Faith of Our Fathers

The Bible and the Plot to Destroy American Democracy, Part Nine

This series is about how Christian Nationalists are using the Bible to undermine democracy.

Christian Nationalism is about power. It seeks to merge the power of the Church with the power of the State by rewriting the past and repositioning the Bible as a source of power.

So far in this series, we’ve traced the shifting sources of power and authority in Christianity and then how Christianity itself became a source of power. In the beginning (of Christianity), Jesus was the authority, then the disciples, followed by the Councils, then the Roman Church. After the fall of the Roman Empire, the Church’s power expanded beyond the realm of faith.

The Reformation shifted authority from the Church to the Bible (for Protestants) and reduced the power of the Church which emboldened Protestant kings to declare that their authority came directly from God and not from the Church. European nations were redefined through wars and conquest; power and authority shifted to the monarchs.

That was the state of power in the 18th century when the colonists on the American continent got fed up with the King of England’s abuses of power and authority.

They weren’t rebelling against taxes, they understood the necessity of taxes, that is not tyranny. Tyranny is the abuse of power and violation of rights.

That is what the Declaration of Independence is all about.

Some of the men leading the charge toward independence used biblical references (the Bible has a lot to say about abuses of authority and tyranny), along with other writings, in their appeal to people’s reason and state that because of the “abuses and usurpations” of the king, and Parliament’s inability or unwillingness to restrain him, they had a moral right to be free and independent states.

They believed the Bible spoke with authority, but they declared that they, themselves, had the authority to create an independent state. Ponder that for a moment. They were free because they had the authority to declare it so.

When they shifted the center of power from the king to the people, they understood that the people had to be of good character in order for self-governance to work. They assumed that religion, Christianity in particular, would support building a people of strong moral character.

There’s a reason we were all told the story of George Washington and the cherry tree and that Abraham Lincoln’s moniker was Honest Abe. A good president is one of integrity, who cannot tell a lie.

Whether or not they were Christians, by whatever definition we use, is irrelevant. They created an authority structure that diffused power and a wall of separation between church and state to prevent the accumulation of power.

They declared that authority comes not from kings or the Church or the Bible, but from the people. They established a government that serves by the consent of the governed, not by royal decree or divine right or papal blessing.

In the process, they made quite clear what the purpose of the United States government is:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

They did not create a Christian nation. Article VI clearly states:

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The Constitution is the authority, not the Bible, nor the Church, nor any creed.

As concerned as they were about the abuse of power by a despot, these men did not extend the freedom and authority they took for themselves to all the people around them, but over the next two centuries, the distribution of power increased.

Not everyone likes that. Christian Nationalism seeks to return power to the few.

Next week, we’ll look at how it was often the Christians, the evangelicals, who pushed for a more equal, diverse, and inclusive society.

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