Secular Humanism and Christian Humanism

There are two references to religion in our Constitution. The First Amendment reads, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Article VI reads, “…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.” As the political parties in America divide along liberal and conservative ideologies we continue our arbitrary labeling of our adversaries.

On the left, most Democrats or Liberals are reluctant to include references to church or religion in campaign speeches. President Obama ends many of his presidential addresses with, “God bless the United States.” Yet a surprising percentage of people still believe he is a Muslim, and remember the infamous words of his former preacher. Many Liberals recite the Pledge of Allegiance in its original wording omitting the religious content. Much of the early posturing for the 2016 presidential election includes the implied equation of conservatism and Christianity, and the association of liberalism with some status of secularism or less religious persons.

The position generally held by most conservative evangelicals is a desire to see leaders who are shaped by a Judeo-Christian ethic and making governing decisions according to that ethic. Many conservatives reject what has come to be thought of as an absolute separation of church and state, a phrase not found in the Constitution.

This should be distinguished from Christian Reconstructionism, which is also known as Dominion theology, or theonomy. This is the conviction that governments should rule according to principles to the same extent that the nation of Israel was to be ruled according to the law that God had given them in the Old Testament. This includes a blending of religious or church authority and civil authority, as well as other spheres of life. Sometimes, as in Old Testament history, the belief that God rewards or punishes a Christian or secular nation for compliance or departure from ecclesiastical law.

There is a similar division or distinction within the Democratic or Liberal political camp. Some would insist that the phrase liberal Christian is a contradiction in terms. Most liberal political candidates interpret the writings and speeches of the Founding Fathers that ethics and morals are behavioral principles in humans that determine what is right and wrong. This is not in conflict and very much the same rules as the belief of the common man that Christianity is a religion bound by a certain set of ethical and moral rules imposed by the Almighty.

As Christianity became part of the Roman Empire, Christian ethics became primarily centered on grace, mercy, and forgiveness. Christian teaching includes the virtues of faith, hope, and love. Many Christians believe that goodness exists only from God. There is no other form of legitimate, genuine, and absolute good except from God.

After years of church authority during the religious Reformation and the secular Renaissance, in the writings of Protagoras, Petrarch, Erasmus, and others there was a return to academia, science, the arts more focused on Greek sources and individual criticism and interpretation of religious teaching. The position called secular humanism promotes ideals in the face of an indifferent universe.

Today, as in the Middle Ages, religion has shifted its emphasis to grace, mercy, forgiveness, and other-world reward and punishment. Somewhere between these extremes is the Christian Humanist, who also believes in the value of intellect, science, philosophy, and political science. Humanism implies good deeds and morality derived from human logic and empathetic charity and tolerance. The secular humanist excludes God in this; the Christian Humanist does not, accepting a loving and indiscriminate God.

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