WHY WE OWE OUR DEMOCRACY TO OUR JUDEO-CHRISTIAN HERITAGE
by Tom Taylor
Most of us, with the exception of some liberal college professors, have noticed that America is
really a wonderful place to live. We have liberty and freedom here, but without anarchy. We have
law, order and stability; but we have it without tyranny or oppression. How on earth did such a
happy state of affairs come to be? A look at history and the world today reveals this is not at all
normal or natural for mankind; which explains why so many people in the world want nothing more
than to leave their own country and live here.
So how did we get this wonderful and rare system of liberty? Were the Anglo-Saxon and
European founders of America just naturally smarter and morally superior to other men? (Now
there is a racist idea if I ever saw one.) But, no. Though many of them were extraordinarily gifted
and brilliant, there have been such men in every age and culture. Then what made the difference
for America? I believe there is only one credible explanation. It is simply that America’s founders
were products of (hang on tight) the Judeo-Christian culture existing in England, Western Europe
and America at that time. They formed our system of law and government based on a Biblical view
of the world and mankind.
Yeah, yeah, I know. We’re told the idea for our democracy came from ancient Athens and
Rome; and from the ideals of “the Enlightenment.” But when Thomas Jefferson declared our
inalienable right to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, he did not appeal to Plato or Seneca or
Voltaire. He argued from the Judeo-Christian worldview that mankind is endowed with liberty by no
less than the Creator God. This idea is dynamite; and without the Biblical worldview it could never
have been conceived. It is the cornerstone of our freedoms; and Jefferson never backed away from
it. In later years he wrote: “Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed
their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that their liberties are a gift from God?”1
When the U. S. Constitution was being hammered out in 1787, the delegates did indeed look to
the ancient democracies as well as the European nations of the Enlightenment. But Benjamin
Franklin said in his famous speech of June 28: “We have gone back to ancient history for models of
government and examined the different forms of those republics which, having been formed with the
seeds of their own dissolution, now no longer exist. And we have viewed modern states all round
Europe, but find none of their constitutions suitable.....” 2
The convention was in danger of breaking up due to friction between the smaller and larger
states over methods of representation. Franklin then went on to recommend that the assembled
delegates pray each morning to “the Father of Lights” to “illuminate our understanding” and
“implore the assistance of Heaven and its blessings on our deliberations.”3 The result was the most
brilliant and stable constitution of liberty and representative government in the history of the world.
Then there’s a second concept that came from our Judeo-Christian heritage that is absolutely
essential for any democracy to succeed. It’s the idea that all citizens, from greatest to least, are
equal under the rule of law. Other civilizations have tried this; but they had no sound basis for it;
and they have since disappeared anyway. But Western Civilization (which produced our Founding
Fathers) took its’ cue from the Biblical worldview. Nearly one thousand years ago, Englishmen
began to reason since the law originated with God, then it was higher in authority than any man;
and all men must be equal under it. That idea, too, was dynamite. Since the king was inferior to
God, then he was under the rule of law just as much as the stable hand. It was inevitable this idea,
like a fresh-blowing wind, would eventually sweep in liberty and self-government.
Its’ development from the Biblical worldview can be traced through history. A good place to start
is with the Magna Carta, that seminal document of liberty signed “in the meadow that is called
Runnymede” in 1215 A.D. In it, King John agreed to demands for freedom for the English Church
and liberty for his barons. It’s important to note the terms of the agreement were “granted to God,”4
thus recognizing God as a higher authority than the King and his nobles.
Then around 1250 A.D. an influential English judge named Henry DeBracton wrote De Legibus
et Consuetudinibus. (They wrote things like that in Latin, which makes us modern folks feel a bit
stupid.) DeBracton wrote, “that he (the King) ought to be under the law appears clearly in the
analogy of Jesus Christ, whose vice-regent on earth he is.” DeBracton pointed out that God could
have crushed Satan by using his sheer power. Instead, Christ died so that Satan’s work could be
destroyed by way of justice and law. Since God, who is all-powerful, chose to work within the rule of
justice, so should the king who is under Him.5
In 1644 a prominent Scottish theologian, Samuel Rutherford wrote Lex Rex (The Law and The
Prince) in which he used Biblical Scripture to show that the King’s authority is legitimate only when
he acts within the law.6 Around 1760 a famous English jurist, Sir William Blackstone, wrote
Commentaries on the Law of England in which he said there are only two sources of law. One is
natural law, enacted “when the Supreme Being formed the universe and created matter out of
nothing.” The second source, according to Blackstone, is “revealed or divine law, and they are to
be found only in the Holy Scriptures.”7 (Think about this the next time a federal judge orders the
Ten Commandments removed from a courtroom.) Blackstone’s Commentaries had a great
influence on the thinking of American jurists prior to the Revolution.
As late as 1829, the famous American jurist, Joseph Story, summed all of this up very neatly
when he wrote, “There has never been a period in which Common Law did not recognize
Christianity as laying at its foundation.”8 It seems beyond dispute that our concept of equality
under the rule of law, which seems to us as natural as breathing, came as a result of our Judeo-
Christian heritage.
Incidentally, if there was a planet where no one lived except atheists and evolutionists, (what an
awful place that would be!) they could never come up with that liberating idea. The atheist has no
basis for law except human opinion, which would turn out to be the opinion of the man who could
whip everybody else. “Law” would become the word of the strongest and meanest, with all the
horror that would entail. The evolutionist likewise has no basis for law except brute force, the
“survival of the fittest.”
Can you think of another concept necessary for liberty and democracy to work? Right! It’s the
idea that government is the servant of the people, not the master. This came to us, too, from the
Bible: the words of Jesus who said, “He who is greatest among you, let him be the servant of all.”
George Washington (a Christian and not a deist) understood this very well. When, after the
Revolution, his senior officers tried to make him the king of America, that remarkable man refused;9
and chose instead to go the Christian way of the servant.
Then there’s the simple fact that when the Judeo-Christian influence is strong in a society, it
produces a fair number of generally honest and virtuous people. This too is necessary for the
survival of a democracy. As Benjamin Franklin said, “Only a virtuous people are capable of
freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”10 And
President John Adams said in 1798, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”11
Maybe all of this explains why every democracy I can think of existing today either originated in,
or else was transplanted from, the Judeo-Christian based (Western) world. I can think of no Islamic,
Confucian, Buddhist, or animist culture today that has originated a representative government of
liberty and law solely on its own. They either had it forced upon them, (as in the case of Japan and
the former colonies of Western nations) or else had a leader who studied and adopted the ways of
the Western World in order to form one. (As in the case of the Turkish Republic whose founding
President replaced Islamic courts and law with a civil code modeled after Switzerland’s.)12 It seems
beyond dispute that democracy would hardly exist in today’s world except for the influence of the
Judeo-Christian worldview.
This conclusion can be frightening when you think about it. It stands to reason if we owe our
liberties and democracy to our Judeo-Christian heritage, then, if we lose that heritage, we will surely
eventually lose our democracy and freedoms. The frightening part is our own educators,
government officials, and judges are busily erasing our Biblical heritage at every level; apparently
unaware they are destroying their own foundation.
1 Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia, Query 18
2 Benjamin Franklin, June 28, 1787, quoted by James Madison in Notes of Debates in the Federal
Convention of 1787.
3 ibid
4 English text of Magna Carta, third general paragraph, also in Item 61 as “for God.” (G. R. C.
Davis, Magna Carta, British Library, 1989.)
5 English translation of De Legibus et Consuetudinibus by Henry De Bracton, (Cambridge, Mass,
Harvard, Belknap, 1968.)
6 Samuel Rutherford, Lex Rex, Argument One in Section: “For lawfulness of resistance in the
matter of the King’s unjust invasion of life and religion.” This is also shown throughout the entire
work. (Dr. C. Matthew McMahon, A Puritan’s Mind, online apuritansmind.com.)
7 Sir William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Law of England, Section The Second, “Of the Nature
of Laws in General.”
8 The Legal Mind in America, Perry Miller, Ed. p.178 (New York, Doubleday, 1962.) Also Francis
Schaeffer, A Christian Manifesto, p.38 (Crossway Books, 1982.)
9 George Washington,The Man who Would Not be King, Stephen Krensky, (Scholastic
Paperbacks, February 1, 1991.)
10 From a letter April 17, 1787 in The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, Albert Henry Smith, Ed., 1907,
(Reprinted New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1970.)
11 From an address to the military, Oct. 11, 1798 in The Works of John Adams – Second President
of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, Ed., (Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1854.)
12 The history of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Wikipedia online, January 2007