“While a democracy seeks equality in liberty, it cannot be established without morality, nor can morality be established except through faith.” (de Tocqueville: Democracy in America, 1835)
The founding documents of this nation, whose inspiration and subsequent penning became a beacon of hope for the future of the world, have now become intelligible to a vast majority. And, if it wasn’t for those same principles having been written in the hearts of some, America as bastion of liberty would have ceased to exist long ago. Those same few, who in turn, invested in the currency of future generations, gave hope that one day others would rise once again to carry the call and reignite the torch of freedom. That this nation was foraged in a furnace of passion and common cause was once common knowledge. A knowledge fed by an unquenchable fire of conviction, believing that through the willing sacrifice of a few, the many might be made free. Let us then remember Thomas Paine, English-born, colonial firebrand, who in his now famous publication Common Sense, set the stage of colonial resistance by saying: “Britain is the parent country of prejudice, leaving little affection among us for those fetters of previous affliction; for the same tyranny that drove the first immigrants from their original home to these very shores continues to pursue their descendants still.”
Yet through those trials, it was the Christian faith of our forebears which carried us through. As George Washington so aptly remarked: “Our pulpits became the very altar upon which the daily sacrifice was made. If it wasn’t for the fearlessness of our ministers, the fire of their exhortations and the light of their countenance, deep darkness would have surely have overcome us.“ And, there were many that fit that description among them, such as the Calvinist evangelical Jonathon Edwards, and theologian George Whitefield, Anglican priest and co-founder of Methodism.
These revivalist preachers not only helped ignite the Great Awakening of the mid-eighteenth century, but the American Revolution, even as Alexis de Tocqueville* said: “giving birth to a shared consciousness of innate human dignity and a rationale for independence among the people of the British Colonies in America.” This birthright was made even clearer by the Venerable Bede,* author of The History of the English Church, who commenting on the earlier birth of England and the unification of the Anglo Saxon kingdoms under Christianity, said this: “Our nation was not only founded upon a sense of common blood, race, and language, but a common mind.” And it was this mind which not only united the English people in purpose, but in a moral certitude, that liberty was their Christian birthright, and its preservation their solemn duty.
Even so, much like the Mosaic Law that was dispensed from Heaven, the democratic foundation of our own country rests upon the same basic principles: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your strength“, and that “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Mat. 22: 38,39) Yet, “how can they call upon Him, unless they believe…and how can they believe unless they first hear.” (Heb. 11:6) An it is that which ministers of the Gospel must preach, as “the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God.” (2 Cor. 10:4) And, being well-armed, we bring the sword of the Spirit to battle, “…which we bear not in vain, for although, as ministers of God, we are called to you for good, for those who do evil we are avengers to execute the wrath of God.” (Rom. 13:4)
Although belief, and accountability to a living God remains a matter of personal conviction, it is our faith in Him and His principles which forms the bedrock of a democratic civilization. Without which it soon devolves into a free-for-all, with everyone vying for their own self-interests, which leads inevitably to some form of tyranny By contrast, it is only through the process of faith and it’s conceptualization that the promised transformation of the individual can hope to materialize, from having been the weak and acquiescent to that of soldier with a cause – freedom not only for ourselves, but “that others might live” free.
*Venerable Bede (673-735). English monk at the monastery of St. Peter and Paul, Northumbria, England. Venerated as “Doctor of the Church” by Pope Leo X111 in 1899, and holding the Historica Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum – a quill, a biretta.
*Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859). French aristocrat, diplomat, and political historian. Best known for his works Democracy in America, The Old Regime, and Revolution, he remained skeptical of the extremes of democracy.
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