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Is there a difference between being a Christian nation vs. being a nation founded on Christian principles? Gary DeMar from American Vision dives into this question and provides fascinating insights into America's biblical foundations. Drawing from historical documents and engaging examples, he examines how even non-Christian founders like Jefferson and Franklin understood the importance of biblical principles in governance.

We also explore recent political and cultural shifts in America, why top-down governmental solutions may not be the answer to our nation’s problems, and how Christians can effect change through future-oriented personal responsibility in their families, businesses, and local communities.

Episode Transcription

Note: This transcription may vary from the words used in the original episode for better readability.

Marlin Detweiler:
Hello again and welcome to another episode of Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. Today we have with us again Gary DeMar. Gary, thanks for joining us today.

Gary DeMar:
Hey, always good to talk to you.

Marlin Detweiler:
Gary, tell us, in the last time that you came in for our listener in case our listeners, I think we’ve more than one, the last time you were here was, I noted, episode 37. So if somebody wants some context, they can do that. And you told us a little bit about yourself personally there, but tell us a little bit about your work at American Vision and what you all do there.

Gary DeMar:
I came on board 1980. I had just graduated from seminary in 1979, and when I was in seminary, I went to seminary because I was a worldview guy. I wanted to know how the Bible applied to every area of life. And so I went to seminary and I hooked up with an organization called American Vision, which was concentrated on America's Christian heritage.

And that was okay for, you know, looking at the past and so forth. And I've written extensively on that as well. Then I came out with a book called God and Government. And then you have to remember, this was 1981, 82, and Ronald Reagan was president. And my book was actually three volumes of God and Government.

It explained how the Bible deals governmentally with things and not just politically, and how the Bible deals with self-government, family government, church government, civil government, so that God's word is applicable to every area of life, that God is the governor of all things, and we govern the world in which he has given us. And so that's what I've been doing for more than 40 years, is what does the Bible say about this topic?

How does it apply to this situation? In the world in which we are living today, we as Christians need to look at the world through the lens of the Bible and see what the Bible has to say about it. And unfortunately, you know, most people don't get that from the pulpit. And it's something that we do in terms of books and audio and video podcasts, interviews like this, debates, and so forth and whatnot. I've been doing this since 1981.

Marlin Detweiler:
But we have come through in recent weeks and months a fairly tumultuous time. This is not an overstatement. I'm trying not to use hyperbole here, but it was tumultuous with regard to the election, the whole process. The people involved, very dirty in a number of ways. No party can claim complete innocence.

And in terms of where things were in their past and in some of the ways that things operated. But I think it, what you just said begs the question, what is America's Christian heritage? What's an accurate historical understanding of whether America is a Christian nation and what that means?

Gary DeMar:
I don't like the phrase Christian nation. And I think the history, if you go back and look at the history, there is no doubt that America was founded by Christians and applying a biblical worldview to the world in which they knew. They didn't do it perfectly. That's to be sure.

But through the documentation that you see, foundational documents, look, even the Constitution of the United States. Says this was done in the year of our Lord, 1787, set Sunday aside as a day of rest for the president of the United States. If you're going to deal with court cases, you have to have two witnesses.

I mean, the principles of the Bible were either explicit or implicit in the way our country was founded, and the documentation is unrivaled, and there's no way around it. In fact, we published a book a number of years ago called The Christian Life and Character of the Civil Institutions of the United States, that was actually published in 1864.

It's like 800 pages. And I remember doing an interview with the ACLU around this time, around Thanksgiving, and they asked me to come down. All I had was a Xerox copy of the book. I'd never really seen a real copy of the book. And I had that on my lap anyway.

And I said, look, until you can answer what's in this book, you don't have a case. And we after that published it as a hardback. And it's look, when you look at the material, you know this in the things that you're publishing, it's all there, even someone like Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin stands up at the Constitutional Convention and says, unless the Lord builds the house, we labor in vain that build it.

We can't do any better unless we acknowledge that God governs in the affairs of men. So even someone like Benjamin Franklin, who wouldn't be considered a Christian, understood that you needed a foundational basis for starting the country, and that was a Christian, a biblical foundation. And they understood it. Colleges, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, all of them, all understood that as well.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. Well, is it reasonable to make a distinction between a biblical foundation and a Christian foundation, as you mentioned? I noticed you use both words and you quickly went to biblical from Christian, at least in the last comment. I think it seems reasonable to say Harvard was founded as a Christian institution, but would it not be, in an effort to be precise, to say America was founded on biblical principles as opposed to it being, well, you didn't like the term Christian nation.

I don't either. So let me leave it at that and maybe comment. I'm not sure I can say the question any better without an elaboration. Yeah.

Gary DeMar:
I would say when you start talking about Christian, you're really talking about the redemptive nature of the Christian faith. And I think that's really important. I consider Christianity and the influence it had on our culture as having a spillover effect. Even those people who aren't Christian, who have identified with the person work of Jesus Christ, benefited by the Christianity that was prevailing in the culture at the time.

So that's why I try to make the nation. Because if you don't, once you start talking about, you know, Christian nationalism and Christian nation, and you start talking about the possibility of using the civil magistrate to force compliance to what you and I would hold in terms of what it means to be a Christian. Forcing people, you know, tell people you now need to go to church and all these sorts of things. That's why I try to kind of keep those two things separate.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. I think that's very important. And it's easy to see that Jefferson and Franklin, two people who I don't think anyone would say held to Orthodox Christian belief, borrowed heavily in biblical principles at America's foundations. Would you agree?

Gary DeMar:
Yeah, I think Jefferson's a perfect example. He was the guy who loved the fruit, but not necessarily the root, the origin, some of the doctrines. I mean, he was the person who took the New Testament, the Gospels, and took out the moral principles of Jesus and used that as a basis of help.

I believe it was maybe the Native Americans at the time. So he understood this. He understood this better than atheists do. I wrote a book recently called Why It Might Be Okay to Eat Your Neighbor: If Atheism Is Right, Can Anything be Wrong? And I think Jefferson understood that he was not an atheist.

And even Thomas Paine was not an atheist. Although he was described as a filthy atheist, he was not an atheist. But even him, when he wrote Common Sense, he appealed to the Bible. If you look at the historians, it does not apply to the Bible. First Daniel chapter eight, Matthew chapter 22.

If he had not appealed to the Bible, his case would not have been made, because the arguments of decentralized power, the basis of a person's moral character, were foundational in establishing the nation, and Christianity had built this paradigm for centuries that people understood. Man was evil.

If we can't be bound by some standard of authority, then we become licensed in everything we do. They all understood that. Today, atheists are still in the essence of borrowed capital. It was Richard Dawkins. Richard Dawkins comes out and says he's a cultural Christian. Of course he is. He's living within the Christian world. And as an atheist, he has the freedom to say he's an atheist and argue for atheism. So, I know this is important that Christians and non-Christians, I think, need to understand.

Marlin Detweiler:
Is there any other government today, or maybe in history, that would have approached such a sense of presuppositions and commitments that we can look to comparatively?

Gary DeMar:
I actually think every major civilization in the world, if you go back and look historically, they all believed that there were gods. They understood this too.

Marlin Detweiler:
They understood talking about what might be natural revelation as much as I am biblical, because it seems to me that's where some of the precision and effectiveness comes from. Two witnesses, in terms of establishing reasonable testimony, that kind of thing.

Gary DeMar:
I guess you might be able to go back to the Reformation period and maybe Calvin's Geneva might be a good place to start. My pastor, David Hall, has written extensively on this—the impact of Calvin's Geneva and all this. So I think you probably see elements of it there.

I think you also see it in the early pilgrims and Puritans who came. In fact, if you look at their original charters, you will see specifics regarding what the Bible has to say. Even the jurisdictional separation between church and state. We think that's Jefferson's model, which was actually in a letter.

And it's not in the Constitution. It's the Bible that lays out this jurisdictional separation between church and state. You have Moses and Aaron, you have the elders and the priests—these were operationally jurisdictionally, separate. And it's something that I write in my God and Government series.

We have secularized separation between church and state today in terms of separating God and civil government. But even Jefferson would not have gone along with that model. He would want to define his concepts of God, to be sure, but he understood, foundationally, that God is the author of all things.

Marlin Detweiler:
We talked earlier and just a few minutes ago about the complexity and the tumultuous time that we've come through. Some people might be inclined to think that conservatism won and maybe equivocate that with Christianity won. We certainly, as Christians, have had grave concerns with the abuses and gender discussion and sexuality and some of the things going on there. I'm curious, what's your take on what happened November 5th?

Gary DeMar:
Well, the first is we dodged a bullet, and that's the first thing.

Marlin Detweiler:
So let me not just assume that everybody understands what that means. Why do you say that?

Gary DeMar:
I really believe that what the political left, the media, the entertainment world, all the things that are, you know, kind of just in our face all the time and the judicial system to us, it... Oh, I would say that as well, they were being controlled by an ideology and being forced upon us.

And I think a lot of Christians and conservatives and just people in general felt helpless to deal with. I mean, most parents send their kids to public schools, and they saw what was happening in the government schools. A lot of people saw all this. And I think if there had been another four years of this, it would have emboldened the media even more because they would have seen that they were able to affect an election.

I think what we're seeing in terms of even the transgender movement, that chant, the transgender movement, I read a couple of articles on this. It's like these companies are pulling back on the DEI stuff, you know, putting people in cause of different categories and so forth.

Marlin Detweiler:
For years for recruiting people that would satisfy gender concerns as opposed to the professional abilities needed for the job?

Gary DeMar:
Oh, exactly. And it yeah. And it was across the board not, you know, this, and I think Boeing is a perfect example of this. We don't have time to go into all that. But Boeing is in deep, deep trouble. And a lot of it has to do with a lot of the problems of manufacturing and so forth that the people who are doing those jobs might not have been qualified for those jobs because they had a diversity and inclusion clause built into their contracts.

And I think the media are beginning to see this as well. CNN is starting to reassess their whole platform. You saw what Bezos did with The Washington Post. There's been a tremendous shift. And I think we've been held hostage by an alternative worldview that was certainly unworkable and immoral.

And we now we have to see what's going to happen. I am not a believer that the top down is going to fix all of this, I believe it can be dangerous if we give power to the civil aspect of this and to enforce compliance across the board and put the government, civil government in control.

I'm not looking for a swamp, looking for Christians swamping the power structure. I want to see a really diminished role of civil government in society from top to bottom. Will that happen? There are... It looks like it might in some areas, but we as Christians need to be really wary of any attempt to just switch sides and switch power bases in all of this.

And then we need to be involved in order to get our voices heard and get them out there. Because all these people that, I think Trump is putting in positions of authority, it took him a long time to get to that place in society. And Christians complain about who he picks and so forth. Well, look, you need to study and get involved in yourself, and maybe someday you'll pick some people with a much more clear biblical worldview.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, yeah, it's the caution that I hear from you is dodging a bullet from the things that were being forced on us was not a populist idea, but the populous, the population, its majority felt helpless but found that it could put a stop to that at the ballot box. And that's what happened in some sense, or to some extent with our recent election. But it's not as if that is a biblical solution or answer that handles one aspect of it. But the idea of thinking of politics or government as being messianic in nature, that is, they provide the biblical worldview that Christians ought to have. It is simply not the case. You run into that much?

How much would you say the American Christian population tends to be tempted by that thinking?

Gary DeMar:
I think there are probably different categories. I know some Christians don't want to be involved in politics at all, and they frustrate me to no end. I think there are some Christians who vote, I think practically, which is I think what most people do, it's still about economics. You got 5 million people between the two candidates and 5 million went to Trump this time. So I think most people are practical, in that regard.

Marlin Detweiler:
People are voting their wallets?

Gary DeMar:
Yeah, yeah. Vote in their wallets. There we go. Look, we vote personal interests. I think education is another big thing. A lot of people, a lot of parents are very dissatisfied with education. So, I think the solution to this in terms of Christians is they need to reassess everything in their own lives, how they invest, how they spend their money, how they save their money, how they educate their children.

I wrote a book called Whoever Controls the Schools Rules the World. I think maybe some Christians and conservatives are beginning to see that. What you've been doing for years, and yours isn't a civil government entity. It's a business and you're making available product to people. That's what we need to start doing.

We need to start saying, hey, how can I add to and change our world just in the orbit in which I live? If you get a number of Christians doing that over a long time and all the connections and all the overlapping takes place, you begin to change the world in the way that people think about it from the bottom up.

I think that's always been American Vision's message. You're part of that message as well. There are others who are doing it very well. I'm very optimistic, especially in terms of what happened to the legacy media. Think about what we're doing right now. Ten years ago was not really that viable.

But here you and I were talking, and there was Joe Rogan. I mean, no Christian, but 40 million people watched his interview with Donald Trump. This is one guy making a difference. Not governmentally. I think that's extremely important for the change of society. You got to do it from the bottom up by keeping a wary eye on the top.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah, yeah. A lot of that falls under, though. We dodged a bullet. People like Rogan, Musk with Twitter or X, assuring an element of free speech, it really has been remarkable. It's been fascinating to me to see companies make decisions ideologically when they also have stockholders to keep happy. The decisions they make are really in conflict with and at the expense of their profitability.

Gary DeMar:
Yeah. I think of Elon Musk. He plunked down billions of dollars to buy Twitter.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah.

Gary DeMar:
The guy stepped up, and he saw that the answer was not governmental. This is something I can do with my money, and this is what he's done. You don't need billions of dollars in order to do it. It's the small things that make changes in a society. There are lots of things we can do personally. I always talk about circles of responsibility: yourself in terms of personal government, your family and your children, your church, your business, and the community in which you live. Don't get overwhelmed with the possibilities and the things that need to be done.

Just stay within your circles of responsibility and do them there. As everybody starts doing that, that overlap takes place and you end up changing society.

Marlin Detweiler:
Yeah. You've told me in the past that you're and you said it here too, that your commitment from early on, as a young Christian, quickly ending up in seminary, was really about world, but biblical worldview. Now you run an organization called American Vision. What is, help us understand. You talk about America's biblical heritage, but now let's talk about vision in light of where we are.

I appreciate what you've said about what we're doing in education, and that's a lot of around which our relationship has congealed. But tell me, give our audience thoughts and ideas for what it's like to have a vision for America, a vision for the future, a vision for where we go that would be right and good in the eyes of our Lord and Savior.

Gary DeMar:
First, I think you need to believe in the future. That's one of the things. This is an interest of mine. There's an eschatological element to every worldview. The Russians, the communists had it. Francis Nigel Lee, you may remember Francis Lee, wrote a book called Communist Eschatology.

Every worldview has an eschatology. Every worldview has a view of the future. The secular has had it. Hitler had it. China has it. They all have it. They build in terms of the future. If you don't have a long-term strategy, long-term conception of the future, you diminish what you do in the present because you don't believe it has any impact long-term.

So that's the first thing. You've got to have a perspective of the future that's optimistic. I know we can't get into all the eschatological stuff, but too many Christians today believe we're living in the end times. Jesus is coming soon. The rapture is right around the corner, and why worry about 20, 30, or 40 years down the road if it's all going to fall apart?

I became a Christian in 1973. The bestselling book in the 1970s was Hal Lindsey's The Late Great Planet Earth. That was 53 years ago. It was all supposed to come to an end by 1988, and people jumped on the bandwagon with the Left Behind series and all that.

Although I have to give credit to Tim LaHaye. Even though he believed in all of that, he was still involved in worldview-type issues and especially involved in education and so forth. So, that's the first thing. Then you have to believe that the Bible does, in fact, apply to every area of life.

And I mean, I say every area, I mean, every area. The Bible might not apply to baseball and football, but the Bible does apply to the idea that there are in order to make something work in something that's a conflict. There are biblical principles that deal with that. An umpires have a rulebook, they understand the nature of rules, and we need to understand the nature of rules and how they apply to us as individuals, families, churches, and in the civil sphere.

So by saying, yeah, I do believe the Bible applies to every area of life and I believe it applies in the particulars. Now, we may not understand how all of those particulars work out, but there are enough of them in there that are extremely clear that we can apply to the world in which we live. And I think we would see a change again from bottom to top, from top to bottom.

Those principles need to be put into operation and keeping in mind, as I mentioned, this jurisdictional separation between church and state does not mean separating God from government.

Marlin Detweiler:
And I'm going to summarize those as a closing and help, correct me if I don't get it right. But we should, as Christians, realize that we need to be planning for the long term. We need to be investing in our children and our grandchildren and in the things that we do. We need to think about what they might look like 50 or 100 years from now.

And without having gotten into the eschatological discussion, it's easy to say to someone who says, well, I don't believe that the world is going to be around that long. My answer to them, even though I disagree with them, is why would you not plan for the long term anyway? Because in planning for the long term, you get the best results in the short term anyway.

The work is good, to think multi-generational and to plan that way. The work is good in the present.

Gary DeMar:
Yeah. It's like saving money. You invest and invest and invest and you're hoping, knowing that one day you may need that money. But if you don't need that money and money is there, you pass it on to the next generation. And hopefully you've trained that next generation to use that money wisely. I've written a book called Last Days Madness, if anybody is interested.

It deals with all of these issues eschatologically in AmericanVision.org. And I try to make a biblical case. And again, I got involved in this eschatological aspect because of the worldview side of things, because oftentimes when I went out to speak on God in government, invariably there'd be somebody in the audience and say, why are we worried about all this stuff?

Jesus is coming soon. And I keep reminding them, people have been saying this for almost 2,000 years.

Marlin Detweiler:
Millennia.

Gary DeMar:
The Bible talks about two witnesses, 2 or 3 witnesses. We've got hundreds and thousands of them. You might want to reassess things a little bit.

Marlin Detweiler:
That’s wonderful, the second thing, and I'll call it the last thing is that the Bible applies in every area, even in the particulars, and establishing and growing in a real biblical worldview that helps us think rightly, biblically about everything is a very important part. A takeaway that applies to how we look at what we're dealing with today, with wisdom and with insight and with God's mind.

Gary DeMar:
I really, I really do believe that, just just one simple example in the book of Exodus talks about kidnapping, man stealing. If we, if the church had really pushed what the Bible had to say about man stealing and the modern-day slavery movement, we never would have been involved in the slave trade.

A simple one, a couple verses in the Bible talking about kidnapping, stealing somebody and then selling them. It's in the Bible, it's against it. We would have changed the world. So it's yeah, that's the way the Bible works. And I think we can find those principles in the Bible.

Marlin Detweiler:
Well, Gary, I always enjoy talking to you. I enjoy our friendship. Thank you so much for what you're doing. Thank you for your support of what we're doing.

Gary DeMar:
Oh, I thank you. I, you know, recommend your stuff all the time to people. And if you ever get into the Atlanta area, look me up, go out to lunch.

Marlin Detweiler:
Love to do it again. We've done it before. I look forward to doing it again soon. Thanks for joining us. Folks, this has been Veritas Vox, the voice of classical Christian education. I'm sorry I interrupted. You can say one last thing.

Gary DeMar:
No. Go ahead.

Marlin Detweiler:
All right. Thanks, folks. Bye bye.