The mission of Issues in Perspective is to provide thoughtful, historical and biblically-centered perspectives on current ethical and cultural issues.

This weekend we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.  It is indeed the founding document of our nation.  This anniversary reminds us of the importance of history and a proper understanding of that history.  How Americans view their history is important, for that narrative is what is taught in our schools and informs how we view current issues in their historical perspective.  Until fairly recently, there was a consensus among most Americans about that narrative.  No longer.  There are at least two competing narratives that dominate America’s educational curriculums and the various media outlets (e.g., cable television, the social media, and political commentary):

1. According to Damon Linker of the University of Pennsylvania, “The United States has stood for democracy and freedom since the time of its founding.  In the 20th century, the country began applying these ideals to its relations with the rest of the world, which it saved first from the specter of fascism in World War II and then from the threat of Soviet totalitarianism, which it battled around the globe over the next four decades.  Along the way, the United States built a liberal international order that brought peace and prosperity to countless millions on the American side of the Iron Curtain by championing the human rights of people everywhere.  Eventually, with the Soviets defeated, all the nations of the world were invited [to fulfill] the universal human longing for freedom and benefitting all those who adopt and affirm it.”  The founding documents of America—the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of 1787, along with the Bill of Rights—provide the anchor for the Republic that, through its history, has expanded the inclusive circle of citizenship—abolishing slavery, granting women the right to vote, etc.  In the words of Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address, America has been experiencing through its history “a new birth of freedom” with each generation.
2. The second narrative “begins not with the ideals of democracy and freedom but with settler colonialism wiping out the America’s Native populations to make land available for white development, chattel slavery fueling capitalist growth through the mid-19th century and then imperialism enabling the economic exploitation of societies abroad.”  This narrative loathes capitalism and views American foreign policy through the grid of imperialism.  For this narrative, everything America has done has been to secure access to abundant natural resources, cheap labor and vast markets for selling its goods.  Its history is one of exploitation and violence.  All of these opportunities are rigged to benefit the wealthy and powerful far more than anyone else in the social hierarchy.

I am a Christian historian, with three graduate degrees in history and historical theology, and I have published four books relating to history and the Christian worldview.  I share all this to demonstrate the difficulty I have as a Christian historian responding to either narrative, for the challenge in building a coherent Christian narrative of American history is the reality of human sin.  None of the early settlers from Europe, nor the nation’s founders, nor any of those who followed them were perfect.  As a Christian, I cannot justify or excuse the subjugation of Native Americans or the monstrous evil of racial, chattel slavery that dominated America, especially in the South, through the end of the Civil War in 1865.  Nor can I excuse the horrors of segregation and state-sponsored discrimination along with the denial of basic human rights that followed Reconstruction well into the twentieth century.  But this same nation also articulated high-minded principles in its founding documents that energized nations throughout the world to focus on human rights and freedom.  Furthermore, this nation built a formidable capitalist economy that attracted immigrants from around the world, who sought human freedom and economic opportunity.  Despite all its inconsistencies and sin, America has been a force for human flourishing around the world.  To deny this is an act of intellectual dishonesty.

So, let me respond to these competing narratives with several comments resulting from decades of teaching, writing and thinking about the discipline of history. How does the Bible equip us to realistically study history, learn from its lessons and apply universal truths from the Word to our lives?  A biblically-centered philosophy of history has several aspects:

1. A Christian philosophy of history posits the absolute sovereignty of God.  He rules over His universe and is working all things according to His wise plan.  Sovereignty is an assuring attribute of our God, for it means that nothing is out of His control and that ultimately He will triumph.  Daniel 4 illustrates that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar needed to learn that “the Most High rules the kingdom of men and gives it to whom He will and sets over it the lowliest of men ,”(Daniel 4:17, 25,ESV).  Furthermore, the Apostle Paul asserts that our submission to the state is based on the proposition that God created the state and puts in power whomsoever He wishes: “For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God” (Romans 13:1, ESV).
2. History is linear.  Worldviews such as Hinduism, Buddhism and New Age pantheism all argue for a cyclical view of History.  (A belief in reincarnation illustrates this approach to history).  But the Bible asserts that space-time history has a beginning point—Creation in Genesis 1—and has a specific end point—Revelation 21-22, the New Heavens and New Earth.  Everything along the line of history is superintended by the sovereign will of God.
3. History has a telos, an end or purpose to which it is moving.  The overall purpose of history from God’s perspective is redemptive.  God is reconciling this rebellious planet to Himself through the death, burial and resurrection of His Son.  He is in the process of eradicating evil from His world by becoming a victim of that evil.  His Son is reclaiming this planet from Satan who successfully usurped that authority through enticing Adam and Eve to join His rebellion (see Genesis 3).  The telos of history from God’s perspective is the return of His Son, the establishment of His physical, literal kingdom and the collapse of the rebellion, the end of sin and evil and the triumph of His kingdom of light.  That redemptive plan has a cosmic nature to it as Paul so clearly argues in Romans 8:18-25. Finally, the ultimate telos of history is to bring glory to God.  The concluding chapters of Revelation demonstrate that when the rebellion is finally crushed and sin and evil are banished in the lake of fire, all of creation will be singing praises and giving glory to God, the One who redeemed them and who vindicated Himself through His redemptive plan.
4. A Christian approach to history also understands the human condition, which is sinful and in conscious rebellion against God, His moral law and His sovereignty.  Indeed, 1 John 3:4 defines the heart of sin as “lawlessness.”  Sin is not what we do; it is what we are.  Humans are born with the guilt and corruption of Adam and are in absolute rebellion against God.

The coming of World War I demonstrated this aspect of the human condition.   No matter how much wealth or how much easier life was because of technology, the heart of the human being remained “lawless.”  The most prosperous, wealthy, sophisticated, scientifically adept nations of the world in 1914 embarked on an insane course that killed 20 million people.  Human history is littered with examples of such irrational lawlessness.  Only God, through the finished work of Jesus Christ can cure such irrational lawlessness!

With this framework in mind, what can we argue about the founding of America as a nation?

• An important foundational milestone in America’s history occurred in the summer of 1776:  Five religious ideas connected deists and evangelicals across British North America.  In the desire for independence from Great Britain, there was both a commitment to political liberty and to religious liberty.  As historian Thomas Kidd argues, these ideas informed and influenced the writing of the Declaration of independence in 1776 and the US Constitution in 1787:  

• The disestablishment of all state churches.

• The idea of a Creator God who is the author and guarantor of fundamental human rights.

• The reality of human sin as a threat to the new republic.

• The republic would be sustained only by religious virtue.

• God, in His Providence, moved in and through nations.  In short, they believed that God was raising up America for some special purpose.  A civic spirituality emerged which believed that God had a special purpose for America.  There was a redemptive aspect to the American Revolution; the cause of America was the cause of Christ, many believed.

• The influence of John Withersppon, president of the [Presbyterian] College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), especially on James Madison, the father of the US Constitution, cannot be ignored.  [Madison stayed at Princeton an extra year after he graduated in 1771 to study Hebrew.]  The Presbyterian form of church government had similarities with the American Republic in that the people choose their own representatives to the General Assembly (GA) and the idea of a union of all presbyteries in the GA.  Witherspoon taught his students that a balanced political structure would prevent the abuse of power.  He also taught total depravity and thus the need to check the natural tendency to vice and political corruption.  Madison was convinced that a balance of power and a system of checks and balances would prevent this from occurring in the new republic being established in America.  Witherspoon taught that political and religious liberties would only be preserved through both public and private virtue, which was tied to personal faith.  [In addition to Madison, Witherspoon’s students included a vice president, 12 members of the Continental Congress, five delegates to the Constitutional Convention, 49 US Representatives, 28 Senators, and 3 Supreme Court justices.]

• The desire for independence was a movement to guarantee political liberty and religious liberty.  The latter was a product of the First Great Awakening, which had these results:

• 200,000 conversions with 350 new churches
• New colonial colleges to further train ministers
• Split Presbyterians and Congregationalists
• New denominations—Baptists, Methodists
• Stress on Missions after revivals, especially to Native Americans (e.g., David Brainerd)
• Colonial unity thanks to Whitefield and itinerant preachers: He preached to all Protestant groups; the Gospel is what unified them, not their denominational distinctives
• Denominationalism takes hold in colonies
• A postmillennialism that saw America as the center of God’s kingdom work in the world
• A deepening conviction that Americans did not want an established church.  The leaders of this conviction were Jonathan Mayhew and Baptist Isaac Backus.

Jonathan Mayhew (1720-1766): An eloquent proponent of the idea that civil and religious liberty was ordained by God, Jonathan Mayhew considered the Church of England a dangerous, almost diabolical, enemy of the New England Way. The bishop’s miter with the snake emerging from it represented his view of the Anglican hierarchy.  He was an Arminian (free will) theology in a largely Calvinist culture. His teaching on the Godhead was a precursor to Unitarianism. In his support for personal liberty, he opposed the unpopular Stamp Act imposed by Britain on the colonies, apparently coining the slogan “No taxation without representation.”

Isaac Backus (172401806): Considered a leading orator of the “pulpit of the American Revolution,” Backus published a sermon in 1773 that articulated his desire for religious liberty and a separation of church and state. Called An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, Against the Oppressions of the Present Day, Backus stated: “Now who can hear Christ declare, that his kingdom is, not of this world, and yet believe that this blending of church and state together can be pleasing to him?” In 1778, he authored a historically important work entitled Government and Liberty Described and Ecclesiastical Tyranny Exposed.

The Christian philosophy of history produces balance, realism and hope.  History is not filled with random events carried out by random actors on a random stage called earth.  The irrational lawlessness of humanity has been overcome by the triumphant Jesus Christ.  All humanity needs to do is embrace the gracious gift of salvation that He offers.  History is moving along a line over which God sovereignly superintends events to accomplish His redemptive plan for His purposes and for His glory.

See Damon Linker’s review of the book Bland Fanatics in the New York Times Book Review (1 November 2020), p. 9; and Thomas S. Kidd, God of Liberty: A Religious History of the American Revolution.