Laurence Cooper is professor of political science at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author, most recently, of Dreaming of Justice, Waking to Wisdom: Rousseau’s Philosophic Life (2023, University of Chicago Press). For the past five years or so I have studied the classics of political philosophy togeth with him and former Claremont Institute Chairman Bruce Sanborn weekly over lunch. Larry is our gifted teacher. I asked him if he would address the proposition asserted by Vice President Vance in his December 21 Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest speech: that America is a Christian nation. He takes issue with the proposition in the following column. Professor Cooper writes:
In his much-noticed speech at the TPUSA AmericaFest event last week, J.D. Vance proclaimed America a Christian nation. Not a small matter, and the Vice President didn’t treat it as one. Neither, however, did he go very far in outlining the meaning of the claim.
“Christianity,” he said, “is America’s creed—the shared moral language from the Revolution to the Civil War and beyond.” Our understanding of our rights and duties, he explains, arises from Christianity, and our “major debates have always centered on how we could best, as a people, please God.” And thank goodness that this has been so: “The only thing that has truly served as an anchor of the United States of America is that we have been—and by the grace of God, we always will be—a Christian nation.” That’s about it.
Is that not enough?
Alas, no, not when the claim at issue (America as a Christian nation) admits of interpretations as widely divergent as this one does. Vance himself showed awareness of the ease with which he could be misinterpreted. No sooner did he pronounce America a Christian nation than he proceeded to dissociate himself from one misreading of his meaning: “Now, I want to be explicit, because of course the fake news media will twist everything that I say. I’m not saying you have to feel about them the same way I do. I’m not saying that you have to be a Christian to be an American.” Indeed, he goes on to say that this capacious attitude toward adherents of other faiths is incumbent upon Christians: “our famously American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept. Because we’re all creatures of God, we must respect each individual’s pathway to that God.”
But if the American idea of religious liberty is a Christian concept, so were the concepts that it arose specifically to combat. And this points to a problem: The meaning of Christianity, and therewith its place in our or indeed any polity, is contestable; and it is not clear that the contest can be reliably settled, for part of what is being contested is how to understand the standards by which to address the issue. Add to this that the most serious and passionate contestants regard the stakes of the contest as nothing short of ultimate, and we are left, if history is any guide, with the prospect of the contest becoming violent and cruel.
To be sure, the history of American Christianity has very largely been a history of moderation and respect, not only toward those who belong to different denominations but even to non-Christians and nonbelievers. Religious liberty has not been much contested. But might that history of moderation and respect not owe something to the fact that America has never defined itself as a Christian polity?
If the Founders had declared the United States a Christian polity, or had they appealed to Christian Scripture or doctrine as the ground and justification of the new republic, they would effectively have invited sectarian disputation to serve as the most authoritative political discourse. Even if all agreed as to how the Founders understood Christian Scripture and doctrine, that would not bind subsequent generations to accept the Founders’ reading.
The founding principles of the United States were developed and gained widespread adherence among a population that was almost entirely composed of Christians. But to understand these principles and live by them does not require one to venture into Scripture or theology. Even if dedication to these principles depends upon a certain religiosity among citizens—and even if the only religion that could adequately promote that dedication in the United States is Christianity—even then we would not need, and would not be wise, to understand America as a Christian nation, not as the phrase is apt to be heard and understood.
The Founders clearly understood this, as had the modern political philosophers from whom they drew important insights. The Declaration of Independence appeals to the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God, not to Scripture. And that very formulation, “Nature’s God,” alongside the powerful insistence that the truths on which the country was to be based are self-evident, indicates that they did not want to ground political discourse and action in Christian Scripture or doctrine. Nor is there reason to regard the Founders’ appeal to God as incidental or pro forma.
Washington, Adams, even Jefferson saw religion—a certain kind of religion, i.e., religion that emphasizes principles of action rather than tenets of belief—as an important and even necessary groundwork for self-government. That the only religion on hand that could meet this description was Christianity was no reason to declare the new nation a Christian nation. Quite the contrary.
The same embrace of religion alongside the same leeriness of sectarianism can be found in the greatest interpreter of what the Founders’ wrought, Alexis de Tocqueville. As the author of a massive tome rather than public documents, and with no need to secure the approval of a Continental or a Constitutional Convention, Tocqueville developed both the embrace of religion and the leeriness of sectarianism, as well as the relation between them, more fully than the Founders did.
In Democracy in America Tocqueville frankly credited religion for supporting and sustaining freedom and the possibility of greatness in America. He proclaimed religious faith essential for human dignity and morale. He presented religion as a check against the most unfortunate tendencies of democratic peoples, particularly materialism (understood both as the philosophic doctrine and as an excessive taste for material pleasure) and the tendency of democratic citizens to isolate themselves from public life and from all but the smallest circles. He pronounced religious faith an inculcator of wholesome habits of heart and mind that manifest in all domains, not just religious life. And he depicted religion as the most powerful source, propagator, and supporter of morality.
What’s more, he suggested that these essential services provided by religion in America could not have been provided by anything but religion, certainly not with sufficient breadth and power. Obviously all of these benefits that Tocqueville attributed to religion were in fact owing to Christianity, since almost all of American religion during Tocqueville’s time was Christian.
Yet the interesting thing is that it was Tocqueville himself, and not I, who attributed these things to “religion” as such. As Tocqueville formulated it, it is religion—not Christianity, but religion—that “teaches the Americans the art of being free.” It is “religions” whose “greatest advantage” is to inspire “instincts” that counter the “dangerous instincts” suggested to men by equality, particularly the tendency toward isolation and excessive preoccupation with merely material well-being. It is “religions” that provide answers without which people would be enervated, paralyzed by doubt, frightened of limitless freedom, and thus more than willing to submit to an earthly master. For these reasons (and others) that Tocqueville maintains that “Religion, which among Americans, never mixes directly in the government of society, should [nevertheless] be considered as the first of their political institutions.”
Just as the Founders had known that their appeal to Nature and Nature’s God would be understood and embraced by a largely Christian populace as an appeal to the Christian God, so Tocqueville knew that, for his readers, “religion” could only mean “Christianity”—if not in principle then certainly in practice.
Indeed, he counted on being read this way: for all his apparent ecumenicism, he insisted that religion, if it is to support political freedom, must meet certain requirements. In particular, “religions ought to keep themselves discreetly within the bounds that are proper to them and not seek to leave them.” (As a counterexample he cites Islam, whose Prophet conveyed with divine authority “not only religious doctrines…. but political maxims, civil and criminal laws,” and more. If he nevertheless chose to speak of “religion” and “religions” rather than of “Christianity,” he did so—again, like the Founders—precisely in order to avoid inviting sectarian disputation into politics.)
His insistence on keeping political life free from sectarian religious dispute, moreover, was not only for the sake of maintaining moderate and rational political discourse but also for the sake of protecting religion. On this he is crystal clear. If churches were to involve themselves in politics, he argued, they might gain short-term influence. But in the longer run—and in the world of modern democracy the longer run wouldn’t even be very long—they would be setting themselves up to suffer, as the European Churches were already suffering, from association with political factions whose fortunes and popularity would be mixed at best and temporary in any case.
As one who looked to religion to help sustain freedom, Tocqueville finally posed the question that all who look to religion as a buttress of freedom should ask: “What means, then, remain to authority to bring men back toward spiritualist opinions or to keep them in the religion that evokes them?”
His answer, he announces, won’t endear him to politicians: “I believe that the only efficacious means governments can use to put the dogma of the immortality of the soul in honor is to act every day as if they themselves believed it; and I think it is only in conforming scrupulously to religious morality in great affairs that they can flatter themselves they are teaching citizens to know it, love it, and respect it in small ones.”
This isn’t a call for politicians to model piety. It’s a call for them to speak and act seriously, with reference to the country’s founding principles and with a view to the long term. It’s a call for them to conduct themselves as statesmen.
