Faith and Law

 Reading some of the early commentary on Supreme Court nominee Amy Barrett, I was struck by constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel's reference to Ms. Barrett's "past comments about the conflict between faith and law." (Mr. Seidel works with the Freedom From Religion Foundation.) I have not looked up whence came those "comments about the conflict between faith and law," but the phrase itself gave me pause.

It pinged for me the remembrance of many conversations in which folks asserted that the United States is a "Christian nation," or that somehow being American intrinsically allies one with Christian faith and ethics. And with that ping in my grey matter came a thought that I've been mulling over for some time: the references (or lack thereof) to Christ in the founding documents of the United States.

The Constitution has no reference to Jesus Christ, or even to God. It is a non-theistic document. If the authors wished to somehow ground the Constitution in some sort of theological foundation, we would expect that grounding to appear in the Preamble at least. But no reference to the divine appears there. The only god of the Constitution is "the People."

Our next search for a Christian basis for the United States would be in the Declaration of Independence--not, strictly speaking, a document founding this nation but justifying its separation from Britain. Here, at first glance, we might think we had found our proof.

"The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" figures in the first paragraph as the authority determining which peoples may become their own nation. The term "God," however, is without explicit content. In contrast, Christians stake their lives on the assertion that the God of the cosmos is the God who is filially connected to Jesus Christ (see 2Cor1:3, et al). The name Jesus Christ circumscribes the nature of God. Not only did the authors of the Declaration omit the name of Jesus Christ, they may also have indicated that they were only interested in invoking the God belonging to Nature, that is, the God who is known through Nature. That God is not known through revelation, whereas the God of Jesus Christ is known only through revelation. The authors of the Declaration may have intentionally set their document apart from the Christian God.

The second paragraph references a "Creator," and the final paragraph mentions both a "Supreme Judge of the world" and "divine Providence." These three serve as ambiguous pointers to something above humanity but indistinct and certainly not connected to Jesus Christ. In fact, the "authority" on which the Declaration rests is expressly "the good People of these Colonies." Given that the founding authors were intellectually astute, literate, and raised in a Christian culture, the omission of a connection between Jesus Christ and the God in the Declaration could not be happenstance. They did not intend for the document to be "Christian" in any meaningful way. They intended it to be literally "democratic": ruled by the People.

The sole authority for the governance of the United States, as per the Constitution, is the People. We may well argue whether or not the founders assumed that all People would cast their vote, legislate, execute, and judge based on Christian values. The final texts with which they left us, however, produce no such mandate.

If the god of the United States is the People, then we the People of the United States are doomed to encounter conflict between the Christian faith and American law. The God of Jesus Christ does not accommodate any other gods. We Christians are living the Mosaic dilemma: We discover God's commandments on the summit only to learn that the masses (to which we belong) are doing their own thing at the bottom of the mountain. The dilemma gets rehashed in Jesus' lifetime: The crowds that listen rapt to Jesus' teaching call for his crucifixion.

The only alternative to this conflict would be the establishment of a Christian theocracy (or bibliocracy) in the United States. I suspect that the founders sensed that such an establishment would have resulted in a far more contentious and bloody national life than the vicissitudes of rule by the populace. Here is the genius of making the People the supreme ruler of a nation: The successes of the nation will be ours and the failures of the nation will be ours, no matter our creed.

Mr. Seidel is right to insist that those examining Amy Barrett for the Supreme judicial bench ask her about her religious beliefs. Doing so will reveal conflicts between her Christian ethics and the ethics of the People. All Christians will experience conflicts between their ethics and the ethics of the People, as will Muslims, Baha'i, Hindus, Jews, and every other faith besides the faith in the People.

Supreme Court justices take an oath of office swearing allegiance to the Constitution. It would seem unfair to ask justices to set aside their core convictions about the world as they do their job. So perhaps our quest for good justices should not seek out those who believe the way we do. Rather we ought to call for justices whose only god is the People; otherwise will not their oath of office be hypocrisy?

Of course, the answer to this leads us into the question of whether Christians, beholden to trust only in the God of Jesus Christ, may swear allegiance to another entity. That's a topic for another time.

~ emrys