We the Fallen People

The Founders and the Future of American Democracy

Robert Tracy McKenzie

• Editorial: IVP Academic
• Año: 2021
• ISBN:
  9780830852970
• Categoría: History
• Categoría: North American History

Christianity Today Book AwardThe Gospel Coalition Book Awards Honorable MentionForeword INDIES Book of the Year Award FinalistThe success and survival of American democracy have never been guaranteed. Political polarization, presidential eccentricities, the trustworthiness of government, and the prejudices of the voting majority have waxed and waned ever since the time of the Founders, and there are no fail-safe solutions to secure the benefits of a democratic future.What we must do, argues the historian Robert Tracy McKenzie, is take an unflinching look at the very nature of democracy—its strengths and weaknesses, what it can promise, and where it overreaches. And this means we must take an unflinching look at ourselves.We the Fallen People presents a close look at the ideas of human nature to be found in the history of American democratic thought, from the nation's Founders through the Jacksonian Era and Alexis de Tocqueville. McKenzie, following C. S. Lewis, claims there are only two reasons to believe in majority rule: because we have confidence in human nature—or because we don't. The Founders subscribed to the biblical principle that humans are fallen and their virtue is always doubtful, and they wrote the US Constitution to frame a republic intended to handle our weaknesses. But by the presidency of Andrew Jackson, contrary ideas about humanity's inherent goodness were already taking deep root among Americans, bearing fruit in such perils as we now face for the future of democracy.Focusing on the careful reasoning of the Founders, the seismic shifts of the Jacksonian Era, and the often misunderstood but still piercing analysis of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, McKenzie guides us in a conversation with the past that can help us see the present—and ourselves—with new insight.

Part One

Governing a Fallen People

The Founders, the Constitution, and Human Nature

IF JAMES MADISON WERE IN COLLEGE TODAY, a conscientious career counselor would break it to our fourth president that he had no future in politics. How would he ever sway voters? Not in person, certainly. Plagued by real and imaginary physical maladies, Madison was uncomfortable in crowds, disliked speaking in public, and detested the thought of appealing for votes. We can’t imagine him kissing babies, eating a hot dog at the state fair, or working the crowd into a frenzy at a partisan rally. Even friends described him as “timid” and “stiff,” “cold” and “gloomy.”1

He would fare no better on television. The camera wouldn’t be kind to him, not because he was ugly, exactly, but because he was so utterly, relentlessly unimpressive. “Madison at first glance appeared not to merit a second glance” is how a modern historian puts it. “Little and ordinary” was a common verdict among contemporaries. “Little Jemmy” was short and scrawny, and a sympathetic acquaintance tactfully acknowledged that his “form, features, and manner were not commanding.”2 Can you imagine how Donald Trump would skewer him?

Nor would social media be an effective platform. Madison struck many who met him as a “book politician.” He was given to “rather too much theory,” a sympathetic critic observed, a scholar as much as a statesman. He read widely in multiple languages. He knew the history of the Achaean League, the Helvetic System, and the Amphyctionic Confederacy. He could spell Amphyctionic. The world as Madison understood it was complicated, and its serious political problems demanded extended reflection and systematic study, not knee-jerk pronouncements in 280-character increments. Twitter would have appalled him.3

James Madison

Today, I’d advise such a student to forget about politics and apply to graduate school. But two and a half centuries ago, intellectualism and politics weren’t the matter and antimatter that they are today, and a bookish introvert like James Madison could go on to play an indispensable role in the formation and ratification of the US Constitution. The secret of his unmatched influence—why later generations would remember him as the “Father of the Constitution”—was his ability to meld theory and practice, to enlist the best scholarship of his day in the service of practical problems.

Like most of the fifty-four other delegates to the Constitutional Convention, Madison went to Philadelphia in 1787 with a sense of urgency. The consensus was that something had to be done, and done quickly, to save the infant United States from collapse. The intentionally weak Articles of Confederation, erected in wartime, were proving inadequate to the problems of peace. A combination of commercial chaos, financial disarray, local irresponsibility, and internal upheaval threatened to bring down the “frail and tottering edifice,” as Alexander Hamilton put it. “It certainly is tottering!” George Washington agreed from Mount Vernon. And should the “fabrick” finally fall, “what a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves.”4

But creating “a more perfect union,” Madison realized, would require more than simply endowing the central government with sufficient power to address pressing problems. It wasn’t enough to clothe the federal government with new authority: the power to tax, to regulate commerce, to raise an army and navy. That was the easy part. The real challenge would be figuring out how to delegate such authority without jeopardizing liberty. This was true because any governmental power necessary to advance the public good could also be perverted “to the public detriment.” Granted, the impotence of the central government under the Articles of Confederation invited anarchy, but strengthening its powers would increase “the danger of oppression.”5

This meant that the structure of the new government would be as critical as the powers that it wielded. And so Madison ransacked history, systematically reviewing “ancient and modern confederacies” for lessons that might apply to America. He grappled with the leading theorists of the Enlightenment, poring over crates of dense treatises imported from England, Scotland, and France. The key, he concluded after much study, would be to devise a governmental framework that could compensate for the shortage of virtue among both the people and their leaders. “It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary,” Madison later conceded during the debate over the proposed Constitution. “But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government should be necessary.”6

1

Asking Different Questions

It’s a story that American Christians have long enjoyed repeating—most of it, anyway—and it’s not hard to see why. It’s packed with drama, it boldly declares Christian truth, and it’s not even fabricated—a trait we’ve learned not to take for granted. See if you recognize it:

It’s a sweltering Thursday afternoon in the summer of 1787, and the statesmen gathered behind closed doors in the Pennsylvania State House are discouraged. They have come to Philadelphia on a mission to save the country, but conflicting interests—between North and South, large states and small states, agriculture and commerce—have repeatedly thwarted compromise. Time is running out, tempers are short, and the unthinkable is now increasingly likely: barring a breakthrough, the delegates will have to admit defeat and head home. It is, as James Madison will later recall, a “period of gloom.” In the opinion of New York delegate Gouverneur Morris, “the fate of America [is] suspended by a hair.”1

And then, at this “awful and critical moment,” the Constitutional Convention’s oldest member asks for permission to address the fractured assembly.2 At first glance, Benjamin Franklin is apt to disappoint. A delegate who has met him for the first time this summer describes him as “a short, fat, trenched old man,” but Franklin has devoted more than half of his long life to public service, and he commands respect.3 In Europe, he is hands down the best known and most highly regarded of all Americans. At home, he is second only to George Washington in the prestige and acclaim he enjoys.

But in his eighty-second year, Franklin is long past taking an active role in the convention. Although his mind is still sharp, he is a “physical wreck,” plagued by gallstones and gout, and he will address the convention but a handful of times throughout the summer.4 When he does so, he frequently writes out his remarks in advance and enlists another member of the Pennsylvania delegation to read them on his behalf. He has done so today. There is nothing spontaneous about his comments. They are premeditated and serious, devoid of the witticisms for which he is famous.

Benjamin Franklin

Acknowledging the “small progress” of the past month, Franklin observes that the convention is “groping, as it were, in the dark, to find political truth.” “How has it happened,” he asks, “that we have not hitherto once thought of humbly applying to the Father of lights to illuminate our understandings? . . . The longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that GOD governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?”

During the Revolutionary War the Second Continental Congress prayed regularly for “divine protection,” Franklin goes on to remind his audience, and a “kind Providence” heard and answered their prayers. “Have we now forgotten that powerful Friend?” he asks. “Do we imagine we no longer need its assistance?” If so, their undertaking is doomed. “Except the Lord build the House, they labor in vain that build it,” he observes, quoting Psalm 127. Pressing home his point, the venerable patriot concludes with a recommendation: henceforth, the convention should begin each day with prayer “imploring the assistance of heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations.”5

It was at this point in the drama that the rest of the cast forgot their lines. Franklin’s motion was supposed to be the cue for his fellow delegates to experience deep conviction. Cut to the heart, they were supposed to express remorse and embrace the call to prayer. Instead, they froze or went off script. A handful voiced tepid support. A few raised unconvincing objections. Most sat in silence.

In the end, according to James Madison’s meticulous notes of the proceedings, the convention adjourned without even voting on Franklin’s motion for prayer. This was a polite way for the delegates to defeat the measure without explicitly rejecting it. Franklin’s own summation of the awkward affair was terse and unsparing: “The Convention, except three or four persons, thought Prayers unnecessary.”6 No one mentioned it again.

If we want to understand the rise of American democracy—to see it more clearly and think about it more deeply—then we’re going to have to ask different questions about the Constitution. For too long, Christians interested in America’s past have been preoccupied with one overarching question: Was the United States founded as a Christian country?7 Concerning the Constitution specifically, we’ve wanted to know whether the Framers were Christian men, guided by Christian principles, and determined to establish a Christian government. Not much else has seemed to matter.

There’s a logic to our fixation. The questions go to the very heart of how we understand our country and our place within it as people of faith; that makes them integral to our identity. They also promise insight into the Framers’ original intent concerning the relationship of church and state. Given the centrality of Supreme Court rulings to religious liberty disputes today, that makes them hugely relevant to public policy. But we need to recognize how difficult these questions are to answer as well as the damage—I use the term advisedly—they can inflict on us when we become obsessed with them.

We always confront two obstacles when we try to make sense of the past. The first is a problem of evidence: there’s almost never enough of it.8 When it comes to the Constitution, for example, we need to recognize just how hard it is to prove that the document was shaped by Christian thinking or even that the men who crafted it were orthodox believers. Either is a tall order.

Establishing intellectual causation may be the most difficult task a historian ever undertakes. We know from their correspondence, diaries, and libraries that many of the Framers were extraordinarily well read. They were students of theology as well as history, philosophy, science, and ancient literature. They were also practical men of the world with practical concerns about profit and power. Unraveling the interwoven threads of intellectual influence to identify a single strand as paramount is almost impossible.

We should also be leery of the implication that it is a simple thing to substantiate the authentic religious beliefs of figures from more than two centuries ago. “For what man knows the things of a man except t...