John Adams famously said: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” Adams recognized that as great as the ideals of liberty are, they can only be lived and applied by men whose hearts have been reformed to love such virtues.

Righteous hearts desire righteous laws. This is the key ingredient of any free society. And it is an ingredient we lack.

Law and order will only be enforced in a nation to the degree that its citizens are first enforcing it in their own hearts, lives, and homes. Self-government is the bedrock upon which the founding principles of America rest. Men who cannot rule their own spirits place themselves in danger of being conquered by their adversaries (Proverbs 25:28). History has borne witness to the reality that men will either be controlled by a power from within or compelled by an external, coercive force. When individuals refuse to govern themselves, they become vulnerable to the rule of tyrants.

Christians have understood the internal dynamic that creates self-ruled men and women to be the product of the Holy Spirit’s operation. Wherever God has come to dwell in the hearts of human beings, there it may be said that liberty exists: “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17).

True freedom is first and foremost freedom from slavery to sin (John 8:34). It is the result of an action initiated by God to deliver men from the dominion of death and transfer them into the kingdom of the beloved Son and his life-giving Lordship.

Unregenerate men may be able to exercise discipline, but the best they can hope for is to keep their sinful desires at bay or attempt to divert them. The self-governing Christian is not only able to restrain his fallen nature, but see it mortified and uprooted through the divine power at work in his life. Through his restored relationship to God, he aligns both himself and the world around him to the standard of God’s Word.

This is why those who have been made new creatures in Christ are the most transformative force the world has ever seen. A man saved by grace knows his God and is empowered to carry out mighty exploits in his name (Daniel 11:32).

The revolutionary Christian confession

History has shown that the gospel frees individuals, but it also has implications for social freedom. This was seen in the formation of the first truly free institution: the Christian Church. The people of God, gathered together by the preaching of the good news, turned the world upside down with their revolutionary confession of “another King” (Acts 17:7). The audience of the first century understood that Christianity was not a go-along-to-get-along kind of religion that wanted to be left alone.

The nature of its propagation was public; after all, its progenitor was executed in the public square. The New Testament records evangelistic statements about the message of salvation that dismiss any notion of a privatized faith: “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).

Statements like this brought the Christian faith into direct conflict with the Roman Empire because men like Augustus Caesar had declared themselves “savior of the world.” Caesar was looked to as the source of safety, deliverance, and provision for citizens of the polis. The biblical testimony speaks to the reality that the work of the risen Christ in his death, resurrection, and ascension to the right hand of the Father signaled a transference of salvation from man and his institutions to God and his Christ. “For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).

The New Testament records evangelistic statements about the message of salvation that dismiss any notion of a privatized faith.

In keeping with ancient paganism, the function of the state was priestly and salvific. The great empires of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Persians, and Romans all viewed man as living on a spectrum of divinity. The difference between people and gods was one of degree. Human beings could graduate to deity. Rulers were seen as god-kings in whom the divine and human came together. Salvation and its blessings were mediated through the political realm to the people. The message of the early church was that because there is another King who truly sets men free, men can draw near to God himself through Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and men.

If Christ was Lord, then Caesar was not, which means that free men always have a transcendent appeal beyond that of the state’s decree. The state is not a god, but subject to a higher law.

Only in an environment where this was recognized could a concept like liberty arise and ultimately flourish. If Caesar was not God, then he was his servant (Romans 13:1-4). As such, law is not the result of man’s decree, nor are human rights an invention of those in authority who can take them away at their leisure. Rights, such as the ones we presently enjoy in America, are to be recognized and protected by those who have been installed by God and delegated with the authority to rule under his commanding jurisdiction (Daniel 2:21, Luke 1:52).

The importance of Chalcedon

The foundation for this Spirit-led liberty was articulated at the Christian Church’s fourth ecumenical council in Chalcedon, which occurred in 451. This council was unique and marked an important victory for Christianity against the pagan religions of the past which viewed salvation as a manifestation of man’s political institutions.

Chalcedon upended such sentiments by stating that Jesus is one person with two distinct natures, truly God and truly human. These natures were distinguished, but unconfused and indivisible. The implications of this Christological formulation would go on to shape the foundations of Western civilization.

The message of the early church was that because there is another King who truly sets men free, men can draw near to God himself through Jesus Christ, the only mediator between God and men.

In the kingdoms of men, the divine idea came to expression in the state: man enlarged. Heretofore, liberties and rights were dispensable and granted by permission. There were no citizens of a free nation, only political animals who served the whims of the polis.

The council of Chalcedon declared that only one person in human history could bridge the gap between heaven and earth, which Christians believed happened at the incarnation (John 1:14). For the early Church, the proclamation of the good news of salvation was that Jesus is Lord. His Kingdom was not like the kingdoms of men that advanced by force, but only entered by grace and through faith.

The attendant blessings of these realities for the West have been myriad. The Constitution and America’s other founding documents were based on principles derived from the Christian worldview. Concepts like limited government, division of powers, the rule of law, equal justice, and elected representation demonstrate that the authors assumed man’s natural orientation toward lawlessness. The implementation of these principles allowed our nation to be an exception to centuries of oppressive rule by coercion.

Conservatism without Christ

Political conservatives today have adopted these principles, arming themselves with the traditions of our forefathers because they see the incredible fruit they have borne over the course of two centuries. The problem is that while many of these pundits love to feed off the tree of liberty, they have effectively denied the vine that gives life to the branches (John 15:5). Forgetting the rock from which they were hewn, they have elected to champion the cause of liberty while severing themselves from the Lord of liberty in their public discourse.

Proponents of a Christless conservatism have emerged in recent history, electing to take religiously neutral stands in the political arena. They emphasize a common-sense approach based on natural law, human rights, and traditional values. Even if they maintain a Christian confession in their private lives, they act in the public realm as if Christ, his Word, and his Lordship are irrelevant to the policies they espouse. Public activity is often viewed as off-limits to religious values. Their strategies have aimed at “acquiring a big tent” and growing their support base on the common ground of shared cultural norms, which are rapidly dissipating in society as the culture embraces evil.

The Constitution and America’s other founding documents were based on principles derived from the Christian worldview. The implementation of these principles allowed our nation to be an exception to centuries of oppressive rule by coercion.

Common sense and traditional values are good things, but they are only common because of the successful evangelization of the West over the course of centuries. America has lived off the fat of these benefits without establishing new guards for its future security. This security finds its anchor in the fear of the Lord. When a nation will not fear God, it is on the verge of being dispossessed, a process we are slowly witnessing today.

America will not recover apart from a radical return to the beliefs that allowed it to exist. A fatal flaw of Christless conservatism is that it grounds its view of freedom in politics rather than theology. Proponents view the cultivation and application of a holistic Christian worldview to the culture as unnecessary because religion for them means little more than possessing a personal piety. For these conservatives, getting souls saved for heaven and people into the institutional church setting are the primary focus. It is a spirituality reserved for private worship, not a system of truth to be applied to every area of life, including politics.

By largely leaving the Bible outside of their engagement with the world, they show themselves to be just as arbitrary as those in willful opposition to God. Any ethical claim they make or policy for which they advocate has no objective basis because it is not grounded in the authority of God’s Word.

Common sense and traditional values are good things, but they are only common because of the successful evangelization of the West over the course of centuries.

Conservatism that does not stand on Scripture fails to take into account that human beings are fundamentally religious creatures in relationship with God. As God’s image-bearers, we are constantly living either in obedience or disobedience to his revealed will. This is what it means to be human. All of life is inherently religious. Consequently, any system of government, political ideology, or ordering of society assumes a certain set of values and norms that are often taken for granted by both believers and unbelievers alike. What people are, what they are for, and how they should live are all religious questions informed by an ultimate standard.

The Christian contention is that only the biblical worldview provides the ability to ground such things in objective reality. This does not mean that Christians should refuse engaging in civic action with unbelievers. All of us do so every day without blinking under the assumption of boundaries that only exist if Christianity is true. We should be grateful to participate in such endeavors with unbelievers when they are acting like Christians, while separating from them where they deviate from the standard. But we must not pretend as if a religion-free world of neutrality is a viable option.

The way forward

Our problem today is not secularism, but religious apostasy. Therefore, the solution runs not through political victories, but through the hearts of men. In turning away from the true God, there is no longer a way to have an absolute moral order. A people with no prophetic vision cast off all restraint and descend into anarchy (Proverbs 29:18). Radical individualism is the result of such untethering and maximum freedom is demanded by those who desire no accountability.

However, without a unified moral vision there is no glue to hold society together. People willingly surrender their freedoms in exchange for growing state control to keep order and give purpose. Community becomes artificial as the state seeks to maintain peace and make allowance for a variety of laws while still retaining for itself divine prerogatives to preside over them all. In this way, ours is not unlike the environment of the apostles in the first century.

The only way to combat a catastrophic outcome is not political conservatism. It requires a radical return to the religion of our forefathers. Whether or not all of them had a profession of faith, the culture in which they were steeped was undoubtedly the fruit of biblical Christianity. This is why the Constitution functioned for them and why it is wholly inadequate to govern any other type of people.

Without a unified moral vision there is no glue to hold society together. People willingly surrender their freedoms in exchange for growing state control to keep order and give purpose.

That we still maintain the ability to influence public policy and change the law in our nation is a blessing we should not willingly surrender. But these alone are insufficient. American conservatives will not right the nation through winning elections or appointing Supreme Court Justices. Our nation requires an internal transformation that will bear the fruit of liberty once again. Apart from a work of God’s Spirit and widespread repentance, men and women will continue to choose slavery over liberty. If we will not have the King of kings to govern us and our elected officials according to the rule of his law, then freedom will become a distant memory.

We need self-ruled men with subdued hearts that cry out for righteousness in the public arena because they possess the righteousness of Christ. Creating a “moral and religious people” must be the priority of the Christian Church as it engages in evangelism, discipleship, and the relentless application of the faith to all of life. Conservatism alone will not do because without the standard it will merely be left preserving the progressive victories of yesterday rather than advancing the Kingdom of God in the earth.