Christian Atheist Citizens

In his last book before his death earlier this year, American Babylon, former-Lutheran-pastor-turned-Catholic-priest Richard John Neuhaus, who was once named by Time as one of the "25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America, wrote a chapter titled, "Can An Atheist Be a Good Citizen?" Early in the chapter he mentions that the first Christians were considered atheists by the polytheists of the Roman Empire, for they were "without the gods" and adamantly opposed to them.

Eventually he includes a piece from George Washington's farewell address, delivered at the end of his second term of office. Our first President, who aptly received the title pater patriae, said this:

And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. (American Babylon, 114)

Neuhaus himself then goes on to say:

"In such a nation, an atheist can be a citizen, but he cannot be a good citizen. A good citizen does more than abide by the laws. A good citizen is able to give an account, a morally compelling account, of the regime of which he is part -- and to do so in continuity with the constituting moment and subsequent history of that regime. He is able to justify its defense against its enemies, and to convincingly recommend its virtues to citizens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn. This regime of liberal democracy, of republican self-governance, is not self-evidently good and just. Reasons must be given. They must be reasons that draw authority from that which is higher than ourselves, from that which transcends us, fromthat to which we are precedently, ultimately obliged." (American Babylon, 116, emphasis mine)

"Those who adhere to the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus turn out to be the best citizens. Those who were once called "atheists" are now the most persuasive defenders not of the gods but of the good reasons for this regime of ordered liberty. They are that not despite the fact that their loyalty to this polis is qualified by a higher loyalty, but because of it. The ultimate allegiance of the faithful is not to the regime or to its constituting texts, but to the City of God and the sacred texts that guide our path toward that destination. We are dual citizens in a regime that, as Madison and others underscored, was designed for such duality. When the political order forgets itself and reestablishes the gods of the polis, even if it does so in the name of liberal democracy, these citizens have not choice but to run the risk of once again being called 'atheists.'" (American Babylon, 117)

Whatever else we teach our children about being good citizens, and we must teach them to be good citizens, we must teach them that their primary allegiance is to the God under Whom exists the nation to which they pledge a secondary allegiance. Ours is a nation in which anyone and anything can become a god. Yet whether such a state of affairs is good or bad can only be articulated in any coherent and meaningful way by those who have come to know the Truth, not the desiccated propositional truth of the philosophers and scientists, although even such lower-case truths have their foundation of their existence in the upper-case Truth, but the Truth Who was and is and is to come, the Truth Who became incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ. With such an understanding of ethics informed by this personal Truth, this Truth Who is a person, the Christian citizen can articulate what true justice is, why it matters, and provide sound arguments for how it can be achieved.

Oddly, it was part of the initial design of the free public school system in America to produce just such good citizens. Yet by refusing the God Who is Truth and substituting for Him an atheistic pantheon of disembodied beliefs, such schools are incapable of producing the kind of citizens who can, as Neuhaus urges "convincingly recommend its virtiues to citizens of the next generation so that they, in turn, can transmit the order of government to citizens yet unborn."

To the degree that the Christian school has not lost its mandate and become a prep school for the elite with a nominal chapel time thrown in for good measure, it alone in this present age is capable of producing what our nation needs, good citizens capable of working for the good of their country.