An American ‘Utopia’?

J. Michael Sharman
Published: June 2, 2008

In this period between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July, it’s a good time to ponder what it is that makes our country so unique, so good and so great.

Young John Adams, 20 years before the Declaration of Independence was written, pondered in his personal diary: “Suppose a nation in some distant region should take the Bible for their only law book, and every member should regulate his conduct by the precepts there exhibited! What a Eutopia, what a Paradise would this region be.” 

After he became president, John Adams, in a speech to the military, said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Our nation has the potential to be great, Adams wrote, but the potential for our greatness is directly limited by our own potential for corruption. Our form of government, he said, “is productive of everything which is great and excellent among men. But its principles are as easily destroyed, as human nature corrupted. A government is only to be supported by pure religion or austere morals. private, and public virtue is the only foundation of republics.“

As an elder statesmen, when he was reminiscing to Thomas Jefferson in June of 1813, Adams wrote: “The general principles on which the fathers achieved independence were the only principles in which that beautiful Aasembly of young gentlemen could unite. And what were these general principles? I answer, the general principles of Christianity, in which all these sects were United. [T]hose principles of Christianity are as eternal and immutable as the existence and attributes of God; and that those principles of liberty, are as unalterable as human nature and our terrestrial, mundane system.” 

One of our core values as a nation is liberty, and we have achieved it and held it longer than other people in history. Why? Because “where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty.” (II Cor. 3:17).

Encircling the top of the Liberty Bell is the quote, “Proclaim liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof,” with its Bible reference, Lev. 25:10.

But as Adams said, the potential for our greatness is limited by our own potential for corruption. Our nation’s greatest crime was permitting slavery even though we were warned by many Colonial Americans that buying, selling, and keeping slaves violated basic biblical principles because slavery begins and ends by stealing a person’s life.

Our costliest war was precipitated by Supreme Court Justice Taney’s Dred Scott decision that a runaway slave is not a person but a piece of property, and that no state could choose to be a “free state” and thus provide a refuge for him.

The deaths, loss and painful heritage of the War Between the States all could have been avoided if the simple words of Scripture had been followed: “If a slave has taken refuge with you, do not hand him over to his master. Let him live among you wherever he likes and in whatever town he chooses. Do not oppress him.” (Deut. 23:15)
Our forefathers believed that each person since Adam was touched by his original sin and whether a person was in church, the government or business, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

They agreed with Peter that for the happiness of ourselves and our national posterity we should “live as free men, but do not use your freedom as a coverup for evil; live as servants of the Lord.” (I Peter 2:16)

In our system of government, most of the power is designed to reside in you, the individual.

Do you know the Bible well enough to discern if our current governmental decisions are being made in keeping with “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God?”

Maybe that could be your new summer reading material.

J. Michael Sharman is an independent columnist who practices law in Culpeper. His column appears Tuesday in the Star-Exponent.