Excerpt from “Never Give Up. Never Surrender.” Click here to read the complete American Vision article by Gary DeMar.
Alexis de Tocqueville was a keen observer of American society. Writing from the perspective of the 1830s, the French author concluded that the exceptional virtue, moral fiber, and self-restraint shown by Americans were due to the extraordinary influence of the Christian faith in this land. “It was religion that gave birth to the English colonies in America,” Tocqueville wrote.[1]
The religion that Tocqueville wrote about was Christianity. “While the United States embraced ‘an infinite variety’ of religious sects, Christianity stood in this new land as an ‘established and irresistible fact which no one seeks to attack or defend.’”[2] Tocqueville considered America’s religious climate superior to that of Europe.
All foreign visitors to America, Tocqueville noted, agreed that sexual morality was “infinitely stricter” in the new United States than anywhere else in the world. In America, he reported, all books even novels supposed women to be chaste, and no one boasted of amorous adventures. He was astonished to discover that in cases of sexual immorality, both the seduced and the seducer were scorned; he was equally surprised to learn that rape was punishable by death, while in France it was difficult to get any jury to convict rapists, even given much lighter sentences.[3]
Public date: November 25th, 2009Categories: News
Tags: America, Christianity, Enlightenment, Europe, Humanism
