Dear en,
I read with interest your article by Edward Vines in the October en on the ‘Slide in Society’, with many illuminating views and quotations.
However I cannot view the Declaration of Independence as an essentially Christian document. The idea that we are ‘endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights … among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ is surely humanism, not Christianity, a product of the so-called Enlightenment. If we want to know the true position of man before his Creator we are better served by the historic creeds. ‘The chief end of man is to glorify God, and enjoy him for ever.’
It is also highly questionable whether the Declaration of Independence could be justified from a Christian point of view. Of course there are many different views of the legitimacies of revolution, but if Paul could write as he did (Romans 13.1–2) in the era of Nero it would be difficult to see how the apostle could approve of rebellion on essentially economic grounds. (The question of the form of government is quite separate and is a different debate. Democracy is not a system with a specially biblical warrant).
It is arguable that the seeds of the present situation in America were sown by the essentially humanistic and unbiblical ideas contained in that document and the subsequent national unfolding. Of course few if any nations have a constitution that can be viewed as biblically supported, but we make a mistake if we view the USA as more virtuous in that respect than other nations.
It would therefore be a mistake to look at Communism or Capitalism as the cause of a nation’s decline. These are symptoms of a spiritual decline. Materialism is as destructive a force as any political system, and is surely a cancer eating away at our Western society: but it is our failure to honour our Creator and humble ourselves before him that is destroying us.
Yours,
