Gary discusses a recent question answered by Vivek Ramaswamy about the American government “propping up” Christianity and Christian Nationalism.
Professor Stone is correct that there were traditional Christians and deists among the Founders. “Around the time of the American Revolution,” Robert Royal, president of the Faith and Reason Institute, writes that “a significant minority of the founders and the other colonists had been influenced by a moderate deism of the British sort that also retained strong elements of Christianity. Few, however, were deists properly speaking; most were out-and-out Christians.” The deists shaped their moral worldview from Christianity, picking and choosing what they liked and disliked and then constructed a hybrid religious model. Even Deism could not pass muster in today’s government schools.
Anyway, I don’t know how appealing to deists of any type helps Professor Stone’s case. There are few card-carrying members of the ACLU who would accept the religious tenets and political applications of eighteenth-century deists or even Unitarians. Deists and Unitarians believed in a personal and transcendent God and appealed to Him frequently in political discourse. If a candidate used deistic and Unitarian language in a political speech today, the ACLU would be the first to proclaim that such attributions were a clear violation of the “constitutional doctrine” of the “separation of church and state.”
I doubt that few Christians would disagree with Professor Stone’s statement that the Founders “believed that a benevolent Supreme Being had created the universe and the laws of nature and had given man the power of reason with which to discover the meaning of those laws.” I wonder if he would allow such a view to enter the discussion of human origins in a public-school classroom. If it was good enough for the Founders of our country, it certainly ought to be good enough for the young citizens of our country.
The rise of the New Atheists would nullify the claim that there is a “benevolent Supreme Being” who “had created the Universe.” They would also reject the notion that a Supreme Being “had given man the power to reason.” Professor Stone is doing what the deists did; he is borrowing from the Christian worldview to make his reason-alone worldview work. I suggest that he take time to study where an Enlightenment cut off from God will take us. It’s not a pretty picture with heads falling into baskets, blood running in the streets, and approval coming from receptive “citizens.”
Restoring the Foundation of Civilization
There are many Christians who will not participate in civilization-building efforts that include economics, journalism, politics, education, and science because they believe (or have been taught to believe) these areas of thought are outside the realm of what constitutes a Christian worldview. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Buy NowGary discusses a recent question answered by Vivek Ramaswamy about the American government “propping up” Christianity and Christian Nationalism. Aside from the fact that it’s so far from the truth, the questioner is asking from a secular/satanic/atheist perspective that has no basis for ANY morality other than “kill or be killed.”