Renewing American Leadership

Countering those historians who discount any distinctively Christian basis to this nation's past, Michael Novak, a distinguished Catholic philosopher and public intellectual, argues — in On Two Wings:  Humble Faith and Common Sense at the American Founding (San Francisco:  Encounter Books, c. 2002) — that America was established as an explicitly Judeo-Christian nation.  

"[T]he way the story of the United States has been told for the past one hundred years is wrong.  It has cut off one of the two wings by which the American eagle flies, her compact with the God of the Jews."

Reaching this conclusion, however, took him years of study to discover that "the way the story of the United States has been told for the past one hundred years is wrong.  It has cut off one of the two wings by which the American eagle flies, her compact with the God of the Jews" (p. 5).  The story of the Enlightenment (personified by Locke and Montesquieu, Jefferson and Franklin) and its role in shaping the nation has been effectively told.  Sadly neglected is the role of the Bible!  In fact, fully one-third of all citations in the works of the founders were taken from Scripture, whereas only ten percent cited Montesquieu, the most influential of all secular writers; even the most secular of the founders, Thomas Jefferson, suggested the Seal of the United States depict "'the children of Israel in the wilderness, led by a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.'  He later concluded his second inaugural address with this same image: 'I shall need ... the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessaries and comforts of life'" (p. 8). 

 

Jefferson incarnated what Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated, in his magisterial Democracy in America: "'There is no country in the world in which the boldest political theories of the eighteenth-century philosophers are put so effectively into practice as in America.  Only their anti-religious doctrines have never made any headway in that country.'  Indeed, Tocqueville went further:  'For the Americans the ideas of Christianity and liberty are so completely mingled that it is almost impossible to get them to conceive of the one without the other'" (p. 31).  At this point, Novak repeatedly emphasizes the statement of one of the most influential of the founders, Benjamin Rush:  "'A Christian cannot fail of being a Republican'" (p. 35). 

Sharing Rush's position in a 1807 letter addressed to him, John Adams declared: "'The Bible contains the most profound philosophy, the most perfect morality, and the most refined policy, that ever was conceived upon earth.  It is the most republican book in the world'" (p. 37).  Accordingly, Adams and his colleagues asserted their understanding of "rights" in religious rather than secular terms.  They were original rights, rooted "'in the frame of human nature, in the constitution of the intellectual and moral world,'" not granted by kings or parliaments (p. 78).

So Alexander Hamilton insisted:  "'The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records.  They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power'" (p. 132). 

 

Having established his position, Novak devotes the final sections of his book to answering "ten questions about the founding" and providing biographical vignettes of some of the "forgotten founders" (men who were both deeply religious and major 18th revolutionary leaders) such as George Mason and James Wilson, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay.  

"Today's overwhelmingly secular historians generally imply that all of the 100 founders were akin to the least religious of them-Franklin, Jefferson and Madison.  But, in truth: 'Virtually all the signers of the Declaration and Constitution were churchgoing men.'"

Today's overwhelmingly secular historians generally imply that all of the 100 founders were akin to the least religious of them-Franklin, Jefferson and Madison.   But, in truth:  "Virtually all the signers of the Declaration and Constitution were churchgoing men" (p. 129).  Hamilton, for example, routinely knelt by his bed and prayed before retiring and asked to take Communion while on his deathbed.  John Witherspoon, Princeton's Presbyterian president, exercised enormous influence in both the Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.   Digging into the original sources one finds persuasive evidence that this nation's founders were, in fact, deeply Christian men who openly relied upon their faith while establishing the United States of America.

  

Novak's skill in assembling the evidence — amply evident in his extensive citations — and setting forth cogent arguments makes this treatise both scintillating and persuasive.  

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Gerard Reed is a retired professor of history and philosophy, most recently Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. He is the author of three books--The Liberating Law; C.S. Lewis and the Bright Shadow of Holiness; C.S. Lewis Explores Vice & Virtue--as well as a variety of articles and book reviews.