DID WE TAKE A WRONG TURN SOMEWHERE ALONG THE WAY ?
By Dr . Christian Overman the 1830s , the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville came
IN to examine America . He wrote a book about what he discovered entitled Democracy in America . The following excerpts from this remarkable book will give you a flavor of the day from the perspective of an outside observer : “ From the earliest settlement of the emigrants , politics and religion contracted an alliance which has never been dissolved . [ p . 281 ] . . . I do not know whether all the Americans have a sincere faith in their religion ; for who can search the human heart ? But I am certain that they hold it to be indispensable to the maintenance of republican institutions . This opinion is not peculiar to a class of citizens or to a party , but it belongs to the whole nation , and to every rank of society . [ pp . 286-287 ] . . . The Americans combine the notions of Christianity and of liberty so intimately in their minds that it is impossible to make them conceive the one without the other . [ p . 287 ] . . . Upon my arrival in the United States , the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention ; and the longer I stayed there , the more did I perceive the great political consequences resulting from this state of things , to which I was unaccustomed . In France I had almost always seen the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom pursuing courses diametrically opposed to each other ; but in America I found that they were intimately united and that they reigned in common over the same country . [ p . 289 ] . . . America is still the place where the Christian religion has kept the greatest real power over men ’ s souls ; and nothing better demonstrates how useful and natural it is to man , since the country where it now has the widest sway is both the most enlightened and the freest . . . . [ p . 291 ]” 1 So much for not mixing Christianity with civil liberty .
John Adams plainly spoke when he declared : “ We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion . Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people . It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other .” 2 Does anyone think the “ religion ” Adams had in mind was anything other than Christianity ? Think again !
I ’ m not a fan of Woodrow Wilson , but in one 1911 speech , he hit the mark with 100 percent accuracy : “ We know that there is a standard set for us in the heavens , a standard revealed to us in this book [ the Bible ] which is the fixed and eternal standard by which we judge ourselves . . . . We do not judge progress by material standards . America is not ahead of other nations of the world because she is rich . Nothing makes America great except her thoughts , except her ideals , except her acceptance of those
26 THE RENEWANATION REVIEW