ARTICLE: No Hint of Politics

[FreddtFlash]

Koukl quotes Philip Yancey, “We have no mandate to ‘Christianize’ the United States—an impossible goal in any case. Yet Christians can work simultaneously toward a different goal, the ‘moralization’ of society. We can help tether the values and even the laws of society to some basis in transcendence.” I think that remark hints at a philosophical divide. Should the laws (and morality) of society have some basis in transcendence?

What values and what laws of society? Examples please.

FRF

[Nanny]

What values and what laws of society? Examples please.

FRF

To Fred and All:
Since Fred consistently takes over a week to respond, anyone can jump in here. Otherwise it's probably best I just drop it. I find it hard to converse after these lags.

And now, to respond -- what laws and values??? This question implies that certain laws have a basis in one belief system, while different laws rest on a different basis.

Without a cohesive legal system, the whole structure will eventually fall, or give way to another system. All laws are based on some belief system.

Our Republic was established on the belief in a transcendant Creator and natural law, I think in the words of Jefferson, "the law of nature and nature's God." Koukl in his excellent article reminds Christians of our responsibility to be involved in the political process. This involvement would reflect our belief in a transcendant God.



N.

[FreddtFlash]

Our Republic was established on the belief in a transcendant Creator and natural law, I think in the words of Jefferson, "the law of nature and nature's God." Koukl in his excellent article reminds Christians of our responsibility to be involved in the political process. This involvement would reflect our belief in a transcendant God.

James Madison believed in a transcendant Creator who ordined a Total Separation of Religion and Government as ordained by the Savior in Matthew 22:21. That belief was shared by most American's during the early years of the Republic.

During the early years, neither the federal government or many of the state government's issued religious recomendations via executive proclamation, posted religious commandments in courts and schools, legislated a recommendation to believe in "one Nation under God" or required the people's trust in God to be declared on the nations coins.

"The law of nature and nature's God" was a phrased coined by the Deists not by Christians. The "Natural law" advocated by Thomas Jefferson did not include the Bible or any form of "revelation."

Why should "Christians" be involved in politics? To encourage, promote or impose Christianity? To use the government to express their religion? Why?

***************

Who is Nature's God?

When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.[1]

In the "Declaration of Independence," the founding document of what would become the United States, Thomas Jefferson mentions "nature's God." Unfortunately, this phrase is unclear. The religious beliefs of Jefferson were much debated in his time and still are over two centuries later. Through the letters and other writings of Jefferson, it is possible to construct an outline of his beliefs. Although he supported the moral teachings of Jesus, Jefferson believed in a creator similar to the God of deism. In the tradition of deism, Jefferson based his God on reason and rejected revealed religion.

Jefferson's parents reared him in the Episcopal Church. Although there is no known record of him being baptized, it is almost certain that an Anglican clergyman baptized him. Records show that both Thomas Jefferson and his father Peter were elected vestrymen. These positions, however, merely reflected the Jeffersons' social status; they were both land-owning and educated men. The positions were given "with small regard to their personal convictions or even their way of life."[2]

That Jefferson participated in the administration of the parish does not reflect his specific beliefs. Despite his social and familial ties to the Episcopal Church, Jefferson came to disbelieve its creeds and rejected most Christian doctrine. In his book The Religion of Thomas Jefferson, Henry Foote says that Jefferson did not believe in the divinity of Jesus but he viewed him as a "human teacher."[3] He believed only what his reason allowed: "His knowledge of science led him to reject all miracles, including the virgin birth and the bodily resurrection of Jesus."[4] By the time he was a young adult, Jefferson had developed his own religious views outside the framework of any sect.

Jefferson believed that the various sects of Christianity had corrupted the original message of Jesus: "They [the teachings of Jesus] have been still more disfigured by the corruptions of schismatizing followers, who have found an interest in sophisticating and perverting the simple doctrines he taught."[5] However, Jefferson did believe that the teachings of Jesus had some merit.

Jefferson felt that religion was a deeply private matter. People did not need to proclaim their beliefs: "I never told my own religion nor scrutinized that of another. I never attempted to make a convert, nor wish to change another's creed."[6] Jefferson saw religion as private and therefore found priests unnecessary. He wrote in the same letter "I have ever thought religion a concern purely between our God and our consciences for which we were accountable to him, and not to the priests."[7] He only spoke about his own religious beliefs when he was asked to, and only in his private letters did he speak clearly of his beliefs.

Without supporting revealed religion, Jefferson subscribed to the moral teachings of Jesus. He stated this belief explicitly in a letter to John Adams in which he wrote that the moral code of Jesus was "the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man."[8] Jefferson even made a collection of Jesus' moral teachings from the Bible which seemed to be in their original simplicity. He used this collection as an ethical guide to his own life.

Jefferson's God was the source of moral values. In a letter to his nephew Peter Carr, he wrote that "He who made us would have been a pitiful bungler, if He had made the rules of our moral conduct a matter of science."[9] Rather, God made man "with a sense of right and wrong."[10] People were responsible for their actions on earth and would be rewarded or punished in some kind of afterlife.

More important than beliefs to Jefferson was the way people lived their lives. "I have ever judged the religion of others by their lives . . . for it is in our lives and not from our words, that our religion must be read."[11] In a letter to Adams, Jefferson concluded about religion: "the result of your 50 or 60 years of religious reading, in four words 'be just and good' is that in which all our inquiries must end."[12] This emphasis on behavior over belief was at the core of Jefferson's creed, although he did think that morality was connected to belief in God.

Jefferson based his belief in God on reason. In a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote that he believed in God because of the argument from design:

I hold (without appeal to revelation) that when we take a view of the Universe, in it's [sic] parts general or particular, it is impossible for the human mind not to perceive and feel a conviction of design, consummate skill, and indefinite power in every atom of it's [sic] composition. . . it is impossible, I say, for the human mind not to believe that there is . . . a fabricator of all things.[13]

After applying his faculty of reason, in which he placed much faith, Jefferson found that he had to believe in a creator.

Jefferson believed most aspects of the creator could not be known. He rejected revealed religion because revealed religion suggests a violation of the laws of nature. For revelation or any miracle to occur, the laws of nature would necessarily be broken. Jefferson did not accept this violation of natural laws. He attributed to God only such qualities as reason suggested. "He described God as perfect and good, but otherwise did not attempt an analysis of the nature of God."[14] Also in a letter to Adams, Jefferson said, "Of the nature of this being [God] we know nothing."[15]

Although Jefferson never gave a label to his set of beliefs, they are consistent with the ideas of deism, a general religious orientation developed during the Enlightenment. Jefferson, being a non-sectarian, did not subordinate his beliefs to any label. He once said, "I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever, in religion...or in anything else."[16]

Deism was not actually a formal religion, but rather was a label used loosely to describe certain religious views. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word deist was used negatively during Jefferson's lifetime.[17] The label was often applied to freethinkers like Jefferson as a slander rather than as a precise description. Thus the deist label is not highly specific. Deists were characterized by a belief in God as a creator and "believed only those Christian doctrines that could meet the test of reason."[18] Deists did not believe in miracles, revealed religion, the authority of the clergy, or the divinity of Jesus. Like Jefferson they "regarded ethics, not faith, as the essence of religion."[19]

"Nature's God" was clearly the God of deism in all important ways. That Jefferson included God in the "Declaration of Independence" is very significant because it helped lay the foundation for a civil religion in America. Paul Johnson addressed the civil religion begun by the founders in his article, "The Almost-Chosen People,"[20] saying that the United States was unique because all religious beliefs were respected. People were more concerned with "moral conduct rather than dogma." So Jefferson helped create a society in which different religions could coexist peacefully because of the emphasis on morality over specific belief.[21]

Endnotes

1. Thomas Jefferson, The Complete Jefferson, ed. Saul K. Padover (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1943), 28.
2. Henry Wilder Foote, The Religion of Thomas Jefferson (Boston: Beacon, 1947), 6.
3. Ibid., 57.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid., 55.
6. Jefferson, 955.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid., 951.
9. Arnold A. Wettstein, "Religionless Religion in the Letters and Papers from Monticello," Religion in Life, 46 (Summer: 1977): 158.
10. Ibid., 154.
11. Jefferson, 955.
12. William B. Huntley, "Jefferson's Public and Private Religion," South Atlantaic Quarterly, 79 (Summer 1980): 288.
13. Lester J. Clapton, ed., The Adams-Jefferson Letters (New York: Van Rees, 1959), 592.
14. Huntley, 79: 288.
15. The Adams-Jefferson Letters, 592.
16. Wettstein, 152.
17. J.A. Simpson and E.S. C. Weiner, eds., Oxford English Dictionary (Clarendon Press: Oxford, 1989), s.v. deism.
18. Marvin Perry, Western Civilization (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 1990), 280.
19. Ibid., 280.
20. Paul Johnson, "The Almost-Chosen People," American History, R.J. Maddox, ed., vol.I, 10th ed. (Guilford, Conn: Dushkin Publishing Group, 1989): 34-37.
Ibid., 37.

FVF

[FreddtFlash]

Does anyone know where I might find the 1853 report of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, in relation to the expediency of abolishing the office of chaplain in the public service?
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage...123&linkText=1

FVF

[Nanny]

James Madison believed in a transcendant Creator who ordined a Total Separation of Religion and Government as ordained by the Savior in Matthew 22:21. That belief was shared by most American's during the early years of the Republic.

During the early years, neither the federal government or many of the state government's issued religious recomendations via executive proclamation, posted religious commandments in courts and schools, legislated a recommendation to believe in "one Nation under God" or required the people's trust in God to be declared on the nations coins.

"The law of nature and nature's God" was a phrased coined by the Deists not by Christians. The "Natural law" advocated by Thomas Jefferson did not include the Bible or any form of "revelation."

Fred,
My point was that the founders appealed to a transcendent basis for morality. I recognize the influence of Kant and Hume with the emphsis on reason over revelation. I also know something about the Deists (or as they were called).

You may like to refer to another well-footnoted Koukl article in which he says "Thomas Jefferson was more Unitarian than Deist or Christian."
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=N...ter_friendly=1

In this same article, he documents that 51 of the 55 Constitutional Convention were Christians and would have been greatly influenced by Christian thought.

Question: Do you hold the necessity for a transcendent basis for morality? I think I've asked you this before.

Why should "Christians" be involved in politics? To encourage, promote or impose Christianity? To use the government to express their religion? Why?

I'll quote just one small part, but might I suggest you read again Koukl's entire article.

If the Church doesn’t stand in the gap giving substance to the words “good” and “evil,” then nothing prevents leadership from reversing the definitions, praising evil and punishing good. Tragically, this is already happening.

Certainly, Christians do not want to "impose Christianity" -- I've said it before. You seem to be on the defensive while, on the other hand, I believe the tide has turned in the other direction where Christians and Christian thought is being marginalized.

Your research also showed that (even) "Jefferson's God was the source of moral values."
Question: Do you agree that laws reflect moral values?

Hopefully, we're making progress.

[FreddtFlash]

Do you hold the necessity for a transcendent basis for morality?

No. Should I?

Certainly, Christians do not want to "impose Christianity" -- I've said it before. You seem to be on the defensive while, on the other hand, I believe the tide has turned in the other direction where Christians and Christian thought is being marginalized.

Too bad. The government is not one marginalizing it. Genuine Chiristianity cannot be marginalized. Are you familiar with the first 313 years of Christianity?

Do you agree that laws reflect moral values?

Some do. Sone don't. Some reflect concern for education, health and safety.

FVF

I am not receiving notices of new posts. Please send me an email @ 1slice@comcast.net when you post.

[Nanny]

No. Should I?

That puts you in opposition with the nation's founders.

Too bad. The government is not one marginalizing it. Genuine Chiristianity cannot be marginalized. Are you familiar with the first 313 years of Christianity?

If one lived previous to 300 AD, you'd be concerned about the lions. During Constantine, a Christian would be even more concerned about obligatory baptism, which imo was more dangerous to Christianity than the lions. However, I am a Christian and a citizen of the United States, and the danger here and now is apathy on the part of Christians and those who maintain traditional moral standards.

Some do. Sone don't. Some reflect concern for education, health and safety.

Please read my post #17. There is an element of right and wrong, justice and injustice, in every law. The debate is over what philosophical approach one takes. Maybe you'd like to tell how you determine right and wrong since you reject a transcendent basis?

I am not receiving notices of new posts. Please send me an email @ 1slice@comcast.net when you post.

I'll send you a PM. I think you can request to be notified when someone posts to a subscribed thread. Go to Control Panel. ... or maybe someone else who better knows their way around here can explain.

[FreddtFlash]

That puts you in opposition with the nation's founders.

What is your concept of a "transcendent basis?" When I discuss the founders I like to use the words that that used. What was their word for "transcendent basis?"

I am a Christian and a citizen of the United States, and the danger here and now is apathy on the part of Christians and those who maintain traditional moral standards.

Danger of what?

Please read my post #17. There is an element of right and wrong, justice and injustice, in every law. The debate is over what philosophical approach one takes.

Ok. I will do that and post a response later.

Maybe you'd like to tell how you determine right and wrong since you reject a transcendent basis?

I listen to my conscience. That's a transcendent basis, is it not?

I'll send you a PM. I think you can request to be notified when someone posts to a subscribed thread. Go to Control Panel. ... or maybe someone else who better knows their way around here can explain.

I have subscibed to this thread but I don't get notifications. Thanks for the PM my friend.

FVF

[Nanny]

What is your concept of a "transcendent basis?" When I discuss the founders I like to use the words that that used. What was their word for "transcendent basis?"

Nature/natural law was a philosophic presupposition, an attempt to find an absolute basis for law. This was the period of "enlightenment" and this veneration of Nature was discovered by reason. It was a transcendent base (absolute/objective), but inadequate in the area of morals. Nature is both peaceful and violent, etc.

The unique timing of the birth of our nation was that two streams of thought merged. The second stream that joined the "enlightenment" (natural law)was a religious one. The authority of Scripture (not the hierarchial church system) grew out of the Reformation; the Scriptures provided an objective, transcendent basis for morality. This moral consensus was not imposed by government; it was the result of personal belief. All were not Christians, but there was a general acceptance of Scripture (Judeo/Christian) as the basis for morality.

It was not the consensus that determined morality and law; it was the acceptance of an absolute/objective basis. See Justice pointing to the "Word of God" in painting by Paul Robert.

I listen to my conscience. That's a transcendent basis, is it not?

No. It is not an objective transcendent "absolute"; it is a subjective basis. The dictates of my conscience can vary, depending on the will. Lack of moral absolutes results in a fragmentation of both the individual and a society. There are long term results to short term, arbitrary decision making.

For instance, Materialism may speak of human rights, but w/o a sufficient absolute base in absolute truth, it can interpret, deny or apply the idea at will. That's why it has been said that our liberty eminates from a (transcendent) Creator, not the government. If the government gives liberty, it can take it away.

I would add to Mr.Koukl's excellent article that a second factor is necessary. That being serious minded Christians, rational/thoughtful Christians, who learn how to apply Scriptural principles to the decisions and policies of everyday life. Instead I fear we have faddish Christians, emotional Christians, superficial Christians, who give credence to the popular, distorted picture of Christianity that is used by the media and (sorry to say) the many of our academic elite. In addition to apathy, we have a deeper problem; our problem is not faith in politics, it is a lack of deep faith that was apparent in our early leaders.


Sorry for the delay. These are busy days for me.
N.