Os Guinness Says the U.S. is Gradually Turning Away from Biblical American Revolution Values and Following the Anti-Religious Worldview of the French Revolution

Os Guinness preaches at Saddleback Church. | Screenshot: Saddleback Church

The United States is gradually “switching” from a worldview influenced by a biblical American Revolution model to an anti-religious French Revolution model, according to author and social critic Os Guinness.

Last week, Guinness gave a speech titled “1776 vs. 1789: the Roots of the Present Crisis” that was part of a virtual event hosted by the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview.

Guinness said the American Revolution of 1776 and the English Revolution of 1642, the latter of which involved the rise of Oliver Cromwell and the overthrow of King Charles I, were “biblical” in nature.

“Through the invention of printing and the power of the Reformation, the 17th century was called the ‘biblical century’ and the great model was the Hebrew Republic from the book of Exodus,” Guinness said.

While describing the American Revolution as “largely but sadly not fully biblical,” Guinness said the French Revolution of 1789 was “expressly anti-biblical, anti-Christian, anti-religious, and anti-clerical.”

“That hostility to religion, and certainly to the Christian faith and the Church, has been a characteristic of the French and the Russian and the Chinese [Revolutions] ever since,” he added.

Guinness stressed that the current state of division in the U.S. ultimately stems from a difference between those who look at freedom from “the perspective of 1776” and those who define freedom by “the perspective of the French Revolution and its heirs.”

“The French Revolution lasted 10 years only and then in came Napoleon,” he said. “But like a huge volcanic explosion … the lava, as it were, of the revolutionary faith has flowed out ever since then.”

Guinness briefly traced the ideological progression of the French Revolution, tying it to the rise of nationalism in the 19th century and revolutionary socialism in the 20th century.

In the 21st century, this developed into “cultural or Neo-Marxism” and “critical theory,” which involved a “long march through the institutions” to enact radical social change.

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SOURCE: Christian Post, Michael Gryboski