“It seems to me that Independence Day, the Fourth of July, should be celebrated as much in Britain as in America. Not in rejoicing at the separation of the American Colonies from the British Crown, but in sincere gratitude to the Founding Fathers of this great Republic…
These were the words of Her late Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, speaking here in Boston at the Old State House during the Bicentennial celebrations.
The Queen went on to memorialise further the 200th anniversary by adding that, “it gives me the greatest pleasure, on behalf of the British people, to present a new bell to the people of the United States of America. It comes from the same foundry as the Liberty Bell, but written on the side of this Bicentennial Bell are the words “Let Freedom Ring”.
Just two days earlier, at the Banquet hosted at the White House by President Gerald Ford at the start of her State Visit, Her Majesty had recalled the words of John Adams, America’s first Ambassador, to the Court of St James, in London, who spoke “ to my ancestor, King George III, …of “the old good nature and the old good humor between our peoples.”
The Queen went on to say: “Mr. President, the British and American people are as close today as two peoples have ever been. We see you as our strong and trusted friend, and we believe that you, in turn, will find us as ready as ever to bear our full share in defending the values in which we both believe.”
Beneath the robust and mutual sentiments of cordiality exchanged at that historic time, there was a sense of very real common bonds rooted in a shared heritage. For the Queen in particular this would have been seen as grounded ultimately in a shared Christian heritage. This is an important point that bears consideration.
That there is a powerful common thread, based in Christianity, is something that in certain circles it may be ever more unfashionable to dwell upon — and still less to affirm — but this makes it all the more important to do so for those who believe it to be true.
In some ways, ironically, it may well be someone who was neither British nor American who can help us to do this, namely Alexis De Tocqueville, who was, in addition however, possessed of what Isaiah Berlin once described as a, “utilitarian” attitude to religion, regarding it as merely a, “social cement, a safety valve for passions that might otherwise feed a revolutionary torrent dangerous to individual liberty” 1 . Understanding this background nonetheless serves to make his observations all the more telling.
While he may well have considered equal freedom one of the highest goods of political life he nonetheless held that what he called character was more vital than even the best written constitution to the maintenance of this freedom.
In other words, while healthy ways, mores or habits in a given society can support freedom in the absence of a good constitution, no constitution, no matter how well designed, can sustain freedom among a people whose character is degraded. 2 As he observed, “How could society escape destruction if, when political ties are relaxed, moral ties are not tightened.” 3
This point was rather later to be well illustrated in 1977, when the Soviet Union, under Leonid Brezhnev, severely taxed its constitutional lawyers by having them search for new freedoms which the third revision of the Soviet Constitution could enshrine. 4
And it was this way of looking at things in respect of morals and character that ultimately led de Tocqueville to see the Puritans as America’s true founders. Though in supposing this, he did not wish to diminish Thomas Jefferson or the other Framers by denying them the title of founders. This is attested by his calling Jefferson “the most powerful apostle of democracy there has ever been” (261) and Washington and Madisson, the “men of greatest intelligence and noblest character ever to have appeared in the New World” (114).
Thus, in contrast to many later historians who traced the origins of the new American polity to a philosophical rather than to a religious tradition, 5 De Tocqueville, made Christianity the primary source of American principles and he even saw Martin Luther as a pivotal figure and influence. 6 Some later historians did share one or another version of this religious emphasis in seeing the Puritans as central to America’s evolution through their seeking to establish biblical principles as the basis for political life. Andrew C. McLaughlin for example asserted in 1932 that Puritan covenants, or communal agreements sanctioned by God, were major theoretical sources for American constitutionalism (see, The Foundations of American Constitutionalism. New York, 1932) 7
What is particularly intriguing, is the way that Tocqueville discerns in Puritanism a unique combination of what he calls the “spirit of religion” and the “spirit of freedom” (47).
The primary source for the Puritan “spirit of religion” was the Old Testament, where the great drama culminates in God’s deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt, the revelation to Moses at Mt. Sinai, and the subsequent journey of the Chosen People to the Promised Land.
He saw this as having shaped the Puritans’ understanding of their own exodus from Europe, their perilous journey to America which carried with it in echo that they had a privileged status in God’s eyes also along with the founding of the New England colonies (36-37). In addition however, biblical Judaism inspired the passion for orthodoxy which fueled the Puritan “spirit of religion” and the laws which promoted it (which tended against freedom of religion for others).
By contrast to all this, the “spirit of freedom” was believed to have had its roots in the New Testament and was strongly democratic.
Tocqueville argued that Jesus Christ was indeed the first historical figure to teach that all human beings had an “equal right … at birth to liberty” (439). But in so doing, Jesus rejected both the Jewish concept of the chosen people and most of the restrictions contained in the Mosaic code (see 445).
In turn for Tocqueville, the growth of democracy was thus Providential: “it is universal and permanent, it is daily passing beyond human control, and every event and every man helps it along” and this leads to an account of Providence more in keeping with the universalism of the New Testament than was true in the end of either the Puritans or the Old Testament Israelites with their ideas of the chosen few (12, 439,445-47, 704).
Within Tocqueville’s understanding it is important to note however that God left humanity responsible for determining whether the “spirit of freedom” would flourish within democracy, or whether aristocratic tyranny would be replaced by a new, more onerous form of despotism (705) – a challenge which arguably even now unfolds!
Tocqueville’s discussion of the principle grounds of American beliefs provides striking evidence for the depth of these changes he saw as central to the American story.
For the Puritans the Bible was the ultimate source of intellectual and moral guidance (36-37, 46-47). But according to his analysis there next came a further turn in America that led in opposing directions.
On the one hand it was the American use of ultimately philosophical methods that led to the undermining of the sovereignty of the Bible as well as of the superiority of clergy. Thus came the rise of “universal reason as the source of moral authority”.
But on the other hand there was too the characteristically Protestant notion that the “truths of the other world” were “subject to private judgment” (374, 397). It was this ultimate privatization of belief that led to an “infinite variety of ceaselessly changing Christian sects” which situation ultimately as intolerable to Puritanism as to other earlier forms of traditional Christian orthodoxy (432). Thus meant that in the end Tocqueville did not think that general use of philosophical method in religious matters led to true freedom.
In order to function in his view, no society can exist without shared beliefs which have to be simply a given, but this entailed that the critical question for assessment becomes not whether any intellectual authority exists, but rather “where it resides” (434).
And it is this that led to the fateful turn when by the time of Tocqueville faith in the Bible had already been replaced by faith in public opinion, which became as he saw a new “sort of religion, with the majority as its prophet” (436).
Majority opinion thus became arguably sacred in America, Tocqueville observed, because democrats believe that all enjoy an equal capacity for judging truth. For such people, it naturally follows that “truth will be found on the side of the majority” a profoundly radical idea indeed (435). Tocqueville saw Americans as distrustful of any intellectual authority “beyond and outside humanity,” thus making American public opinion in the 1830s less Christian than it seemed (435).
What this left as the challenge for the future of America and the primary task for for American leaders and moralists was to strengthen the elements of Christianity which still did exist in the American mind. For unless this be accomplished, he feared, the influence of Christianity in America would decline and “no new religion” would arise to take its place (435). How very prophetic he was!
1 Berlin, Isaiah. “The Thought of de Tocqueville: Review of Jack Lively, “The Social and Political Thought of Alexis de Tocqueville” in History (Vol. 50) 1965: p.198–206.
2 (See Alex de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1969 edition Ed. J. P. Mayer. Trans. George Lawrence. New York (Vol. 1 originally published, 1835; Vol. 2 originally published 1840) p. 274, 294, 305-308 and here he was following Rousseau.) 3 Op cit as in all following cases where only page numbers cited, p. 294 4 Among the rights already supposedly conferred were those to freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of assembly and the right to religious belief and worship while there was in addition freedom of artistic work, protection of the family, inviolability of the person and home, and the right to privacy as well as rights to work, rest and leisure, health protection, care in old age and sickness, housing, education, and cultural benefits. Fundamental to the rather different practical reality of the Soviet Constitution was that it also outlined express limitations on rights. Citizens thus only enjoyed rights insofar as the exercise of those rights did not interfere with the interests of the state, which the Communist party alone had the power and authority to determine. 5 For example: see J. G. A. Pocock who points to classical republicanism as the intellectual source of the founding in, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; while Gary Wills looks to the “Scottish Enlightenment” in his Inventing America: Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence. New York: 1978; and others looked for this to the British philosopher John Locke (Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas, New York 1942:, Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, New York, 1955, and Thomas L. Pangle, The Spirit of Modern Republicanism. Chicago, 1988. 6 In regard to finding a strong Christian influence on the founders, among later more recent historians see, Harry V. Jaffa, V., “Were the Founding Fathers Christian?” This World 8:3-7, 1984; John P. Diggins, The Lost Soul of American Politics. Chicago and London, 1986, Ellis Sandoz, A Government of Laws: Political Theory,
7 See also, Edmund S. Morgan, who argued that covenants formed the basis of American belief in the principles of limited government, delegated power, and popular rule in his Puritan Political Ideas: 1558-1794. Indianapolis, 1965, xlii-xlvii). Daniel J. Elazar connected them to the idea of federalism, in his The American Constitutional Tradition. Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska,, 14, 1988 . See also Donald S. Lutz, The Origins of American Constitutionalism. Baton Rouge and London. 1988; and Robert N. Bellah, The Broken Covenant: American Civil Religion in Time of Trial. New York1975 where he argued that the covenant tradition traditionally legitimized American society and provided a standard for critically appraising it.4
