The Case for Christian Nationalism

10. The Foundation of American Freedom | I. Introduction

Previously:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

Does the American political tradition permit a Christian self-conception, Christian governments, and church establishments? One popular narrative is that the American founding was anti-establishment and secularist and reflects the influence of “Enlightenment philosophy.” How can we get Christian nationalism out of that? But that narrative is false, as this chapter shows.¹

As he has regularly done throughout the book, Wolfe chooses the opposition most easy to counter. He is correct that America’s founders were not dominated by secularism, though their thinking was most definitely influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment; the Declaration of Independence’s “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”, taken from John Locke’s “life, liberty and property,” serves as a prominent example. As is most often the case with history, the story of religious influence in the founding of the United States is multi-faceted and not dominated by wholly positive or negative influences. Throughout this chapter I will give examples of colonial and early-Union history that will provide a more holistic and nuanced view of the role of religious toleration, or lack thereof, in the nation’s founding. As for where that has led us, though Wolfe avoids the question, “Is America now a Christian nation?”², theologian Francis Schaeffer answered it in his 1969 book, Death in the City:

And so too in the days of Jeremiah we find that the Jews had turned away from the true fulfillment. However, these ancient Jews were not nearly as bad off as the modern man of our own post-Christian world. They turned to false gods, but at least they still knew something was there. In a similar way the Greeks built their culture. Of course their gods were inadequate, so that, for example, Plato never found what to do with his absolutes because his gods weren’t big enough, and the Greek writers didn’t know what to do with the Fates because the gods were not great enough to always control them. But at least they knew something was there. It’s only our foolish generation (and I am using “foolish” in the same sense it has in Romans 1) that lives in a universe which is purely material, everything being reduced to mass, energy, and motion. Thus we find that the Jews left the true God for false gods, just as the Greeks, the Romans, etc., had false gods, but they were not as far from the truth as our generation. Our generation has nobody home in the universe, nobody at all.³

Contemporary America is far from being a Christian nation, though it used to be, at least in a general sense; as noted earlier with the popular, Reformation-era Swiss proverb, “If you act like a sheep, you’ll be eaten by a wolf,” modern Christians often hold a nostalgic view of a mass orthodoxy among people of former “Christian nations” that rarely comports with reality. The notion that, through human effort, American Christians can “drive away the open mockery of God and to claim what is [theirs] in Christ”⁴ is laughable. The truth is that there are far more people in the United States willing to fight against imposing a state-church, and all that comes with it, than for it.

Wolfe states that the founders’ opposing positions on establishment of state religion “rely on standard positions in historic, classical Protestantism” and that the majority “affirmed some form of establishment at the colony-state level.”⁵ This is historically accurate, as many states instituted religious restrictions on public office well into the 19th century, unchallenged by the federal government. The 1778 Constitution of South Carolina even made Protestantism the official state religion, which was not changed until after the civil war:

That all persons and religious societies who acknowledge that there is one God, and a future state of rewards and punishments, and that God is publicly to be worshipped, shall be freely tolerated. The Christian Protestant religion shall be deemed, and is hereby constituted and declared to be, the established religion of this State. That all denominations of Christian Protestants in this State, demeaning themselves peaceably and faithfully, shall enjoy equal religious and civil privileges.⁶

In this chapter, I will give examples of how this allowance for discriminatory religious practices by states bred an environment of animosity, particularly between Protestants and Catholics, which led to multiple acts of religious violence (such as the aforementioned 1834 mob arson of the Ursuline convent) some of which turned murderous. The story of early “Protestant America” is anything but one of ubiquitous “prudence and resolve”.

Next:

The Case for Christian Nationalism

1. Stephen Wolfe, The Case for Christian Nationalism (Moscow, Idaho: Canon Press, 2022), 398.

2. Ibid., 399.

3. Francis A. Schaeffer, Death in the City (Wheaton, Ill: Crossway Books, 2002), 42–43.

4. Ibid., 352.

5. Ibid., 400.

6. “Constitution of South Carolina - March 19, 1778,” Text (Washington, DC : Government Printing Office, 1909, December 18, 1998), sec. XXXVIII, https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/sc02.asp.