By James M. Kushiner –
Charlottesville, Virginia, April 2008. I was having lunch with two professors, from different universities. They had never met, but had one special thing in common. Each told me that their careers had suffered from university authorities because they had published their views in Touchstone. You see, they were conservative or traditional Christians. No tenure for one, no job for the other. So much for tolerance!
I had just come from a visit to nearby Monticello, home of American Founder Thomas Jefferson. Now Jefferson was hardly a Christian, but he had no problem with Christians in government or teaching (perhaps because some of his best friends were Christians?).
Religious belief was not merely a context in which the American republic had been founded; it was also a necessary condition for it. The Constitution's framers not only assumed the presence of a strong religious citizenry; they were banking on it:
"We have no government armed in power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion." – John Adams
"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to a political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports." — George Washington
Note: "no government … capable" and "indispensable." No religion, no governable republic–even with a Constitution.
I believe that only traditional Judeo-Christian morals in practice can sustain the virtuous citizenship necessary for the American republic to flourish in sustaining liberty and justice.
While many today assume the possibility of a benign and tolerant society, as long as people would only be nice, this hope in its present form is parasitic on the moral labors of previous generations who built our society, its economies, technologies, culture, and its institutions of government, higher education, science, and healthcare. Healthy societies are not self-sustaining; to flourish they require a measure of selfless labor and virtuous discipline similar to that required to create them in the first place. No dynamic system can coast indefinitely; it must receive continuous infusions of selfless labor and virtuous discipline to escape decline and fall.
Only the character-building power of true religious faith can address our cultural decay. If traditional Christianity does not serve as a dynamic and corrective restraint on man's fallen inclinations, more coercive faiths and political ideologies will fill the moral and spiritual vacuum, replacing our freedoms with forms of unyielding servitude.
In Charlottesville 2017 we have seen two malignant forces–neo-Nazi fascism/white supremacy and Antifa/antifascism–clashing in the vacuum. Whether an offensive removal of statues or the removal of offensive statues, there are moral demands being made in that vacuum. Indeed, no mob gathers without having what it sees as an injustice in its laser sights. But passions have led to deadly violence. How can the republic of Mr. Adams govern them?
With no moral governance "from above," i.e., true religion, the need for coercion will expand as self-restraint withers. Without a fixed Divine moral code and with a code that is seen as merely humanly constructed, raw political will to power will dominate the public square. This is the way of the serpent, not of the dove.
America's past is hardly without sin. But its sins are exposed and seen most clearly in the light of the eternal Word. But now, as in Gadara, the Unites States in large measure has told Jesus to retreat from public view. It cannot bear his Light. Academic elites wanted nothing to do with my professor friends because of their Christian beliefs. Begone, with your Jesus.
So, the secular nation stands alone, naked with a Constitution, a mere fig-leaf of paper that blows in the winds of passions. Many cultural and political elites have declared independence, saying, "We have no king but Caesar."
Well, to Caesar shall you go. But note well: Caesar is not abounding in steadfast love, nor does his mercy endure forever.
James M. Kushiner is Executive Director of The Fellowship of St. James
