This Part B of the second installment of a series on Our Great U.S. Culture War.
American Biblical Worldview
When the thirteen colonies became thirteen united states, that America was 98.2% Protestant. The Protestant denominations had their differences, but they shared a focus, allegiance, and affinity to the Holy Bible. Furthermore, “dissenting” Protestantism is a unique view which is shaped and emboldened by shared experiences of persecution. This dissenting Protestant view was shared from the Puritans of New England to the Quakers and Palatinate Germans in the Middle Atlantic, to the Presbyterians on the Frontier to the Methodists and Baptists throughout the colonies after the 1st Great Awakening.
Our American Biblical worldview was inherited from Great Britain and reinforced by the common use of the King James Bible. The King James Bible was the lingua franca among Protestants from the most royalist Anglican to the most republican Baptist. The highly literate colonists in America knew the King James Bible. In fact, any person who wants to understand America – why it is as it is from the planting of a cross at Cape Henry, Virginia on April 29th, 1607 to today – must be Biblically literate.
Our American Biblical worldview included the following key points:
- The Christian God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit lives. God is unseen, but real and involved in every aspect of the world, nature, and people.
- Life is a sacred gift from God. Humans are created in God’s image.
- Law originates with God. The laws of nature are created by the Creator of nature. Consequently, they observed an evolving body of thought about “Natural Law.” Natural Law, like God’s explicit laws given in the Bible, is superior to man-made law. This includes the individual’s right of self-preservation over any law made by a king or a state.
- Individual rights come from God. Not man. Not tradition. Furthermore, God alone is just.
- Individualism is important. Humans find salvation as individuals. With salvation, comes individual responsibilities. Charity is a significant individual responsibility.
- God ordains personal property. Humans have a God-given right to own property. Furthermore, God ordains humans using their property to make a profit.
- Everyone who can work, must work. Individuals work to glorify God in the quality of their work.
- Wisdom is knowing God. God’s truth is truth.
- The Ten Commandments are the ethical and moral basis for society.
The Biblical worldview of early America is important today. The Left, as the Human Secularist Totalitarians they are, insist America never was a “Christian” nation. They create a Christian Nationalism boogey man to brand Christians exerting their rights as citizens as the new NAZIs or Taliban. They even make movie series, like the Handmaid’s Tale, to create a scary threat.
There may be a tiny smattering of Americans who want an exclusively Christian-peopled government run on their interpretation of Scripture. But, that crowd and the ever-mentioned White Nationalists would be hard-pressed to fill an old telephone booth in most places. It took drawing from a population base of over 80m Americans to get about 200 guys from hither and yon to carry tiki-torches to “Unite the Right” in Charlottesville in 2017.
On the contrary, the Biblical worldview of Dissident Protestantism is a legacy of “Christian” tolerance after the First Great Awakening. Especially among the Quakers and Baptists. That means honoring religious diversity, unless it threatens the existing religious expression, is embedded in our former consensus culture and American Civilization.
By 1776, America was a place where it was safe to be a professing Protestant, Catholic, or Jew. Individual Americans discriminated on the basis of religion, but legal and social discrimination diminished over time. Until today, when Christians are in the cross hairs for speaking and practicing their religion.
Yet, the argument about a “Christian” nation remains. It depends on the definition of “Christian” as an adjective to the noun – nation.
Is a country that is 98% Muslim called a Muslim country? America was 98% Protestant.
Is a country where, once, an over-whelming majority of the citizens have a Christian Biblical worldview – secular? Where the moral-ethical basis of society is explicitly Christian?
Is a country where the Federal executive, legislative and judiciary repeatedly write until the 1960s, “ America is a Christian Nation” (or country), something other than “Christian?”
Is a country where the King James Bible is the moral-ethical basis for law until the 1930s, not a Christian nation?
Did every action in America bespeak “Christian?” Regardless of how many definitions of Christian are used, the quick answer is “No.” People are people. Americans acted like the people of the Bible for good and evil, because the nature of human beings doesn’t change. Their culture changes. Consequently, their civilization changes. Christianity shaped American Civilization for the better.
In that respect, as John Adams famously wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” If 99.9% of the people are Protestant and Catholic Christians, it fits that our Constitution, hence our government, is intended for a Christian nation.
Next Issue
We’ll look the different Enlightenments which shaped two different revolutions. We’ll contrast those differences between the French Revolution’s worldview and the American Revolution’s worldview. We’ll finish the cultural assimilation in four sub-cultures and outline of the incipient, consensus American Culture. That new American Culture describes the basic tenets of what America was and what Americans agreed about themselves – upon winning our American Revolution
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