In trying to understand the unique concepts of the USA, we need to start with two key documents written in the heady days of the Second Continental Congress: The Declaration of Independence, and the Articles of Confederation.

We saw in the last episode, Christianity was one of the four core themes we can glean from the colonization efforts that formed the USA. In case you missed it, the other three are Capitalism, Risk, and Rebellion. There's a larger point here about that hypothesis regarding understanding the USA, but that's not this podcast. Perhaps I will add a bonus episode going into depth about this to help people better understand the nation called "the USA."

Does that fact that the colonists were intentionally bringing Christianity with them, asserting its importance to their future success, mean that decades later, at the founding of the nation, that they were expecting a “Christian Nation” to follow? What about decades later, as national leaders gathered in Philadelphia in the crucial days leading to the American Revolution…did they perceived themselves creating a “Christian Nation”?

You can read the Declaration of Independence and also the Articles of Confederation for yourself. In the Declaration we focus on the opening explanation, noting editorial changes that were made by Franklin and Adams ("hold these truths to be self-evident") and a few other parts there. Then, we shift focus to the concluding paragraph to two key editorial changes made that inserted the general consensus of the group about the involvement of the Christian God in their effort. With the Articles, we specifically noted Article III and the conclusion that starts, at the end, with "And, whereas...."

We’ve seen that Christianity is vital to the type of society that everyone seems to want—individual rights, protections in liberty, etc… This vital need is both in acknowledging how Christianity brought these concepts to the West (and then others through “the West”) and how Christianity as guiding structure provided US culture the means for its success (that others strive to move here for).

So, we NEED Christianity…but WE ALSO HAVE SEEN that the “Christendom” concept (“Christian Nationalism”) is ruinous to the faith and also how the faith is expressed, especially in a civic structure. So, what did our first colonists believe?

Were the first colonists trying to establish a “Christendom,” a “Christian nation”…a nation only for Christians where there would be religious faith requirements before holding office or opening a business, as was true in the nations from which these colonists came? Or, were they somehow trying to escape religion altogether, eager to create a nation on some broad concept of “Natural Law” in which formal religions would be either absent, or at worst, only something for the individual, something kept quiet and private? To find these answers, we must examine the first English-speaking colonies to see what lessons they can provide.

We will read The Mayflower Compact and also excerpts from the Sermon of John Winthrop. Both documents are crucial to understanding the colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay. We will also examine Jamestown and St. Mary's. For St. Mary's we will read excerpts from their revolutionary Maryland Toleration Act of 1649.

In our first Bonus Episode, Dr. Sandy Shugart joins me for an indepth examination of the Enlightenment Project and my contention that the promises of such were really a myth, one that has left society disillusioned and bordering on cynicism due to discovery that they were misled. The humans are not improving, not really changing at all from what our species has been all along, certainly not changing when the only agency of change is human will. But why? Dr. Shugart, one of my most important mentors, currently serving as a Senior Fellow at The Aspen Institute and also Quo Vadis Institute (based in Salzburg, Austria), stopped by to help me understand this tension within our modern secular society.

In the early episodes, particularly 1 and 3, I spoke about the Enlightenment and its impact on how we view the world. Starting at some point in the 1600s and building steam in the 1700s, a new way of thinking and considering life, both individually and corporately in civic structures, was emerging. With the American and French Revolutions, the Enlightenment took full form and was soon being elevated to a high plane, perhaps a mystical plane, and in that growing sense of a new way of thinking, the sense of "promises" from this Enlightenment emerged.

And yet, by the late 20th century, it has been manifestly apparent that those promises never arrived, particularly the myth that the human as species could and would improve. Some "Enlightenment Prophets" seemed to believe that a utopia would be soon achieved, but the horrendous 20th century, a century often held up as the triumph of the Enlightenment, was evidence enough to the failure of this concept.

So, as the 21st century has emerged, disillusionment has set in, particularly among the young (say, 40-under crowd). Since faith or even simply “the transcendent” has been marginalized, many have moved into cynicism, depression, and a general sense that life is not worth living. Of course this is part of my raison d'être for the podcast, and we needed to take a deeper dive in order to see the complexities of this topic.