Does American Democracy Need God?

In a recent book, To Achieve Our Country, Richard Rorty reasserts the traditional idea that the United States has the unique potential of coming closer than any other nation to the creation of a moral society, one in which "liberty and justice for all" becomes a reality. But he departs from the traditional belief that we have this unique destiny because of our special relationship to God. Instead, he bases his optimistic belief on a political ethos that "has no room for obedience to a non-human authority" but only to "freely achieved consensus among human beings."

Rorty assumes that moral values are created by human beings out of our experience and therefore have no need of any foundation in some entity or force that transcends our needs, desires, and hopes.

He cites not only John Dewey, as might be expected of a humanist philosopher, but also Walt Whitman to indicate that this repudiation of any nonhuman foundation for our political ethos is as much a part of our tradition as the reliance on divine or natural law. Dewey told us that democracy doesn't "rest upon the idea that experience must be subjected at some point or other ... to some `authority' alleged to exist outside the process of experience." And in Democratic Vistas, Whitman complains about "how long it takes to make this American world see that it is, in itself, the final authority and reliance!"

This view has been questioned by many critics, as might be expected. An overwhelming proportion of Americans believe in God, U.S. currency confirms trust in God, and the Pledge of Allegiance asserts that the United States is a nation "under God." And there is little evidence that the majority of Americans agree with the humanist-pragmatic idea that moral values don't require a source in God or in natural law, contrary to the Declaration of Independence, which states that "the laws of nature and nature's God" entitle all people to "certain unalienable rights." Nevertheless, I think that Rorty's view is firmly rooted in our earliest tradition and that the belief that the authority of our government comes only from the "freely achieved consensus among human beings" owes as much to Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Abraham Lincoln as to Dewey and Whitman.

For as much as our ancestors liked to believe that their deepest values had their source in God and nature, their experience told them, time and again, that the same God--whether Christian or deist--could be interpreted to justify very different values. And it is this experience that is reflected in the crucial passage of the Declaration of Independence--namely, that governments derive "their just powers from the consent of the governed." This principle was reiterated in the Constitution, where there is no mention of God--except for the negative reference in Article VI prohibiting a religious test for federal office--and there is a strong assertion that the ultimate authority is "We, the People."

The struggle over slavery and the second birth of our nation only confirmed that the appeal to God and nature could and was made by those who supported slavery as well as those who opposed it. Nevertheless, the need to believe that moral values have a dimension that goes beyond human volition continued to be felt. Lincoln reconciled these different ideas in another of the great documents in our political heritage. In the Gettysburg Address, he reiterated our belief in the authority of the people but placed that authority "under God." Lincoln's assertion "this nation, under God ... of the people, by the people, for the people" might also be interpreted as combining our faith in human beings with our need to believe that this secular faith has a religious justification.

Today, this dualism continues. The majority of Americans want to keep the phrase under God in the Pledge of Allegiance but are equally determined to keep religion out of public institutions. The belief in God is becoming more and more a source of personal consolation--a belief that gives meaning and hope to many lives and, consequently, a matter better left to the individual conscience than to the government. That is why the majority of Americans, although they accept the possibility of a nonhuman authority for basic moral values, expect everyone to abide by the laws passed by the majority of people. In practice, if not in theory, vox populi is vox dei.

Americans may believe that we are all under God as individuals, but because God's instructions have to be interpreted by human beings, the authority for our political values lies in the "freely achieved consensus among human beings," or "We, the People." Rorty's view on this subject is, therefore, not only a secular, humanist interpretation of our democratic ethos but a reaffirmation of the ethos central to our history. To see how the religious and the secular aspects of this tradition converge in our nation's scriptures, however, we have to look at what people do in the practice of politics, as well as what they say.

Lawrence Hyman is professor emeritus of English at the City University of New York's Brooklyn College and past president of the Humanists of North Jersey.