The Religious Foundation of a Free Society; E. Opitz

Year by year, we are spending a larger proportion of our income on schooling. More young people are in The Revere~d Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the F<;>unda tion for Economic Education. 10 THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF A FREE SOCIETY 11 college every year, and communities all over the land are engaged in a mighty school building program. All of these things should give us a sense of satisfac tion; but they don't. There is probably more discontent now among our people than at any time in the history of this country. We view with alarm the rising incidence of crime and juvenile delinquency, the mounting prob lems of alcoholism and drug addiction. Then there is inflation, causing prices to rise while at the same time it dilutes the value of our savings accounts and insur ance policies. Government grows larger all the while, marking the stampede away from personal responsibility which occurs at all levels of life.

A recent writer has remarked that "this is the era of the goof-off, the age of the half-done job. Our land is populated with laundrymen who won't iron shirts, with waiters who won't serve, with carpenters who will come around some day maybe, with businessmen whose minds are on the golf course, with teachers who demand a single salary schedule so that achievements cannot be rewarded nor poor work punished, and with students who take cinch courses because the hard ones make them think." How did we get ourselves into such a mess, and how can we get ourselves out of it? Perhaps the most helpful way to face up to our pres ent situation is· to look at our past history. If we wish to recover faith in ourselves and in our free society, we must understand what this faith is and what it meant to earlier generations. A new nation was brought forth upon this continent. What was it like, and what was 12 EDMUND A. OPITZ the source of its strength, idealism, and earthly hopes?

During the nineteenth century, the world of the de feated and the oppressed looked to America as a land of liberty and justice for all. In large· numbers, people came here to find freedom for themselves and for their children. It goes without saying that they didn't always find what they were seeking; reality, here as everywhere, fell short of the professed ideal. But even when the ideal failed to show through the practice, it was never wholly without influence; for this ideal was in scribed in a basic national document, the Declaration of Independence, for all to see and many to memorize. Emblem of American Ideals The Declaration of Independence was once the emblem of American idealism. The America of a former day was not a mere place; it was more than a geographic area. America was a world-wide symbol of the enduring hu man quest for a country in which each person might be free. Most of us refer to the Declaration now and then and do so with reverence, but·how many of us have read the Declaration of Independence recently and read it carefully? It is worth reading and rereading and it re pays careful study.

The Declaration, in paragraph 1, refers to "the laws of nature and nature's God." In paragraph 2, the sign ers of the Declaration say that, as far as they are con cerned, they believe or accept as axiomatic, the proposi tion that the Creator endowed men with certain rights.

THE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF A FREE SOCIETY 13 Other men might hold that "rights" are granted by the State, or else have a purely naturalistic basis; "we hold" that these rights have a supernatural derivation, i.e., they are God-given. The Creator is sovereign. In other words, our Declaration of Independence has a built-in religious dimension; and the importance of this fact is underscored by the absence of a similar dimension from a comparable document issued in 1789, thirteen years after our own Declaration, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of Citizens. The French Declaration, wishing to set forth "these natural, imprescriptible, and unalienable rights" says: "The national assembly doth recognize and declare, in the presence of the Supreme Being, and with the hope of His blessings and favor, the following sacred rights of men and citizens." It will be noted that, although the Supreme Being is mentioned, he is invoked as a mere gesture of formality; he is not acknowledged as the source of human rights. What then is this source accord ing to the French Declaration? Paragraph III tells us.

"The nation is essentially the source of all sovereignty; nor can any individual, or any body of men, be entitled to any authority which is not derived from it." The French and American Revolutions are, in short, based on contrary principles. The American dream was not of a sovereign people, which in practice comes down to mere majority rule; the American dream has at its center the individual per son, endowed by God with certain rights which no other individual nor combination of individuals may properly 14 EDMUND A. OPITZ transgress. Government itself must respect these individ ual rights, and government serves the ends of freedom and justice by punishing any trespass on these private rights. This same respect for the individual and this recog nition of his rights and immunities which we find in the Declaration is reflected also in our Constitution. The men who drafted the Constitution did not design a streamlined political structure. James Madison and the others had been once burnt by government, and they were twice shy. They created a political structure in which the federal government was to be internally self governed by three separate but balanced powers, and the several states were to retain their original sovereign ty in order to act as a counterpoise to the central au thority. This entire political equilibrium was balanced on the sovereign individual; the only excuse for gov ernment was to .secure him in his rights. The Founding Fathers knew that a free government implies an unfree people, so in the interests of personal liberty they pinned down their government to strictly limited, de fined, and delegated functions.

A Great Religious Tradition Where did the Founding Fathers get this generous estimate of man? They were students of history, and we know from their writings that they were thoroughly acquainted with the social and political institutions of ancient Greece and Rome. But we also know the FoundTHE RELIGIOUS FOUNDATION OF A FREE SOCIETY 15 ing Fathers could not have derived their vision of a free society composed of sovereign persons if they had not looked beyond the institutions of ancient Greece and Rome, for both these societies were founded on human slavery. Hilaire Belloc, the historian, describes this as pect of the Greco-Roman world: "The structure and stuff of society was based upon and rooted in slavery. . . . Slavery became a mechanical and oppressive burden weighing upon the human spirit and giving its tone to all." Then came Christianity into this world, and the power of ancient despotism was weakened. Christianity starts from man as an individual person, endowed with an immortal soul striving for its salvation. Wherever this doctrine is accepted, there is no longer a nation composed merely of oppressor and oppressed. Before the State, there is now the person, and above the State, there is God, his love and his justice common to all men.

Repair the Foundations The Founding Fathers were the inheritors of a great religious tradition and the American dream of a society of free men was largely a projection of that religion. This is how the original American equation got its built in religious dimension. But this equation no longer balances because the religious elements in it have been discarded or forgotten. In a sense, we have been merely coasting on a momentum once given to us and with which we have now lost contact. Suchan analysis helps 16 EDMUND A. OPITZ us understand, I think, the discontent and uncertainty to which I referred earlier. The American dream was built upon a religious foundation. And this was noted by a young Frenchman who came to these shores to study us backin the 1830's, Alexis de Tocqueville. "Religion," he said of us, "is the first of their political institutions." Political'liberty is the limitation of government to the securing of men in their rights, and because these rights derive from re ligious premises, political liberty needs to rest on a re ligious foundation. To employ a figure of 'speech, "po litical liberty is a check drawn against the capital stock of our religious heritage. When a check bounces, the inference is that there are no funds in the bank. Sim ilarly, we cannot go on drawing upon our religious heritage 'unless we systematically replenish it. How do we rehabilitate our religious heritage?

I wish it were possible at this point to offer you, a simple answer. I wish it were possible' to say that all we need to do is go back to church. But the answer is not so simple. Many of the most articulate church leaders of our time are part of the problem, not part of the remedy. They have sought to use the churches for their own ends, and so we are often presented with a counter feit faith. But there are churches of all faiths which "proclaim liberty throughout the land," and at least they point the direction in which we must look for our answers. The men of such churches once -created the American dream, and the men of such churches today can, if they will, recreate it.