I mentioned in another post that, while this is not intended to be a political blog, there are political implications to a Christian worldview. One implication came home to me this week. I’ve been reading Francis Schaeffer’s book, A Christian Manifesto. In it Schaeffer pointed out something I’ve believed for many years but had not thought through completely. I’ll get to it in a minute.

Since the war in Iraq began I haven’t really questioned its primary purpose, bringing democracy to Iraq. The notion of a stable democracy in the Middle East is compelling. If it could be achieved it would change the political landscape in the region and around the world. The question of whether Iraq was ready for democracy was, of course, another question. Many felt, and still feel, that the culture of Iraq and the Middle East in general is not conducive to democracy. They cite decades or centuries of oppression and authoritarian rule to support their position.

Others believe that all people would naturally prefer a democracy to any other form of government. It is believed by many that democracy is simply the natural state of man. Since human nature is the same the world over, why wouldn’t people in Iraq or anywhere else prefer democracy and be willing to work toward it?

The answer isn’t so difficult to reach but it doesn’t seem to be obvious. One need look only to our own founding fathers for the answer.

Many today debate over whether our founding fathers were Christian or not. Some point out that many of the founding fathers were deists, not Christians. A deist believes in a God who created everything and then stepped back and let it run however it would. Unlike the Christian God, the God of deism is not involved in the daily affairs of man.

Deist or not, many of our founding fathers recognized the importance of the Christian faith in the success of this country and the form of government they created. One blogger, Jenn Sierra, has written a good deal about this in her blog at www.jennsierra.com. A selection of quotes from some of our founding fathers will demonstrate the point.

We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other. –John Adams, October 11, 1798

Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the ajge by impressing the minds of men with the importance of educating their little boys and girls, inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity… and leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system. –Samuel Adams, October 4, 1790

Without morals a republic cannot subsist any length of time; they therefore who are decrying the Christian religion, whose morality is so sublime and pure…are undermining the solid foundation of morals, the best security for the duration of free governments. – Charles Carroll, signer of the Declaration of Independence

God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured in the Sacred Writings that except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. I firmly believe this. I also believe that, without His concurring aid, we shall succeed in this political building no better than the builders of Babel. – Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention of 1787

God who gave us life gave us liberty. And 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 these liberties are a gift from God? That they are not to be violated but with His wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, and that His justice cannot sleep forever. – Thomas Jefferson

We’ve staked our future on our ability to follow the Ten Commandments with all of our heart. – James Madison

We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We’ve staked the future of all our political institutions upon our capacity…to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God. – James Madison

Public utility pleads most forcibly for the general distribution of the Holy Scriptures. The doctrine they preach, the obligations they impose, the punishment they threaten, the rewards they promise, the stamp and image of divinity they bear, which produces a conviction of their truths, can alone secure to society, order and peace, and to our courts of justice and constitutions of government, purity, stability and usefulness. In vain, without the Bible, we increase penal laws and draw entrenchments around our institutions. Bibles are strong entrenchments. Where they abound, men cannot pursue wicked courses, and at the same time enjoy quiet conscience. – James McHenry, Signer of the Constitution

I verily believe Christianity necessary to the support of civil society. One of the beautiful boasts of our municipal jurisprudence is that Christianity is a part of the Common Law. . . There never has been a period in which the Common Law did not recognize Christianity as lying its foundations. – Justice Joseph Story

The list goes on and on. It is clear that our founders believed, not just that Christianity was true, but that without the belief in Christianity and the morality that follows from that belief, the American form of government could not prevail. Even our Declaration of Independence states, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…” These unalienable rights are given by God, not by government or men and they cannot be taken away. This, of course, presupposes a benevolent God who is concerned with the affairs of men. (Note also that both Franklin and Jefferson made distinctly Christian statements in spite of claims that they were deists.)

I stand in agreement with the founders quoted above and the Declaration of Independence. So what does all that have to do with the stated goal of the war in Iraq? Simply this, if a representative republic requires the Christian religion to prosper and survive, how can Iraq possible achieve it? The proposition is this: A representative republic, a system whereby the government governs by the consent of the governed, requires that those being governed must themselves be self governing by virtue of the morality that only Christianity instills. Without the tenets of Christianity, a democratic form of government will always degenerate into tyranny.

The lessons of history certainly seem to bear this out. In the grand scheme of history most governments have been tyrannies and those that started out as something else always degenerated into tyrannies without a Christian foundation.

The secular humanist worldview claims that government can govern fairly and maintain morality and the consent of the governed through some means other than Christian morality, thought both the Humanist Manifesto and Humanist Manifesto II admit that without Christian morality it is a challenge to come up with a sound foundation. Well known humanist Will Durant recognized the problem when he wrote in The Lessons of History, “There is no significant example in history, before our time, of a society successfully maintaining moral life without the aid of religion.” It simply does not happen. The empirical evidence seems to indicate that morality requires religion, specifically, the Christian religion and successful civil government requires morality. This can be stated as a syllogism thus:

A moral society requires Christianity
A successful civil government requires a moral society
Therefore, a successful civil government requires Christianity

I conclude that any form of democracy in Iraq is doomed to failure so long as Iraq remains a predominately Muslim country. They simply do not have the requisite worldview and religion to make it work. Unless the effort to convert Muslims to Christianity is at least as large and sustained as the effort to import democracy, we are wasting our time. It would be better to set up a dictator managed by the US so that basic human rights could be ensured and the stability of the government can be maintained.

Certainly some will say that I am just an American imperialist who wants to run other countries. I can understand how you might think that but you would be far from the truth. I am simply following the logic of history to its logical conclusion. We could, of course, simply pull out of Iraq as some have proposed but I am convinced that doing that would be a far larger disservice to the people of Iraq, to the Middle East and to the world because the resulting instability and inevitable supremacy of Iran in the region would be far worse

This example demonstrates, I think, the difficulties facing serious students of worldviews. It is simple enough to adopt one of the other worldview and say that is your worldview. It is quite another thing to really think through the logical consequences of the worldview you claim and arrive at conclusions and positions consistent with that worldview.

My contention in this blog is that the Christian worldview is the only worldview that encompasses all of reality, explaining satisfactorily all that we see and experience. The major competing worldviews are humanism and Islam, both of which I believe fall far short of explaining all of reality.