The Kingship of Christ and the American Founding

During the historical period before and after the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, a prevailing expectation among the Israelite people was the appearance of the Messiah. The common view of the Messiah was King and Savior, or the religious figure but also a political figure who would govern nations.

For Jesus, this messianic view was not quite as bilateral as it was with the Jewish authorities,

“They sent some Pharisees and Herodians to Him to ensnare him in his speech. They came and said to him, “Teacher, we know that you are a truthful man and that you are not concerned with anyone’s opinion. You do not regard a person’s status to teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. Is it lawful to pay the census tax to Caesar or not? Should we pay or should we not pay?” Knowing their hypocrisy he said to them, “why are you testing me? Bring me a denarius to look at.” They brought one to him and he said to them, “whose image and inscription is this?” They replied to him, “Caesar’s.” So Jesus said to them, “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar to God what belongs to God.” (Mark 12:13 – 17)

During his passion and trial before Pilate, he was asked, “are you the King of the Jews?” (John 18:33)

Jesus replied, “my kingdom does not belong to this world.” (John 18:36)

Thus, Jesus clearly delineated between entities created by humankind and the domain of God and where His kingship lay.

We fast-forward to the 13^th through the 18^th centuries. Kingdoms fall and rise and spread the influence and power of the Church. However, it is no proverbial picnic; war in Europe is nearly continuous and the conquest of the New World is not precisely in keeping with Christ’s teaching, to “love one another.” (John 13:34)

Thus, in the late 18^th century, when the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia to declare their independence from Mother England, they acknowledged the primacy of the Creator and as the basis for that certain set of unalienable rights that formed the foundation of the republic, but there was no specific recognition of the kingship of Christ. When we analyze the religious propensities of the Founding Fathers, we find a mixture of various Protestant Christians, a couple of Roman Catholics, and a Deist or two. The majority of the Founding Fathers were Unitarian in their thinking, i.e. religious rationalists.

Two additional aspects must be considered: first the Founders were inspired by Enlightenment thinking, and, second, much of their immediate ancestral tradition was fleeing religious persecution in parts of Europe.

Along with these two factors, the Founders had come to realize that theocracy had done nothing but cause problems throughout human history.

The Founders thus acknowledged the fallen human condition, they acknowledged the first and ultimate gift given by God – creation, they rationalized Christ’s separation of human-created institutions from God’s domain, and they honored the Creator’s gift of free will.

This then, is the basis of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, that “Congress shall make no law regarding the establishment of religion, nor to prohibit the free expression thereof.”

Looking at the Church’s social doctrine, we find in the Compendium, #380: “Submission not passive but “for the sake of conscience” (Romans 13:5), legitimate authority responds to the order established by God. St. Paul defines the relationships and duties that a Christian is to have toward the authorities (cf. Romans 13:1 – 7). He insists on the civic duty to pay taxes: “pay all of them their dues, taxes to whom taxes are due, revenue to whom revenues are due, fear to whom fear is due, respect to whom respect is due” (Romans 13:7)”.

In the Compendium, also, #393, “the Church has always considered different ways of understanding authority, taking care to defend and propose a model of authority that is founded on the social nature of the person. “Since God made man social by nature, and since no society can hold together unless some one be over all, directing all to strive earnestly for the common good, every civilized community must have a ruling authority, and this authority, no less than society itself, has its source in nature and has, consequently, God for its author.”

The social order – as a human invention – nonetheless, thus, stems from the social nature of human beings as created by God. Christ’s kingship, furthermore, is one that he explained in Scripture – not of this world – and it was fundamental to the Founder’s principles, particularly the Christians, that we honor both Christ’s own teaching and God’s gift of free-will. The Founders had no reason to believe that any fallen human being could hold any kind of monarchial power over other people in the name of Christ. The nature of the Fall and the weight of history were against it.