Bishop Barron: 5 Ways America is grounded in God

Yesterday in his excellent speech  at the 'Rededicate 250: A National Jubilee of Prayer, Praise & Thanksgiving' gathering at the National Mall in Washington D.C. Bishop Barron made five key points that show Amercan political theory has always been grounded in God.

He seemlessly blended his theological knowledge with his keen understanding of American political thought as expressed in the writing of the founders. As both a Catholic theologian and an American patriot, Bishop Barron captured the spirit of 1776 because he knows that the founders based everything on ancient greek philosophy, the bible and Catholic theology (ie. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas).

Here's a break down of his main points...

1. Lincoln knew God was necessary for America: 

Bishop Barron started his speech by making the observation that Lincoln added "under God" to the Gettysburg Address during his delivery because it was not in the early drafts. This last minute inclusion of God is not a "pious ornament" but a theological necessity for a coherent account of democracy, freedom, and equality. 

“Abraham Lincoln carefully added the phrase under God to the Gettysburg address as he delivered it. that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom. Now, we know this because the earliest written versions prepared in advance don't have that phrase. So, what was it that prompted our greatest president to add these words at so decisive a moment? Was it merely a sort of pious ornament or did it signal something of central importance? I believe Lincoln intuited even as he gave his most significant speech that this theological addition was crucial to the argument he was making. He knew that God is essential to any coherent account of democracy, freedom, and equality.”

2. In America Equality depends on God: 

Humans are obviously unequal in size, intelligence, and talent. This is why in the Classical perspective Plato and Aristotle argued that natural differences justify social hierarchies and slavery. But the Founders were heirs to the Bible and Christian theology so for them, equality is rooted in being "created."  They knew that without a Creator, equality disappears but with a Creator, it becomes an enduring, universal sign of our dignity as children of God.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal… The recognition of these differences is the key to the establishment of a right social order... If you had suggested to Plato or Aristotle that all people are equal, they would have laughed at you.So what changed? Though our founding fathers were indeed influenced by classical philosophy, they were also heirs to another great tradition, namely the Bible. And Jefferson gives away the game in that single word created. What the founders knew from their Christian formation is that all people despite their enormous inequalities are equally children of God and therefore equal in dignity. Take God out of the equation and equality quickly disappears. But when equality is grounded in a creator, it becomes enduring and universal.”

Bishop Barron reminded us that ‘inalienable rights’ are from God. Even today people argue about where our rights come from. In the ancient, pre-Christian world, rights were granted by the state. The American founders held that rights are granted by God. This is part of the Left vs. Right political debate in America. If rights come from the government or a majority, they can be taken away. History shows that countries denying God often become the greatest violators of human rights.

3. Freedom as essential for dignity and love:

St. Thomas Aquinas’ version of freedom is commonly called, ‘Freedom for Excellence’. It is what makes us like God and it is essential to the dignity of a child of God. To be like God is to love and love requires freedom to be virtuous. As Bishop Barron often says, “Freedom for excellence is the disciplining of desire to make the achievement of "the Good" possible and then effortless.  

“Freedom, I would say now as a biblical person, makes love (as a virtue) possible. And love is what makes us fully alive…. God could have made us robots or marionets, but robots and marionets are incapable of love. If you're forced to love, you're not really loving. Freedom is required for this.”

Bishop Barron went so far as to say that this idea of freedom is the same as what the founders had in mind. “This is the kind of freedom that the founders are talking about. This is the freedom that Lincoln is citing and for the rebirth of which he is calling.”

4. God’s Law and all good laws are the Friend of Freedom:

Jefferson’s pharse, "laws of nature" suggest moral principles are discovered, not invented and that they stem from God not from humans.

“Remember in the prologue to the declaration, Jefferson referenced, quote, "The laws of nature and of nature's God." Can we see how Jefferson's reference to law is perfectly congruent with his emphasis on freedom? Once we understand the kind of freedom Jefferson is talking about, what are the laws of nature to which he refers? It's this very ancient idea that there are moral principles embedded in our nature, truths that we discover and not invent…There is an eternal law (from Nature’s God)  that stands above the human law, grounding it and giving it legitimacy.” 

He then went on to make a distinction between human laws that correspond to Eternal law which we have an obligation to obey and those that do not, bad laws which we have an obligation to overturn. For Bishop Barron it is clear that there was a tremendous Influence of St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas on the Civil Rights movement. He made this case by citing the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail.

“One may well ask, how can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others? The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of law, just and unjust. I'd be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. But then King contrasts this with obedience to an unjust law. I'm quoting again. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine. An unjust law is no law at all.”

5. For the American founders, Reason was not a ‘god’ but a gift from God:

He ended by making a very important distinction between the French Revolution and the American Revolution. The French revolutionaries were hostile to religion and they deified human reason (turning cathedrals into "Temples of Reason"). The American Revolution, on the other hand, was grounded in reason, biblical principles and God’s order. It was impossible not to notice that in some ways this was hinting at the difference between the American political left and the political right. 

“There's an enormous difference between the French and the American revolutions. Both were events at the end of the 18th century. Both were conditioned by the Enlightenment. But whereas the French Revolution involved a break with religion and overt hostility to religious institutions, the American Revolution did not. Whereas the French Revolution deified human reason, the American Revolution did not. The revolutionaries in Paris turned Notre Dame Cathedral into a ‘temple of reason’, elevating human judgment above all else. But the American revolutionaries, were shaped by biblical convictions. They did not replace God with reason, but they grounded reason itself in God's order.” 

Bishop Barron made a brief but compelling case for 'Natural Law' & 'Christian Humanism' as being the theoretical and spiritual foundation of America.  In fact, this speech was a textbook example of Natural Law theory, which argues that human rights are not ‘social constructs’ but are "discovered" through reason and grounded in a divine order. Bishop barron's argument that equality is a "theological necessity" rather than an empirical fact is what 'Christian Humanism' is all about. It is focused on the truth that human dignity is derived from the biblical principle that all humans being are made in the image of God. Finally, by citing MLK Jr., Augustine, and Aquinas, Bishop Barron made a sound case for ‘Moral Realism’ (the opposite of moral relativism) —the belief that there is an objective moral law above the state, and any law that contradicts it is "unjust."

This is good news! The most well known Catholic Bishop in America knows his history, political theory and theology and therefore, in the spirit of 1776, he knows how to and is willing to eloquently point out that the Catholic vision for man has its best chance of success within the American experiment