Michael Buckner and Jay Lucas Debate on America's Founding Documents--Part Four (Michael Buckner on the US Constitution)
12 July 2024
I’ve suspended 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 order will be:
MEB (Declaration)—Friday, 21 June
JL (Declaration)—Friday, 28 June
JL (Constitution)—last Friday, 5 July
MEB (Constitution)—12 July (today)
MEB (Rebuttal)—19 July
JL (Rebuttal)—26 July
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.
Today, Michael Buckner on the US Constitution—
The US Constitution
Michael Buckner
With regard to the Declaration of Independence, the answer to the question posed by this debate—“Christian or secular?”—was properly “Neither one.” With regard to the United States Constitution, the answer is completely unequivocal: Our constitution is absolutely a secular document. The words of the United States Constitution are neither Christian nor Biblical, they are entirely secular—that is, not anti-Christian, but concerned with this life, in this world. The Constitution follows the Declaration of Independence in grounding the authority of government in the consent of the governed—“We the People...do ordain and establish this Constitution”—and political authority is not something handed down by God, whether by accident (or divine providence) of birth or by any religious anointing. Where the Mayflower Compact had proclaimed that the establishment of the colony at Plymouth was being done “for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith,” the purposes of our Constitution are of this world, not the next: forming a more perfect Union, establishing justice, insuring domestic tranquility, providing for the common defense, promoting the general welfare, and securing the blessings of liberty—NOT the insuring of the salvation of souls, or providing for the preaching of the Word of God.
The government established by our Constitution is given a lengthy list of responsibilities, from regulating international and interstate commerce, to fixing the standards of weights and measures, to promoting the progress of science and the useful arts by protecting patents and copyrights. Nowhere in that list of responsibilities is there anything to do with the saving of souls, or the promulgation or protection of orthodox religious doctrine. And quite notably, there is no invocation of God, or of the authority of the Bible or of the Christian religion, to be found anywhere in our Constitution (or in any of its amendments).
Not only does our Constitution not ground its authority in any kind of mandate of Heaven, or even invoke the approval of the Almighty in the most rhetorical of ways, the Constitution in fact provides that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”; wherever our Constitution calls for someone to take an oath—including the President’s oath of office—it invariably explicitly allows for an affirmation instead. In the First Amendment, our Constitution goes on to deny Congress any power to establish any religion, while guaranteeing the free exercise of religion for everyone, without any of the exceptions that pre-Revolutionary documents all too often had. (Thus, Maryland’s 1649 Act of Toleration prohibited persecution of anyone who accepted Jesus Christ as savior and professed belief in the Holy Trinity, but proclaimed the death penalty for anyone who denied those basic Christian beliefs.) Our Constitution thus broke with centuries of religious persecution in European civilization, including in its colonial American offshoots—of requirements that state must project, not just Christianity, but the right kind of Christianity, while suppressing other ideas—not just non-Christian ideas, but often especially the “wrong” kind of Christianity. By grounding the power of government in the consent of the people, and by refusing to claim any religious basis for the state, the framers of our Constitution put into practice a truly revolutionary idea, something which had never been seen in many centuries of both Christian and non-Christian thought. From the dawn of history, states had been conceived of as having a religious basis. Kings (and later the magistrates of city-states in such places as ancient Greece or Rome) had been understood for thousands of years to have a sacred duty to see to it that the gods of the tribe or the state were properly worshiped. Our Constitution proclaims one of the fundamental purposes of government to be establishing justice, but for many centuries “justice” had been held in Christian societies to include the persecution of “heretics” and the protection—by the state, by force—of the truth of this or that denomination of Christianity. Before the Protestant Reformation, the medieval Church propounded the idea that public theological disagreements among Christians were not merely occasions for open discussion and debate, but were crimes; and that secular authorities must repress heresy, by the force of law, up to and including the application of the death penalty. Early Protestant confessions of faith were also quite clear that civil rulers had the right and duty to maintain the unity of the Christian church—by force—and to that end, had the authority to suppress “blasphemies” and “heresies.” [Original Westminster Confession of Faith]
As Americans we reject the idea—which had prevailed among Christians for centuries—that secular authorities must enforce religious uniformity, or combat religious “error,” just as we have rejected hereditary monarchy and aristocracy. Our Constitution instead proclaims the secular principles of full religious liberty and of full equality of citizenship, without regard for creed. In this we reject centuries of religious persecution and religious strife, very often of Christian against Christian. We have instead acted to ensure equality before the law for Christians (of all denominations) and non-Christians alike, and protect the liberty of every American, regardless of his or her beliefs.
In protecting the liberty of everyone, including Christians of every denomination as well as of non-Christians of every stripe, our secular Constitution also insures domestic tranquility. It was one of the great insights of the framers of our Constitution that separating religion from government, and establishing a secular state with religious liberty for all, is one of the best defenses against religious strife, and the perils of religiously-motivated civil war. For centuries before our own Revolution, it was widely believed that—even aside from genuine religious conviction—that civil peace required uniformity of religious opinions, and that secular rulers needed to enforce such uniformity simply in order to maintain order. What our American experiment has shown is that it is not uniformity in religion, but liberty concerning religion, and a secular state where religion and government are separated, that is the true guarantee of domestic tranquility. Humans will never agree on theology (at least not short of divine intervention), but our great experiment in secular government shows that we can all cooperate—and debate!—on how to solve our problems in the here-and-now, while also peacefully arguing with each other about the hereafter.
I hope that in pointing out that our Constitution is secular I will not provoke Christians to turn against our form of government. That is certainly not my intent. The secular conception of government of our Constitution is in no way anti-Christian. It is not the state atheism of 20th century Communist states. As James Madison, the principal drafter of our Constitution, wrote:
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution. —[https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/historic-document-library/detail/james-madison-memorial-and-remonstrance-against-religious-assessments-1785 Madison Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments]
Madison also wisely observed that
…religion and government will both exist in greater purity, the less they are mixed together —[https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/04-02-02-0471 Letter to Edward Livingston, July 10, 1822]
I am not a religious believer, and never have been. But I would think that even the most devout of believers—especially the most devout of believers—will understand that the excessive entanglement of their religious faith with the world of politics—with all its messy yet necessary compromises—will, as Madison observed, corrupt and debase that religion. Most especially, any Church which becomes established or supported by the state risks becoming a mere vehicle for power and not a vehicle for truth or grace.
There is also an insidious idea that it is impossible to have neutrality; that everything must be either Christian or anti-Christian, and that believers and non-believers can simply have no common ground on which to even speak to each other. But we can surely recognize that there are things in this world that are either true or false, good or bad, not on the basis of Christianity or of secular humanism or of any other religion or ideology, but in and of themselves. The principles of mathematics are not dependent on our belief in God or lack thereof. An atheist or a Christian can look at a house and agree as to whether that house has been built poorly or well—whether its walls are solidly constructed and its roof leaks or doesn’t leak. As President John Adams said of the new American constitutions being enacted throughout the states of our newly independent nation:
It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had any interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the inspiration of heaven, any more than those at work upon ships or houses, or labouring in merchandize or agriculture: it will for ever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses. —[A defence of the constitutions of government of the United States of America]
It should also be understood that many devout Christians have understood the desirability of secular government as a guarantee of true religious liberty and a protector of the integrity of the Church as well as the peace of the State. As the Revolutionary War patriot—and Baptist preacher—John Leland said:
Is conformity of sentiments in matters of religion essential to the happiness of civil government? Not at all. Government has no more to do with the religious opinions of men than it has with the principles of the mathematics. Let every man speak freely without fear—maintain the principles that he believes—worship according to his own faith, either one God, three Gods, no God, or twenty Gods; and let government protect him in so doing, i.e., see that he meets with no personal abuse or loss of property for his religious opinions.
Leland also proclaimed that
The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. ... Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another.
In the words of Leland’s fellow Baptist preacher, Isaac Backus:
Religious matters are to be separated from the jurisdiction of the state not because they are beneath the interests of the state, but, quite to the contrary, because they are too high and holy and thus are beyond the competence of the state.
There are a number of quotations from some of this country’s founders about the necessity of the citizens of a Republic displaying virtue; that without civic virtue no Republic can survive. This position is often framed in theological terms, even—it must be admitted—by some of those Founding Fathers themselves. As an atheist, a secular humanist, and a political liberal (in the broadest sense of that term as well as in the more narrow American partisan sense) I have increasingly come to believe that this view—that no Republic can survive if its citizens are not, on the whole, virtuous—is entirely correct. I would, however, maintain that this necessary virtue—this sense of morality and decency—should not be conflated with any theological point of view. As Thomas Jefferson said, “It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are 20 gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” What we require of our neighbors and fellow-citizens is not a particular set of beliefs about God but that they respect the basic rights and fundamental dignity of their fellow human beings, that they value truth over lies, kindness over cruelty, and that they show a willingness to work for the common good—that citizens display the virtue of patriotism. Whether they derive these common virtues from Christianity, from secular humanism, or from some other religious or philosophical system is beside the point. And a secular government is a fundamentally more moral government than a government with a religious basis—a government, like ours, that recognizes that we will never agree about religion, but that we can agree about basic decency, and respects the dignity and freedom of every person.
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