The spiritual heritage of the United States of America is notorious. Most of the most important American government leaders, institutions, monuments, buildings, and landmarks both openly acknowledge and incorporate religious words, symbols, and imagery into official venues. Such acknowledgments are even more frequent at the state and local level than at the Federal level, where thousands of such acknowledgments exist.
The Puritans in England’s colonial New England communities covenanted their citizens to realize the spirit as well as the letter of the law in their daily activities. There was an emphasis on self-control as a part of self-rule, the primacy of commitments based in consent, giving meaning to ideas such as justice and liberty.
But the early 17th century, the Renaissance movement had paved the way to the Age of Enlightenment questioning traditional authority and embraced the notion that humanity could be improved through rational change. The American and French Revolutions were directly inspired by Enlightenment ideals.
The Declaration of Independence (1776) follows the covenant form and, when linked to the frame of government supplied by either the Articles of Confederation (1781) or the U.S. Constitution (1787), established a national compact.
But! The Founding Fathers did not enter into a covenant with the God of the Bible. They founded a Republic modeled on Roman, Greek and Egyptian heritage spectacular demonstrated in the Greek and Roman influences on Washington, D.C. Architecture and absorption of conquered gods and practices.
Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, Monroe and many other of the Founding Fathers were Deists – a philosophical belief in human reason as a reliable means of solving social and political problems. Deists believe in a supreme being who created the universe to operate solely by natural laws—and after creation, is absent from the world. This belief in reason over dogma helped guide the founders toward a system of government that respected faiths like Christianity, while purposely isolating both from encroaching on one another so as not to dilute the overall purpose and objectives of either…
they not only respected and honored the gods of the newly conquered lands but often brought these foreign beliefs and practices with them back to Rome…As a consequence, in the name of religious tolerance and respect for all ancient traditions, the religious makeup of the Roman Mediterranean was radically transformed to the point that the Roman from the second century BC would not have been able to recognize the Roman religion of the third century AD as his own.
And certainly the religion of the Puritans is difficult to recognize in the churches of modern America.
Since its inception in 1776, the United States of America has been considered the world’s most prominent advocate for freedom and liberty. Its emphasis on liberty and equality results from this nation’s dedication to and founding upon the Christian proposition that all men are created equal by God. This idea is clearly defined by influential Americans…
“The far-reaching, the boundless future will be the era of American greatness. In its magnificent domain of space and time, the nation of many nations is destined to manifest to mankind the excellence of divine principles; to establish on earth the noblest temple ever dedicated to the worship of the Most High — the Sacred and the True. Its floor shall be a hemisphere — its roof the firmament of the star-studded heavens, and its congregation an Union of many Republics, comprising hundreds of happy millions, calling, owning no man master, but governed by God’s natural and moral law of equality, the law of brotherhood — of ‘peace and goodwill amongst men.” (O’Sullivan 1845).
Here’s the problem with that ideal. The Wealth of Nations is in fact a continuation of the philosophical theme begun in The Theory of Moral Sentiments. The ultimate problem to which Smith addresses himself is how the inner struggle between the passions and the “impartial spectator”—…the single individual—works its effects in the larger arena of history itself, both in the long-run evolution of society and in terms of the immediate characteristics…
In Economics, the word ‘land’…stands for all nature, living and lifeless.It includes all natural resources that we can get free from air, water and land…everything that we use can be traced ultimately to land. Land may be rightly called the original source of all material wealth. The economic prosperity of a country is closely linked with the richness of her natural resources.
What soon followed the establishment of the United States of America was NOT brotherhood, peace and goodwill amongst men.
A treaty of peace and friendship between the United States and Tripoli – a Muslim city-state that became part of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya – was approved by George Washington. It explicitly stated: “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion…”
As has happened to the American Christmas holidays.
Let me pause and make it clear that I’m not trying to incite riot against faiths other than Christianity. Not at all. I one hundred percent support freedom of religion in America as well as separation of church and state.
My point is that Christians who do get upset about their loss of primacy in the public sphere are utterly mistaken when they think they ever had it in the first place.
The controversial phrase “under God” was not added to the Pledge of Allegiance until 1954, under President / General Eisenhower’s urging as America’s international influence was growing after WWII. The original pledge, written for the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World, is clearly influenced by the recent American Civil War.
“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands — one Nation indivisible — with liberty and justice for all.”
This clarification becomes important when attempting to understand biblical concepts. People who misidentify America as a Christian nation are not just misled by false political leaders, they apply their misunderstandings to biblical accounts and are misled by false religious leaders.
There is a group in the US who brought out a film shortly before the 2018 midterm elections called The Trump Prophecy. This film likened the US president to Cyrus, the first emperor of Persia – a pagan used by God to bring about his purposes…
Sure, Cyrus was responsible for freeing the Jewish population from captivity in Babylon, but I think I missed the bit of the Bible where God’s people campaigned to be subject to his rule in the first place. It all sounds like an excuse for people desperate to justify voting for someone who Christians should be rebuking, not supporting.
…one thing I know for sure is that we are instructed to love God and to love our neighbour – and that means that someone who separates children from their mothers, bans Muslims from entering his country, and countenances torture, is worthy of rebuke…
The politicization and tribalism of Christianity is dangerous and, in the case of Trump, stands in direct opposition to the values of the saviour who…gave up his rights to save others rather than trampling on the rights of others to promote himself…
The choice of American Christians to publicly back Trump now, and George W Bush before him, has been a dangerous move in a culture war that now means that half of the US has its fingers in its ears when it comes to the gospel. My challenge to Christians in the US is this: what matters more to you, the identity of the person in the White House or the promotion of the good news about Jesus Christ?
America was founded on Renaissance Humanism at a time when the options were made very clear.
- The Protestant Reformation is a vivid example of how religious transformation could set in motion institutional changes, leading to profound consequences for economic and political development.” The Reformation had a considerable [positive] social, economic and political impact on Scotland. There was an attempt to improve the lives of the poor and to open new markets for trade…to increase the number of schools in Scotland. Literacy rates improved.
- Renaissance Humanism was focused on the ability of humans to act free from religious rules. Humanists thinkers make the most of life for themselves, not everyone else.
The difference between the results of the Reformation’s biblical enlightenment and the Renaissance’s secular Enlightenment could not be more stark.
The American Revolution came first, was influenced by French philosophers and financed by French interests. The French Revolution was fired by the success of the American Revolution.
France then took Renaissance Humanism to the next logical step. Rejecting accommodation of deism, France was the first Renaissance nation to deny religion altogether. Accepting only what the senses could experience, it set up the atheistic Cult of Reason. It replaced the Hebrew 7 day work week with Rome’s 10-day work week, and sacred days of worship with pagan sensual festivals.
Robespierre, one of the most influential leaders of the revolution, detested the amoral culture spawned by atheism. Believing, like Nietzsche did later, that belief in a god was necessary to achieve the virtue essential to a Republican form of government, Robespierre replaced the Cult of Reason by the Cult of the Supreme Being. Within the year Robespierre was executed, and his religious reformation wiped out.
Promising enlightenment through scientific discoveries, freedom from religious dogma, and political democracy for all classes the French Revolution rapidly degenerated into an orgy of blood, not just for France, but for most of continental Europe under the first of two lowly privates catapulted to Supreme Dictator of the reorganized Roman Empire seized from the Church.
Like Charlemagne who kicked off what became retroactively known as the 1st Reich with the “Holy Roman Empire,” Napoleon crowned himself Emperor in the presence of the Pope. This enhanced Napoleon’s intended impression, that he was the highest authority in France, more powerful than the Church.
Like Augustus Caesar before him, he already had absolute power through his position of First Consul for ife. Unlike Caesar, by doing this, Napoleon did away with the flimsy illusion of the Republic. Napoleon further undid any democratic reforms of the Revolution by re-establishing the French aristocracy, the French Court, and granting titles and land to those that served him well throughout his campaigns.
The second lowly private was, of course, Hitler with his Third Reich. Again with the Pope’s approval.
Do you see where I’m going with this?
In the updated edition of the classic treatise The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, the question likely to dominate international relations in the twenty-first century is; “Can China rise peacefully? The answer is no: a rising China will seek to dominate Asia, while the United States, determined to remain – get that, REMAIN – the world’s sole regional hegemon, will go to great lengths to prevent that from happening.
America is not One Nation Under God, any allusion to God by politicians is subterfuge, and Christians who think the President of the United States is going to save the world are most dreadfully mistaken. Humanists can only promise enhanced life in this body for a short time. Only a covenant with God can transform material existence and the horror of a disembodied soul into eternal life through resurrection by reconnection with his Singularity.
Kingdom Come 