A Tocquevillian Defense of Christian Morality
A Tocquevillian Defense of Christian Morality
While Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America is widely recognized as one of the master works on American government, his vigorous defense of religion’s role both in the American Founding and society at large garners less attention. To understand his position, it is essential to sketch Tocqueville’s conception of the meaning of freedom. By freedom, I do not mean the right to act according to one’s whims. That is thoroughly impracticable as a universal definition for freedom since variability of perceptions is intrinsic to humanity, and the only way to avoid anarchy is to organize society around some set of ideological conventions. Therefore, I will postulate, as did Tocqueville, that true freedom requires a moderative element as well as a self-interested one.
Tocqueville’s understanding of freedom was founded in his view of human nature, which was based on two principles. First, self-interest is intrinsic to humanity. Second, people’s greatest conscious interest will be “in the development of his most human powers, those which depend upon a taste for what is elevated, great, or sublime.” This conscious pursuit of self-betterment extended to existential questions such as how to come to terms with the brevity of life and hopes and fears about the afterlife.
The second principle moderates the first, and at the societal level this existential bent of humanity is expressed through the “mores,” or shared fundamental beliefs, of societies. Tocqueville considered religion the natural means by which humans organize their mores and come to terms with existential questions. Therefore, for individuals, true freedom comes from balancing self-interest with self-government based on religion, which is projected to the societal level as a balance between the democratic will and social mores. This layered equilibrium between self-interest and the need for moral and social structure allows freedom to remain in balance between anarchy and tyranny.
Tocqueville believed that human society is inevitably progressing towards equality but expected that the desirability of the form that equality would take depended upon how individuals and societies would use their freedom. He argued that when societies maintain mores, then societal equality would lead to political freedom. However, if individuals abdicate their responsibility to self-government in favor of pure self-interest, the result will be tyranny. In the absence of self-government, political authoritarianism in some form would be the only way to maintain social order. Tocqueville feared this could occur even in America if citizens, heeding the siren song of self-aggrandizement, ceded their liberty to government for security and self-interest without the responsibility of self-government.
Tocqueville considered the acceptance of a certain set of beliefs not only beneficial but essential for society, arguing that without a strong moral fiber to compliment political freedom, a democratic society would be unable to function. In the case of America, the prosperity and freedom that had attended Christianity’s moral rule convinced Tocqueville that it could serve as the anchor for society. As he put it: “Nothing shows better how useful and natural to man it [Christianity] is in our day, since the country in which it exercises the greatest empire is at the same time the most enlightened and most free.”
The Foundations of American Democracy in Puritan New England
One of Tocqueville’s recurring themes in Democracy in America is the division of society into public and private spheres. Under this framework, the public sphere encapsulates societal issues such as the nature and structure of government, while individual concerns like morality, religion, and self-government are part of the private sphere. Despite their coexistence, the two spheres can never completely fuse in a democracy without sacrificing individual liberty to democratic majorities. Much of Democracy in America is spent considering whether American government succeeds in balancing these two spheres to effectively preserve liberty.
Tocqueville considered the Puritan pilgrims of 17th century New England to be the exemplars of a balanced fusion of the public and private spheres. His positive impression of the Puritans will seem bewildering to some modern audiences since the Puritans are routinely typecast as stolid fundamentalists who squelched individual freedom. This assessment, however, only holds true when freedom is defined according to pure self-interest. In the context of freedom through self-government as espoused by Tocqueville, it is easy to understand why he viewed the Puritans as the “Point of Departure” for American democracy. The Puritans believed that individual liberty and self-government should be the starting point for building a society, not positive law. This idea parallels Tocqueville’s belief that mores, within the private sphere, supersede laws, which inhabit the public sphere, as true pivot on which societies turn.
The government that the Puritans established was almost purely democratic and egalitarian, with everyone’s votes counting the same and no distinctions in societal position being made. Tocqueville was astounded that there was almost no innate influence based on status. The Puritans were light years ahead of contemporary societies in this conception of political equality, and Tocqueville knew better than to write this off as an aberrant blip in 17th century history. He recognized that this idea of freedom as the original basis of politics is the defining element of American democracy, and that the Puritan settlers were this concept’s original source.
Tocqueville provided several contributing explanations for this novel political structure, but considered the Puritans’ Christian faith its primary basis. They believed, as the Bible says, that all men are equal before God, given the free will to choose to either follow him or not. Believing that mankind’s status was equality before God, they utilized the same principle in their politics by viewing all individuals as equal before the law.
Like Tocqueville, the Puritans had two definitions of liberty. One denied all authority and acted only in self-interest, but there was another, “a civil, a moral, a federal liberty,” which was consistent with authority and governed itself in the interests of its own preservation and the preservation of the liberty of others. The Puritans believed the Bible when it said that true freedom was freedom from sin and submission to God’s authority, not freedom from any authority whatsoever. This conception of freedom was consistent with, though not identical to, Tocqueville’s conception of true freedom with its self-interested and moderative elements.
The clearest evidence of the Puritans’ intent to unite their freedom with their faith is the Mayflower Compact, which the original settlers of the Plymouth colony drafted before debarking from the Mayflower. Their intention cannot be misplaced, as they undertook “…For the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith… a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts…”. The main purpose for the compact was to “…Covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politick, for our better ordering and preservation… and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony…”.
One critical aspect of the document is the use of the word “covenant” to describe the settlers’ commitment to each other. In the Bible a covenant was an unbreakable oath, and the Puritans’ use of this word underscored their commitment to creating an effective government. Additionally, the authority to which they appealed was God himself (as demonstrated by references to “the glory of God” and to acting “in the presence of God”).
The Mayflower Compact represented the Puritan’s take on trying to balance the public and private spheres. They formed their government on equality and the democratic will but specified that this government must be consistent with God’s laws. Their mores were incredibly strict by almost any standard in history other than the Biblical Israelites (on whose laws the Puritans based their own penal code), but the mechanisms of their government were some of the freest seen in all of history.
One example of this freedom is the independence of action these colonies exhibited toward England. Tocqueville notes that they acted with legislative sovereignty as townships “as if they came under God alone”. There is some self-conscious irony here, as Tocqueville knew well that these particular colonists did indeed consider themselves beholden only to God. An even greater irony is the fact that the very laws which so many today consider anti-freedom were actually the most democratically established laws ever. The Puritan assemblies functioned as nearly pure democracies, and these gatherings were so committed to maintaining their mores that they democratically enacted laws which many today consider oppressive.
This marriage of strict mores and free government is like something out of the twilight zone to most individuals in the modern day. The exercise of government was divorced from the exercise of religion; in short there was a near complete separation of church and state in their functions. It was not a religious entity that voted religious principles into law, but democratic citizens consenting to frame laws that underscored the self-government they already exercised over themselves through their religion. Agents of government had no responsibility for creating laws and mores, they simply administered them as directed by the populace. Political freedom was at its greatest when self-government was at its strictest. As Tocqueville said of the Puritans: “In their hands, political principles, laws, and human institutions seem malleable things that can be turned and combined at will.”
The Constitution as a Continuation of the Point of Departure
Built on the Puritans’ foundation, the Constitution is a monument to the separation of the public and private spheres and the malleability of political institutions. Each branch of the national government is more powerful than its counterparts in other democracies, yet the federal government was designed to separate and check these powers to maximize individual freedom. When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they comprehended both the large size of the United States and the likelihood of its expansion and knew that a powerful national government would be needed to effectively govern the states. Nevertheless, they also recognized that America’s defining principles were freedom and equality, and that unless these were preserved, they were wasting their time.
The Constitution establishes a self-moderating system for the public sphere that parallels the Puritanical principle of self-government in the private sphere. These checks and balances (some examples being the electoral college, congressional bicameralism, and the presidential veto) serve two purposes. The first is to require moderation of the federal government in its actions, thus preserving individual liberty from being threatened by hastily passed laws. The second is to give voice to political minorities to minimize the threat of tyranny of the majority.
The Constitution also expands on the idea of balancing religion and freedom. It does not prescribe morals or even address them directly: it simply establishes a form of government. This aversion to endorsing a specific moral code should not be interpreted as a rejection of religion or morality, but as a defense of it. The Founding Fathers, like the Puritans, believed that religion belongs in the private sphere where it is safe from the public sphere’s tendency to forget that it exists to serve individual citizens, not collectivized political and social interests.
Tocqueville emphasized this need for separation of church and state rightly understood: “…When religion wishes to be supported by the interests of this world, it becomes almost as fragile as all the powers on earth.” Religion as a tool of government ceases to turn men’s minds towards heaven and instead identifies heaven with earth, delegitimizing divine authority. This explains the espousal of strict separation of church and state from the Puritans to the founding fathers to Tocqueville. It was not intended to subvert religion or diminish its importance in society. Instead, it was based on an understanding of religion’s importance to the maintenance of mores and the loss of moral force associated with aligning religious exercise with any particular political movement.
This commitment to separating church from state was nearly unilateral among the Founders. George Washington was so guarded in religious exercise that it was nearly impossible to attribute his faith to any particular sect, despite an almost universal feeling among his peers that he was an ardent Christian. This guardedness has largely been attributed to his desire to avoid attaching any one sect to the government by association.
James Madison was also a firm believer in separating church from state, going to great lengths in 1784 to prevent the state of Virginia from recognizing the Episcopal church as a state religion. In the official “remonstrance” presented to the general assembly of Virginia in 1785, Madison argued: “That Religion, or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence: and therefore, that all men should enjoy the fullest toleration in the exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience, unpunished, and unrestrained by the magistrate…”.
Many individuals claim that the founders’ support for separating church and state implies a general skepticism towards or even rejection of religion. This could not be further from the truth. The Founders understood as well as Tocqueville the need for a moderative force in society and religion’s unique ability to serve that role. George Washington could not have been clearer in his farewell address: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens.” Here, Washington speaks directly to religion’s role as the moral basis for society; it is these “indispensable supports” that provide the moral framework by which men frame their patriotism.
Christian Morality as the Basis of Freedom
True Freedom is under attack in America today. In recent decades American society has begun to reject religion and moral self-government due to the broad redefinition of freedom as unrestrained self-interest. As a result, American political freedom is slowly retreating. As Tocqueville well knew, no society can exist without a moderative force, and where self-government through religion ceased, he anticipated that a citizenry who desired order without religion would sacrifice their political freedom to achieve that order. Anticipating this danger, Tocqueville was unequivocal about the need for religion to serve as the moral force underpinning society.
Tocqueville also elaborated on the gradual shift away from “true” Christianity, towards a more practical and democratic faith that simply served society. Many secular readers of Democracy in America claim that he must therefore have considered religion simply a means to an end, a sort of synthetic morality. This assessment is true to a point: Tocqueville was a political scientist first and foremost and his self-expressed goal was to educate democracy, not argue theology.
Today, the mutually beneficial relationship between faith and freedom, when even acknowledged, is usually interpreted in terms of political science much as Tocqueville understood it. However, that relationship makes more sense if interpreted as evidence that Christian faith is based in truth, with political freedom being a natural extension of God’s design for humanity. Considering the question in this way is difficult for a political scientist because it leaves the empirical realm, yet it could not be otherwise even if the God of the Bible is real: a truly just God could not be proved empirically since salvation would then depend on intelligence and not an equal need for grace. The only way for all men to be equal before God is for all men to depend on faith to achieve a relationship with Him.
To step away from Tocqueville, to abandon the shackles of empirical reason, or of political science, long enough to address the relationship between Christianity and American society more broadly, one can ask the question: could not the apparent consistency between the exercise of Christianity and political freedom imply the truth of the Christian Faith? The Puritans attained the greatest political freedom known in history through true faith, not “useful” faith. They completely believed in God and the Bible as the authority over mankind and used it to regulate all their actions and laws, and the methods which they used to enforce those laws and build their society were arguably the freest ever known. They succeeded in making an almost pure democracy effective because their faith was strong enough to moderate the potential ill-effects of tyranny of the majority.
The Constitution, far from assuming mankind can govern itself justly, is designed as if mankind has a natural proclivity towards haste and injustice in government and is designed to defend citizens from this tendency. The Bible is clear that even those who do attain salvation through Christ will still sin, so why would it be a surprise that the Founding Fathers, some of whom were Christians and almost all of whom accepted Christianity as a foundation of American society, would design a system that protected against man’s propensity to project human imperfection into government?
The Constitution takes moral power away from the government as much as possible, intentionally directing it towards the individual. These checks and balances and the separation of powers protect a faithless member of a faithful society as well as they protect a faithful member of a faithless one. If Christianity is indeed true, then the Constitution successfully leaves the government of souls to God without sacrificing the orderly government of man.
Tocqueville, despite his abstract treatment of religion, could not escape the need for true faith as opposed to “useful” faith. He was concerned as to how religion should be maintained in democratic societies and thought it essential for governments to set the example. He did not, in saying this, contradict himself by suggesting that church and state should not be separated: he in fact reaffirmed his belief that separating the church from the state is essential. Instead he declared: “What I am going to say is indeed going to harm me in the eyes of politicians. I believe that the only efficacious means governments can use to put the dogma of the immortality of the soul in honor is to act every day as if they themselves believed it; And I think it is only in conforming scrupulously to religious morality in great affairs that they can flatter themselves they are teaching citizens to know it, love it, and respect it in small ones.” In other words, for society to fully realize benefits of religion as its natural and necessary moderative force, individuals within government must practice religion for its own sake to affirm religion’s usefulness to the citizenry. If Christianity is the true source of freedom, then this would already be a given.
I consider the mutual beneficence of religion and political freedom to be a self-evident truth, demonstrable both through a faith-based perspective as briefly outlined above and through a study of political science as outlined by Tocqueville. Yet, whether one approaches true freedom as an extension of Christianity or religion as an extension of true freedom, their mutual dependence is clear. Religion needs to maintain a place in American society, and if religious freedom is ever undermined and morality is placed in the hands of the government to determine, then the last chance for America to regain an understanding of true freedom will be irrevocably lost.
This article is a streamlined version of my final paper for a Washington & Lee Class, Politics, 396, focused on Tocqueville’s Democracy in America