Loading summary
Transcript46 lines
- [00:05]
A
Professor GEORGE it's great to be here in your neck of the woods. Princeton University I joked earlier I feel smarter just being in this room. But it's an honor. Thanks for taking time.
- [00:16]
B
Well, it's my very great pleasure. And what a joy it is to have you right here with us at the Witherspoon Institute in Princeton.
- [00:22]
A
Well, it's just incredible work that is going on here, and I'd love to share some of that with our folks. But really, we're here to talk about Fidelity Month. And it's such an interesting year, it seems, for a couple reasons. One is there's momentum. There's momentum for Fidelity Month. There's more people that are recognizing it. There's more churches that are doing things to participate. There's states and cities and municipalities. Where did this idea come from?
- [00:51]
B
Oh, well, this goes back to the spring of 2023. I got up one morning and was having my cup of tea and my three biscot. That's my breakfast.
- [01:00]
A
That's where the best ideas come.
- [01:02]
B
Yeah, there it is. And I was looking at the Wall Street Journal, I think the website, and I saw a story about some polling data, data that had been compiled over many years now about what Americans value, what Americans think is important. And alarmingly, the data showed that the belief of Americans in the importance of some of the traditional values that had been our sources of unity and strength as a people had diminished, diminished very significantly. Right down in a line like that. The belief in the importance of religion, belief in the importance of fidelity in marriage, belief in the importance of patriotism, love of country, those were way down. The only thing that Americans believe in, the importance of went up with respect to was money. More Americans think that having a lot of money is more important. Now, I want to be clear. I want everybody to have a nice life, materially speaking. I want everyone to be prosperous. I want people to be able to take care of themselves and their families and have a few luxuries.
- [02:15]
A
But gosh, I mean, Jesus kind of warned against money, right? And it's pretty explicit.
- [02:21]
B
So, yeah, the love of money should not be on the same scale as love of God, love of your spouse and your children, love of our country. So I said to myself, oh, heavens, what are we going to do about this? And then it dawned on me, well, you know, we have a day for this and a week for that and a month for the other thing. Why don't we take some period of time, let's say a month, and encourage our fellow citizens or fellow Americans to Rededicate themselves to the basic principle of fidelity. Fidelity to God, fidelity to our spouses and to our families, fidelity to our country and to our communities. Because, after all, John, these have been historically our sources of unity and strength. We don't have a lot of other sources of unity and strength in the United States. We are a people that is not founded on a common race or common religion, common ethnicity, common cultural heritage. We're black and white and Latino and Asia, and our ancestors come from Croatia and Japan and Armenia and Indonesia and all over the world. We are Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, Christian, Buddhist, Hindu. We're a very diverse country. So what binds us together? What provides unity and strength, especially when times are tough and we need to face some challenges? Well, historically, it's been, number one, our shared commitment across religious lines, across racial, ethnic lines, and so forth, to our country's founding principles, the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. But not those alone, John. We've also shared, across the religious traditions, across the races and ethnicities, love of God, a sense of the importance of fidelity to God, the importance of marriage and family. Americans have always considered that to be important. That's not a distinctively Christian thing. Jewish people, people from other traditions of faith, also value fidelity in marriage and love of your family, your kids. And same with love of country. If we look at the great wars we fought, look, for example, at the first and second World Wars. The blood that was shed was shed by people who were black and people who were white, people who were Asian, Native American, Indian, Latino, people whose ancestors came from Germany, people whose ancestors came from Ireland, people whose ancestors came from India, people whose ancestors came from elsewhere in Asia. So, yeah, across all these divisions, love of country has been a common value, Part of our strength, part of our unity. So that's why I think taking some time, let's say a month, to remind ourselves of the importance of fidelity is very much in our interest as a people.
- [05:18]
A
I think it's been such a great example of something that was important to Chuck Colson that we not just curse the darkness, but we light a candle. We interrupt for that.
- [05:27]
B
That's for sure. Well.
- [05:27]
A
And highlight those things which are good, but at the same time, those are contested principles. Right. That our country is a good force, something to be proud of and not something to be ashamed of. That family is something that is fixed and secure, a given defined as opposed to, you know, love makes a family, or the kind of. The idea of family as a social construct that could constantly be made and remade and then of Course, even, you know, whether Christianity or the belief in God in general has been good or bad, I mean, we just came out of the realm of the new atheism, you know, a generation ago, which told us that, you know, God's a delusion and religion poisons everything. So in a sense, even though you're highlighting Infidelity Month, things that we should care about and be faithful to, you're kind of going to war, in a sense against these other ideas that have quite a hearing.
- [06:21]
B
Well, it's interesting you bring up the new Atheism. The new Atheism. The new Atheism, so called New Atheism seems rather old these days.
- [06:28]
A
It does, doesn't it? Yeah. Some of those guys are changing their tune a little bit.
- [06:32]
B
Well, that's true. Even my dear old friend, and he is my old friend Richard Dawkins, with whom I was in a senior common room in Oxford when I was a young lecturer and he was a professor just about to become a professor at Oxford University. So we go back a long way together. Professor Dawkins now has taken to calling himself a cultural Christian.
- [06:52]
A
Fascinating.
- [06:52]
B
He understands and is willing to admit that many of the things that he himself believes in, things that he regards as important values, values that we need to preserve and protect, are the heritage of Christianity. Yeah. So things have changed. Times are changing.
- [07:10]
A
They are. Do you sense some of that? I mean, it's one of the questions. We should always defend these first principles. We should always care about them. We should be faithful to them, we should call people to be faithful to them. But there does seem to be a little momentum here away from maybe some of the, I don't know, the woke ideas or the other ideas which saw all of these principles of faithfulness to God and family and country as being something negative.
- [07:37]
B
Yeah, that's right. And we see it with Fidelity Month. So the movement is growing. It's a grassroots movement, John. As you know, it's not a top down movement. I happen to be the founder, but I'm not the president. We have no organization, we have no budget, we don't raise money. This is not a fundraising appeal to anybody. We're asking people at the grassroots to be build this movement. And now we're seeing that it's getting recognition, as you mentioned a moment ago, not only from clergy across the religious denominations, but also from political leaders. We're very pleased this year that Governor Spencer Cox in Utah and Governor Sanders, Sarah Huckabee Sanders in Arkansas have issued proclamations recognizing Fidelity Month in their states. The Michigan House of Representatives has passed a resolution recognizing Fidelity Month in Michigan. Lower level officials around the country are showing an interest in doing the same thing. So our movement, thank God, is growing without anybody putting money into it, without there being formal leaders or a leadership structure, an administration or a bureaucracy of any kind. It's a movement that's coming from people themselves, from ordinary Americans who want to do something. And if you want to join them, John, anybody who wants to join us in the Fidelity movement, all you have to do is go to our website, fidelitymonth.com www.fidelitymonth.com and there you'll find a menu of ways that you can help.
- [09:13]
A
Well, so it is a very easy to get involved, right?
- [09:16]
B
It is. It doesn't cost anybody any money.
- [09:18]
A
You can do it as a family, you can do it as a church. Our church is participating this year, which is really exciting, and even to the level of states. You know, I mentioned there were two things interesting here about kind of the timing. Looking back, you know, it's just a few years ago that you, you have this idea, and here we are this year at the 250th anniversary of the United States. So there's a level at which I think, even as I've seen you interviewed and your own words, that's, that's in your mind very much that this fidelity to country, which is certainly something, you know, we hear as a bad thing, you know, we shouldn't prioritize our country, we shouldn't have a sense of pride. I think you even hear that some from Christians who say that the love of country can compete with the love of God. And certainly it can.
- [10:10]
B
It can. But it doesn't have to. It doesn't have to. We know as Christians that it's our duty always to put God first, above anything else. And it's possible for anything else, John, to become an idol, idol, idol in our lives. We can turn the country into an idol. We can turn any good thing into an idol, thus making it into a bad thing, an occasion of sin. So we certainly don't want to do that. But historically, the great thinkers of Christianity, of the Christian tradition, have made clear that although we Christians consider ourselves to be resident aliens here on earth, this is not our ultimate home. Nevertheless, we are called to be the very best of good citizens. We are called to love our country. We are called to be grateful for what the country makes possible for us. And gosh, we Americans have reason to be very grateful. Where else in the history of the world do we find this level of prosperity, of liberty, of security. These are gifts that a lot of people would give a right arm for across history and across cultures. So we've got a lot to be grateful for. And one of the things we have especially to be grateful for, Jordan, is this blessed experiment, as our founders called it, in ordered liberty and republican government. This gift of a democratic republic, a self governing polity that was bequeathed to us by the founding generation who created it at enormous risk and cost to themselves. We're celebrating. We will be celebrating on July 4, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Those men who signed that document, when they affixed their signature to it, knew that they were putting their heads in a noose. That if they failed, and the odds were very good that they wouldn't fail, they were going up against the greatest military power on earth. They knew that if they failed, John, they would be hanged for treason. Yeah. And yet with a firm confidence in Providence, as they said in the Declaration itself, the providence of God, with a firm confidence, pledging their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor, they did it. They made the break with Britain and now why did they do it? They explained why they did it, really, in the second sentence of the Declaration. The first sentence explains why they are explaining themselves. The second sentence says this. We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Then it goes on to say that the fundamental purpose of government is to secure those rights, Rights, John, that government did not create, and that therefore government cannot legitimately take away our most fundamental rights. Those unalienable rights to equality, to liberty, to life, those are not the gifts of kings or presidents or parliaments or Congresses or supreme courts. Those are gifts, endowments, as the Declaration says, from Almighty God Himself, conferred on us as his children, made in his image and likeness. And because they were given to us by no merely human power, no merely human power can legitimately violate them or take them away.
- [14:01]
A
I'm just struck by the comment. I always have been since I first heard the idea of Fidelity Month, which I. I'd loved immediately. Just because it was an alternative, it was an option. It was something we could participate in, and it recognized something. And gratitude was always part of this. And so you mentioned this. And Chuck Colson would often talk about Saving Private Ryan as being his favorite movie, because there's that. That gratitude baked in. That is something that orders the life of that character. And there is an intimate connection here between recognizing that we are recipients of things we didn't earn, we didn't build, we didn't buy, we couldn't have, that came ultimately from God, but also because of courage of those who have gone before us. But we live in a culture in which some of the dominant ideas are that there really are no givens, there's no gifts. We construct everything, including our understandings of freedom and our understandings of human dignity and human value. It's kind of like that line from the Declaration that you read. We hold these truths to be self evident because we were endowed by our Creator. You don't have a true fidelity and faithfulness to country that is virtuous or that is good unless you recognize there's a gift.
- [15:21]
B
If you fail to recognize those gifts as you arrogate to yourself the credit, you might say the credit for all the good things in your life, you'll come to feel entitled. I earned these things. Well, look, no one earned the family they're born into. No one earned the country they're born into. No one earned the economy they're born into. No one earned the polity that they were born into. Now, some people are born into pretty nasty families or pretty nasty countries, or pretty nasty political regimes or pretty dreadful economies. We in the United States of America were born into a country that honors liberty. Security provides. Security provides, unprecedented in the history of the world, opportunities for people to rise. Even people who were born with very little or into poor families can rise to wealth.
- [16:24]
A
And that's historically unusual.
- [16:26]
B
It is across the world. I mean, in most places, if your father's a tailor, you're a tailor. Your father was a tailor because your grandfather's a tailor. My grandfathers were a pair of coal miners. They're both immigrants. One came from Syria, one came from Italy, southern Italy. They were both fleeing bad situations. My father's father was fleeing Ottoman oppression as a member of a small Christian minority in Syria. My mother's father was fleeing the grinding poverty of southern Italy. My dad's dad remained in the mines and working on the railroads his entire life and died of lung disease as coal miners did in those days, and these days still some do. My mom's dad was able to save up enough money working in the mines to go into a little grocery business, made a little grocery store, and actually owned his own business. He ended up being a little more prosperous than my dad's dad. But neither of them had a college education, nor did my parents have a college Education. So I'm just, what, two generations away from my grandparents. I'm the first in my family to go to College, and I'm McCormick professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, and I have degrees from Harvard and Oxford and all these places. But do you think I did that myself? No. Those are not just my achievements. I live in a country where that's possible. I was brought up by a family that made it possible for me. I have no right to feel entitled. I have no right to claim the credit for the great things that have happened to me. I've got grandparents and parents and other family members that I owe gratitude to. I have a country that I owe gratitude to, a community that I owe gratitude to. And my story, what's wonderful about my story is nothing funny or unique or different about it. It's the American story.
- [18:19]
A
It is.
- [18:19]
B
Think of so many people, some of whose ancestors came on the Mayflower, some of whose parents came, or they came themselves. So one of my star students, now a very distinguished professor himself, came from Egypt, brought by his parents when he was 2 years old. And now he's a very important figure in American academic life. This is the United States of America. We should be grateful, John. All of us should be grateful for this country.
- [18:51]
A
Well, inherent in that, I think, is just an idea too, which is if we're not grateful, we risk squandering. Oh, you bet we risk, in a generation, losing some of these ideas.
- [19:05]
B
Jesus parable of the prodigal son is very apt here, very much on point.
- [19:10]
A
Squandering the inheritance.
- [19:12]
B
He gets the money from his dad.
- [19:13]
A
He just goes to his dad and
- [19:14]
B
says, I want what's mine. Well, he hadn't earned it. His dad, presumably had earned it. So he demands it as if he's entitled to it. No sense of gratitude. Off he goes, he squanders it, and then he comes back begging. But of course, his father, representing in Jesus parable, our merciful and loving Father in heaven, welcomes him back with open arms. But he wasn't entitled to that.
- [19:39]
A
So this 250th anniversary of the Declaration, we're going to think about these founders, we're going to think about the stories and we're going to think about the sacrifices they made. And as you, I think, very clearly described, what was at stake for these individuals, we're also going to hear a good bit of critique of these guys. We're going to hear a bit of
- [19:59]
B
they were not perfect. You know, we all have our faults and foibles and failings. It's because we're fallen creatures.
- [20:06]
A
Sure. I mean, is that a sufficient explanation, you know, when you think of something like the 1619 Project or some other narrative about America's founding and that this was actually something that was built out of some great evil as opposed to, as you articulated these ideals that, you know, were aspirations to live up to, how do we respond to that when we hear that?
- [20:30]
B
Well, first, there's no doubting that slavery was a very, very grave evil. Why was it a grave evil? Was contrary to the UR principle, the most fundamental principle of all, sound morality, the principle of the profound inherent and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. Slavery flies right in the face of that. It was a grave evil. Now, what's the source of the inherent and fundamental and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family? Well, we have to go to Genesis 1 for that, the very first chapter of the very first book of the Bible where we're told that the human being, though mere dust of the earth, is nevertheless fashioned in the image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of all that is the image of God. That's what slavery violated. Now, our founders, including Jefferson himself, who was a slave owner, I say Jefferson himself, because he was the principal draftsman of the Declaration, didn't do it all by himself. There was a committee, Adams was on it, Franklin was on it. But Jefferson, the principal draftsman, was himself a slaveholder. And yet he knew that slavery was wrong. He said, speaking of slavery, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice will not sleep forever. That's how keenly aware he was of how evil slavery was. But he didn't know how to get rid of it. He said of slavery. Another famous quotation from Jefferson. He said, out of slavery we have a wolf by the ears. We know we can't hold him forever, but we dare not let go. I think the founding fathers, for the most part now, some of them, were very explicitly anti slavery. Hamilton, sure, Adams, Franklin came around to the anti slavery position. But even those like Jefferson who did not favor the abolition of slavery, believed and certainly hoped that slavery would die out gradually. They saw that as the only way forward. You can't just immediately abolish it. The economic and social consequences of that would be too severe. They hoped it would die out gradually. Well, but then came along some technological developments that gave slavery a new economic lease on life. And arising with that was a new ideology that rationalized, attempted to justify slavery, especially using modern scientific notions. A Kind of pseudoscience. So that's the story. And I think, John, it's our responsibility. And by ours, I mean not just professors like myself, but everyone's responsibility to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The whole truth is complicated, but we've got to tell it. We shouldn't whitewash history, but we shouldn't pretend that this country is built on nothing but evil. After all, that promissory note, as Martin Luther King would later refer to the Declaration of Independence, contained the seeds of the destruction of slavery. The very idea of equal, unalienable natural rights endowed by our Creator. That was the essence of the promise of the Declaration that could function and did function as the goal of the great reform movements that eventually not only abolished slavery, but overcame the racial injustices that were the legacy of slavery. Dismantling the system of Jim Crow, the segregation system. So complicated history. Yes, but it's gotta be told in all its complexity.
- [24:20]
A
And that's part of fidelity.
- [24:22]
B
It's part of being faithful to the
- [24:23]
A
truth, being faithful to what's true.
- [24:25]
B
Yeah.
- [24:26]
A
It just struck me, as you were quoting Jefferson there, that he was a really, really bad deist, wasn't he? That's what he's often called with that kind of language about the judgment of God.
- [24:36]
B
The term, term deism is a term whose meaning has shifted pretty significantly. Today when we hear people speak of deism or deist, we think of the distant God who winds up the clock and then just lets it go. For a figure like Jefferson, he was not a Christian. He didn't believe in the Christian doctrines. That's certainly true. He had his own version of the Bible with the miracles cut out of it. But he did believe in judgment, a divine judgment. He did believe in a superintending providence. A God who cared about the affairs of men, was active in the affairs of men. As far as I can tell, there were no deists in the sense of the word that we use today among the American Founders, nor were there any atheists. There were certainly atheists among the French Revolutionary, sure, but not among the American Founders.
- [25:26]
A
Interestingly, thrilled to be sitting down today with Professor Robert George, the one and only incredible influence nationally and conservatively and Christian thought. The McCormick professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University, the founder of the Witherspoon Institute and the James Madison Program at Princeton University. Dr. George, it's great to be with you.
- [25:48]
B
What a joy to be with you. Thank you, John.