PURITAN NATION:

In Federalist 51, James Madison referred to justice as the end of civil society and of government itself, something that people will always pursue "until it be obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit." When fallen people pursue justice, they are tempted to avoid moderation and wreak vengeance on those they see as wrongdoers. Yet despite this danger, Madison knew that a shared attachment to justice was vital to the republic. Great concerns of justice and the general good, he believed, were the only grounds upon which coalitions involving a strong majority could be built in an extended republic. As no shared ideal or interest bound Americans together deeply enough, he was skeptical about how long any such majority could hold.

McKenzie contends that arguments like Madison's formed the background for the American Founding. But so also did the nation's relatively strong Christian faith. Americans attended church in large numbers in this period--one estimate holds that between 71-77% of the population regularly attended a church in 1776. Despite wildly divergent theologies, what was common among them was a skepticism concerning the limitations of human nature. They generally shared a belief that our individual ability to consistently behave morally was quite limited, and that the pressure of public opinion further compromised that low capacity for virtue: "The problem as they understood it is not that we're wholly evil; it's that we're not reliably good." McKenzie argues this stance was a core part of their views; one might go so far as to suggest it was an essential part of the nation's Cultural Christianity.

By and large, the observations with which Madison concludes Federalist 56 hold here, "As there is a degree of depravity in mankind which requires a certain degree of circumspection and distrust: so there are other qualities in human nature, which justify a certain portion of esteem and confidence." Madison continues in a manner important for McKenzie's point:

Republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form. Were the pictures which have been drawn by the political jealously of some among us, faithful likenesses of the human character, the inference would be, that there is not sufficient virtue among men for self-government; and that nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.

In general, then, McKenzie concludes that "the Framers scoffed at the contention that men and women are basically good, but they also rejected the view that we are relentlessly depraved." Even Reformed thinkers like John Witherspoon would concur with the politics this produced--but in doing so they would point to the works of God rather than those of man as the source of that residual confidence. [...]

The Framers knew there would be no angels in the government, and no angels in the electorate, and they planned accordingly. They designed a Constitution for a fallen people. Its genius lay in how it held in tension two seemingly incompatible beliefs: first, that the majority must generally prevail; and second, that the majority is predisposed to seek personal advantage over the common good.

It is impossible to prove what percentage of those men who debated and ultimately ratified the Constitution believed the Christian teaching of original sin. Some, like Thomas Jefferson, we can say fairly conclusively did not. Many leaders of the period left us little or no comment on their own faith. McKenzie suggests that it is more crucial that they crafted the laws and argued in terms that deeply resonate with this teaching. Whatever their individual intentions, we can look back and see that they worked "to design a framework of government for people who would be fallen as well as free."

These men could rely on a Christian culture to help reinforce a sense of skepticism toward concentrated power and the widespread perception that too vigorously pursuing a single state or social group's idea of justice, prosperity, and order would lead to factionalism and disunion.

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