The Religious Foundation of a Free Society

The Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Educa­tion.

We live in a time of great un­easiness, when the values of the free society which we cherish are being seriously challenged; chal­lenged not only by imperial com­munism abroad but also by dubious ideologies here at home. Even if by some miracle the communist challenge vanished overnight and the international scene ceased to trouble us, there is every reason to believe that we have enough do­mestic problems to keep us busy for the next generation.

Outwardly, everything seems prosperous. Nearly everyone who really wants to work can find a job. Automobiles are bigger, fas­ter, and more numerous. Restau­rants and places of entertainment are crowded. There are increased opportunities for travel and rec­reation. In the cultural fields of religion and education, there is much activity. New church build­ings are springing up everywhere, and increasing numbers of people are participating in religious ac­tivities. In education, likewise. Year by year, we are spending a larger proportion of our income on schooling. More young people are in college every year, and com­munities all over the land are en­gaged in a mighty school building program.

All of these things should give us a sense of satisfaction; but they don’t. There is probably more discontent now among our people than at any time in the history of this country. We view with alarm the rising incidence of crime and juvenile delinquency, the mount­ing problems of alcoholism and drug addiction. Then there is in­flation, causing prices to rise while at the same time it dilutes the value of our savings accounts and insurance policies. Government grows larger all the while, mark­ing the stampede away from per­sonal responsibility which occurs at all levels of life.

A recent writer has remarked that "this is the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. Our land," he continues, "is populated with laundrymen who won’t iron shirts, with waiters who won’t serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with business­men whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule so that achievements cannot be rewarded nor poor work punished, and with students who take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think." How did we get ourselves into such a mess, and how can we get ourselves out of it?

Perhaps the most helpful way to face up to our present situation is to look at our past history. If we wish to recover faith in ourselves and in our free society, we must understand what this faith is and what it meant to earlier genera­tions. A new nation was brought forth upon this continent. What was it like, and what was the source of its strength and ideal­ism?

During the nineteenth century, the world of the defeated and the oppressed looked to America as a land of liberty and justice for all. In large numbers, people came here to find freedom for them­selves and for their children. It goes without saying that they didn’t always find what they were seeking; reality, here as every­where, fell short of the professed ideal. But even when the ideal failed to show through the prac­tice, it was never wholly without influence; for this ideal was in­scribed in a basic national docu­ment, the Declaration of Indepen­dence, for all to see and many to memorize.

Emblem of American Ideals

The Declaration of Independence was once the emblem of American idealism. The America of a former day was not a mere place; it was more than a geographic area. America was a world-wide symbol of the enduring human quest for a country in which each person might be free. Most of us refer to the Declaration now and then and do so with reverence, but how many of us have read the Declara­tion of Independence recently and read it carefully? It is worth read­ing and re-reading and it repays careful study.

The Declaration, in paragraph 1, refers to "the laws of nature and nature’s God." In paragraph 2, the signers of the Declaration say that, as far as they are con­cerned they believe or accept as axiomatic, the proposition that the Creator endowed men with certain rights. Other men might hold that "rights" are granted by the State, or else have a purely naturalistic basis; "we hold" that these rights have a supernatural derivation, i.e., they are God-given. The Cre­ator is sovereign. In other words, our Declaration of Independence has a built-in religious dimension; and the importance of this fact is underscored by the absence of a similar dimension from a compa­rable document issued in 1789, thirteen years after our own Dec­laration, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citi­zens.

A Study in Contrasts

The French Declaration, wish­ing to set forth "these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights" says: "The national assem­bly doth recognize and declare, in the presence of the Supreme Be­ing, and with the hope of His bles­sings and favor, the following sacred rights of men and citizens." It will be noted that, although the Supreme Being is mentioned, he is invoked as a mere gesture of formality; he is not acknowledged as the source of human rights. What then is this source accord­ing to the French Declaration? Paragraph III tells us. "The na­tion is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individ­ual, or any body of men, be en­titled to any authority which is not derived from it." The French and American Revolutions are, in short, based on contrary princi­ples.

The American dream was not of a sovereign people, which in practice comes down to mere ma­jority rule; the American dream has at its center the individual person, endowed by God with cer­tain rights which no other indi­vidual nor combination of individ­uals may properly transgress. Gov­ernment itself must respect these individual rights, and government serves the ends of freedom and justice by punishing any trespass on these private rights.

This same respect for the indi­vidual and this recognition of his rights and immunities which we find in the Declaration is reflected also in our Constitution. The men who drafted the Constitution did not design a streamlined political structure. James Madison and the others had been once burnt by gov­ernment, and they were twice shy. They created a political structure in which the federal government was to be internally self-governed by three separate but balanced powers, and the several states were to retain their original sovereignty in order to act as a counterpoise to the central authority. This en­tire political equilibrium was bal­anced on the sovereign individual; the only excuse for government was to secure him in his rights. The Founding Fathers knew that a free government implies an un­free people, so in the interests of personal liberty they pinned down their government to strictly limit­ed, defined, and delegated func­tions.

A Great Religious Tradition

Where did the Founding Fathers get this generous estimate of man? They were students of history, and we know from their writings that they were thor­oughly acquainted with the social and political institutions of ancient Greece and Rome. But we also know the Founding Fathers could not have derived their vision of a free society composed of sover­eign persons if they had not looked beyond the institutions of ancient Greece and Rome, for both these societies were founded on human slavery. Hilaire Belloc, the his­torian, describes this aspect of the Greco-Roman world: "The struc­ture and stuff of society was based upon and rooted in slavery…. Slavery became a mechanical and oppressive burden weighing upon the human spirit and giving its tone to all." Then came Chris­tianity into this world, and the power of ancient despotism was weakened. Christianity starts from man as an individual person, en­dowed with an immortal soul striving for its salvation. Wher­ever this doctrine is accepted, there is no longer a nation composed merely of oppressor and oppressed. Before the State, there is now the person, and above the State, there is God, his love and his justice common to all men.

The Founding Fathers were the inheritors of a great religious tra­dition and the American dream of a society of free men was largely a projection of that religion. This is how the original American equa­tion got its built-in religious di­mension. But this equation no longer balances because the reli­gious elements in it have been dis­carded or forgotten. In a sense, we have been merely coasting on a momentum once given to us and with which we have now lost con­tact. Such an analysis helps us understand, I think, the discontent and uncertainty to which I re­ferred earlier.

A Solid Foundation

The American dream was built upon a religious foundation. And this was noted by a young French­man who came to these shores to study us back in the 1830′s, Alexis de Tocqueville. "Religion," he said of us, "is the first of their political institutions." Political liberty is the limitation of government to the securing of men in their rights, and because these rights derive from religious premises, political liberty needs to rest on a religious foundation. To employ a figure of speech, political liberty is a check drawn against the capi­tal stock of our religious heritage. When a check bounces, the infer­ence is that there are no funds in the bank. Similarly, we cannot go on drawing upon our religious heritage unless we systematically replenish it. How do we rehabili­tate our religious heritage?

I wish it were possible at this point to offer you a simple answer. I wish it were possible to say that all we need to do is go back to church. But the answer is not so simple. Many of the most artic­ulate church leaders of our time are part of the problem, not part of the remedy. They have sought to use the churches for their own ends, and so we are often presented with a counterfeit faith. But there are churches of all faiths which "proclaim liberty throughout the land," and at least they point the direction in which we must look for our answers. The men of such churches once created the Ameri­can dream, and the men of such churches today can, if they will, recreate it.