Essential Christian Character of the United States of America
The founding of the United States began the unprecedented and formerly unimaginable improvement in the human condition around the world that we enjoy today. Comprehending the chart (below) can there be any doubt of the powerful and positive benefits of the faithful and consistent application of Christian belief, republican government and capitalism? Seven facts require our utmost, unwavering and reverent attention:
1. The stunning revelation and realization of human potential only began with the creation of the United States; it did not happen during the many centuries before, and there can be seen no other prime mover since;
2. The United States was founded by Christian men and women, largely inspired by Scottish Presbyterians, dedicated to the ideas of personal independence with political, economic and religious freedom. They demanded individual liberty and equality; and with personal freedoms, accepted personal responsibilities – values carried forward in a clear line by the Gaelic Clans from the mists of antiquity, to Iona and into the character of the Scottish people and the philosophical accomplishments of the Scottish Enlightenment. To put the necessary very fine point on it, there was no other race, culture, nation, philosophy or religion that provided for such true human progress;
3. Products of the Scottish Enlightenment, our Founders were perhaps the best educated people of all time, extraordinarily well versed in classical literature, logic, rhetoric, history, political theory and moral philosophy;
4. Following some trail-and- error and great debate, the Government they created is a Constitutional Republic; a government of laws with checks and balances on power across three separate but equal branches administered by elected representatives and their appointees acting in accordance with the consent of the governed;
5. They believed that the success of the Government, and so the Nation, depended upon public virtue, whereby the great common good trumped narrow personal interests; and further, that this public virtue was dependent upon a personal virtue, whereby Man acted for right against wrong; and lastly, that personal virtue was dependent upon the faith of an organized religion;
6. So strongly did our Founders believe in the necessity of organized religion as the foundation for the morality vital to the success of the American Experiment, that they designed the government to ensure freedom of religion, not freedom from religion. The phrase separation of church and state often fallaciously bandied about is not in any of our founding documents, but rather in a private letter of Thomas Jefferson’s to a Baptist congregation concerned about religious discrimination. The point of Jefferson’s letter was to assure the Baptists that the Federal Government would not adopt one religion over another; not that America would be an irreligious Nation.
7. The final point to be made is Jesus said that salvation was available to everyone, as all men were purely equal in the eyes of God. Following Christ is a personal choice. Likewise, accepting the emancipating ideas of representative democracy with the catalyzing ideas of capitalism are personal choices. While the legacy of the Clans though the Scottish Enlightenment developed the ideas of representative democracy and capitalism, they are available to all as personal choices. The beauty, power and Truth is that there are no proprietary rights to salvation or freedom; in America, as with and from Jesus, each and every one are equally free to chose and equally graced to benefit.
Scotus
chart: Angus Madison, Statistics on World Population, GDP and Per Capita Income, 1 – 2008AD, IMF
photo credit: American Flag with Cross, Birmingham Christian Family