America and its roots.
But there is a problem here. The founding of America occurred during the long stretch of Christendom in Europe. In fact, Christendom in America outlasted Christendom in Europe. With Christendom making Christian ideas ubiquitous in Europe and America, why would we not expect to see references to Christianity and Christian Natural Law in the writings of America's founders? This is why, in trying to make a point, the context of the times couldn't help but have a significant impact on the work and efforts of America's founders. Yet that context is invisible or even nonexistent in Moots's article and perhaps in the book he is reviewing. And so any Christian references, both biblical and Christian Natural Law, are seen as deliberate attempts to make America's founding based on Christianity as if its founders had an equal opportunity to do otherwise but chose not to. And since I have not read the book, I cannot speak to whether Cooper and Dyer communicate the same idea.
I understand that Cooper and Dyer's description of America's founding either presents America as mixed bag or somehow fuses Classical and Christian Natural Laws together. But I am always troubled by those who claim that America's founding was in any way Christian. For if its founding was Christian, then we Christians must take the shame with the glory.
What is the shame that Christians must answer to as they bask in the light of America's accomplishments? The shame revolves around the injustices that America forced on people of color. For from The Constitution itself, references that either assumed or promoted the delusional belief in white supremacy guided our nation for a significant period of time. The shame also includes the fact that the words we write and speak to make claims about ourselves have so often been betrayed by our actions. This also is something all of us Christians have to face about ourselves personally. That all of us perform actions that betray how we have portrayed ourselves with our words. And so the same applies to our nation when we describe its founding as being Christian.
From slavery to Jim Crow, to the remaining presence of systemic racism, and to the ethnic cleansing of Native Americans from the land, whatever we have claimed about our Christian roots are put in doubt by how we treat others. And none of that includes how we have treated women.
Here we should note that perhaps our dependence on classical ideas of justice might have had a bigger influence on us than Christianity did. This is seen in who Aristotle viewed as being worthy of being called a citizen. Not all were worthy to be considered as such. If Classicalism had significant influence on our nation's founding, then this explains why equal rights, such as voting, came so slow in people of color and also to women. Those who were generally not counted as citizens included women and what Aristotle called 'natural slaves.' In particular, Aristotle saw natural slaves as benefiting from being owned and ruled over by their masters. Women were also not counted as being worthy of being citizens because though they were regarded as able to deliberate, they had no authority. Natural slaves are seen as not being able to deliberate (click here and search for 'natural slaves'). The ability to deliberate and have authority were the determining factors in recognizing whether one was a citizen.
So how does Aristotle's classification of natural slaves fit in with America's history? Much of America has been based on hierarchy from the beginning. In fact, the deliberations on and writing of The Constitution were sparked by challenges made to America's then new elites. Henry Knox's letter to George Washington provides evidence for this as he pejoratively describes those veterans who were rebelling. In addition, some of the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention also convey a hierarchy in America (click here and see how Knox describes those who were rebelling). Widespread dissent and Shays Rebellion caused the concern necessary for the founders to gather to write The Constitution.
And while Cooper's and Dyer's book denies that America started as a Deist or secular project, the emphasis on religious liberty is highly influenced by people like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. For while Jefferson wrote a version of the Bible that eliminated the supernatural miracles of Jesus, Madison's religious beliefs are really unknown despite being raised as an Episcopalian and attending an Episcopalian Church.
If America's founding has Christian roots because of Christendom, what is America now seeing that Christendom has ended and we are seeing a more religiously diverse nation? Are we to submit to the tyranny of tradition despite the fact that its founding was more in line with the times back then than now? Or does the expression of America become fluid to express what America has become today? These questions are necessary to answer once we admit the context provided by Christendom could have greatly influenced what America's founding was based on.
America's founding was based on Christianity and its principles? Our words say 'yes,' but even today, our actions appear to say 'no.' To the extent to which that is true, the context for why that occurred seems to have been disappeared by those making that point. In addition, our actions have also been ignored by those trying to make that claim.
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