Like the Declaration of Independence, the FreeCon statement of principles now invokes ‘nature and nature’s God.’ This is a welcome sign for the movement.
God has joined freedom conservatism.
No, He has not signed the freedom conservatism statement of principles. But about two years since the latest formal debut of freedom conservatism, He has been officially added to that statement. Like the Declaration of Independence, it now invokes “nature and nature’s God.” This is a welcome sign for a movement that is both new and old.
Freedom conservatism is a political tendency rooted in the American Founding. It has found expression repeatedly in our nation’s history: in this magazine, in Ronald Reagan’s presidency, and elsewhere.
The most recent form of this tendency describes itself as “a movement founded to reaffirm and reapply the timeless principles of liberty, limited government, and human dignity to the challenges of our time.” It launched in a moment when the left as well as parts of the right have displayed an increasingly tenuous connection to those principles. Heartened by the effort, I signed its original statement of principles.
One of the recurring criticisms made against this new statement of principles, and by extension those “FreeCons” who signed on to it, was that it excised God. Despite drawing explicit inspiration from the 1960 Sharon Statement — the concise, forceful document drafted at William F. Buckley Jr.’s home that gave definition to the modern conservative movement — the FreeCons’ statement lacked the former’s acknowledgement that an individual’s free will was “God-given.” (I learned from the late Lee Edwards, who helped draft and then signed the Sharon Statement, that including God in it was a close-run thing.)
I signed the FreeCon statement despite this notable difference between the two documents. Though not ideal, the excision struck me as defensible, or at least tolerable. Indeed, at the time, I defended it. Though God was absent in name, the principles expressed unmistakably drew from the Christian heritage. It also reflected the influence of the Declaration of Independence (unlike the national conservative statement of principles), even if it lacked that document’s references to God. There were also tactical considerations: “A defense of a framework that draws from the Christian tradition and facilitates its expression is one capable of drawing allies from other faiths or of no faith at all,” I wrote.
Yet God’s absence still stung. I argued in 2023 that God’s absence from the FreeCon statement placed a great burden on signatories “to uphold such a moral order through their actions in private and public life, in a manner both according with and bolstering our constitutional order.” If they did not, then the opening the statement left “for religious expression will be left empty” and FreeCons will merely sap “what National Review editor Frank Meyer called ‘the foundations of belief in an organic moral order,’ which remain ‘the only possible basis of respect for the integrity of the individual person and for the overriding value of his freedom.'” And earlier this year, after the first FreeCon conference, I called on FreeCons to engage “not just political suasion but moral exhortation.”
This revision to the freedom conservatism statement of principles goes a long way toward addressing my remaining doubts about the project. It may have been possible to keep freedom conservatism rooted in the transcendent without a formal and explicit reference to God. But the new presence of one will make it a bit easier. The rest is up to us.