One of the hot topics along the front lines of the culture war is the issue of the relationship between religion and government. In an attempt to establish a political theocracy, right-wing Christian Nationalists have designed their own historical narrative to suit their own image. Christian reconstructionalists, such as the popular pseudo-historian, David Barton, maintain that the Bible served as the primary source cited by our founders in creating the Constitution.
For example, let’s take a look at the Barton hypothesis that our founders allegedly based the idea of separation of powers on the “Biblical concept” [1] found in Isaiah 33:22 which says:
“For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; it is he who will save us.”
That’s the only “proof” these historical charlatans offer. That’s it – two short lines wrenched from the Bible. The Isaiah verse, offered by Christian Nationalists, is the direct opposite of the separation of powers used in our system of government, and describes a totalitarian theocracy where the concentration of power lies in a single kingship. Furthermore, what these theocons fail to offer is any citation from the founders themselves mentioning the Bible.
Luckily, reality offers another source, other than Old Testament mythology, for the idea of separating political power into three branches of government. The history and development of political philosophy has been recorded and can be reviewed; from the framers such as James Madison, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson; to the Scottish and French Enlightenment thinkers such as Locke, Smith, and Montesquieu, to Pericles’ Golden Age of Greek Antiquity.
James Madison 1751– 1836
James Madison, echoing Montesquieu in Federalist 47, states that it has become a “political maxim, that the legislative, executive, and judiciary departments ought to be separate and distinct.” History had clearly proven to our founders that the “accumulation of all powers… in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many,” regardless of whether this power be “appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” [2]
In surveying the extensive writings of Madison, one finds that, while he did not speak as harshly of religion as Jefferson, Madison most certainly held religion to be a serious threat to liberty. As Madison stated in his, Vices of the Political System:
“…the strongest of religious ties, proves that individuals join without remorse in acts, against which their consciences would revolt if proposed to them under the like sanction, separately in their closets. When indeed Religion if kindled into enthusiasm, its force like of other passions, is increased by the sympathy of a multitude. But enthusiasm is only a temporary state of religion, and while it lasts will hardly be seen with pleasure at the helm of Government. Besides as religion in its coolest state, is not infallible, it may become a motive to oppression as well as a restraint from injustice.” [3]
Montesquieu 1689–1755
The other alternative to the historical mythology offered by Christian Nationalism can be found in Montesquieu’s, The Spirit of Laws, where after giving a complete history of Greek and Roman constitutions and their limitations, he concludes that “When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty… Again, there is no liberty if the judiciary power be not separated from the legislative and executive.”
The remedy for faulty governments, where power was concentrated in one body – such as described in the Biblical narrative – was to divide political power so that the branches “check one another by the mutual privilege of rejecting.” According to Montesquieu, the “ancients, who were strangers to the distribution of the three powers in government… could never form a just idea of monarchy.”
Nowhere in Montesquieu’s monumental and extensive exploration of political history do we find any mention of the Bible as a source. There are no reviews of the governmental structure of the Jewish Iron Age’s Southern and Northern Kingdoms, in Montesquieu’s seminal work, for these were totalitarian theocracies. In fact, Montesquieu specifically stated in the opening, that he had excluded Christianity as a moral source of republican government.
What Montesquieu referred to as “virtue in a republic” was not a “Christian, but a political virtue.” This secular political virtue serves as the “spring which sets the republican government in motion.”
Montesquieu became the first to articulate in a detailed way the doctrine of the separation of powers. The Isaiah passage used by Christian Nationalists in an attempt to further their theocratic political and social agenda, is not reflective of individual liberty, nor is it a government that resembles a democratic republic in any way. It is reflective of the worst type of government known to history; a totalitarian dictatorship where all power resides in a singularity.
Aristotle 384–322 BCE
Going back even further into the history of political philosophy, and ideas concerning political power, we arrive at Aristotle’s Politics. Aristotle inquires, “what is to be the supreme power of the state:- Is it the multitude? Or the wealthy? Or the good? Or the one best man? Or the tyrant?” Aristotle concluded that all of these alternatives were problematic.
The poor tend to “divide among themselves the property of the rich” and the wealthy tend to “rob and plunder the people.” One of Aristotle’s remedies was a mixed government between the various interests. This would later evolve into the separation of powers that we find in Montesquieu.
While the enlightenment thinkers rejected Aristotle’s metaphysics and cosmology, the ideas of a government of poise and counterpoise that limited the concentration and abuse of power, can be traced back to Aristotle, rather than the Bible.
As we can see, the Christian Nationalists’ historical narrative is a fabrication constructed of pure air, un-tethered to the actual historical record. We can cleanly trace the genealogy of the idea of separation of powers found in our Constitution, back through the Scottish enlightenment, to Greek antiquity, rather than to the Bible. Nowhere in the writings of the framers do we find any mention of the Bible serving as a foundation for the Constitution.
[1] David Barton, The Myth of Separation, Wallbuilders Press, 4th Addition, (1991), p.196
[2] James Madison, Federalist 47, Great Books of the Western World, University of Chicago, (1952), Volume 43,p. 153
[3] James Madison, Vices of the Political System, April. 1787, James Madison Writings, Library of America, (1999), p.78