“It is also significant that no one can come to this God [that is, the God of Judaism and Christianity] except by personal freedom. Many of His first believers at times turned against Him. A few were faithful to Him freely, often at great personal cost. Every story in the Bible has as its dramatic axis an act of liberty. At one time the same human being is unfaithful to God, and at another faithful, and the suspense in the next chapter is, What will he or she choose to do this time?” No One Sees God: The Dark Night of Atheists and Believers by Michael Novak (2008, page 191)
Three Phases of U.S. History
I will admit openly and up front that I’m being contradictory in this post—contradictory because what I’m writing could be interpreted as making Christian worldview political and on my own political spectrum at that.
But you be the judge. At the very least, I hope you’ll understand the main points. Agreement isn’t necessary.
Last month, my Compass post talked about American populism and argued that Donald Trump, like Plato’s chariot rider, has benefited from hitching up We the American People’s two powerful forces of reason and desire or passion that’s been driving politics since the 1960s. (Molly Worthen’s new book Spellbound linked here in our book review makes a similar argument based on DJT’s story telling ability.) Whether intentionally or not, or whether you like Trump as a person, it really doesn’t matter. He has harnessed a “populist” trend via genuine charisma that could carry us at least another 20-30 years, easily.
My argument views the American Revolution of 1776 (with its 250th anniversary next year) as essentially a “conservative” revolt—unlike the more radical French Revolution—against monarchy and aristocracy. It was a movement to extend gentleman and lady status to all Americans, along with the most important rights then held by Englishmen. In other words, it was King George III’s war to lose—and he did. Had he and Parliament simply granted Americans self-government and the rights many English citizens already claimed, the Revolution might never have happened.
The first observation of this post: Since 1776, the consequences of “We the People” (the first three words of our Constitution from 1787) have simply played themselves out in three basic phases: Phase I under Andrew Jackson in 1829, Phase II under Franklin Roosevelt in 1932, and Donald Trump as the marker of Phase III starting in 2016.
After the Revolution, Andrew Jackson signaled the triumph of the People (first surfacing with Jefferson’s election in 1800) in the rise of Jacksonian Democracy. While the Founders recognized mobs can be a problem and feared them, they gave the People the vote and thus control in the United States. In 1828, the People won in electing a bumpkin (by elite Eastern standards) from Tennessee, who hosted an out-of-control inauguration victory party with commoners in 1829 in the Executive Mansion (the White House). (The Easterners were wrong about Jackson like many today are about Trump: no bumpkin.)
Most certainly, America was created in the Constitution in 1787 as a Republican-Democracy. As a result, given that underlying democracy, the still European, “elitist,” or planter sensibilities of many of the Founders could not have held political power for long after 1787 without change. That’s a primary reason why the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties dissolved quickly thereafter.
The primary struggle throughout all of American history has been the elected Federal Government’s derivative, public power versus the American People’s private, foundational power. While Phase II began formally under Franklin Roosevelt and accelerated under Lyndon Johnson, it actually began with the Civil War ending slavery. Subsequently, it blossomed during peacetime with Teddy Roosevelt in 1904. Of course, Lincoln and T. Roosevelt were Republicans. What they represented was the People deciding they wanted Washington to take a more active role to make America better.
This resulted in what’s called today, still with some affection, the Welfare State. The good news: since the 1960s, we’ve virtually eliminated poverty in America beyond anyone’s expectations in FDR’s day. What’s next? It’s time to ensure government stays limited, strong, honest, and on budget. The People are reasserting themselves.
In representing Phase III, the Trump presidency is the corrective to the mammoth—and, some would say, corrupt—state’s overreach. In essence, all of the imagined solutions of modernity’s centralized government have been tried already across the globe with much success and much failure. The point is that the American People today understand this, and, through decades of personal experience, they have developed an educated and good idea of what government actually can and cannot do well. They see what happens when Communism or certain Theocracies dominate the private sector and families (the latter being the heart of any civilization).
These political trends across the three phases are not so much about the political platforms of the winning political parties as they are about what the People themselves desire. Jackson founded the Democratic Party as we know it today, and the U.S. and DP benefited from Jacksonian Democracy. The Republican Party sprang out of the Civil War and benefited from furthering relatively more active government until the Great Depression. Beginning with Wilson, however, the DP and FDR finally turned the political winds against the GOP.
Well, it’s all flipped again. The Democrats have lost the majority of the People because all of their solutions involve overreaching central government, the very thing that tripped up Britain in the first place. Most big government solutions, beyond providing support for the poor, disabled, and elderly, simply do not work. (We don’t need to touch on those certifiably crazy ideas like men in women’s sports and their dressing rooms. What would your grandmother have said?)
Christian Worldview Is Not Primarily about Politics
My last Compass post also declared victory in America for the Christian “end of history,” rather than liberalism’s or “progressivism’s” end, as many thought had occurred after the Fall of the Berlin Wall and Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991. All Christians recognize that Jesus was not in anybody’s pocket except God’s. Clearly, he was not a huge fan of the Pharisees, Sadducees, Roman authorities, or most “authorities” outside his new church or the family. He was not about grand social themes such as the struggle over the means of production, identity-based social justice, wealth redistribution, Communism, or freedom to pursue desires in one’s very own pleasure palace (as long as consensual and no one is looking).
In fact, the Bible is clear that personal choices, not grand political themes, are what shape our lives. This is what Michael Novak’s quote at top suggests. Alexander the Great and King David were more worried about their relationships with God and their extended family than creating utopia in its various forms on earth. The gods or God can worry about that later. Once the Bible became available in the vernacular via printing presses in the early 1500s to begin in full what we call “modernity” today, We the People in Europe and then in America realized this, too.
The second observation of this post: Christian worldview still dominates America like no other major country in the world. It does so through its majority of Christians and Jews and its large number of secularists who rely knowingly or unknowingly on Christian ethics. To most, life is about one’s relationship with Christ, following Christian ethics, or “doing the right thing”‘—which, in most cases, aligns with Christian ethics. It’s about individuals and various large and small communities living up to standards more than permanent results in all Christian freedom, the pre-condition for what Americans fought for in the American Revolution. Like politics, helping one’s neighbor works best on a local basis first.
Nothing has really changed here since the Founding. What matters most is how we decide in our own living time to fulfill our duties and use our rights under these principles. God is the ultimate patient Father and just Judge, and his Celestial City will be here soon enough. In the meantime, we all need a large dose of good judgement, humility, patience, and love to prepare this world for that future time. Neither the Republican or Democratic Party, nor any political party, has a monopoly on this worldview.
Today I finished a book by Jed Atkins, the Department Head of the UNC’s School of Civil Life and Leadership (SciLL), entitled The Christian Origins of Tolerance (2024). It’s a thorough rendering of the development of Christian ethics from St. Paul through St. Augustine (early 400s A.D.), emphasizing the North African early church fathers who first applied the Gospel and the writings of Paul to private and political life. If these Christians were wrong about their politics, they paid with their lives.
Suffice it to say that the elements of Christian toleration were well-established long before the Reformation, John Locke, or the Enlightenment. Times change radically, yes, but truth and Christian principles do not. “Am I being an angel or a devil here?” drives infinitely more behavior than BLM, Antifa, or Proud Boys.
In the classic Praxis Circle video clip at the top, Os Guinness outlines in “The Golden Triangle” how freedom works in America. (Note the similarity to Aristotle’s golden mean.) He believes freedom must have a faith to support it, and, in these parts, Christianity remains that faith. It makes the First Amendment and the protection of all other faiths possible. These American Christian population numbers will only increase in the future. If you do not get on that boat politically, you will miss it.
As a Christian, Try to Forget Left Versus Right
A recent article by Michael Barone, who follows these issues globally, supports these conclusions. He notices that the trends are the same across America, the West, and even the world. He calls it the “Metropole versus the Heartland,” and the Heartland is winning. In America, he paints the picture of the Democratic Party (see the map of the United States in his article) consisting of “elites” in the largest cities allying with a shrinking group of minorities. The DP’s minority support is shrinking because they’re seeing what’s been going on in America for decades, while coming to grips with the logic of American freedom. In other words, they’re converting in significant numbers to the other side, the Heartland. While such grand political waves occur in fits and starts, the trends are becoming increasingly apparent, and it’s also happening in Europe in different but related ways.
The third observation of this post: Christian ethics have no allegiance to Left or Right. They have allegiance to right and wrong, when applicable and clear. Alasdair MacIntyre makes this point in After Virtue and Whose Justice? Which Rationality? We have discussed in the past how what’s to the Left and Right shifts radically. You see this in American history as described above. (I also understand how using such terminology today, from our flash point in time, can have lots of meaning. I do it all the time.)
However, there remains a vast middle of the American bell curve consisting of perhaps up to 70% of the voting public who do not march to any drummer, other than a genuine concern for what Judeo-Christian and CJC ethics and culture support.
We are seeing a decline of elitism of the type endorsed by such people as James Davison Hunter and a rise of a more populist ethic tied to the Heartland of an Os Guinness, Michael Novak, or Chuck Colson. This goes far beyond politics into competition among religions. A number of Mainline churches are on the road to extinction because they don’t understand how little God is concerned with Republican or Democrat victory.
To quote Carl Trueman’s recent First Things article about Mainline decline, who references a famous Hemingway quote: churches (and I would argue political parties) go bankrupt in two ways: “Gradually and then suddenly.” The Christian Church’s mission, whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox, is to “go into the world and to make disciples of every nation, baptizing in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching all that Jesus commanded (Matthew 28:19-20).” (Again, quoting the Trueman article.)
So, let’s do as we’re commanded and worry later about which party to support. Besides, there’s usually plenty of room to maneuver and find agreement in America’s free time and space, as protected.
It worked for George Washington, and it’s still working for Americans today. Just ask them.
