Eric Metaxas is a Christian conservative commentator and author of several books, including the bestselling Bonhoeffer.
Drawing on themes from his latest title, Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World, he made the case at this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference that Christianity was both central to the founding ideals of the United States, and remains essential to understanding and sustaining liberty today.
He speaks to Christian Today about why questions of faith are returning to public life and - and why they are key to the restoration of the West.
We've heard a lot at ARC about the “deconstruction” of Western civilization. What is your understanding of deconstruction and why do you think the West is in the state it’s in now?
I don't see deconstruction as anything but a nihilistic Marxist project to undermine truth and reality, which amounts to an attack on God. Once those foundations are torn down, they are replaced with something diabolical and unhealthy, like critical race theory and the other critical theories. That in a nutshell is what deconstruction is.
Do you think that the Church has contributed to that deconstruction - or perhaps not done enough to stop it?
Yes. I think the Church, especially the Western Church, is extremely naive when it comes to evil and the nature of Communism and Marxism. That naïveté, combined with forgetting Jesus' injunction to be wise as serpents, has indeed greatly contributed to the ability of deconstruction to make headway and to do many destructive things.
Your new book, Revolution, touches on the role of faith in the founding of the United States of America.How central do you think Christianity has been to the success and the uniqueness of Western civilization?
My book is essentially a retelling of the American Revolution from the years leading up to it, through to the Treaty of Paris in 1783. In telling that story, I couldn’t help but see that all of the men behind the onset of the revolution were not only strong Christians, but were conscious of doing something that was explicitly Christian. That is, trying to create a government where people ruled themselves not by looking to an earthly king, but directly to God the King.
That was explicit and yet that aspect of Western freedom has not been discussed often enough - which is a scandal and like talking about the rainbow without reference to colour. There is no doubt that American, and what we today call Western values, are biblical values. The idea that all men are created equal is a biblical idea; the idea that we’re free and ought to have religious liberty doesn’t bubble up naturally.
What distinguished the American Revolution from the French Revolution, though, is that America knew that if we get rid of the earthly king, he needs to be replaced with God as our king. That’s not something we can legislate because the US believes in religious liberty, but without that idea we can’t govern ourselves. The French thought they could get rid of their earthly king and then be free, but they ended up with a bloodbath. That’s why my book is titled Revolution: because it really was the only successful revolution in that it achieved what it set out to do - which was to create an environment of liberty.
You are one of many Christians platformed by the ARC this year. Are you surprised by the level of interest in what Christians have to say about the big civilizational questions of our time?
I was at ARC last year and I was quite surprised to see how many Christians were represented. This year I'm even more surprised and very encouraged. But I think we also have to be honest. As I point out in Revolution, you cannot have real liberty and self-government without God at the centre. How that works in reality is subject to debate because of course, if you believe in liberty, then that includes religious liberty and, by extension, the fact that the state cannot legislate people's faith. It’s the paradox at the heart of freedom: you can't legislate faith and virtue, yet without them you can't have liberty - what Os Guinness calls the ‘golden triangle of freedom’. The people have to choose faith and virtue by their own free will; it cannot be forced and therefore freedom cannot be forced. America’s founders all understood this.
So, on one level, I'm a little surprised to see so many Christians here, but on another I'm not entirely shocked. It's a healthy sign that people are recognising that without conversations about virtue, morality and faith, you can't have serious conversations about liberty or what it means to be conservative or traditional, because faith and God are inescapably at the heart of those things. And that's been historically true as well. Going back to America’s founders, even those who were among the least religious, like Jefferson and Franklin, understood this and we do them an injustice if we don't at least try to see it from their point of view.
One of the themes of this year’s conference was the “reconstruction” of Western civilization. Do you think things have gotten better in this respect under Trump?
I don't think there's any doubt that things are better than they were under the Democrats. The Democrats of today are not the Democrats of 20 or 50 years ago. The Democrats of that time really were part of a broad consensus of people who loved America and shared basic American values. The Democrats of today have moved far away from that and are now openly hostile to the Constitution. Sometimes they'll give it lip service but they're hostile to the ideas underpinning it and the Declaration of Independence. And they are hostile to the founder's vision and to faith in the God of the Bible. Essentially they've become explicitly Marxist and have opened the door to Islamo-fascism.
All of those things are united together as a front against biblical values, American values and the values of liberty. So we have to be aware of the fact that we're no longer dealing with the Democratic party of Tip O'Neill or Bill Clinton - even Obama gave lip service to these things. The Democrats of today are no longer even giving them lip service. They've gone over to the dark side, unfortunately, although in some ways it's actually fortunate because it clarifies the situation and shows us what we're up against.
Has anything changed in the US since the assassination of Charlie Kirk?
Charlie was a friend of mine and I think his assassination has caused many, many people to take what he was saying more seriously or to at least watch his videos, listen to him and examine his views. And I think many, many people have come to faith as a result of his murder and I don't think that fact has been widely reported. Anecdotally, it seems undeniable to me that many people are coming to faith. And I think that in the wake of Charlie's murder, the Holy Spirit has been powerfully on the move and a lot of the dark forces that were previously hiding in the shadows have been stirred up. They're not hiding any more; we can see them and hear them, and in some ways that’s a good thing.
The Right on both sides of the Atlantic has become fractured - in the UK between the Conservatives, Reform and Restore, and in the US the likes of Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have gone their own way.
Well, Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens have flipped their lids. No one could have ever dreamt that they would go insane but they have - and they’ve said such crazy, despicable things. But again, it's helpful in some ways even if it’s just to realize that they’re no longer with us - if indeed they ever were. Tucker recently said he's officially leaving the Republican Party, as if anyone cared or as if we didn't already see him as an enemy of conservative values - I think unfortunately Megyn Kelly is in that group as well. They have done themselves tremendous damage, and while it makes for good headlines to say that the Right is splitting, that is not at all true. If anything, the MAGA movement has been purified because now we know that they are outside the camp - and good riddance.
As an American looking in on the UK, what do you make of the cycle of social and political upheaval that the country is going through?
As I was writing in Revolution, one of the things I learned was that all of America’s ideas about liberty actually came from this island. These are English ideas and ultimately they come from the Bible by way of the English Reformation. Many of the people who took them seriously left England for the 13 colonies and at that time there was a real hope that the movement for liberty unfolding in America would catch fire here in England as well. Ultimately it didn't, which is disappointing. But it’s conceivable to me that what England is going through now may lead to a reconsideration of these principles. Perhaps now, with things as bad as they are, people here in England will start to reflect on and understand what's necessary for liberty because at present I think they do not. When a society doesn’t believe in free speech and people are being imprisoned for memes, that's despicable and deplorable. And I hope the people rise up against it because it is unacceptable.
What would you like Western Christians to understand about the moment in time they are living in?
Well, I think it's important for us always to be hopeful and to remember that God is on the throne. It seems to me that things are moving in the right direction and I think Trump's election is a sign of that. His election was a rejection of the Marxist madness that had overtaken the elite circles in America and this became so clear that many Americans simply said ‘we've had enough, we need to change’. Things became that bad and people realized it was leading us to a cliff edge. I think that sometimes things need to get very bad first in order for people to wake up and my hopeful sense is that things have gotten so bad that people are waking up.
So I have real hope. One thing I can say for sure is that apart from the God of the Bible, there is no hope - certainly no hope for the West remaining what it has been and remaining free. God has to be at the center of that. Writing Revolution made that so clear to me and I hope that from reading my book, others will see it too because it's very important.
