Why are Americans So Deeply Divided?

By Kelley Keller, JD

Shortly after the summer of 2020—the summer of George Floyd—I realized Americans don’t just have political disagreements; we have worldview disagreements. We disagree not only on everyday political issues, but on the fundamental nature of reality and how we should interpret it. This means we disagree on the big stuff: truth and falsehood, right and wrong, good and evil. We disagree on what’s real or unreal, what’s actual or imagined, and what’s normal or aberrant. 

What is Worldview?

Worldview is the set of fundamental beliefs through which we see the world and find our place in it. These beliefs create the standards by and through which we define reality, manage order and disorder, and understand both the physical and metaphysical worlds. Worldview shapes our values, informs our decisions, helps us manage our daily lives, influences our thinking and perception, and, at its most fundamental level, provides the reason for our existence.

Worldview influences every single dimension of life—intellectual, physical, social, economic, and moral—whether we engage it consciously or process it subconsciously. Worldview is the lens, the framework, the grid through which we see, filter, and process everything.

At the center of every worldview sits an authority figure, personal or impersonal, that governs the world and everything in it. This authority comes from one of two sources: (1) nature, the natural world, or (2) supernature, the supernatural world. As such, authority either begins and ends inside the natural world (with man) or beyond it, in the supernatural (with God). Regardless of its source, this authority determines what is right or wrong (values), what is true or false (facts), who we are (humanity), what the world is (universe), and why we exist (destiny). It also guides how we relate to each other and the world around us (society). This is played out in how we understand every part of our culture, including our history, politics, education, law, arts, science, psychology, medicine, biology, economics, and more. When two people hold to worldviews with different sources of authority, finding agreement on most matters becomes nearly impossible. 

Think of it this way: Our worldview disagreements aren’t just opposite sides of the same coin, they’re entirely different currencies that cannot coexist in the same economy unless one is converted to the other. An American dollar, for instance, means nothing in China until it’s converted to a Chinese yuan. An otherwise cohesive society with this kind of disconnect cannot sustain itself for long and will eventually implode. It faces but one possible end—utter collapse.

Culture Wars are Worldview Wars

Culture wars are a type of worldview war where the factions fight for ideological superiority across all spheres of society. They vie for influence over what’s deemed culturally normative, the role of individuals versus the collective, the definitions of marriage and family, the content and mode of education, the nature and scope of government, the role and rule of law, the progression of history, the authority of science, and even the proper system of economics. 

Consider just a few battlegrounds in our current culture wars:

• Human Rights: We all believe in human rights, but we don’t agree on who counts as a human or who’s responsible for protecting those rights from others.

• Social Justice: We all believe that justice ought to be publicly applied, but we don’t agree on its meaning or the best way to achieve it.

• Marriage and Family: We all believe in marriage and family, but we don’t agree on what marriage is, what family is, or what either one comprises. 

• Climate Change: We all believe that clean water and fresh air are important, but we don’t agree on how to accomplish that, whether climate change is real or how best to solve the resulting problems.

• Human Atrocities: We all believe that human atrocities like slavery and genocide should be condemned, but we don’t agree on how (or how much) to condemn them, how to compensate the victims, or even how to prevent the atrocities from recurring. 

We disagree fundamentally because our assumptions about the world and reality are fundamentally different. Our disagreements are a symptom of irreconcilable worldviews.

Everyone, and Every Nation, Has a Worldview

Everyone has a worldview, and all our beliefs rest on the truth claims of that worldview. This becomes clear when we engage someone who holds to different assumptions about the world, but we often don’t realize it until we’re knee-deep in conversation. Instead of an easy-going discussion, we talk past each other, growing more frustrated by the minute. 

Every nation has a worldview too, with its entire culture built atop it. When a scrappy group of American patriots huddled together in 1776, they agreed on a set of guiding principles for their revolution and their future nation. These principles, now encoded in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, formed the basis for the American worldview, one that prioritizes human rights and political liberty.

Worldviews are so central to our personal and, in the case of polities, collective understanding of the world that a worldview becomes deeply tied to the identity of those who hold it. It’s nearly impossible to understand an individual, a community, or a nation without first understanding their worldview.

Does America Have a Worldview?

The Declaration of Independence, authored by Thomas Jefferson and adopted on July 4, 1776, was America’s first founding document. It announced our separation from Great Britain, declared the formation of a new nation, and established the original 13 colonies as free and independent states. Throughout the Declaration, Jefferson carefully built the philosophical foundation and justification for a new government based on axiomatic principles of human freedom—principles that closely resonate with biblical ideas about the nature of man, government, and objective reality. Jefferson called them self-evident truths:

• Laws Come from God and Nature (Genesis 1:1, 2:7; Acts 17:25)

• All Humans are Equal (Genesis 1:27, Leviticus 19:15, Galatians 3:28)

• Human Rights are Unalienable (Genesis 1; Psalm 139:13-14)

• Life, Liberty, and Property are Among the Most Important Human Rights (Exodus 20)

• Government Must Protect Rights (Romans 13:1)

• Governments are Permitted to Exist (Exodus 18:21 and Acts 6:3 and 5)

• People May Change Government At Will (Acts 5:29)

As we read America’s founding documents, beginning with the Declaration, it becomes clear that the United States was founded upon philosophical foundations consistent with a theistic or, more specifically, a biblical worldview. Indeed, the entire American experiment presupposes a worldview that acknowledges the existence, morality, and authority of a supernatural Creator as described in both the Hebrew and Greek Bibles. The resulting “American” worldview unmistakably informs our national understanding of humanity, including our origins and destinies, the proper role of government in human life, and the ethical norms required for human flourishing. God, not nature, sits at the center of our founding worldview. 

Simply put, America was founded upon the worldview that says, In the beginning, God (Genesis 1), not In the beginning, a speck of matter (man’s idea). There’s really nothing ambiguous, mysterious, or difficult to understand about this. But whether America should realign with its founding worldview, and the culture it produces, is an entirely different matter—one currently being litigated across many parts of American society.

Does the Founding Worldview Establish a National Religion?

The American worldview does not establish a national religion or mandate a certain kind of worship, but it does provide a normative public philosophy for thinking about God, man, and how to operate in the world. A public philosophy naturally gives rise to a culturally dominant way of thinking that underlies all cultural norms. And this is precisely what’s at issue in our modern culture wars: One side seeks to uphold the dominant culture, and the other seeks to destroy it.

No American is personally required to share in the founding American worldview or in any resulting religious beliefs. Moreover, the government is absolutely prohibited from compelling citizens to believe or worship in a certain way, or even at all. That said, irrespective of one’s personal convictions, every American has the duty to follow the nation’s laws, pay their taxes, and respect the rights, beliefs, and opinions of others. If we disagree with laws or tax codes, there’s a process for challenging and amending them, which itself recognizes the equal value of every individual. Regrettably, there is tremendous confusion around this issue, contributing to the chaos characteristic of our current social conflicts.

Americans are Deeply Divided Over the American Worldview

Americans are irreconcilably divided not because we have a handful of political disagreements, but because we no longer share a common worldview for ourselves or for our nation, a shift that began in earnest in the decades following World War II. 

We no longer share a common belief in the goodness of the self-evident truths articulated in our founding documents. In fact, half of us no longer accept their validity, given their supernatural origins. As a result, many of us no longer believe America is a good or decent country and have strident opinions about its future.

And therein lies the problem.

If we can’t even discuss the merits or demerits of the foundational precepts upon which our nation, society, and resulting culture have been built, where does that leave us? 

Hopelessly divided? 

Or ripe for reconciliation?