America is at war in the Middle East. Yet here at home, a conflict is ongoing that stands to be far more consequential because it strikes at the root ideas that underlie our own country.
It is a war on the American Founding, powerfully described by political scientist John West in his new book Endowed by Our Creator: The Bible, Science, and the Battle for America’s Soul, out on March 3, looking ahead to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
This conflict is waged not with missiles and drones but with spiritual, philosophical, and yes, scientific untruths pitted against corresponding truths. The book’s title, of course, is taken from the key phrases of the Declaration that initiated the American Revolution, stating “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
Easy to Say “Of Course”
I may say “of course” that’s where the title is drawn from, but as new polling data reveal, many Americans are in need of education about the Founding, especially about the source of our rights in a Creator, and the necessary limits on the scope of government.
With elections upcoming later this year, more than focusing just on victory in seeking office, our leaders need to assume the role of educators. As Dr. West emphasizes, nothing less than “America’s soul” is at stake.
The Politics of Blasphemy
The Founders believed that reason and revelation lead to the same set of principles — “converged” on them, as John West puts it. Revelation did not ask us to deny reason or science, but to affirm them. Yet he traces a second Revolution, against the Revolution of 1776, that has falsely attacked those principles in the name of reason and science.
A high-ranking Confederate politician, for example, sought to do nothing less than “blasphemously appropriate[e] words from the New Testament where Jesus was identified as the cornerstone,” replacing “Jesus with the doctrine of scientific racism.” While some of the relevant issues have changed, the politics of blasphemy, and abusing science in its name, are still very much with us.
However, while contemporary American figures, not least on the political Right, may deny it — pining for the days of feudalism, monarchy, or theocracy — science itself has returned to the aid of the Founding project:
[S]cience in our day has come around to reaffirming three truths articulated by the natural theologians and by America’s Founders: There is a Creator. All men are created equal. And because of human equality, governments should be based on consent of the governed.
The American Creed
West quotes Chesterton:
“America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed,” observed English writer G. K. Chesterton after visiting the United States in 1921. “That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence; perhaps the only piece of practical politics that is also theoretical politics and also great literature.”
According to West, “Many Americans are apt to miss the full significance” of this statement. That is true, and at the present moment, defending the Declaration as our creed puts you on a collision course with some very influential people.
Indeed, I would add on a personal note, I have been troubled by calls from high levels in our political culture to replace the true creed of the United States, the Declaration, with another, which would render a swath of Americans, including me, as second-class citizens.
I am grateful to our colleague John West for his strong defense of America’s founding ideas not just as fondly held sentiments but as hard truths grounded in reality. This is a wonderful book, not least its section at the end of “Resources for Digging Deeper.” When I first heard about Endowed by Our Creator, I hoped that it would include such a resource. It also includes fascinating historical images. See here for some amazing endorsements.
New survey data from John West and Discovery Institute underscore the urgency of the book, reporting How Americans View the American Founding. For a 75-page document on that, please go here for the free download now. More on all this is to come in future weeks.