In the introduction to E. C. Wines book The Hebrew Republic, Louis F. DeBoer also made this point. He observed,
Many other, realizing that our founding fathers were sane and sober men, conservative and respectful of traditions, who shunned with alarm the radicalism of the French cataclysm of 1789, have sought in their antecedents the true origin of the republic that they have bequeathed us. Thus they have laid an emphasis (and correctly so) on the development of English Constitutionalism and its carryover over the Atlantic to the colonies. But they have then gone on and ransacking the pages of secular history have sought to find the antecedents of the then American Republic in Rome and Greece. This is really a tragedy. That the civil polity that was the high water mark of Christian civilization and the Protestant Reformation has to go begging as a mendicant to the dregs of pagan Greece and Rome for its inspiration is truly a disgrace. Fortunately there is little substance to this myth…It is the grand theme of wines’ work that the origin of the American Republic lies ultimately in the laws of Moses and thus in divine wisdom and on eternal principles of truth and justice. It places our civil polity on its proper foundation, a foundation that is eminently defensible.
“If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” These words or Christ had spiritual freedom as their immediate referent. But, typical of God’s goodness, his words have implications for political and economic freedom as well.
John Robbins acknowledged this in his book Christ & Civilization. He wrote,
Martin Luther’s courageous rejection – in the name of written revelation, logic, and freedom – of this faith-works religion laid the necessary theological foundation for the emergence of a free, humane, and civilized society from the ancient and medieval paganism of Christendom. The result was religious freedom and her daughters: political, civil, and economic freedom (38).
This civilization, which Robbins describes as “free, humane, and civilized,” is what we call Western civilization. Here’s Robbins making this point,
Christ’s life is the point from which we date all of world history, and it is impossible to understand history and Western civilization, especially the United States, without understanding Christianity (Christ & Civilization, 6).
In his book Ecclesiastical Megalomania, John Robbins again made the important connection between religious liberty and political and economic liberty, writing,
Out of the religious liberty that is implicit in the idea of the Reformation – the end of an ecclesiastical monopoly enforced, as all genuine monopolies must be, by a system of command, coercion, and control; the liberty not to belong to or attend the Roman Church-State; the liberty not to contribute to its maintenance; the liberty not to believe whatever the Roman Church-State required – flow all the liberties with which this nation, and to a lesser extent Europe, Canada, and the Pacific Rim, have been blessed: constitutional government, civil rights (by which I mean the freedoms protected by the Bill of Rights), and economic liberties. Religious liberty is the mother of all liberties; it is deliberately listed first in the First Amendment in the bill of Rights; and historically it is the fountainhead from which all other liberties have flowed (14).
It is this religious liberty, first established by the Protestant Reformers, and later brought to the American colonies by the Puritans and other Christians, that is the basis for all the freedoms Americans historically have enjoyed and still to some extent possess.
But today, liberty is not so popular as it once was in America. Everywhere, it seems, coercion is growing, and individual liberty is on the run. Increasingly, the law, when it’s applied, is applied not in a neutral way to punish those who practice evil. But in a weaponized version that seeks to punish those with whom the powers that be disagree. This is not the rule of law, but the rule of lawlessness.
And this should come as no surprise. For if it is the widespread preaching of, on belief in, the Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone that sets men free spiritually, politically and economically, what can we expect but tyranny in an era such as ours that has cast the Gospel of Christ behind its back?
Indeed, one can see in the Old Testament the pattern of spiritual bondage preceding political and economic bondage. It was the persistent unbelief of Israel and Judah that led to their military defeat at the hands of the Assyrians and Babylonians and their subsequent exile.
If the Lord judged Israel and Judah for their faithlessness, should Americans be surprised if they are currently experiencing judgment for their faithlessness? The growth of Romanism and Arminianism in 19th century America and the collapse of Reformed Christianity with the implosion of, especially, the Mainline Presbyterian Church in the late 19th and early 20th centuries made today’s society with its open homosexuality, fornication and open embrace of the principles of tyranny inevitable.
If liberty is once again to be proclaimed throughout the land, it will begin to come when America’s pulpits once again preach the clear, undiluted Gospel of Justification by Belief Alone and the Lord causes many to hear it and believe.
May the Lord once again bring reformation to his people in America. That is my prayer in this, the 246th year of our independence.
Lux Lucet 
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