"Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: Christianity and the Creation of the American Republic" by Mark David Hall

Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: Christianity and the Creation of the American Republic

Mark David Hall

This article is part of our “Law, Religion, and the Constitutionalism” series.
If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here.

This essay was originally published on June 16, 2020 in Cato Unbound: A Journal of Debate

The Liberty Bell is one of the most prominent symbols of American freedom. It is inscribed with the words “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof,” which are taken from Leviticus 25:10. In Did America Have a Christian Founding?, I contend that the connection between the Bible and liberty is no accident. America’s founders drew from their Christian convictions, and ideas developed within the Christian tradition of political reflection, when they created a constitutional order committed to protecting and expanding freedom.¹

The book’s argument is, to put it mildly, controversial. Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation asserts that the Bible and liberty are fundamentally incompatible.² Similarly, Matthew Stewart proclaims that the skeptical philosopher Benedict de Spinoza is the “principal architect of the radical political philosophy that achieves its ultimate expression in the American republic…”³ Both authors agree that America’s founders were deists who created a godless Constitution and desired the strict separation of church and state.

Far too many scholars make similar claims. For instance, the historian Frank Lambert writes that the “significance of the Enlightenment and Deism for the birth of the American republic, and especially the relationship between church and state within it, can hardly be overstated.”⁴ University of Chicago law professor Geoffrey Stone likewise writes that “deistic beliefs played a central role in the framing of the American republic” and that the “Founding generation viewed religion, and particularly religion’s relation to government, through an Enlightenment lens that was deeply skeptical of orthodox Christianity.”⁵ Even prominent Christian college professors such as Richard Hughes contend that “most of the American founders embraced some form of Deism, not historically orthodox Christianity.”⁶

In this essay, I argue that there is no good reason to accept the common claim that “many” or “most” of America’s founders were deists. Positively, I discuss different ways in which America’s constitutional order benefited from the founders’ Christian convictions.⁷ I defend these positions at greater length in Did America Have a Christian Founding? and look forward to discussing them in more detail here.

Were the Founders Deists?

No serious scholar disputes the fact that virtually every American of European descent in the founding era, with the exception of about 2,000 Jews, identified himself or herself as a Christian. Approximately 98 percent of Americans were Protestants, and the remaining two percent were Roman Catholics. But these facts are not particularly useful. These citizens may have been Christians significantly influenced by non-Christian ideas, or they may have been Christians self-consciously attempting to create a secular political order.

More interesting is the debate about whether the founders were orthodox Christians or deists. By “orthodox,” I mean that they adhered to fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith as articulated in the Apostles’ or Nicene Creeds. “Deism” refers to an intellectual movement that emphasizes the role of reason in discerning religious truth. Deists reject traditional Christian doctrine such as the incarnation, virgin birth, atonement, resurrection, trinity, divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, and miracles. The last point is critical; unlike most Christians, deists do not think that God intervenes in the affairs of men and nations.⁸ In Alan Wolfe’s words, they believe that “God set the world in motion and then abstained from human affairs.”⁹

These citizens may have been Christians significantly influenced by non-Christian ideas, or they may have been Christians self-consciously attempting to create a secular political order. More interesting is the debate about whether the founders were orthodox Christians or deists.

Popular authors and scholars who assert that America’s founders were deists inevitably support their claim by describing the religious views of some combination of the following men: Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Thomas Paine, Alexander Hamilton, and Ethan Allen. On occasion, they reach beyond this select fraternity to include another founder, and they usually concede that not all founders were as “enlightened” as the ones they profile.

There is no doubt that Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Allen, and Paine rejected more than a few basic tenets of orthodox Christianity. Yet, to my knowledge, no writer has ever produced a public or private journal entry, letter, or essay showing that Washington, Madison, or Hamilton denied any basic Christian teaching. The case that they were deists is usually based on some combination of observations that they seldom used familiar biblical appellations for God or Jesus Christ, did not regularly attend church, chose not to become communicants, and/or did not always act in a moral manner.

Having an extra-marital affair as Hamilton did, or even rejecting the incarnation as Jefferson and Adams did, does not make one a deist if deism includes the idea that God is a “Creator or First Cause who subsequently stood aside from his creation to allow it to run according to its own rules.”¹⁰ With the exception of Ethan Allen, all of the founders mentioned above often spoke or wrote about God’s intervention in the affairs of men and nations. If they believed such claims, then by definition they were not deists as the term is commonly defined.

To give just two examples, in the Constitutional Convention Franklin noted that “[i]n the beginning of the contest with Great Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the divine protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered…the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs the affairs of men.”¹¹ Franklin was the oldest delegate at the convention, and his proposal to open each day in prayer was seconded by Roger Sherman, an indisputably pious man who was the second oldest member. The delegates did not act on the suggestion, but Madison nevertheless suggested that God was involved in the proceedings. In Federalist #37, he wrote: “It is impossible, for the man of pious reflection, not to perceive in it [the Constitutional Convention] a finger of that Almighty Hand, which has been so frequently and signally extended to our relief in the critical stages of the revolution.”¹²

Of course, one could argue that Franklin and Madison were referring to God’s intervention merely for rhetorical purposes. There is little doubt that similar statements by Paine and Jefferson are best understood in this way. Yet it is abundantly clear that Washington, Adams, Hamilton, and, at the end of his life, Franklin, believed that God regularly intervenes in the affairs of men and nations.¹³ Thus, using the common definition of deism, it is difficult for a careful scholar to identify more than a handful of civic leaders who may accurately be categorized as deists.

Recognizing this reality, some authors have proposed a definition of deism that permits God to intervene in the affairs of men and nations, sometimes referred to as “soft deism,” “warm deism,” or “providential deism.” If we accept this revised definition and ignore the lack of evidence that Washington, Madison, and Hamilton rejected orthodox Christianity, we might make a case that the eight founders referenced above were some sort of deists. Yet if these men were not representative of other founders, this finding suggests little with respect to the founding generation.

“Signing of the Constitution” by Thomas P. Rossiter / Wikimedia CC0

Consider the background and experiences of the founders regularly called deists. Washington, Jefferson, and Madison were elite southern Anglican plantation owners. Hamilton was born and raised in the British West Indies, and Paine was born and raised in England, and he lived only twenty of his seventy-two years in America. Paine came from a Quaker background, and as adults Hamilton and Franklin were nominal Anglicans. In an era where few people traveled internationally, Jefferson and Adams spent significant time in Europe, and Franklin lived most of the last thirty-five years of his life in Britain and France. The only life-long member of a Reformed (Calvinist) church among these founders is John Adams (but he is not a good representative of this tradition).

By way of contrast, in his magisterial history of religion in America, Sydney Ahlstrom observed that the Reformed tradition was “the religious heritage of three-fourths of the American people in 1776.”¹⁴ Similarly, Yale historian Harry Stout states that prior to the War for Independence “the vast majority of colonists were Reformed or Calvinist.”¹⁵ With the exception of Adams, these Americans are unrepresented by the handful of founders regularly discussed by those who contend the founders were deists. In social science lingo, these eight founders are an unrepresentative sample.

In the final analysis, there is no reason to conclude that “most” or even “many” of America’s founders were deists. This is not to say that they were all orthodox Christians. There is abundant evidence that Samuel Adams, Patrick Henry, John Jay, Roger Sherman, Oliver Ellsworth, John Witherspoon, and many others embraced and articulated orthodox Christian views. But the lack of records makes it difficult to speak with confidence with respect to some founders. Accordingly, I do not argue that most of America’s founders were orthodox Christians. Instead, in my book and below, I focus on the influence of Christian ideas on America’s founders.¹⁶

Christianity and America’s Constitutional Order

Scholars and popular writers regularly assert, in the words of Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, that the “U.S. Constitution, drafted in 1787 and ratified in 1788, is a godless document.”¹⁷ If by this they mean simply that God is not referenced in the text of the Constitution, they may have a point. But it is a trivial one.

Article VII proclaims that the Constitution was framed “by the unanimous consent of the States present the seventeenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty seven” (emphasis added), but some scholars argue that the dateline is not technically a part of the Constitution. The Constitution assumes some Christian practices, for example that the government will not operate on Sunday. Article I stipulates that “any bill not returned by the president within ten Days (Sundays excepted)…shall be law.” These two provisions offer some evidence that the Constitution is not godless, but there are far better reasons for rejecting the assertion that America has a godless constitution.

Before considering the Constitution per se, we should explore a more abstract, but essential, conviction that the founders had regarding self-government. With few if any exceptions, every founding era statesman was committed to the proposition that republican government required a moral citizenry, and that religion was necessary for morality. James Hutson of the Library of Congress suggests that this argument was so widespread that it should be called the “Founding generation’s syllogism”¹⁸

For instance, when George Washington left the presidency he published an essay commonly known as his “Farewell Address.” In it, he observed that:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indisputable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duty of men and citizens…¹⁹

Examples of founders insisting that religion is necessary for morality, and that both are necessary for republican government, could be multiplied almost indefinitely. Their view was that if republican government is to work, people need to respect each other. This includes engaging in political debate with civility, treating one’s opponents with dignity, telling the truth, and the like. Equally important, religion was viewed as a source of internal control, restraining and disciplining each citizen and, thus, limiting the need of external control by civil government. A religious and therefore a moral citizenry is necessary before statesmen can even begin to think about constitutional systems.

Human Nature

In the eighteenth century, literally millions of Americans were taught to read with the Calvinist New-England Primer. In spite of its name, the textbook was used throughout America. Children learned the alphabet with a rhyme that began: “In Adam’s Fall, We sinned all.”²⁰ Every orthodox Christian believes that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). However, Calvinists place special emphasis on what they refer to as the doctrine of total depravity. This is particularly significant when one recalls that 50-75% of the Americans in this era were affiliated with this tradition. The vast majority of Christians also believe that even redeemed men and women continue to struggle with sin. This meant that even if elected officials are Christians, we must still be wary of political corruption and tyranny. America’s founders were convinced, as Lord Acton would later put it, that “[p]ower tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”²¹

The vast majority of Christians also believe that even redeemed men and women continue to struggle with sin. This meant that even if elected officials are Christians, we must still be wary of political corruption and tyranny.

In Federalist #51, Madison observed that, “[i]f men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external or internal controls on government would be necessary.”²² Because he and his fellow delegates to the Constitutional Convention recognized that America would be governed by men who are not angels, they created a constitutional order characterized by federalism, the separation of powers, and checks and balances. All of these institutional arrangements were designed to prevent civic leaders from becoming corrupt and/or tyrannical.

By way of contrast, in the late eighteenth century, some European Enlightenment thinkers such as Nicolas de Condorcet were “well on their way to envisioning a benign human nature and even a perfectible one free of original sin.”²³ Practically, this led them to reject the separation of powers, checks and balances, and federalism. According to Barry Alan Shain, one of the best students of religion in the American founding, “by the 1770s, most leading Enlightenment thinkers embraced unicameralism” and many “leading lights of the Enlightenment” ridiculed American federalism.²⁴ In the words of the prominent historian Louis Hartz, America’s founders “refused to join in the great Enlightenment enterprise of shattering the Christian concept of sin, replacing it with an unlimited humanism, and then emerging with an earthly paradise as glittering as the heavenly one that had been destroyed.”²⁵ This helps explain why the constitutional order created in 1787 has been relatively successful whereas that created by the leaders of the French Revolution ended in disaster.

Natural Law and Natural Rights

America’s founders regularly appealed to natural law and natural rights, but they seldom addressed these subjects in a systematic manner. The most prominent exception to this rule is found in Supreme Court Justice James Wilson’s 1790-92 law lectures at the College of Philadelphia (now the University of Pennsylvania). Sounding much like St. Thomas Aquinas, Wilson observed that there are two types of law: divine and human. He went on to explain that there are four “species” of divine law: eternal law, celestial law, natural physical laws, and natural moral laws. Like Aquinas, he thought that human law “must rest its authority, ultimately, upon the authority of that law which is divine.”²⁶ Practically, this led him (and all but one Supreme Court Justice prior to John Marshall) to publicly assert that the Supreme Court could strike down an act of Congress if it violated natural law.²⁷

Wilson followed Aquinas in many respects, but unlike him he offered a rich account of the natural rights possessed by individuals.²⁸ He argued that because natural rights are based on natural law, they exist prior to government. Protecting these rights is any government’s most important responsibility. He asked rhetorically:

What was the primary and principal object in the institution of government? Was it — I speak of the primary and principal object — was it to acquire new rights by a human establishment? Or was it, by a human establishment, to acquire a new security for the possession or the recovery of those rights, to the enjoyment or acquisition of which we were previously entitled by the immediate gift, or by the unerring law, of our all-wise and all-beneficent Creator? The latter, I presume, was the case.²⁹

A commitment to individual rights and the belief that rulers are sinful and fallible naturally leads to the question of how rights can be protected against political authorities. We have already seen several answers to this problem, including fostering a virtuous citizenry, federalism, separation of powers, and checks and balances. Another important protection is a statutory or constitutional delineation of rights that may not be infringed by the government. One of the chief reasons the founders added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution was to ensure that the natural rights of Americans would not be infringed upon by the national government.

Imago Dei and the Right to Life

I cannot discuss every natural right valued by the founders here, but a brief consideration of the founders’ understanding of the rights to life and religious liberty is illustrative. America’s founders were committed to the core Christian idea that all humans are created in the imago Dei — the image of God. Part of what this means is that men and women are reasonable, creative beings. This led the founders to conclude that we the people (as opposed to merely elites) can order our public lives together through politics rather than force.

In his Supreme Court opinion in Chisholm v. Georgia (1793), Justice James Wilson, paraphrasing Psalm 139, observed that “man, fearfully and wonderfully made, is the workmanship of his all perfect Creator.”³⁰ He echoed this conviction in his law lectures.³¹ One practical implication of this is that innocent life must always be protected. Wilson wrote with evident approval that:

With consistency, beautiful and undeviating, human life, from its commencement to its close, is protected by the common law. In the contemplation of law, life begins when the infant is first able to stir in the womb. By the law, life is protected not only from immediate destruction, but from every degree of actual violence, and in some cases, from every degree of danger.³²

Based on this principle, Wilson criticized ancient societies, such as Sparta, Athens, China, and Rome, for the practice of exposing or killing unwanted infants.³³ Like most Christian legal theorists, he condemned suicide because:

it was not by his own voluntary act that the man made his appearance upon the theatre of life; he cannot, therefore, plead the right of the nation, by his own voluntary act to make his exit. He did not make; therefore, he has no right to destroy himself. He alone, whose gift this state of existence is, has the right to say when and how it shall receive its termination.³⁴

Religious Liberty for All

Scholars and activists routinely assert that the Enlightenment inspired civic leaders in the west to adopt religious toleration. They came to value reason over revelation, and so concluded that it is irrational to kill or persecute in the name of God.³⁵ Some thinkers may have made claims along these lines, but the Enlightenment work on religious toleration most influential in America was John Locke’s A Letter Concerning Toleration. In it, he made arguments that drew from, and were thoroughly compatible with, Protestant Christianity.³⁶ Indeed, Locke’s Letter became popular in America in the 1740s when it was used by theological conservatives to argue for the freedom to preach their convictions and form their own churches.³⁷

“A Letter Concerning Toleration” by John Locke / Wikimedia CC0

But John Locke did not invent religious toleration. As Robert Louis Wilken demonstrates in Liberty in the Things of God: The Christian Origins of Religious Freedom,³⁸ Christian leaders were advocating religious toleration since at least the time of the early church father Tertullian. Once they gained political power, Christian civic and ecclesiastical leaders often did not heed these calls. Fortunately, in the seventeenth century Roger Williams, John Owen, William Penn, and a host of other Christians developed powerful biblical and theological arguments for robustly protecting “the sacred right of conscience.”³⁹

Civic and ecclesiastical leaders in the founding era continued to make such arguments. For instance, in 1776, the Presbyterians of Hanover County, Virginia sent a memorial to the General Assembly asserting that

if mankind were left in the quiet possession of their unalienable religious privileges, Christianity, as in the days of the Apostles, would continue to prevail and flourish in the greatest purity, by its own native excellence, and under the all-disposing providence of God.⁴⁰

These believers made a variety of arguments in favor of religious liberty and against religious establishments, but like virtually everyone advocating for these positions a key contention was that religious liberty causes Christianity to flourish and to be purer. In like manner, the future Supreme Court Justice James Iredell remarked in North Carolina’s Ratifying Convention that it:

would be happy for mankind if religion was permitted to take its own course, and maintain itself by the excellence of its own doctrines. The divine Author of our religion never wished for its support by world authority. Has he not said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it [Matthew 16: 18]? It made much greater progress for itself, than when supported by the greatest authority upon earth.⁴¹

One of the most important founding era arguments in favor of religious liberty was based on the theological principle that humans have a duty to worship God as their consciences dictate. A fine example of this is George Mason’s 1776 draft of Article XVI of Virginia’s Declaration of Rights, which reads:

That as religion, or the duty which we owe to our divine and omnipotent Creator, and the manner of discharging it, can be governed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence; and therefore that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished and unrestrained by the magistrate…⁴²

Mason’s draft of Article XVI was reprinted throughout the states and had an important impact on subsequent state constitutions and the national Bill of Rights. But it was not the draft that became law. James Madison, in his first significant public act, did not deny that all humans have a duty to worship God, but he objected to the use of “toleration” in the article, presumably because he thought that it implied that religious liberty was a grant from the state that could be revoked. The Virginia Convention agreed, and Article XVI was amended to make it clear that “the free exercise of religion” is a right, not a privilege granted by the state.⁴³

America’s founders were profoundly influenced by Christianity, but they did not design a constitutional order only for fellow believers. The Constitution prohibits religious tests for federal offices, and the founders recognized that doing so would permit “a Papist or Infidel” or “pagans, deists, and Mahometans” to be elected.⁴⁴ And they understood that people of all faiths should enjoy religious liberty.

Consider, for instance, George Washington’s 1790 letter to the “Hebrew Congregation” in Newport, Rhode Island. He wrote to this tiny religious minority that:

All [citizens] possess alike liberty and conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

…May the Children of the Stock of Abraham, who dwell in this land, continue to merit and enjoy the good will of the other Inhabitants; while every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.⁴⁵

This letter, from the era’s one indispensable man, reflects well the founders’ understanding that the religious convictions of all citizens must be respected. Yet it also illustrates the reality that they did not think that religion must be driven from the public square. This single letter contains nine biblical allusions, including to Micah 4:4, which reads “while everyone shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid.” This was one of George Washington’s favorite verses; we have records of him quoting or paraphrasing it at least 40 times.⁴⁶

Conclusion

In his law lectures, James Wilson observed that “of all governments, those are the best, which, by the natural effect of their constitutions, are frequently renewed or drawn back to their first principles.”⁴⁷ Christian commitments led the founders to create a constitutional order that strictly limits the power of the national government, separates the powers it does have among different branches, and provides checks and balances to prevent any one institution or person from becoming tyrannical. They believed in a higher law, often called natural law, and they thought that natural rights were based upon this law. Governments certainly should not violate these rights, and, indeed, many founders thought that the primary role of government is to secure “those rights, to the enjoyment or acquisition of which we were previously entitled by the immediate gift, or by the unerring law, of our all-wise and all-beneficent Creator.”⁴⁸ We would do well to heed the founders’ insights today. ♦

Mark David Hall is Herbert Hoover Distinguished Professor of Politics at George Fox University and Affiliated Faculty at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. He has written, edited, or co-edited a dozen books, including Great Christian Jurists in American History (Cambridge University Press, 2019) and Did America Have a Christian Founding?: Separating Modern Myth from Historical Truth (Nelson Books, 2019).

Recommended Citation

Hall, Mark David. “Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land: Christianity and the Creation of the American Republic.” Canopy Forum, September 15, 2020. https://canopyforum.org/2020/09/15/proclaim-liberty-throughout-all-the-land/

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