Does God Intervene in History?

John Fea's critique of The Light and the Glory in the July/August edition of Touchstone reminds me of the evolutionist's critique of intelligent design: just as we must confine ourselves to natural causes in understanding the origin of the species, we must do the same when understanding the events of American history.

It may be worth discussing in a bit more detail than Fea does the self-understanding of the participants in the War for Independence.

The Declaration of Independence itself expresses the view that God will be on the side of the Americans in the coming war: they embark on it "with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence." God is on the side of the Americans, not because He likes Americans better than he likes the British, but because the Americans are fighting to defend the unalienable rights with which they have been "endowed by their Creator." Fea seems to think that it is a fatal blow to this way of thinking to point out that British Christians were praying for the Americans' defeat. The Founders would no doubt have found it strange for someone to find, as Fea does here, a moral equivalency between liberty and tyranny. If God in fact gives people rights, presumably He prefers that system of government which is best able to secure them. Perhaps He even intervenes in history on the side of those who fight for it.

Fea wants us to dismiss the statements of the participants in these events, because to do otherwise would be to "fail to exemplify the historian's necessary detachment from his subject." Or because it "would be the equivalent of future historians arguing that the events of September 11, 2001 were a punishment from God because their sources--certain prominent television preachers--said so." Yet these statements were made not by preachers but by important Founders such as Washington and Franklin, intelligent men who were directly involved in these events and who (at least in Franklin's case) were not necessarily known for their great faith.

In the Constitutional Convention, for example, Benjamin Franklin speaks of his certainty that God fought on the side of the Americans: "In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. -- Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor." In his first inaugural address, Washington does the same: "No People can be bound to acknowledge and adore the invisible hand, which conducts the Affairs of men more than the People of the United States. Every step, by which they have advanced to the character of an independent nation, seems to have been distinguished by some token of providential agency."

Granted, we do not have to believe that what Franklin and Washington say is true just because they say it, but the detachment of a historian does not require us to assume that what they say is not true either. Perhaps we can take the approach of the scientist: in the Declaration, the Americans predict that God will fight on their side because they are fighting for liberty, and in the event, He apparently did.

Note: see also John Witherspoon: "It would be a criminal inattention not to observe the singular interposition of Providence hitherto, in behalf of the American colonies."