The Genius of the American System

Lessons from Philip Schaff’s America

In 1854, the “father of modern church history” returned to his native land. For ten years, Philip Schaff had taught church history and biblical literature in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Recruited to be a professor at Mercersburg College, Schaff came to America at the age of twenty-four. And after a decade of learning the customs of America, he returned to Germany, where he gave three lectures on his adopted home.

Those lectures were quickly copied, translated, and distributed in Germany (1854), America (1855), and the Netherlands (1855). Today, they can be found in a volume titled America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character.[1.  Philip Schaff, America: A Sketch of Its Political, Social, and Religious Character (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1961). All parenthetical references come from this edition.] In 1961, Harvard Press published this book with an introduction by famed Puritan scholar, Perry Miller. In this slim volume, Schaff outlines with impressive detail the character of the American people, their Christian faith, and their social customs. 

Written by a theologian with Reformed convictions, America is a book that rivals its more famous precursor, Democracy in America. Two decades before Schaff, Alexis de Tocqueville, a French aristocrat, came to America to examine the penal system. He ended up writing a masterpiece of American history. Released in two volumes (1835, 1840), Democracy in America examines the democratic impulses of the young American country. 

By comparison, Schaff’s book on America focuses more on the condition of the American church than on her liberties. In his second lecture, especially, the church historian gives an outline of American churches—Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, Roman Catholics, and more. 

 What is most helpful in Schaff’s work is the illuminating discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of American religion. He explains to his German audience that this new nation is undeniably “Christian” (76), and yet is fundamentally different from the national churches of Europe. Indeed, how could a nation be Christian if it did not establish the church? That is a primary question that Schaff answers. It is worth our time to give attention to what Schaff said. To that end, let me offer five observations about the church and state in America drawn from Schaff’s work.

What Kind of Christian Nation Was America?

First, America was founded because of Christian motivations.

As he begins his section on “Religion and the Church” in his first lecture, Schaff shows how “religious motives” drove the founding of America. He states, “the first emigrants left the homes of their fathers for faith and conscience’ sake, and thus at the outset stamped upon their new home the impress of positive Christianity” (72). Stressing this point, Schaff continues by saying that the original imprint of Christianity “now exerts wholesome influence even on those later emigrants, who have no religion at all” (72).  The first founders of America came to this land with a commitment to settle this place for Christ. Therefore, unlike the nations of Europe that had to be converted from paganism, America was founded by Christians who were intent on building a Christian society.  

Second, America was Protestant in character. 

In America, “everything had a Protestant beginning” (72). Whereas Christianity in Europe had “historical connections with Catholicism,” in America “the Catholic Church has come in afterwards as one sect among others, and has always remained subordinate”[2. Schaff notes the way that Maryland, established by Catholics, “was by no means specifically Roman.” Instead, “it was found expressly on the thoroughly anti-Roman, and essentially Protestant, principles of religious toleration” (72–73).] (72). Even more, Schaff explains that the source of America’s “spirit and character” came from “the Puritans in New England, the Episcopalians in Virginia, the Quakers in Pennsylvania, the Dutch in New York, . . . the Presbyterians from Scotland and North Ireland, and the German Lutherans and Reformed from the Palatinate” (73).

All told, American Christianity was rooted in the historic doctrines of the Reformation. And specifically, that means that American Christianity would be uniquely centered on the Bible, a feature that caused Mark Noll to label America a “Bible civilization.”[3.Mark A. Noll, America’s Book: The Rise and Decline of a Bible Civilization (1794–1911) (New York: Oxford, 2022).] Capturing the same spirit, Schaff says of American Christianity that it gave “zealous support of Bible and Tract societies, or domestic and foreign missions, the numerous revivals, the general attendance on divine worship, and the custom of family devotion” (76).

Going further, he adds, “In every new city district, in every new settlement, one of the first things thought of is the building of a temple to the Lord, where the neighboring population may be regularly fed with the bread of life and encouraged to labor, order, obedience, and every good work” (79). By comparison then, “the Americans are already in advance of most of the old Christian nations of Europe” (76). And how did this happen? Not by governments establishing churches, but by the free and voluntary worship of the people. Indeed, this is a feature that is rooted in the Protestant Reformation and one that distinguishes American Christianity from that of Europe.

Third, American Protestantism separated the church from the state.

Schaff knew by experience and education that many European nations were Protestant. By this measure, it was not Protestantism alone that formed American religion. Rather, it was the unique way that Protestant Christianity, as it developed in the New World, separated church and state in America. 

Tracing the history from the “rigid Calvinistic church-state system” of the Puritans in Massachusetts (74) to the introduction of religious liberty by Roger Williams and William Penn, in Rhode Island and Pennsylvania, respectively, Schaff arrived at the period of the American Revolution and the disestablishment of the church in the Constitution (74–75). He acknowledged the shortcomings of the American system, since Christ’s kingdom “is to penetrate and transform like leaven, all the relations of individual and national life” (75). Yet, instead of critiquing this novel system, he extolled the unparalleled freedoms that it created (75–76).

For, in fact, the American system of separation did not, as it would come to be defined in the twentieth century, erect a “high and impregnable wall” between church and state.[4. Everson v. Board of Education (1947) was the genesis of our modern understanding of a strict separation between church and state. Reinterpreting the language of Thomas Jefferson, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black made the infamous case that “the First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach.”] Instead, it made possible a “voluntary system,” which “calls forth a mass of individual activity and interest among the laity in ecclesiastical affairs, in the founding of new churches and congregations, colleges and seminaries, in home and foreign missions, and in the promotion of all forms of Christian philanthropy”[5. Remember, Schaff wrote at a time when America had no income tax. A national income tax was introduced in 1861, as an emergency measure to fund the Civil War. After that tax was repealed in 1872, the federal income tax was made permanent in 1913, with the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment.] (79).

Observing these features, Schaff puts his finger on the genius of the American system: churches are protected from being dominated and the state is strengthened by the vitality and moral accountability of its Christian citizens.[6. One remarkable example of this cultural influence is the number of churches that stood in New York City. In a footnote, Schaff counts 300 churches: “In 1854 there were in New York city, forty-eight Episcopal churches, forty-eight Presbyterian, thirty-five Methodist, nineteen Reformed Dutch, twenty-nine Baptist, eight Congregational, five Lutheran, and twenty-four Roman Catholic; besides the church edifices of several smaller denominations and sects, which must swell the number now to nearly 300” (78). By his estimation, it is the prominence of these churches, which filled the city with their Sabbath-keeping, that prevented New York City from becoming a “second Paris” (52).]

This is kind of religious liberty can only be found in Christian nations, and Schaff makes this point explicit in his second lecture, when he says, “the principle of religious freedom rests there on a religious basis, as the result of many sufferings and persecutions for the sake of faith and conscience; and thus differs very materially from some modern theories of toleration, which run out into sheer religious indifference and unbelief” (91). 

The religious liberty that is peddled today by modern Americans, and not a few Christians, is one based wholly on “religious indifference and toleration.” Such religious liberty is worlds apart from the separation of church and state that Schaff saw in 1854. Indeed, if the church in America will have a place to worship freely, as 1 Timothy 2:1–4 invites us to pray, it must reject the type of separation on offer today and recover the type of separation where free churches strengthen the state and the free state is suffused with true churches. In short, the church and state in America were separated in Schaff’s day, but they also enjoyed a symbiotic relationship that should be the aim of every Christian today.

Fourth, American Protestantism developed a symbiotic relationship between church and state.

Immediately after Schaff identified the separation of church and state, he clarified himself, saying, “For it is by no means to be thought, that the separation of church and state there is a renunciation of Christianity by the nation” (76). This might be the most needful corrective to errant views of church and state today. 

Many well-meaning Christians argue that nations cannot be Christian, because not all citizens are born again and the moniker “holy nation” must be limited to the church (see 1 Pet. 2:9). Such thinking ignores the important role that nations, and their governors, play in the purposes of God. 

The exalted Christ commanded Paul to preach the gospel to kings (Acts 9:15) and throughout the book of Acts (as well as church history), the civil magistrates, who are God’s servants (Rom. 13:1–7), play a definitive role in affirming or denying the proclamation of the gospel. That is say, that while the church is called to preach the gospel, the state will either permit and maintain such efforts or stand in their way.

Indeed, while governors are not called to use the sword to coerce faith or criminalize the conscience, Schaff is right when he says that in America, “the church, indeed, everywhere enjoys the protection of the laws for its property, and the exercise of its functions,” even as “it manages its own affairs independently, and has also to depend for its resources entirely on voluntary contributions” (73–74).

In this way, Schaff distinguishes the establishment of one sect of Christianity that comes at the expense of others from the lawful encouragement of Christianity by the magistrate who supports and strengthens the church.[7. As the state commits itself to no particular form of Christianity, there is of course also no civil requisition of baptism, confirmation, and communion. Religion is left to the free will of each individual, and the church has none but moral means of influencing the world. (73–74)] In fact, he goes so far as to approve of the ways “the state, as such, to some extent officially recognizes Christianity” (76). And he illustrates his point with examples taken from America.

Congress appoints chaplains (mostly from the Episcopal, sometimes from the Presbyterian and the Methodist clergy) for itself, the army, and the navy. It opens every day’s session with prayer and holds public worship on the Sabbath in the Senate Chamber at Washington. The laws of the several States also contain strict prohibitions of blasphemy, atheism, Sabbath-breaking, polygamy, and other gross violations of general Christian morality. (76–77)

These are the ways that the American government supported the church in the nineteenth century. And they are the ways that a nation can maintain spiritual separation between church and state, all the while protecting and promoting Christianity. 

And more, with all the unique ways that church and state functioned in the past, it should teach us how nations can be Christian and, in particular, how America was a Christian nation. In America, disestablishment was the federal law of the land[8. At the federal level, at least.], but in no way did the First Amendment outlaw magistrates from encouraging Christianity as the true religion. In fact, the inclination of the young nation was just the opposite. The relationship in America between church and state was one of symbiosis, not stand off.

Fifth, America is a nation with the soul of a church.

Writing a generation later, one year before Philip Schaff died in 1893, Supreme Court Justice David Brewer wrote his opinion in the case Trinity v. United States (1892). And in his judicial statement, he argued that America was a Christian nation. This argument follows on the work of the National Reformation Association, which sought to amend the constitution in 1863 to acknowledge the Lordship of Jesus Christ. And this argument comes three decades before G. K. Chesterton declared in his 1922 book, What I Saw in America, that America is “a nation with the soul of a church.” 

Put these testimonies together, and it was more than a nation with a Christian founding or a nation-state with lots of Christians or Christian ideas—though these claims are undeniably correct. Rather, when time is taken to define the terms, America really was a Christian nation. 

The Protestant Church in America Must Maintain Christianity At All Costs

Whether America continues to be a Christian nation is another question for another day. But as America reflects on its first 250 years, it is worth remembering that when the father of church history took up the task of defining America, he declared this young country a Christian nation. And this year, we would do well to learn again what it means to be a Christian nation and how American Protestantism impressed its Christianity on this country.

As Alexis de Tocqueville said, in his own famous assessment of America and her democracy, Americans must “maintain Christianity . . . at all costs.”[10. Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 279–280, 519.] For him, Christianity was the source from which all religious liberty and democratic freedom sprang. And truly, one cannot understand our nation’s freedoms without seeing the way Protestantism formed the American way of life and law. 

Yet, the evangelical faith described by Schaff is more important than the democracy detailed by Tocqueville. For not only are the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation the ones that bestowed liberty on this land, but they are also the doctrines that promise gospel life to men and women of all nations. In God’s providence, he shed his grace on America. And he did so through an abundance of free churches that effectively made this country Christian—if not formally than substantively. Christians in 2026 should give thanks to God for what he has done in this nation, and we should learn from those who have gone before us.