Problems with Darryl Hart's Secular Faith: Part 1

Hart presents the view that:

“…Christianity in its classic formulations, especially the Protestant traditions of Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican, has very little to say about politics or the ordering of society. This does not mean that Christianity has nothing to say.” (p. 10)

Is it true that Christianity and the Bible historically have very little to say about politics or the ordering of society? Is this a historically accurate statement?

This claim of his is hard to support when there is so much contrary evidence from history. There is a long-standing tradition of Christian legal thought going back at least to 1200AD (perhaps the earliest would be the Christianization of the Roman legal code under Justinius in 500's AD), that sought to apply the foundational truths of Christianity to government, law, justice and the ordering of society. This body of thought developed progressively as the common law tradition of England and later the founding principles of the United States.

Most Americans are ignorant of the history of our system of laws, justice and government, even those who study history or law. Sadly, we Americans have lost touch with our roots. We are ignorant of the great heritage of careful Christian scholarship that provided the foundation for the American experiment. This ignorance has been aided and abetted by revisionist history written by historians who are ignorant of the Christian view of general and special revelation, and the positive biblical view of the relationship between faith and reason. Because of this ignorance, historians have made crucial mistakes in their reading of Christian thinkers of the past and of America's founding fathers, and Christian historians have similarly either failed to read the original works of thinkers, or have at times seriously misread them because of their ignorance of Christian legal thought or adhering to false assumptions.

But, if one studies the history of Christian legal theory, Christian natural rights theory, and common law theory, one cannot help but conclude that America would not exist, and this form of government would not exist, were it not for the development of thought that was derived explicitly from the Bible by Christian thinkers over the course of 800 years.

It is to our detriment as a society that scholars, both secular and Christian, have sanitized the Christian worldview roots of Western civilization from contemporary scholarship. It leaves us with no workable basis for a common understanding of how to govern and relate as a society, as evidenced in our current polarized political milieu.