The American Crisis: A Crisis of Faith

In December 1776, with the outcome of the Revolutionary War very much in doubt, Thomas Paine penned the now-famous words in his pamphlet, The American Crisis: “These are the times that try men’s souls: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from service of their country: but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered: yet we have this consolation with us, the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph…” Called the pamphlet that “saved the Revolution,” these words were written during the Revolutionary Army’s retreat from New York.

The Commander of the Revolutionary Forces, George Washington, understood the power of Paine’s words. After imploring his men to stay on for one last effort, General Washington ordered that The American Crisis be read aloud to his dispirited troops to give them reason to persevere. Three days later - on Christmas Day - Washington’s ragtag army crossed the Delaware River during a Nor’easter and routed the Hessian garrison at Trenton. The small but much-needed victory in the Battle of Trenton galvanized Revolutionary forces. Inspired by their victory, Washington’s men decided to re-enlist, and soon after, his forces won another key engagement in the Battle of Princeton. The tide of the war had begun to turn.

As America approaches her 250^th birthday, she is again a nation in crisis. Unlike the first American Revolution – that involved a crisis of courage needed to persevere against a superior foreign military force - the current crisis does not involve armed conflict against an external foe. The present Revolution is an internal battle, a deeply spiritual struggle. The American crisis is a Crisis of Faith.

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Once upon a time, there was no United States of America. There were thirteen disparate colonies that were ethnically, culturally, and racially diverse. The Founding Fathers saw diversity as a reality and as a problem. The national motto e pluribus unum – meaning “out of many, one” – was chosen by a committee of the Continental Congress consisting of Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and John Adams - and reflected this reality and their longing for national unity.

Politicians who claim, “Diversity is our strength,” are wrong; diversity without unity is not a strength but a weakness. Today America has more e pluribus and less unum than at any time since the Civil War.

What could reunite us?

On July 4^th, 2012, President Barack Obama spoke from the White House during a Naturalization Ceremony to a group prepared to take the oath of citizenship. The President began with a greeting: “Happy 4^th of July. What a perfect way to celebrate America’s birthday - the world’s oldest democracy with some of our newest citizens…. Today, you raised your hand and have taken the oath of citizenship. And I couldn’t be prouder to be among the first to greet you as ‘my fellow Americans’.”

“We are a nation of immigrants,” the President said, “Unless you are …a Native American, we are all descended from folks who came from somewhere else…whether they arrived on the Mayflower or on a slave ship…” Americans, he said, are those “bound together not simply by ethnicity or bloodlines, but by fidelity to a set of ideas.”

In his closing remarks, President Obama stated, “Even though we haven’t always looked the same or spoken the same language, as Americans, we’ve done big things together…The basic idea of welcoming immigrants to our shores is central to our way of life, it is in our DNA…. We believe our diversity, when joined together by a common set of ideals, makes us stronger…”

It’s true – when joined together by fidelity to a common set of ideals, diversity makes America stronger!

From the beginning, this nation was not only racially, ethnically, economically, and culturally diverse, but Americans also held to different beliefs. We are now as we were then ideologically and theologically diverse. It is important to understand basic similarities and differences between a theology and an ideology.

First, theologies and ideologies are both based on a set of beliefs, and both involve a “step of faith.” For ideologies, beliefs are secular; for theologies, beliefs are sacred. The difference between a theology and an ideology is the object of their faith.

Next, ideologies, like theologies, have a starting point. At the risk of over-simplifying their differences, the starting point of an ideology is man, and the starting point of a theology is God.

On July 4^th, 1776, the United States of America was founded upon a common set of theological beliefs. These sacred principles are embodied in the Declaration of Independence, which proclaimed: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness…”

The Declaration of Independence was not less than “an expression of the American mind” as Thomas Jefferson believed it was much more: it was an expression of Americans’ faith. This document was at once their declaration of independence from Great Britain and their declaration of dependence upon God. The shared faith in the Creator revealed in the Declaration was the spiritual glue that united this country.

Beginning in 1776, America went through what historians call the American Revolution. In 1818, John Adams – a signer of the Declaration and this nation’s second president - wrote to a friend to share his perspective on the roots of that Revolution:

“[W]hat do we mean by the American Revolution? Do we mean the American War? The revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the Minds and Hearts of the People. A Change in their religious Sentiments, of their Duties and Obligations. This radical change in the Principles, Opinions, Sentiments and Affections of the People was the real American Revolution.”  

When John Adams said the real American revolution occurred before the Revolutionary War, what did he mean? Adams was referring to the First Great Awakening, occurring between the 1730s and the 1770s. It was a revivalist movement beginning within Christian churches of the fledgling nation and spreading to the hearts and minds of the people more broadly. The First Great Awakening produced a “radical change” in the religious sentiments of the American people. Oxford-educated English historian Paul Johnson agreed, “…The American Revolution is not conceivable without the religious background…the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event…”  

If a radical change in the religious affections of the American people produced the first American Revolution, could a radical change in the religious sentiments of the American people be the root cause of this nation’s current revolution?

We cannot hope to grasp the source of the current revolution without understanding the origins of America’s first revolution. Few understood America's founding spirit better than Calvin Coolidge, the only president born on the Fourth of July.

On July 5^th, 1926, President Coolidge spoke from the “sacred ground” of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pa., where 150 years earlier, the Declaration of Independence was adopted, saying, “…It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history…

“There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence, which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity…

“In its main features, the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man – these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We cannot continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause…

“About the Declaration, there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thought and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward, toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction cannot lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient than those Revolutionary fathers…

“To understand their conclusions, we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought … While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence, they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were people who came under a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.

“No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the alter fires before which they worshiped….

“It is not so much, then, for the purposes of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken…”

Saying, “Governments do not make ideals…ideals make governments,” Coolidge’s’ entire speech is worth reading, not least as a response to claims that we have somehow moved beyond the wisdom of the Founders.

The Declaration bound together the diverse peoples of this vast nation through their fidelity to an interlocking framework of theological principles, setting forth both human rights and corresponding moral obligations. It provided the new nation with a Divine kernel of moral authority and a Divine blueprint for moral guidance. It set forth God-given truths concerning the equality of all races, but America has not consistently lived up to this high standard.

Oxford University Professor C.S. Lewis believed such failures are to be expected, saying all moral systems “agree in prescribing a behavior which their adherents fail to practice. All men alike stand condemned, not by alien codes of ethics, but by their own.” Yet our shortcomings cannot diminish these timeless truths - truths that once guided Abraham Lincoln, who proclaimed, “…I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence…” 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood the religious foundations on which America was built. In 1965, during a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, he affirmed the Founder's faith, saying, “You see, the Founding Fathers were really influenced by the Bible. The whole concept of the imago Dei… is the idea that all men have something within them that God injected…and this gives them uniqueness…there are no gradations in the image of God. Every man, from a treble white to a bass black, is significant on God’s keyboard precisely because every man is made in the image of God.”  

Before this God, all lives matter all the time.

Americans still admire Dr. King’s lifelong commitment to defeating segregation and racial discrimination through peaceful protest, but a growing number no longer share his views concerning the significance, dignity, and worth of every human being. A secular spirit has taken root in America that reveals itself in the words of the late U.S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes Jr., who said, “I see no reason for attributing to man a significance different in kind from that which belongs to a baboon or a grain of sand.”

Scientific atheist Richard Dawkins agreed: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”

In a purposeless universe, human life is a pointless accident.

An unbridgeable spiritual gulf separates those who hold competing faith positions concerning the origins of life on Earth. Dr. King recognized this spiritual chasm but viewed mankind through a spiritual lens. He believed that all men are created equal but understood that all men are not born equal; some are smarter, some are stronger, some are born into power, prosperity, and privilege, others are born into poverty, and so on.

Rev. King's vision of liberty, equality, and justice rested upon his theological convictions that we are “all God’s children.” He understood that if God does not exist, then, strictly speaking, we are “a child of the universe,” which is to say, a purposeless, pointless accident, no more significant than a baboon or grain of sand.

King believed the self-evident truths embedded in the Declaration and, along with British author George Orwell, recognized the dangers of abandoning those truths. In his award-winning novella Animal Farm, Orwell suggested that every political system or ideology founded upon the proposition that “all men are equal” always evolves into a system holding that “all men are equal, but some are more equal than others.”

Dr. King knew the truths embodied in the Declaration could only be defended in the context of the verb created with its reference to a transcendent Author and his purposes. He refused to renounce these ancient truths in favor of an emerging Secular creed.

With its motto, “To save the soul of America,” the modern civil rights movement succeeded because it was animated by Dr. King’s view of God and man. King believed a spiritual perspective is vital for proper understanding. His dream was that as Americans come to see each other rightly, they will be moved to treat each other rightly: ebony and ivory living together in perfect harmony.

Kings’ views were touted by President Joe Biden, who, in the run-up to the 2022 mid-term elections, spoke to the country during a nationally televised address, saying, “My fellow Americans, America is an idea — the most powerful idea in the history of the world.  And it beats in the hearts of the people of this country.  It beats in all of our hearts. It unites America. It is the American creed. The soul of America is defined by the sacred proposition that all are created equal in the image of God….”

Biden’s words appealed to traditionally religious Americans, but they left many to wonder, “How can the ‘sacred proposition’ unite all Americans when it can’t even unite all Democrats?”

Many in Biden’s television audience remembered the 2012 Democrat National Convention when President Obama realized that Democrats, in their haste to craft their platform, had left out the word “God.” So as not to appear godless, a floor vote to amend the platform was taken. To pass, the amendment required a two-thirds vote of all delegates present. When Antonio Villaraigosa, the moderator, called for a vote to insert God into the platform, the voices of secular delegates responded with a vigorous “no” twice. On the third attempt to pass the amendment, the “nos” were louder than ever. Visibly frustrated, Villaraigosa announced the amendment passed – even though everyone, including millions watching on T.V., knew it hadn’t. This spectacle prompted the quip, “Democrats were against God before they were for him.”

The response of Secularist delegates to the proposal to introduce God into the Democrat Platform was swift, unscripted, visceral, and hostile. Their reaction gave all traditionally religious Americans a peek behind the curtain into Secularism’s determined battle for the soul of the Democrat Party and, ultimately, the soul of the nation. But the path of Secularism will not lead to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, only to totalitarianism. As Nobel laureate T.S. Eliot warned, “If you will not have God…you should pay your respects to Hitler or Stalin.” 

Biden’s televised comments also raised a question concerning human rights: Where does the notion of human rights come from if there is no Creator? The idea that nature endowed mankind with inalienable rights and corresponding moral responsibilities is absurd, as Russian philosopher Solovyov sarcastically expressed:

“Man is descended from apes; therefore, we must love each other.”

Ironically, it was the atheist philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche who understood the concept of human rights asserted in the Declaration of Independence does not have its origins in nature but in religion: “Another Christian concept, no less crazy, has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity: the concept of the ‘equality of souls before God.’ This concept furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights…”  British author G. K. Chesterton agreed, observing, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence…(which) …does by inference condemn atheism since it clearly names the Creator as the ultimate authority from whom these equal rights are derived.”    

In their battle for the soul of the nation, the Secularist strategy for victory is set forth in, among other writings, the Humanist Manifesto II, where the authors state: “Faith commensurate with advancing knowledge is …necessary…”  These Humanists “affirm a set of common principles that can serve as a basis for united action” and then put forth seventeen articles of their secular faith, urging “that parochial loyalties and inflexible moral and religious ideologies be transcended.”

Written in 1973, the authors of the Humanist Manifesto II announced that the time had come for man to move beyond his “illusory and harmful” faith in the Creator revealed in the Declaration and, instead, place his faith in science, technological progress, and mankind itself: “No deity will save us; we must save ourselves.” They proclaimed, “The true revolution is occurring… the next century can and should be a humanistic century.”

What is the nature of the “true revolution”? The American Secular Revolution has resulted in a different kind of conflict, what British author Dorothy Sayers described in as a “war of dogma.”

This war was on display in September 2017 during the confirmation hearing of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who had been nominated to serve on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. After questioning Barrett at length, the late Democrat Senator Diane Feinstein remarked, “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”

Feinstein was referring to the “dogma” of Barrett’s Roman Catholic faith. Feinstein was concerned that Barrett’s belief in the sanctity of human life might cause her to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing unrestricted abortion on demand. Feinstein’s words revealed that while she opposed Barrett’s particular brand of dogma, she embraced a competing brand of dogma - which lived loudly within her.

Informed by her traditional religious faith, Barrett believed the life of the unborn person is sacred. Informed by her secular political faith, Feinstein believed “a woman’s right to choose” is sacred. These competing and conflicting commitments to what is sacred, wrote Sociologist James Davison Hunter, reflect “two different ways of apprehending reality of ordering experience, of making moral judgments. Each side in this growing conflict speaks with a different moral vocabulary, and each represents the tendencies of a separate and competing moral galaxy. They are worlds apart.” This, writes Hunter, is “…conflict at its deepest level.”

The cordial exchange between Barrett and Feinstein belied what was underneath: a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God, the nature of man, and the ultimate nature of the universe. This brief give-and-take pointed beyond itself to the “war of dogma” at the heart of our national disunity and division.

President Biden has correctly observed, “There can be no unity without consensus.” But with no broad-based allegiance to a shared set of unifying beliefs, there is little common ground for political consensus. As a nation, we are in gridlock: stuck, unable to move forward or back. As Sayers wrote, “To our horror and surprise, the foundations of (our) society are violently shaken, the crust of morality that looked so solid splits apart, and we see that it was only a thin bridge over an abyss in which two dogmas, incompatible as fire and water, are seething explosively together.”

Understood in this way, what President Biden called “the battle for the soul of the nation” is not a political or cultural war but a deeply spiritual battle. The real cause of the current revolution is the radical change in the religious sentiments of the American people. The political polarization and cultural conflict Americans experience are but symptoms of the deep spiritual struggle engulfing the nation, merely the tip of the proverbial iceberg.  

Why do Secularists wage this war? Their hearts long for peace.

Augustine wrote, "Any man who has examined history and human nature will agree…that there is no such thing as a ‘human heart’ that does not crave for joy and peace.”  According to Augustine, “Their battles are but bridges to …peace.”

The goal in this war, as in every war, is peace … peace on their terms. In this war, “Winning isn’t everything,” as Coach Lombardi told the Green Bay Packers, “It’s the only thing.”  

In this war, the principle battlefield is not the ballot box or the voting booth. First and foremost, it is a spiritual battle … a battle for the heart.

Sadly, the “sacred proposition” that once united Americans is now at the heart of what divides us. No longer joined together by fidelity to a common set of ideals, our diversity divides us and makes America weaker. If America was ever “One Nation, Under God,” she has become “One Nation, Divided by God.”   

In The Clash of Civilizations, Harvard’s Samuel Huntington noted that since 1776, “The Creed…has been the cement in the  structure of this great and disparate nation.” But Huntington raised a crucial question: What happens to this nation if a significant portion of her citizens disavow the principles of America’s Creed? He concluded, “Rejection of the Creed …means the end of the United States of America as we have known it.”  

With creeds in conflict, America is a nation in crisis: A crisis of faith.

More than any public figure of his generation, Abraham Lincoln grasped the peril threatening the very existence of the Republic were a sizeable number of Americans ever to forsake the sacred principles upon which the nation was founded, ominously warning:

“A house divided against itself cannot stand.”

During another season of crisis, Lincoln cried out to the nation, saying, “Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines conflicting with the Declaration of Independence, let me entreat you to come back to the sacred principles in that immortal emblem of Humanity…” 

Lincoln knew the roots of the sacred principles were not to be found in political or secular ideologies but in the religious convictions of the people. In calling them to return to these eternal truths, he urged the people to renew their faith in the God whose transcendent, unshakable ideals once bound together the people of this great and disparate nation. Lincoln wisely refrained from offering political solutions to what was a spiritual problem; there are no political solutions to a spiritual problem.

Again referring to the enduring primacy of the sacred principles, Lincoln said, “These communities, by their representatives in Old Independence Hall, said to the world of men: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’…[T]hey erected a beacon to guide their children, and their children’s children … that their posterity might look up again to the Declaration of Independence and take courage to renew that battle which their fathers began, so that truth and justice and mercy and all the humane and Christian virtues might not be extinguished from the land….”     

And during the darkest days of the Civil War - moved by his love for the people and the nation - President Lincoln proclaimed a Day of National Humiliation, Fasting, and Prayer, saying, “…We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven; we have been preserved these many years in peace and prosperity; we have grown in numbers, wealth and power as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us…”

Lincoln closed his National Proclamation saying earnestly, “It behooves us, then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness…”  

Lincoln's appeal to his generation rings truer than ever, yet on the day Americans pause to honor an imperfect nation founded upon perfect principles, questions remain: Will Americans come back to the God of our sacred principles? Can Americans humble themselves and pray to the offended Power for the forgiveness of our personal and national sins? Is it too late, or could our renewed faith in the sacred proposition of the imago Dei revive the soul of America?

Heaven only knows.