The Law vs. The Great Agreement

Posted on October 1, 2004 in Secularism

Thomas Jefferson put it succinctly when a friend asked him if the Ten Commandments had formed the basis for the Constitution. No, he said, in a letter. No because it had not been constructed legislatively.

Despite what the extreme Right and some liberal and moderate Christians say, our Constitution derives its authority from a power other than God. Those who write accurate history realize that the Constitution was negotiated — and continues to be negotitated. It arose out of a different kind of inner experience than the Ten Commandments. The latter did not inspire the former. If God is involved in our foundation document, it is indirectly, through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Compare how the Ten Commandments was delivered and how the Constitution was birthed. In the first instance, God spoke to Moses, wrote the laws on a piece of stone, and Moses brought them down for the Hebrews to read. God starts out by talking about himself. “I am the Lord Thy God. Thou shalt not have any other gods before me.” He goes on to develop this theme in the next two commandments before he jumps to the human part of the document, governing how the Israelites are to behave socially.

The U.S. Constitution starts in a very different tone of voice. Right from the start, in the Preamble, it establishes a different authoritative basis for its existence:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Out of our longing to be free of authority which simply imposes itself on us comes the essential creed for our governance. As a reviewer of one of Bill O’Reilly’s latest messes pointed out, the Ten Commandments is written for a theocracy. The Constitution establishes a Democratic Republic. On the matter of God, it is agnostic. It does not claim to know.

Let me speak now to the place of religion in Democracy. The First Amendment says that Government is not to take a stand on religion. This idea is New Testament. There is, Jesus tells us in the story of the Tribute Money, a separation between religion and the state. God gets what is God’s and Caesar gets what is Caesar’s. There is the Church and there is the State. Christ had no problem separating the two: one could choose to live the two commandments he gave us and still meet one’s obligations of citizenship such as paying taxes. Under the Constitution, the government cannot ban the Bible (as the RNC suggested the liberals want to do). The First Amendment protects Conscience. There can be no throwing of Christians — or anyone else — to the lions. No real lover of the Constitution would dare change that or try to weasel around the prohibition. To live with one another as fellow participants in the governance of our lives, we agree not to insist on one faith for all. This does not and it has never meant that we cannot use the Ten Commandments as a framework for our lives.

The best we can say for the Constitution is that it does not contradict the Ten Commandments. It allows people of faith to congregate and celebrate their religion. What it definitively prohibits, however, is any religious community using the force of government — whether passive as in the posting of Ten Commandments in court houses or active as Sunday Blue Laws — to promote its dogmas and practices.

Again, if the Constitution does in any way descend from the anthology known as the Bible, its roots lie in the New Testament. Jesus reduces the Law to two statements. He goes on to talk about self-governance in worldly affairs and detachment from the apparatus of the State. Where Government must use coersion, the community of the Spirit must rely on attraction. A Government may arrest and separate thieves, murderers, and similar ne’er-do-wells, but the Christian community remains open to all sinners. Christians do not legislate their love of God: they choose it.

New Testament decision-making involves everyone in the community. The practice that comes the closest to earliest Christianity is that of the Religious Society of Friends or Quakers where no decision affecting the Meeting as a whole is made without the unanimity of the entire Meeting for Business. Quakers arrive at their views through prayerful reflection and discussion with their peers. When they feel a leading, they check it out with others. No prophet arises among the Friends without the consent and oversight of everyone. This departs radically from the Old Testament where prophets came from the class of priests. God speaks to everyone. His guidance is direct. But it remains the job of the entire community to work out how to live God’s will on earth.

Quakers helped establish the foundations for American democracy. Because we are not founded on exclusive membership and a demand for religious commitment as are the Friends (who retain the one true Libertarian practice of governance that I know of), we step back to a lesser form of decision-making, majority rule. This seals once more the fundamental difference between the logic of Ten Commandments and the Constitution. The first was handed down to the vassals of the Supreme Deity. The second was sought for, longed for, and ultimately created by the human spirit, which could be that arm of God reaching through us via the Holy Spirit, the new voice of determination in the age of the democratic Christian mind. The Christian may not impose his religion on people. This is not the way of Christ. Instead, by living out the two commandments defined by Jesus and the Beatitudes, he or she invites others to the Understanding. As a participant in our Democratic Republic, the Christian may vote based on the Bible — hopefully with the Beatitudes forefront in the mind — but not insist that others be Christians or repeat Christian scriptures as part of civics education.

The Concepts of Christ and the Constitution do share this in common: ultimately, we turn inwards — to Religion and/or to Reason — for our Votes. Out of that inner communion comes the Great Agreement based on nonviolent elections and freedom to base on our votes on an interior dialogue with our conscience. Whatever the result of the November Elections, it will not serve us to be compelled to worship one version of Deity or to ban religion — or nonreligion — in our personal life.

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What is more of a miracle? That God chipped ten laws into Sinaic marble or that human beings banded to form a government based on fairness, nonviolent transition of power, and equality for all — and that they are continuing to work out the concept?