Back in the 1970s, I attended a John Birch Society summer camp in the glorious Colorado Rockies. There were young campers from all kinds of families: Catholic, Protestant (Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist), Mormon, and Jewish. And they were all having a good time and making friends with one another.
The secret of this harmony? They all believed in the patriotic creed of Americanism. Indeed, Birch Society founder Robert Welch had called members of the organization Americanists. In other words, the one unifying spirit that these young Americans and their parents believed in was Americanism, the philosophy of the Founding Fathers as stated in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.
This unifying spirit existed in the public schools I attended in New York City in the 1930s and ‘40s. The core belief was that each individual is endowed by God with the unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that the purpose of government is to secure these rights. But all of that changed as collectivist socialists took over the schools, rejected the creed of individualistic Americanism and adopted the philosophy of Marxism, which holds that the purpose of the individual is to serve the State, which is the ultimate source of rights.
Thus, we now have in American culture two opposing visions of human purpose, one based on the belief in the God of the Bible, the other based on the rejection of God and the assertion that man is the servant of the state and that the all-powerful state has replaced God as the highest political and moral authority in the land.
And that is why we have a gridlocked Congress, because neither side is capable of compromising its basic beliefs. Never before have we had such a sharp division among our political parties on such a basic premise as the belief in God. Even during the Civil War, both sides fervently believed in God.
But today, Marxist atheists, who usually call themselves secular humanists or progressives, cannot accept the existence of a Creator because that would undermine their belief in evolution. Thus they cannot believe that human beings are endowed by a Creator with unalienable rights. If they believe in individual freedom, as Ayn Rand did, as the natural product of human reason, they may embrace Americanism as a secular creed and still believe in reproduction rights, abortion, and gay marriage.
And on the Left, there are socialists such as Nancy Pelosi who say they believe in God, but reject the Americanist philosophy.
So how do we reconcile all of these disparate views? The truth is they cannot be reconciled, and the view that prevails among our politicians is the one that gets the most votes.
But there is another dimension to the Americanism story. In 2007, David Gelernter, Yale professor of computer science and a target of the Unibomber, wrote a fascinating book, Americanism: The Fourth Great Western Religion. He had analyzed the philosophy of Americanism, its origins and basic meaning, and had come to the conclusion that it was “no secular republic.” Gelernter writes:
In this book I will argue that America is no secular republic; it’s a biblical republic. Americanism is no civic religion, it’s a biblical religion. Americanism doesn’t merely announce the nation’s ideals on its own authority; it speaks on behalf of the Bible and the Bible’s God, as Lincoln did in his Second Inaugural Address.
He further states that even though America is a “biblical republic” and Americanism a “biblical religion,” this viewpoint is totally consistent with the nation’s adherence to absolute religious freedom.
It also is compatable with the Judeo-Christian tradition, since the beliefs comprising Americanism are beliefs held in common by the Jewish and Christian religions.
Gelernter also believes that Americanism is a global creed based on ideals that belong to all of mankind. He credits Lincoln, who, in his Gettysburg Address, created a “sacred shrine” when he spoke of America as “conceived in liberty,” based on the “proposition that all men are created equal,” and that the “government of the people, by the people, for the people” is the basic political philosophy of the Republic.
Americanism is the religion that the Puritans brought to America with their Bibles, and thus the Bible has been on the American mind ever since. Even though our progressive educators have worked mightily to erase the Bible from the American mind, they cannot succeed as long as a considerable body of Americans still adhere to the teachings of the Bible: in Southern mega-churches, on Christian radio and television, in celebrations of Bible-based holidays, and in the growing largely Christian homeschool movement.
Even though the progressives have banned the Bible from the public schools, there is no doubt that the English Bible is the most important book in British and American history. Thus, to ban the Bible from its rightful place in public education is depriving American children of knowledge and understanding of our Bible-based Americanism. It is pure and simple brainwashing
How can you know English literature without knowing the Bible? British author Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch wrote in 1921 that the Bible “has influenced our literature more deeply than any other book — more deeply than all the writings of Shakespeare — far more deeply…. it is in everything we see, hear, feel, because it is in us, in our blood.” Yet, the public schools can find no place for the Bible in its curriculum. Gelernter writes:
Here is a basic question about America that ought to be on page one of every history book: What made the nation’s founders so sure they were on to something big? What made them so positive?… What made them so certain that America would become a light of the world, a shining city on a hill, a name fervently invoked by oppressed peoples all over the globe?
What made these founders true prophets was their knowledge of the Bible. They associated themselves with the Israelites of the Old Testament, their covenant with God, their exodus from Egypt, and the founding of the Promised Land. The Ten Commandments became the moral code of the New World.
This is history that should be taught to every child in an American school, public or private. When they hear a political leader proclaim “God Bless America” at the end of a speech, they ought to understand the significance of that statement. It’s part of the Americanist creed known as Americanism, and It will endure long after the progressives have finally lost their ungodly power over our culture.
