Originally posted July 4,2006
The Establishment of a Free Nation
How did the founders create a free society. They set out to create a secular state embedded in a Christian society and people entered into a social contract with America and one of several states that were joined to America.
The Dangers of a Religious State.
The Founder knew the dangers of a religious state through centuries of European history. True believers have been for centuries persecuted by religious authorities who claimed to be speaking and acting for God. Jesus promised His followers that there would be those who would kill thinking that they were doing God’s work by murdering them.
Except in the case where Jesus Christ as the Messiah returns to the earth to set up God’s Throne in Jerusalem, attempts to set up a theocracy amount to man setting up an institution that claims God’s authority. Man-made theocracies amount to idolatry and inevitably seek absolute control over peole’s minds and absolute worship and allegiance. They may claim to do this in the name of God but they really seek to replace God with themselves just as their father Satan seeks to replace God.The ultimate counterfeit theocracy is the beast-system
True Theocracy can only be set up through God’s personal action. The Bible plainly states that such will indeed happen, with God bringing justice, liberty from oppression, and peace to the earth. Any and all attempts by man to usurp this privilege that rightfully belongs to God alone will bring disaster. God-fearing people would be wise to avoid any conspiracies to establish a theocracy and walk by faith in God’s promise.
The Dangers of Secularism
While man-made theocracies are one danger to liberty, society that has banned God from the public square is another great danger. Secularist societies and other societies who want to minimize traditional religion have in modern times amassed great atrocities. The Communists have murdered over 100 million people and the Nazis 60 million.
Secularism is not secular at all but deeply religious. A genuine secular mindset is not concerned with religion. Modern secularism seeks to undermine religious influence because of the religious nature of secularism. Secularism seeks to make the state god.
Christian Society Assumed.
The Founders’ solution to avoiding the opposite dangers of secularism and man-made theocracy was to create a secular state and embed that state within a Christian society. The Federal government was designed with a Judeo-Christian perspective in mind, as the Declaration of Independence clearly shows. The Founders assumed that a substantial portion of the population would be Christian and that they would act out their Christian principles in their lives as citizens.
The secular state meant that the rights guaranteed under the Constitution would apply to all citizen without recourse to any religious test. This is why we have in our money the motto NOVUS ORDO SECLORUM. That is Latin for new secular order. America would be different from Europe where religious tests were often a condition of receiving rights and privileges.
The Founders believed that a secular state based on Christian principles and where Christians could exert influence as citizens was a better mechanism for protecting the God-given rights we have than either a godless secular state or a so-called Christian state.
The Founder solution for delivering freedom to the world was to forge a social contract between individuals and the state. This social contract would be of Christian construction but would not give the state or church any rights to regulate religion or thought. It was understood the God was the Judge over the contract but this contract required the state to respect freedom of religion, speech, and thought, and prohibited religious tests as a condition of securing one’s rights. This solution is one of the most brilliant develoments of human history.