Three major expressions of the Enlightenment and its Rationalist world and life view.
I.) French Revolution
II.) The Darwinian hypothesis
III.) The Marxist Analysis of history
Four major consequences of the Enlightenment and its Rationalist world and life view in the American colonies.
I.) The Advent of the Christian-Rationalist conglomerate epistemology
This moved the colonies from a Holy Commonwealth where God’s revelation was the cornerstone for the ordering of the whole social order to a dualistic epistemology wherein what is offered is the idea of a sacred realm and a secular realm. The sacred realm is ruled by God’s revelation while the secular realm is ruled by right reason and natural law.
II.) A shift from Biblical Christianity to Evangelical Christianity
This shift was pietistic in nature. It shifted the Christians understanding of the impact of Christianity from a totalistic world and life view to a understanding of the impact of Christianity that dealt with the inward gaze as combined with “getting souls saved.”
III.) It birthed the American “Revolution”
The American Revolution was actually a reactionary counter-Revolution against the forces of pure Rationalism in Europe in defense of a uniquely American Christian-Rationalism conglomerate. The American Revolution was also the continuation of the Christian principles of the English civil war of 1640 and 1688. Crown and Parliament had decided to pursue a illegitimate sovereignty over the colonies, as the Crown violated previous political covenant arrangements as expressed in colonial charter documents.
The American Revolution sought to Institutionalize the inherently unstable Christian-Rationalist conglomerate. It succeeded in the short term but being inherently unstable it could not (and did not) last long.
IV.) It birthed the American Constitutional Order and System
The American Constitutional Order and System when looked at closely reveals that Christian-Rationalist conglomerate worldview that made colonial America. For example the American Declaration of Independence is clearly a Lockean document that can only be understood from a Rationalist world and life view. On the other hand the US Constitution is clearly a document that has the idea of Holy Commonwealth inspiring it. The ideas contained and expressed by the US Constitution have a long Christian worldview history.
So, the Rationalist and Christian conglomerate lay cheek by jowl in the American Constitutional Order and System and as said it was inherently unstable. The two worldviews could not coexist for long. The tension found in the conglomerate make for the unfolding of America’s history for the first four score years until that conglomerate was finally ripped apart by the rise of the Transcendental worldview in America followed by the French Revolution in America sometimes called the Civil War. With America’s Civil War the Christian-Rationalist Worldview was in principle thoroughly crushed. The working out of the implications would be only a matter of time.
The reality that the American Constitutional Order and System was birthed as a Christian-Rationalist conglomerate is seen in looking at many of the founders. On one hand there are clearly Enlightenment men like Jefferson, John Adams and Franklin. On the other hand there were Biblical Christians like Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams and John Randolph of Roanoke and there were men who were themselves a conglomerate mix like James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and probably George Washington.
