Gary DeMar and "America's Heritage" -- Unsuccessful Effort to Link Christianity and the Constitution

"America's Heritage" by Gary DeMar is an unsuccessful attempt to link Christianity and the U.S. Constitution. The book was published by Coral Ridge Ministries in 2002.

A Christian Constitution?

The fundamental question is posed in the Introduction, "America's Christian Heritage: Fact or Fiction?" The foregone conclusion is "fact," and the book presents the usual assortment of quotes from various Presidents and Supreme Court Justices as evidence. This line of indirect testimony continues throughout the book. Plaques and inscriptions in Washington D.C., the Christian founding of various colleges, and official national days of prayer are presented as evidence.

The author then points to Christianity in the colonial constitutions, which is indisputable. But he tries to bridge from there to show an alleged link between Christianity and the Constitution of 1787. This is highly disputable.

Gary DeMar then presents the two shopworn internal arguments. One is the phrase "year of our Lord" in the subscription clause at the end of the document. Another is the exception of Sunday from the 10 days in which the President must sign or veto a bill. In the lexicon of Informal Logic these are known as trivial arguments.

For example, Christians would not be accused of worshipping the "god of thunder" just because they commonly refer to "Thursday" (ThorsDay) in everyday use of language. Neither should we assume the founding fathers are writing a Christian document merely because they refer to the Christian phrase, "year of our Lord 1787" in everyday use of language.

The Biblical Standard

How can we determine if Gary DeMar has proved that the Constitution is a Christian document and that America is therefore a Christian nation? We need some standard for evaluation. Only the Bible can provide such a standard. Without that standard we are likely to be distracted by various entertaining, but irrelevant arguments. What does the Bible say about deciding whether a particular nation is a Christian nation, or not?

In all His dealings with Israel God insists that the nation maintain its covenant relation with Him by means of an oath to obey His law. Continually Israel returns to an act of formal, oath-bound commitment to God, often written, to renew the broken covenant.

Without the oath-bound covenant to a legal system based on the Bible there is no Christian nation. This is the defining characteristic of a "Christian nation." There may be many other attractive features, but without the oath there is nothing that may be called a Christian nation.

Nehemiah 9:38 provides us a clear example, when it says, "...We are making an agreement in writing; and on the sealed document are the names of our leaders, our Levites and our priests." Judging by this standard, we are forced to conclude that Gary DeMar and "America's Heritage" have failed to prove the case. It has demonstrated no essential link between Christianity and the Constitution.

Do Christian colleges constitute a national oath to God? No. Does the phrase "year of our Lord" constitute a national oath to God? No. Does excluding Sunday from the 10-day window to sign or veto a bill constitute a national oath to God? No. Does any of the evidence presented in America's Heritage constitute a national oath to God? No.

We can only conclude that Gary DeMar has not succeeded in showing that the Constitution of the United States has any Christian Foundation. The author has fallen short of establishing any vital link between Christianity and the Constitution.

Sadly, Gary DeMar takes a nonchalant attitude toward the covenant oath to God. At the end of Chapter 3 a rhetorical question is presented: "If the constitutional framers could get a glimpse of America today, would they have rethought their decision only to make passing reference to the lordship of Jesus Christ?"

The answer: "We will never know. But when all the testimony is in, it is an undeniable truth that Christianity served as the foundation for the political edifice we know as America." Here Gary DeMar admits that the Constitution left out the one essential ingredient for a Christian government -- the lordship of Jesus Christ. However, In the next breath he claims that America is a Christian nation anyway. The conclusion does not follow from the premise.

For this reason we are forced to conclude that "America's Heritage" falls short of establishing any connection between Christianity and the Constitution and denies the cornerstone of Christian civil government.

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