I’m suspending Friday Freethought Perennials for a while in favor of alternating essays from two men I deeply respect. One of these, Michael E. Buckner, is my son and has been one of the two or three most important people in the world to me for over 50 years—and he’ll be presenting the side I firmly agree with. The other, Jay Lucas, is pastor of Grace Community Church in Washington Courthouse, Ohio. I not only respect Jay—I like him. Despite my strong bias in favor of Michael, I pledge even-handedness in this cordial exchange. The two will take turns presenting essays based on their opening statements in a debate back on 16 March on “America's Foundational Documents: Christian or Secular?” (see my Letter on 12 March for more detail), then at least one rebuttal each. The actual order will be:
MEB (Declaration)
JL (Declaration)
JL (Constitution)
MEB (Constitution)
MEB (Rebuttal)
JL (Rebuttal)
With more to follow if both men agree more is warranted—conclusions, perhaps, or second rebuttals, or concurrences for either or both that minds have been changed.
Both understand that they can include links, footnotes, referrals to the writing of others, etc. —and that they need not adhere too closely to their actual debate remarks.
Both have agreed to this process.
First up, Michael—
MEB in November 2005 in Memphis, TN (nothing to do with this exchange—his father just likes this photo)
Michael E. Buckner: The Declaration of Independence
I’d like to thank Jay Lucas and the congregation of Grace Community Church for having me here, and for having this debate. I join Pastor Lucas in hoping that we Americans can continue to talk to each other with civility and respect, both here tonight and throughout our country, regardless of our differences (however important those differences may be). The belief in individual liberty and in the basic dignity of every person is—and I hope will always be—a bedrock American value. We sorely need to be able to respect one another, and respect one another’s basic rights and freedoms, as Americans and as human beings, regardless of our beliefs as to the ultimate source of those freedoms, and of that dignity we all have as thinking beings.
For this first segment, on our Declaration of Independence, the answer to the question posed in the title of this debate (“America's Foundational Documents: Christian or Secular?”) is really “neither one.” As we’ll get to later on, the United States Constitution is an entirely secular document: the word “God” (like the words “Jesus,” “Christ,” “Christianity,” or “Bible”) simply doesn’t appear anywhere in our country’s fundamental legal document. The Declaration of Independence, on the other hand, clearly has philosophical roots that are not wholly secular, but neither are they necessarily Christian, and still less are they Biblical. Certainly the Declaration speaks of “Nature’s God,” of a “Creator,” a “Supreme Judge,” and of “Divine Providence.” None of these phrases is unique to Christianity—there are no references to Jesus Christ or to the Trinity—but none of them is necessarily antithetical to Christian belief either. The Declaration was mainly written by Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was clearly not an atheist; beyond the words of the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson spoke often of his belief in a Supreme Being. Jefferson is normally described as a “Deist,” a follower of a rationalistic belief-system that includes belief in a single God, but generally denies any occurrence of miracles, or of the existence of some authoritative revelation of God beyond the evidence of the human senses and of human reason. The most philosophical of the Deists are often said to have believed only in a “watch-maker” God, who created the world—who “wound it up” like an old fashioned time-piece—but then simply let the world run its course without interfering any further in his creation. But on this point at least, this does not seem to have been Jefferson’s Deism: Jefferson’s God was no mere “watch-maker” God. While Jefferson denied any belief in miracles, he did speak of the notion of Divine Providence, and he clearly believed that his Supreme Being’s creation of humanity had a strong moral purpose: The creation of rational, thinking beings, and the endowment of liberty upon those rational beings.
But to say that Jefferson was not an atheist does not mean that he was a Christian either. Jefferson, in his own words, denied that Jesus was God, or the Son of God, or that he had been resurrected. Jefferson did not believe in original sin, or that the death of Jesus Christ had served to atone for the sins of humanity.
[Letter from Jefferson to William Short, October 31, 1819 https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-15-02-0141-0001]
Jefferson famously made his own “Bible,” literally cutting and pasting—with a razor blade and glue—sections from the Gospels, leaving out their references to the miraculous or the supernatural. While we may perhaps question the scholarly rigor of his exegesis in this exercise, this was clearly not the work of someone we would say is a “Christian” without a lot of explanation of what we mean by that word. Jefferson strongly opposed the idea of entangling religion and government—he famously supported a “wall of separation between church and state.”
[Letter to the Danbury Baptists, January 1, 1802 https://usconstitution.net/jeffwall.html]
Jefferson supported religious liberty for “the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan [that is, Muslim], the Hindoo and infidel of every denomination.” [Autobiography of Thomas Jefferson, https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_religions45.html] And nowhere in the Declaration of Independence are there any citations of Scripture.
Jefferson’s Declaration does ground its theory of human rights in Jefferson’s Deism: We are created equal and “endowed” by a creator with inalienable rights—life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (In the seventeen centuries between the apostles and the American revolutionaries, a great many Christians had very firmly rejected any view that all men are “equal”; on what no doubt seemed to them to be excellently Christian grounds, they believed instead that humans are divided into those of “noble blood” and those who are “commoners.”) But the Declaration’s theory of government is distinctly un-Biblical. In the Biblical view of government, governments are instituted by God: God’s chosen people are initially led by men directly appointed by God, by the prophets and by the Biblical “judges.” Later, when Israel gets a king—Saul—he is chosen by Samuel, a prophet, acting on direct divine inspiration. When Saul is removed from power and replaced with David, it is not due to an act of the people, but again is a matter of direct, divine intervention In the New Testament—the thirteenth chapter of the letter to the Romans—the Apostle Paul declares that rulers and governments have been established by God, and that it is a duty instituted by God to obey those rulers. And it’s worth pointing out here that Paul is speaking of the pagan and at times tyrannical Roman Empire—of Caesar. At the time of our revolution, the ideas that kings either ruled because they had been crowned with the blessings of the Church, or else that they ruled absolutely “by the grace of God,” had dominated in Christian political thought for over a thousand years. While a Christian might properly refuse, on religious grounds, to obey a tyrant who commands his subjects to idolatry, the Bible clearly teaches—again in Romans, chapter 13—that the payment of taxes is not dependent on one’s “representation” in government, but is commanded by God as a moral duty.
In contrast, in the theory of government laid out in the Declaration of Independence, governments derive their power not from God, but from the consent of the governed. People institute governments, for their “safety and happiness” (and not for the salvation of their souls) and people retain the ultimate power to alter or overthrow those governments. This is a revolutionary theory of government, not a Biblical one. “No taxation without representation!” was of course one of the great rallying cries of the American revolutionaries. The list of grievances the American revolutionaries present against George III tends not to hold our attention as much as the Declaration’s grand theories of human rights and of the source of government authority. Still, it’s worth pointing out that the American revolutionaries in 1776 had no specifically religious complaints against their king. They were not accusing George III of forcing them into the worship of false gods, or of being the sort of blaspheming tyrant who would demand that the people set up idols in his image upon their altars. George III was, after all, a Christian king. The concerns of the American revolutionaries were in the here and now: There are demands for proper representation in government, and for respect for the people's elected legislatures. There is a complaint that George III has obstructed immigration to the country. That he has failed to respect the independence of judges. That the king has “erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.” That he has maintained standing armies and threatened to subvert the subordination of the military to the civil power. That he has taxed the American colonists without their consent, and interfered with their free trade with the rest of the world. It is very clear that, at least with respect to the causes that impelled them to demand separation from Great Britain, the American revolutionaries were concerned with things of this life, and not of the afterlife (regardless of what views many Americans then and now may have about an “eternal life” beyond this one).
This non-Christian theory of government authority shouldn’t be taken to be an anti-Christian theory. As we’ll see when we discuss our Constitution, the theory of government found in our Declaration of Independence has guaranteed the liberties of all Americans—atheist or religious, Christian or non-Christian—and has allowed all of us to pursue happiness, whether we conceive of our happiness in secular or religious terms. A government that derives its powers not from anyone’s claim of divine right but from the consent of the governed is a far better safeguard for everyone’s freedom and prosperity. It should hardly be controversial, even to believing Christians, that there have been far more people in history who have claimed to be speaking by God’s inspiration than anyone could possibly agree were actually doing so. To allow any politician to cloak himself with such authority seems rather blasphemous, and is surely dangerous. The Bible says “Put not your trust in princes” but for many centuries Christians did put their trust in princes—all too often to their own detriment. The great teaching of the American Revolution was that, rather than political leaders being “higher powers...ordained of God,” they are public servants, chosen by and accountable to the people. Human leaders are always fallible, and it is therefore always necessary to limit and check their power—through a constitution, through a free press, through free and fair elections, through such means as the separation of powers and the federal structure of our republic, and through all the democratic institutions of a free people. Such limits are fundamentally incompatible with rulers who claim to be ruling in accordance with a divine commandment—whether of the Christian God, or Allah, or the pagan gods of ancient Egypt or Babylon or Rome.
While the Declaration of Independence is not the framework of our government—we’ll get to that a bit later on this evening!—it has certainly continued to influence American ideas about liberty and government. The Declaration’s Deistic (but not specifically Christian) proclamation that “all men are created equal” was invoked by the Abolitionists and the leaders of the Civil Rights movement, while all too often, defenders of slavery were able to quote from the Bible: As it says in the Epistle to the Ephesians: “Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ.” For nearly a quarter of a millennium Americans of all sects and denominations—and Americans of no religion—have worked and struggled together to ensure the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for every American, regardless of race or creed or class.
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VERY nicely said!
Looking forward to the respectful, enlightenment of the back and forth to come.
Cheers, K