Scriptorium Daily
A thoughtful reader asked, “Why do you use the expression “Judeo-Christian?” Did I wish to exclude the other great monotheistic faith: Islam? In the past, atheists or agnostics have asked me if I intended to slight secular contributions to American history.
One way to respond is to point out that both Islam and atheism have made mostly indirect contributions to American history. Most Americans have been Christian or associated themselves with Christianity. Christianity is born of Judaism and the American population has long had a significant Jewish minority. On the other hand, until very recently the United States has had few Muslims and they have not had much influence in the United States.
Atheists were about as rare at the American founding. Deists such as Tom Paine were not orthodox Christians, but they were theists and had not moved very far culturally from their English Christian patrimony. The rise of a class of agnostics and atheists did not change this situation much. These folk tended to accept the majority (Christian and Jewish) culture minus some elements they found “irrational.”
Victorian atheists were still Victorian!
In fact, secularism generally was often parasitic on the majority religious culture. It tended to right obvious wrongs or point out hypocritical attitudes, but it was the vast Christian majority that tolerated the corrections and allowed liberty. Even a curmudgeon like Mark Twain, whose own attitude was hostile to revealed religion, could fall in love with Joan of Arc, in his great novel, and live within American conventions to a great extent.
Twain mocked Christian America and profited from the mocked who rushed to buy his books and used the profits to live a comfortable Victorian life. He brilliantly critiqued a culture he could not have created.
When I say we live in a Judeo-Christian country, I mean just this: even if I am not a Jew or a Christian, I live in a nation shaped by ideas drawn cultures deeply shaped by Jewish and Christian ideas. No other single worldview is comparable. Ideas like deism or Spiritualism have come and gone, left their mark, and passed into a degree of obscurity. Our spiritualism was Christian-like, as was our deism.
But in fact, there is another reason that one need not, yet, speak of Islamic-Judeo-Christian theism. Islam has yet to prove that her adherents can be a majority and still allow religious liberty and full citizenship for religious minorities.
Any group can demand liberty when powerless. What do they do when powerful?
The Christian majority in America is rightly condemned for our denial of human rights to slaves, native Americans, and the unborn. We are inconsistent with our own beliefs when we claim a man can own another man, lie in our treaties, or kill the innocent. We have done all those things.
We love our nation because she is our nation, not because she is lovable. Her face is flawed from her vices, but she is our mother.
And yet having said this truth, it is equally true that the American Christian majority has a remarkable record of tolerance compared other nations at other places at other times. If we have often failed to live up to our ideals, it is in part because our ideals were so high.
We should have been better than we were and it is easy to say this by our own standards. Christians tolerated significant religious minorities, even ones they found distasteful. They did not always handle these tensions well, but the majority rejected the path of the Klan and the Know Nothings.
Woodrow Wilson’s racism was offset by Theodore Roosevelt’s progressivism.
Religious minorities were almost always better off here than any other place on the planet.
There was a time in history when the Orthodox Christian was less persecuted by Islam than other Christian states. There were times in history when Jews found greater protection in Islamic lands than almost any Christian one. One could be a second class subject in an Islamic state with some rights and an ability to have great power.
Many Christian states, sadly, denied even this to minority religious. This inconsistency with the Christian ideal of love stank to Heaven.
Christian America, however, found a way to go beyond tolerance and second-class citizenship so that non-Christians could be full citizens. We limited the role of the state so that a person need agree with very few basic ideas to be a full American. These ideas were consistent with Christianity, but also with natural reason. We followed the law of Nature and of Nature’s God.
Small government allowed religious groups and individuals to make most decisions.
Islam has shown only small ability to accept this idea, but I see no reason, in principle, that it cannot and I know Islamic scholars who do so. As a monotheistic faith, Islam has the intellectual resources to do so.
Atheism and agnosticism have more mixed track records. Where they formed a majority or at least governed, things have gone badly for those out of power. Western Europe recently has gained more secular governing majorities, but we shall have to see how they tolerate those who do not buy into the secular consensus or if this overtly non-religious ruling group can survive.
Even in Europe, fairly religious leaders such as Tony Blair or religious leaders like Pope Benedict remain major players. European secularists have yet to prove they have done more than inherit Christendom and rename it the “European Union.”
In any case, no good person hopes for the failure of either Islam or secularism to learn the lessons Jews and Christians learned at such cost. We hope that someday it will be sensible to refer to the Islamic-Secular-Jewish-Christian consensus of liberty under the Natural Law.
