Kraynak: Christianity vs. Modernity

By Robert P. Hunt


The following is a small excerpt from this essay:

"Nowhere is Kraynak’s effort to baptize classical political philosophy more evident than in his treatment of Plato's and Cicero’s defense of a "mixed regime." The ancients understood "the advantages of a mixed regime in promoting a stable and balanced order that combines freedom and virtue in the citizen body with feelings of filial affection and piety for the foremost ruler" (Kraynak, 236). "The only point [at which a worldview inspired by the New Testament supplied an "important amendment"] that is missing in the classical philosophers is a proper distinction between the spiritual and temporal realms that the Greeks and Romans (and non-Christian cultures in general) were unable to grasp in all its implications" (Kraynak, 236-37).

The Greeks and Romans were unable to grasp the implications of a proper distinction between spiritual and temporal realms because they made no such distinction in the first place. Christianity has done more than merely construct a second-tier "amendment" of supernatural ends over a foundational tier accessible to unaided human reason. Christianity has, in the words of John Courtney Murray, "destroy[ed] the classical view of society as a single homogenous structure, within which the political power stood forth as the representative of society in its religious and in its political aspects."Moreover, it has "freed man from nature by teaching him that he has an immortal soul, which is related to matter but not immersed in it or enslaved to its laws....It has taught him his uniqueness, his own individual worth, the dignity of his own person, the equality of all men, the unity of the human race." This conception of man’s personal spiritual dignity does not sit atop the classical conception of man as a rational animal. Rather, it transforms that conception with the light of its radiance into something other than "Platonic" or "Aristotelian" Christianity. And in freeing man from nature, it has rendered the most fundamental of classical "regime questions" (What is the best political regime?) largely irrelevant since no "regime" short of the Kingdom of God in its fullness can satisfy man’s thirst for heaven. In fact, the very effort to answer such a question in political terms may be indicative of the fact that one has applied categories of analysis more characteristic of a resident of the earthly city.

At other points, Kraynak’s acknowledgedly Christian commitments seem to be subordinated to a view of human nature and of the role and purpose of the state that is more overtly Platonic. For example, Kraynak decries "the replacement of a culture that aspires to spiritual, philosophical, artistic, and heroic greatness with one dedicated to mundane pursuits and the tastes of ordinary people" (Kraynak, 26-27). This aristocratic distinction between a "high" culture of aspirational greatness and a "low" culture of "ordinary" tastes leads Kraynak to argue that Jesus Christ himself distinguished between "higher" and "lower" human beings. By distinguishing between innocent and guilty human beings, Kraynak argues, "Jesus’ very words require us to distinguish between higher and lower human beings and imply that fundamental human rights can be negated in order to satisfy the demands of divine justice" (Kraynak, 174)." (Bold face is mine)

I found this essay by googling Robert Kraynak after he was cited by Jon Rowe in the comments section of this post.  I found it germane in light of Dr. Hall's post on the Constitution and federalism and the ensuing discussion about various views on human nature and how it ties into Federalist 51. Accordingly, the bold faced part of this excerpt shows two distinct views of Human nature.   The former is what many who have been influenced by Augustian thinking deem as being tainted by rationalism but is nonetheless historically Christian.

Does it Really Matter If George Washington Took Communion or Not? II

For many months now Jon Rowe, Tom Van Dyke, and I have been discussing Jon's claim, via Dr. Gregg Frazer, that founding era Christians had to come up with new and creative ways to interpret the Bible to justify their resistance to what they perceived was tyranny.  In short, Jon seems to think that these were "dissident" and "revisionist" views that were heavily influence by Enlightenment thinking.  Tom Van Dyke and I point to the fact that resistance theory has a long tradition in both Catholic and Protestant political theology that, by far, pre-dates the Enlightenment. 

This topic came up again in the comments section of Jon's post that references D.G. Hart's response to Peter Lillback.  The discussion starts on the topic of whether there was a Hebrew Republic and gradually shifts to resistance theory and what is orthodox Christian political thought or not?  Here is Tom Van Dyke setting the stage:

"That the Exodus was seen by the Founding era as not a liberation from the Pharaoh's bondage, but as an entry into an even worse theocratic bondage, is news to me."

To which Jon responds to here:

"That's the proper "orthodox" pre-Whig understanding of the Exodus narrative is what Frazer/Kraynak argue. The Tory ministers of the time argued something similar."

and here:

"Kraynak, Frazer, Zuckert all group GW, Jefferson and Langdon together as peddling the theistic rationalist Whig view of the Bible."

So essentially Jon is stating that anyone who argues that the Israelites left the bondage of Pharaoh to set up a Republic was inventing new rationalist tainted arguments to interpret the Bible.  He then quoted Dr. Gregg Frazer referencing Robert Kraynak:

"God is not bound by the covenant and keeps His promises solely out of His own divine self-limitation.”

I responded here:

"If Frazer is doing this then he is breaking his own rules and interjecting Calvinism here. This is also not sotierological which opens up the door to a discussion of what political thought is "orthodox". I would say we need to broaden the years of his chart to get to the right answer."(referring to Frazer's  chart on the LCD of orthodox at the founding)

My point was that Jon labels this point of view "orthodox" when it is really strict Calvinism and he references Frazer's chart on orthodoxy when this view has nothing to do with it.  I also pointed out the fact that this view is not sotierological and turns the discussion away from a one on personal beliefs toward one about what political thought is "orthodox"?  Which is the proper frame for this discussion to begin with. 


Jon responds here:

"Gregg argues it was more than just Calvinism, but the view that PREVAILED in orthodox Christianity."

Then Jon shifts the discussion from the Hebrew Republic to resistance theory in response to my question about why we do not focus more on what is and is not "orthodox" political theory rather than sotierology. In doing so he turns the discussion back to Romans 13 and begins discussing Calvinism not orthodoxy, yet again:

"I know there are some pre-Enlightenment sources of resistance. And MDH shows that the reformers, contra Calvin, inspired a lot of this. But, at least as far as I understand, the pro-resistance stuff was dissonant, arguably heretical (like Arianism) within Christendom until post-Calvin.

The Calvinist "resisters" were just that -- dissidents. Eventually the dissident view prevailed."

I responded with the following:

"Not in America. Also I guess Aquinas was a dissident by Frazer's logic then."

Jon responded here:

"No we've studied Aquinas' views on the matter and he is at best for both sides inconclusive on the right to resistance.

The best view that PREVAILED (again prevailed doesn't mean find some dissident thinker like Arias who anticipated what came later) for your side was that an unjust law could be disobeyed because it was "not law" but that rulers, no matter how bad, didn't lose their Romans 13 status as rulers."

and added this as well:

"America was "founded" in the 18th Cen. and Dr. Dworetz focuses on a view that PREVAILED up until around the 16th Cen. and was endorsed by Calvin, Luther and counter reformers.

Something started happening around then that led America to follow a political theological point that was, at best, dissident and heretical for most of the history of Christianity. That's why I see parallels with theological unitarianism and the FFs view on revolt."

I responded with Aquinas and a few thoughts of my own:

"St. Thomas: “If any society of people have a right of choosing a king, then the king so established can be deposed by them without injustice, or his power can be curbed, when by tyranny he abuses his regal power” (“De Rege et Regno,” Bk. I, c. 6).

So was Aquinas dissident?

I am all for opening the discussion to a larger discussion of History beyond America. The trouble for you is that Frazer's thesis is dead on arrival if we do."

The trouble for Jon, and really Dr. Frazer whom Jon cites, is that to make resistance theory "dissident" you have to open the discussion up to more than American History, as he states, but when you do this it destroys your entire thesis because resistance theory was most certainly "orthodox" pre-Calvin.  In fact, it could be argued that when one looks at the larger history of Christian thought that Calvin was the dissident and revisionist considering his seeming rejection of natural law. 

I would restate the following from Jon above:

"Something started happening around then that led America to follow a political theological point that was, at best, dissident and heretical for most of the history of Christianity. That's why I see parallels with theological unitarianism and the FFs view on revolt."

to:

Long before the American Revolution natural law began to be interjected back into Christian political theory and produced a stream of thought that impacted the founding generation that was heretical to John Calvin and the branch of his followers that agreed with his rejection of natural law.

When the thoughts of Aquinas on deposing kings are brought into the light it becomes evident as to why Frazer wants to keep the discussion fixated on his soteriological chart and ignore the more germane discussion of political theology/philosophy and how Judeo-Christian ideas, peppered with natural law, influenced the founding.  I have to ask BOTH sides of this culture war, yet again:

 Does it really matter whether George Washington took communion or not?

George Washington and Holy Communion

It's often been noted that at one point, George Washington stopped taking Communion at his Anglican [Episcopal] Church.

Many explanations have been offered, and we will never know for sure why that was, since Washington never said. Some say it's because he didn't believe the Eucharist was Jesus; some argue he didn't believe in Jesus like orthodox Christians do in the first place. Some argue he felt he was a sinner [as a slaveholder?] and so theologically "unworthy" to take part in the "Lord's Supper."

Still others argue that in leading the American Revolution against the King of England, who by law was also the head of the Church of England [Anglican, now "Episcopal" in America], Washington simply couldn't be a good Anglican, since C of E religious services contained prayers for the king.

The much-reviled Rev. Peter Lillback---a theologian, not an accredited historian, mind you---author of George Washington's Sacred Fire, on his blog the other day, argues the last theory:

Scholars are agreed that Washington ceased to commune and resigned as a vestryman at the beginning of the Revolutionary War. Taking these actions, he was breaking with both Church and State as he began to lead the American Revolutionary Army. While some have identified these actions with a nascent deism, a better explanation is he recognized he was no longer able to be in communion with the King or the King’s clergymen. Thereafter in the Revolution, reports of Washington’s communing occur in non-Anglican settings such as the Presbyterian church in Morristown, New Jersey. Furthermore, Mrs. Alexander Hamilton reported to her family that on the day of the new President’s inauguration in New York City, she had the privilege to kneel and take communion with him in an Episcopalian Chapel. Washington’s actions in this regard are consistent both with his break from the lawful Church and his return to its successor that was legally recognized on both sides of the ocean by the King and Congress.

An interesting claim, and Lillback offers Mrs. Alexander Hamilton as a witness, that after the success of the American Revolution that freed Anglicanism from the monarch of England as the head of his church, George Washington ex-ex-communicated himself.

Also interesting and relevant to this academic debate are Lilliback's claims that Washington sought to take Communion from non-Church of England sources during the Revolution.

Me, I don't care much about this issue. The public GWash swore his first oath as president on a Bible, a public act.

And in his Farewell Address,

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity.

But since our American Creation blog is about clarity, and so much has been made of the theological implications of Washington and the Eucharist, I figger the culture warriors should have a shot at Peter Lillback's claims and research, since they're the ones who care about it so much.

At least now we have Lillback in his own words, not what people say he said, the stuff of straw men. Have at it. But even if Mrs. Alexander Hamilton was a liar for Jesus, that doesn't make Lillback one for choosing to believe her testimony. At some point, that ugly rhetoric must stop.

Mark David Hall: The Influence of the Reformed Tradition on the American Founding, Part VII

By Mark David Hall

The Constitution

According to Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, the Constitution is “Godless.” This observation would have come as quite a shock to Roger Sherman, Nathaniel Gorham, Caleb Strong, John Langdon, Nicholas Gilman, Abraham Baldwin, James Wilson, Gunning Bedford, James McHenry, William Livingston, William Paterson, Hugh Williamson, Jared Ingersoll, Oliver Ellsworth, John Lansing Jr., Robert Yates, James McClurg, William Blount, William Houston, William Davie, and Alexander Martin—delegates to the Federal Convention who were raised in the Reformed tradition. Some of these men were not particularly significant and a few ended up opposing the Constitution. Yet some of them, notably Roger Sherman, James Wilson, William Paterson, and Oliver Ellsworth, played critical roles in the debates. Political scientist David Brian Robertson has recently demonstrated that in many respects Sherman was a more effective delegate than Madison, and he suggests that the “political synergy between Madison and Sherman . . . very well may have been necessary for the Constitution’s adoption.”

At first glance the Constitution may appear to be “Godless” as the deity is only referred to in Article VII—where the document is dated “in the Year of our Lord...” Article I does presume that Congress will not conduct business on Sunday, but this provision is more than balanced by Article VI’s prohibition on religious tests for national office. Yet the argument for the influence of Reformed political ideas on the Constitution does not depend on explicitly religious references. It is more profitable instead to consider the ways in which Calvinist political thought may have influenced the men and women who wrote, debated, and ratified the document.

John Witherspoon’s student James Madison wrote in Federalist 51 that “if men were angles, no government would be necessary.” Almost to a person America’s founders were convinced that humans are self-interested or, in theological language, sinful. Of course one can reach this conclusion for a variety of reasons, but is it not probable that the approximately 75% of Americans connected to Reformed traditions adhered to this idea because they had heard it from the pulpit since childhood? It is true that every major Christian tradition in America in this era agreed that humans are sinful, but few emphasized it as much as the Calvinists who taught the doctrine of total depravity. In contrast, many Enlightenment thinkers believed that humans are basically good, and that through proper education they could be perfected. As Louis Hartz recognized, “Americans refused to join in the great Enlightenment enterprise of shattering the Christian concept of sin, [and] replacing it with an unlimited humanism.”

America’s founders believed that because humans are sinful it is dangerous to concentrate political power. The Constitution thus carefully separates powers and creates a variety of mechanisms whereby each institution can check the others. Critically, the power of the national government itself was limited by Article I, section 8. Indeed, the very notion of federalism, some scholars have argued, was itself modeled after Reformed approaches to church governance (especially Presbyterianism) and New England civic arrangements which, as we have seen, were themselves heavily influenced by Calvinist political ideas. It is noteworthy that the authors of the Connecticut Compromise, Roger Sherman and Oliver Ellsworth, were both solid, serious Reformed Christians who were leaders in their Congregationalist churches. Enlightenment thinkers, on the other hand, generally embraced unicameralism and the centralization of power in a national government.

Federalism helps explain as well why religion is not mentioned in the Constitution. The founders recognized that it would be impossible to agree upon a single Christian denomination that could be established at a national level, and many feared giving the national government power in this area. Moreover, many founders were beginning to question the wisdom of establishments altogether (usually because they feared that they hurt rather than helped Christianity). There was almost complete agreement that if there was going to be an establishment that it should be at the state or local level.

Notes:

63. Kramnick and Moore, The Godless Constitution; M.E. Bradford, Founding Fathers: Brief Lives of the Framers of the United States Constitution 2nd, rev. (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1994); David Brian Robertson, “Madison’s Opponents and Constitutional Design,” American Political Science Review 99 (May 2005), 225-243, 242; Robertson, The Constitution and America’s Destiny (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

64. Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, The Federalist Papers ed. Clinton Rossiter (New York: New American Library, 1961), 322; Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America, 39.

65. Shain, “Afterword,” in Dreisbach, Hall, and Morrison, The Founders on God and Government, 274-77.

66. Mark David Hall, “Religion and the American Founding,” in A History of the U.S. Political System: Ideas, Interests, and Institutions, ed. Richard A. Harris and Daniel J. Tichenor, (Santa Barbara: ABC-Clio, 2010 ) 1: 99-112.

Two quotes from John Adams on human equality

Adams' thoughts on natural and legal equality don't get nearly enough attention, given that he wasn't simply one of the key American Founders but that he also served on the committee that was responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence.  While Jefferson did most of the heavy lifting when it came to that draft, it was considered to be the work of the entire committee, and eventually of the Continental Congress as well.  After the Revolution, Adams continued to think about the question of human equality and human difference, and the meaning of each for law and politics, particularly in light of the horrific consequences of the absolutist egalitarianism of the French Revolution:

That all men are born to equal rights is true.  Every being has a right to his own, as clear, as moral, as sacred, as any other being has.  This is an indubitable as a moral government in the universe.  But to teach that all men are born with equal powers and faculties, to equal influence in society, to equal property and advantages through life, is as gross a fraud, as glaring an imposition on the credulity of the people, as ever was practiced by monks, by Druids, by Brahmins, by priests of the immortal Lama, or by the self-styled philosophers of the French revolution.

And for some Aristotlean support for his contentions, Adams resorted to one of the classic concepts of Western philosophy, the idea of the chain of being:

Nature, which has established in the universe a chain of being and universal order, descending from archangels to microscopic animalcules, has ordained that no two objects shall be perfectly alike, and no two creatures perfectly equal.  Although, among men, all are subject by nature to equal laws of morality, and in society have a right to equal laws for their government, yet no two men are perfectly equal in person, property, understanding, activity, and virtue, or ever can be made so by any power less than that which created them.

On a side note, its nice to see that Adams believed in angels.

Chris Rodda's Olbermann Debut

Well done, Chris. Well done!

Mark David Hall: The Influence of the Reformed Tradition on the American Founding, Part VI

By Mark David Hall

Case Studies

Because scholars and popular writers have tended to focus on founders who were not part of the Reformed tradition, and because they often simplistically attribute any reference to natural rights, government by consent, and the right to resist tyrannical authority to a secularized Locke, they have neglected the influence of Calvinist political thought on the American founders. However, if we take the tradition seriously and look beyond a few elite founders, a fuller and richer picture of the founding comes into focus. Within the academy, historians have done a better job of doing this than have political scientists and law professors. The latter two groups are far more likely to focus on a few texts such as the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, The Federalist Papers, and the Bill of Rights. Moreover, they tend to interpret public documents in light of the privately held views of a few elites rather than as a product of a community—for our purposes a community that included a significant number of Reformed Christians. In the following sections I indicate ways that taking this tradition seriously can help scholars better understand texts such as the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights. Each study is necessarily brief and is meant only to be suggestive.

The Declaration of Independence

The War for Independence involved a variety of issues, but particularly relevant for Reformed Americans were concerns that Parliament and the Crown intended to restrict the colonists’ freedom of worship. Notably, they worried that the King planned to appoint a bishop for the American colonies. The Puritans and their descendents had always been in the precarious position of maintaining what was in effect a dissenting establishment. They feared that a bishop would attempt to take over all colonial churches and set up oppressive ecclesiastical courts. The most recent episode in the long-running pamphlet war concerning an American episcopate had erupted in 1763. Two years later, Parliament passed the Stamp Act, which contained a reference to courts “exercising ecclesiastical jurisdiction within the said colonies.” This was taken by partisans of both sides to imply that a bishop would be sent shortly, and that for the first time ecclesiastical courts would operate in the American colonies.

These fears may seem excessive today, but to an eighteenth century Calvinist they made perfect sense. Calvinists had often struggled against unfriendly governments, and New England Puritans had come to America precisely because they were unable to reform completely the Church of England. Throughout the eighteenth century some American Anglicans continued to argue that the Congregationalist and Presbyterian churches were not “true” churches because their ministers had not been ordained by bishops. The extent to which Anglican leaders supported the plans of American Anglicans has been extensively debated by scholars; but there is little reason to doubt that Reformed Christians genuinely feared an Anglican episcopate. Ill-conceived actions by the Church of England such as founding a “mission” in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1759 did little to calm their fears.

Calvinists in America were also troubled by the Quebec Act of 1774. From Parliament’s perspective, this innocuous piece of legislation simply provided for the efficient governing of territory won from France after the French and Indian War. The act extended the colony of Quebec into what is now the American midwest, permitted the use of French civil law, and allowed Catholics to freely practice their faith and take oaths without reference to Protestantism. To many Protestants, these steps constituted a significant retreat for the kingdom of God in North America. Reformed Protestants of the era considered Roman Catholics to be, at best, seriously deceived and, at worst, in league with Satan. Expanding territory controlled by “Papists” and giving them full civil rights did not bode well for the Protestant cause.

Reformed Christians had long been on their guard against tyrannical rulers desiring to stamp out the true gospel. Although they recognized that God is sovereign, they were haunted by events such as the massacres of French Huguenots, where evil rulers seemed to succeed. When tyrannical rulers had failed it was, from a human perspective, because Protestants had resisted them with arguments, laws, and force. As Reformed Americans began to perceive a pattern of tyranny by Parliament and the Crown, they reacted forcefully against the threat.

The influence of Reformed political ideas on American Patriots is often ignored because students of the era focus on the Declaration of Independence as the statement of why separation from Great Britain was justified. Moreover, they read the document in light of the views of its primary drafter, Thomas Jefferson, who was more influenced by the Enlightenment than virtually any other American. The Declaration of Independence is compatible with the Reformed political theory, but this tradition’s influence is more evident in other public documents stating the Patriots’ case. These texts are not narrowly Reformed—indeed, they might be better characterized as articulating Protestant concerns. However, a large majority of Protestants in America at the time were, in fact, Reformed Protestants, and these Protestants were more likely to support the Patriot cause and use such language than, say, Anglicans.

On September 17, 1774 Paul Revere delivered the Suffolk Resolves to the Continental Congress. The Resolves recognized the sovereignty of King George, but challenged the legality of recent acts and practices by the British Parliament. The Resolves proclaimed

[t]hat it is an indispensable duty which we owe to God, our country, ourselves and posterity, by all lawful ways and means in our power to maintain, defend and preserve those civil and religious rights and liberties, for which many of our fathers fought, bled and died, and to hand them down entire to future generations.

As well, they condemned

the late act of parliament for establishing the Roman Catholic religion and the French laws in that extensive country, now called Canada, is dangerous in an extreme degree to the Protestant religion and to the civil rights and liberties of all America; and, therefore, as men and Protestant Christians, we are indispensably obliged to take all proper measures for our security.

The Suffolk Resolves played a significant role in encouraging congressional delegates to take a strong stand against Parliament. Shortly after receiving the Resolves they adopted a “Declaration of Rights” that asserted the colonists’ constitutional and natural rights. They objected specifically to the act passed

for establishing the Roman Catholick Religion in the province of Quebec, abolishing the equitable system of English laws, and erecting a tyranny there, to the great danger, from so total a dissimilarity of Religion, law, and government of the neighbouring British colonies, by the assistance of those whose blood and treasure the said country was conquered from France.

Congress’s “Appeal to the People of Great Britain,” approved at the same time, expanded on the significance of the Quebec Act and challenged Parliament’s ability “to establish a religion, fraught with sanguinary and impious tenets, or, to erect an arbitrary form of government, in any quarter of the globe.” These and other congressional documents highlight concerns that are only vaguely represented in the Declaration of Independence’s charge that the king abolished “the free System of English Laws in a neighboring Province…” The difference has something to do with the person who drafted the latter document, but even more to do with the intended audience. Jefferson was obviously not in the Reformed tradition, and a critical audience for the Declaration was Roman Catholic France. The eventual intervention of France on the Patriots’ side did much to diminish the vehement anti-Catholicism of many Americans in this era, but suspicion of “papists” remained a powerful force in the American imagination well into the twentieth century.

Like the Declaration of Independence, Congress’s 1775 “Declaration on Taking Arms” makes broad theoretical claims about natural rights, the necessity of consent, and the ends of government; but it communicates these claims in powerful religious rhetoric. Originally drafted by Jefferson, it was revised significantly by John Dickinson and then debated and approved by Congress. The document began by arguing that if:

it was possible for men, who exercise their reason, to believe, that the Divine Author of our existence intended a part of the human race to hold an absolute property in, and an unbounded power over others, marked out by his infinite goodness and wisdom, as the objects of a legal domination never rightfully resistible, however severe and oppressive, the inhabitants of these Colonies might at least require from the parliament of Great Britain some evidence, that this dreadful authority over them, has been granted to that body. But a reverence for our Creator, principles of humanity, and the dictates of common sense, must convince all those who reflect upon the subject, that government was instituted to promote the welfare of mankind, and ought to be administered for the attainment of that end.

This paragraph reflects well some of the basic tenets of Reformed political theory. God is the author of freedom, and He ordains limited governments to promote the common good. The document goes on to proclaim that Parliament’s actions must be resisted, not because of the particular harm of any one policy but because its ultimate aim is to enslave the colonies. Congress emphasized Parliament’s overreaching claims, particularly its extravagant assertion that it could “make laws to bind us IN ALL CASES WHATSOEVER.” After listing a number of specific grievances against Parliament and the King, the delegates proclaimed that:

With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, declare, that, exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with our [one] mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.

This declaration, passed a little less than a year before its more famous cousin, falls short of requiring separation from Great Britain. Instead, it concludes “[w]ith an humble confidence in the mercies of the supreme and impartial Judge and Ruler of the Universe, we most devoutly implore his divine goodness to protect us happily through this great conflict, to dispose our adversaries to reconciliation on reasonable terms, and thereby to relieve the empire from the calamities of civil war.” It is interesting for our purposes because it more obviously reflects the concerns and language of Reformed Protestants. It is noteworthy that the text is seldom cited by scholars attempting to understand the ideological influences on America’s founders in this era.

On July 4, 1776 Congress approved the Declaration of Independence. Its most famous lines proclaim that

all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

These words reflect arguments long made by Patriots, relatively few of whom read Locke and many of whom were active Calvinists. Of course their primary drafter, Thomas Jefferson, definitely read Locke and was most certainly not a Calvinist, but he later noted that he was not attempting to “find out new principles, or new arguments” and that the Declaration’s authority rests “on the harmonizing sentiments of the day.” Jefferson indisputably borrowed language from Locke, but the ideas to which he referred predated Locke by years. There is simply no evidence that signers from Reformed backgrounds such as Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton, John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, William Ellery, Roger Sherman, William Williams, Samuel Huntington, Oliver Wolcott, William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, John Hart, Abraham Clark, James Smith, James Wilson, Thomas McKean, and Lyman Hall understood the “Creator” to be “nature” or thought they were approving a document that mandated a “secular politics” as some scholars have claimed.

With the exception of John Witherspoon, no active clergyman is listed above. Yet observers have long recognized that Reformed ministers were among the most important supporters of the Patriot cause. The Loyalist Peter Oliver railed against “Mr. Otis’s black Regiment, the dissenting Clergy, who took so active a part in the Rebellion.” King George himself reportedly referred to the War for Independence as “a Presbyterian Rebellion,” and historians have recognized that there was an “almost unanimous and persistent critical attitude of the Congregational and Presbyterian ministers toward the British imperial policy.” Indeed, before real bullets were exchanged at Lexington and Concord the Congregationalist minister Jonathan Mayhew fired “the MORNING GUN OF THE REVOLUTION, the punctum Temporis when that period of history began.” The gun in question was Mayhew’s influential sermon “A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers” delivered and published in Boston in 1750. The sermon powerfully and eloquently argued that governments are ordained by God, that their powers are limited, and that citizens have a duty to resist rulers who do evil. Mayhew is not a good representative of Calvinist theology, but his sermon is an excellent example of Calvinist political thought. And it is only one of many sermons preached, printed, and circulated that encouraged Reformed Christians to be wary of and to resist tyrannical governments.

With a handful of exceptions such as the Swiss born Presbyterian John Joachim Zubly and a few Old Light Dutch Calvinists and Congregationalists, Reformed clergy were unanimous in their support of the Patriot cause. Most of their parishioners were as well. It should come as no surprise that men and women rooted in the Reformed political tradition, a tradition that had long held that individuals possess natural rights, that governments should be based on the consent of the government, that civil authority should be limited, and that the people have a right to overthrow tyrannical regimes would join the Patriot cause. From the English perspective, British Major Harry Rooke was largely correct when he confiscated a presumably Calvinist book from an American prisoner and remarked that “[i]t is your G-d Damned Religion of this Country that ruins the Country; Damn your religion.”

Notes:

51. For an argument that political theorists should be interested in the views of non-elites see Shain, Myth of American Individualism, 6-8 and Donald Lutz, A Preface to American Political Theory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992), passim.

52. Carl Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre: Transatlantic Faiths, Ideas, Personalities, and Politics: 1689-1775 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1962), 207-87, 256; Frohnen, American Republic, 110.

53. Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Republic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1967), 95-96; Heimert, Religion and the American Mind, 351-52; Bridenbaugh, Mitre and Sceptre.

54. Kidd, The Protestant Interest; Martin I. J. Griffin, ed., Catholics and the American Revolution (Rideley Park: self-published, 1907), 1: 1-40; 3: 384-92.

55. Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789, ed. Worthington C. Ford et al. (Washington, D.C., 1904-37), (hereinafter JCC), 1: 33-35

56. Adams, ed. Works of John Adams, 2: 16; JCC, 1: 68-70, 72.

57. JCC, 1: 83, 87-88. On the decline of anti-Catholicism in the era see Charles P. Hanson, Necessary Virtue: The Pragmatic Origins of Religious Liberty in New England (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1998

58. JCC, 2: 140-41, 146, 150-55, 157. Of course Christians from a variety of backgrounds could assent to the paragraph quoted above, and Dickinson came from a Quaker background.

59. Koch and Peden, Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson, 24.

60. Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, in Ibid., 656-57; Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 76, 141. Of course some of the founders listed above (and in the following lists) were better Calvinists that others—i.e. John Adams was a life-long Congregationalist, but privately he came to embrace Unitarian theology. On the other hand, he specifically claimed to be heavily influenced by Reformed political theory (supra, 20-21). As well, some joined other denominations later in life (e.g. Wilson eventually became an Anglican). I have compiled each list of Reformed founders myself, but where possible I list a printed account of the denomination affiliation of the founders. Lists commonly available on the internet are generally accurate but often contain mistakes. William Stevens Perry, “The Faith of the Signers of the Declaration of Independence,” Magazine of History (1926), 215-37.

61. Peter Oliver’s Origin and Progress of the American Rebellion, ed. Douglass Adair and John A. Schutz (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), 41; Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 173; Baldwin, New England Clergy, 91; John Wingate Thornton, ed., The Pulpit of the American Revolution 2nd (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1876), 43; and Sandoz, Political Sermons, passim.

62. Randall M. Miller, ed., “A Warm and Zealous Spirit”: John J. Zubly and the American Revolution (Macon: Mercer University Press, 1982); Leiby, The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley, esp. 20-25; Mark A. Noll, Christians in the American Revolution (Washington, D.C.: Christian University Press, 1977), 120-21. Oscar Zeichner estimates that only 8% of adult males in Connecticut were Loyalists—and that most of these were Anglicans who lived in the western part of the colony. Zeichner, “The Rehabilitation of Loyalists in Connecticut,” The New England Quarterly 11 (June 1938), 308-309. John Leach, “A Journal Kept by John Leach, During His Confinement by the British, In Boston Gaol, in 1775,” The New England Historical and Genealogical Register 19 (1865), 256. This is not to say that all Patriots who were members of Reformed congregations were motivated by religion or Calvinist political thought. Ethnicity, interests, and other factors wholly unrelated to the Reformed tradition undoubtedly played a role with some individuals and groups. Tiedemann, “Presbyterianism and the American Revolution” (quoting additional contemporary sources blaming Presbyterians for the war), esp. 311-313.

Chris Rodda on Olbermann

Be sure to tune in to Countdown with Keith Olbermann tonight to see Chris Rodda discuss Glenn Beck's new "University" where "professors" like David Barton, Peter Lillback and others discuss the "true" history of America's founding. Countdown starts at 9:00 Eastern time.

Good luck, Chris!

More From DG Hart on Lillback

Here. Dr. Hart cites my American Creation co-blogger Brad Hart, but mistakenly calls him a "history professor." If Brad's writing can fool an eminent scholar like DG Hart, he must be doing something right.

George Washington was not an evangelical Christian -- Lillback admits that. Lillback is a leader in and a scholar of reformed Calvinistic theology. Lillback's dilemma is that he wants to claim someone with whom he admittedly has religious differences. So he'll concede only when it's so obvious and otherwise interpret the facts to fit his happy ending.

For instance, in 20,000 pages of recorded words of GW, the words "Jesus Christ" are found once, and one other time JC is mentioned by example, not name. Neither of which are written in GW's hand, but by an aide and both of these are in public addresses. In all of his many private letters, though "Providence" and other generic God words are mentioned very often, the name or person of Jesus is not mentioned ever. You never see "Father, Son, Holy Spirit," from GW's words. And the one time "Redeemer" is mentioned, it's from an address by the Continental Congress that GW had reproduced for his troops.

This dynamic, at the very least, proves GW was not an evangelical. But Lillback spins it as GW was a low church latitudinarian orthodox Trinitarian Anglican and claims it the custom of them not to mention Jesus. Well, they may not have talked about Jesus as much as the evangelicals did, but they didn't systematically avoid talking about Jesus, as though they had no relationship with Him like GW did. GW, from what we can tell, rarely had Jesus on his mind.

No, Mr. Beck, Our Constitution is Not Based on the Book of Deuteronomy

By Chris Rodda, here.

Rev. Samuel Miller: Unitarians Aren't "Christians"

But he couldn't figure out what to call them.

Rev. Samuel Miller was a professor at Princeton and corresponded with and about America's Founding Presidents. He was an orthodox Calvinist (in fact one of the few notable ones that supported Jefferson).

In this book written in 1821, Miller denies Unitarians the title "Christian." The Unitarians, who thought of themselves as "Christians" so responded:

... Dr. Miller professes to submit his Reply to the "Christian public;" and it is certainly very unreasonable in him to complain, that we should decline our agency in forcing it upon a class of persons, whom he holds not to be Christians.

[...]

It is no wonder, that Dr. Miller, after denying to us the name of Christians, should be puzzled in deciding what to call us. "There is a real difficulty," he says, "in giving a convenient name to these persons as a general body." We beg leave to tell him, that this is a difficulty of his own making. We have never asked him to be at the trouble of giving us a name. We are perfectly satisfied with the one, by which we have always chosen to call ourselves; and really we cannot see, why he, or any one else, should think it so great a tax upon his courtesy and condescension to give us the "distinctive title," which he says, and which we allow, we have "assumed." The difficulty of giving us a name, he informs us, arises from the circumstance of our "differing so materially among ourselves." Does he mean by this, that Trinitarians do not differ equally as much? The truth is, the differences among them are vastly greater, than among Unitarians, not only in regard to the distinguishing doctrine of their faith, but all the leading doctrines of Christianity. And yet, we have never found any "difficulty" in giving them a name, because we are entirely willing they should have the one, which they have "assumed." Whether it be, or be not, a title, which designates their opinions, is no concern of ours. It is enough that they choose to adopt it. If they misname themselves, it is an affair of their own. We do not see in what respect we have any ground of complaint, or any right to interfere.

Thomas Belsham's Unitarian Creed

From "American Unitarianism," circa 1816:

"I shall now proceed to exhibit a concise view of Rational Christianity in its connection with Natural Religion.

"Of Rational Religion, the first and fundamental principle is that the Maker of the universe is infinitely powerful, wise, and good, and that it is impossible for him to act in contradiction to his essential attributes.

"God Is Love. Infinite benevolence alone prompted him to action. And infinite benevolence, combined with unerring wisdom, and supported by irresistible power, will infallibly accomplish its purpose in the best possible manner. It appears in fact, that a limited quantity of evil, both natural and moral, was necessary to the production of the greatest possible good. Whence this necessity arises, we know not; but that it could sot be avoided in a system upon the whole the best, we are well assured; for God would not choose evil for its own sake. Evil therefore is introduced and permitted, not because it is approved, but because it is unavoidable. It is in its own nature temporary and self-destructive; and in the view of the Deity it is absorbed and lost in the contemplation of its ultimate beneficial effects, so that to him the whole system appears wise, beautiful and good.

"God is the Former, the Father, and Benefactor of the human race, whom for wise reasons, unknown to us, but perfectly consistent, no doubt, with his magnificent plan of universal order and happiness, he has been pleased to place in circumstances of frailty and danger, the natural consequence of which, in their progress through life, is the contraction of a certain degree of moral pollution, which, in the nature of things, and by the divine appointment, exposes them to a proportionate degree of misery here or hereafter.

"But this fact by no means proves a preponderance of vice and misery in the world; otherwise we must conclude that the Maker of the world, whose character we learn only from his works, is a weak or a malignant being. The truth is, that although the quantity of vice and misery actually existing is very considerable, there is nevertheless, upon the whole, a very great preponderance of good in general, and, with few, if any exceptions, in every individual in particular.

"The almost universal desire of life and dread of dissolution, amounts to a strong presumption, that life is in general a blessing. And the disgrace universally attached to flagrant vice, proves that such vice is not common. Character is the sum total of moral and intellectual habits, and the proportion of virtuous habits, in the worst characters, exceeds that of vicious ones. But no character takes the denomination of virtuous unless all the habits are on the side of virtue: whereas one evil habit is sufficient to stamp a character vicious.

"God cannot be unjust to any of his creatures. Having brought men into existence and placed them in circumstances of imminent peril, though in the nature of things misery is necessarily connected with vice, we may certainly conclude that none of the creatures of God in such, or in any circumstances, will ever be made eternally miserable. Indeed it is plainly repugnant to the justice of God, that the existence to any of his Intelligent creatures, should be upon the whole a curse.

"The light of philosophy affords a few plausible arguments for the doctrine of a future life: there are some appearances physical and moral, which cannot be satisfactorily explained upon any other supposition. But since the sentient powers are suspended by death, and admit of no revival but by the revival of the man, a fact the expectation of which is entirely unsupported both by experience and analogy, the speculations of philosophy would commonly, and almost necessarily, terminate in the disbelief of a future existence.

"Here divine revelation offers its seasonable and welcome aid. God has commissioned his faithful and holy servant, Jesus of Nazareth, to teach the universal resurrection of the dead, and by his own resurrection to confirm and exemplify his doctrine.

"Jesus hath authoritatively taught, that the wicked will he raised to suffering; nor could it possibly be otherwise, if they are to be raised with the same system of habits and feelings with which they descended to the grave, and without which their identity would be lost. But since eternal misery for temporary crimes is inconsistent with every principle of justice, and since a resurrection from previous insensibility to indefinite misery, to be succeeded by absolute annihilation, is a harsh supposition, contrary to all analogy, and not to be admitted but upon the clearest evidence, we are naturally led to conclude, that the sufferings of the wicked will be remedial, and that they will terminate in a complete purification from moral disorder, and in their ultimate restoration to virtue and happiness. In this conclusion we seem to be justified by those passages in the apostolical writings which declare, that the blessings of the gospel shall be far more extensive than the calamities of the fall, and that Christ shall reign till all things shall be subdued unto him. (Rom. v.—1 Cor. xv.)

"The apostles were commanded to preach the gospel to the idolatrous heathen as well as to the chosen family of Abraham, and they were authorized to confirm their doctrine by miracles. These extraordinary powers are in the Scriptures called the Spirit of God, and the Holy Spirit; and the great change which took place in the views, feelings, and character of pharisaic Jews and idolatrous heathen, when they sincerely professed the Christian faith, is called, a new creation, regeneration, rising from the dead, and the like. And as conversion to Christianity was usually produced by the evidence of miracles, this new creation, regeneration, sanctification, or passing from death to life, is in this sense ascribed to the Spirit of God.

"The Jews, having been chosen by God to peculiar privileges, entertained a very high notion of their own dignity, and expressed themselves in the most contemptuous language of the idolatrous gentiles, who were not in covenant with Jehovah. Of themselves they spoke as a chosen and a holy nation, sons of God, and heirs of the promises. But the heathens were represented as sinners, as aliens-, as enemies to God, and the like. In allusion to which forms of expression, the converted gentiles being entitled equally with converted Jews, to the blessings of the new dispensation, they are therefore said to be forgiven, reconciled, and saved, to be fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.

"The death of Jesus is sometimes called a propitiation, because it put an end to the Mosaic economy, and introduced a new and more liberal dispensation, under which the gentiles, who were before regarded as enemies, are admitted into a state of amity and reconciliation; that is, into a state of privilege similar to that of the Jews. It is also occasionally called a sacrifice, being the ratification of that new covenant into which God is pleased to enter with his human offspring, by which a resurrection to immortal life and happiness is promised, without distinction, to all who are truly virtuous. Believers in Christ are also said to have redemption through his blood, because they are released by the Christian covenant from the yoke of the ceremonial law, and from the bondage of idolatry. Dr. Taylor has in general well explained these Jewish phrases in his admirable Key to the apostolic writings, prefixed to his Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.

"The Scriptures contain a faithful and credible account of the Christian doctrine, which is the true word of God: but they are not themselves the word of God, nor do they ever assume that title : and it is highly improper to speak of them as such, as it leads inattentive readers to suppose they were written under a plenary inspiration, to which they make no pretension, and as such expressions expose Christianity unnecessarily to the cavils of unbelievers.

"Christianity sums up the whole of human duly in the love of God and our neighbor; and requiring that all our time should he employed to the best account, and that every action should be consecrated to God, lays no stress upon ritual observations, and expressly abolishes that distinction of days, which formed so conspicuous a feature in the Mosaic institute. To a true Christian every day is a Sabbath, every place is a temple, and every action of life an act of devotion. A Christian is not required to be more holy, nor permitted to take greater liberties upon one day than upon another. Whatever is lawful or expedient upon one day of the week is, under the Christian dispensation, equally lawful and expedient on any other day. Public worship, however, must be conducted at stated intervals; and it has been usual from the earliest times for Christians to assemble together, on the first day of the week, to commemorate the death and to celebrate the resurrection of their Master.

"This appears to me to be the true doctrine of reason and revelation, in which the God of nature is not represented as frowning over his works, and like a merciless tyrant dooming his helpless creatures to eternal misery, with the arbitrary exception of a chosen few ; but as the wise, benevolent, and impartial parent of his rational offspring, who is training them all, under various processes of intellectual and moral discipline, to perfect virtue and everlasting felicity. Such is the God of my faith and adoration, the God of nature and of revelation, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, that God whose existence, attributes, and government are the joy and confidence of every enlightened and virtuous believer."*

"Jesus is indeed now alive. But as we are totally ignorant of the place where he resides, and of the occupations in which he is engaged, there can be no proper foundation for religious addresses to him, nor of gratitude for favors now received, nor yet of confidence in his future interposition in our behalf."

Mark David Hall: The Influence of the Reformed Tradition on the American Founding, Part V

By Mark David Hall

Adherence Rates, Calvinism, and the American Founding

A significant argument made by scholars who dismiss the influence of Christianity, generally, or Reformed theology, specifically, in the founding era is that the founders were not particularly religious. In modern scholarship this argument can be traced back to the 1930s when W.W. Sweet estimated that only 20% of New Englanders in the founding era took their faith seriously. In recent years, the most important advocates of this position are the sociologists Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, who claim that on “the eve of the Revolution only about 17 percent of Americans were churched.” Such assertions have made their way into polemical literature, as evidenced by Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore’s statement that “Americans in the era of the Revolution were a distinctly unchurched people. The highest estimates from the late eighteenth century make only about 10-15 percent of the population church members.” Although all of these authors acknowledge that “adherence” rates varied by region, Finke and Stark still conclude that New England adherence rates were no more than 20% of the total population.

James Hutson, Chief of Manuscripts Division at the Library of Congress, has demonstrated that Finke and Stark make numerous factual, methodological, and historical errors. For instance, they misstate Ezra Stiles’ estimate of the population of New England in 1760, and they ignore the best calculations of the American population in 1776. More significantly, by relying on church membership rates in an era and for denominations where it was exceedingly difficult to formally join a church (particularly in New England), they grossly undercount the number of Americans who were active in their churches. As well, Hutson notes that many of Finke and Stark’s data come from decades after the era about which they write, and that some of data comes from fledgling denominations such as the Methodists. Using their methodology but the more reliable data offered by Ezra Stiles, Hutson contends that 82% of New Englanders were involved in Congregational churches—and this does not include New Englanders who were active in Baptists, Anglican, or other churches. Patricia U. Bonomi and Peter R. Eisenstadt similarly conclude that in late-eighteenth-century America “from 56 to 80 percent of the [white] population were churched, with the southern colonies occupying the lower end of the scale and the northern colonies the upper end.”

In New England, citizens overwhelmingly attended churches firmly within the Reformed tradition. In 1776, 63% of New England churches were Congregationalist, 15.3% were Baptist, and 5.5% were Presbyterian. Thus 84% of the region’s churches were in the Reformed tradition, and the Congregational churches generally had the largest congregations. In Connecticut, for instance, Bruce Daniels estimated that in 1790 “dissenting societies comprised about one-third of the total number, [but] they were only about 20 percent of the population.” Moreover, members of Congregational churches tended to have more influence in their communities and states than did dissenters.

It is worth noting as well that 95% of Congregational ministers were college graduates—usually from Harvard or Yale—and they were among the most educated and influential members of their communities. Within these churches, congregants would gather twice on Sunday to hear theologically and exegetically rich sermons lasting about one-and-a-half hours and to engage in other acts of worship. Where possible, congregations would gather on Thursday as well for an additional sermon. Harry S. Stout calculated that the “average 70-year old colonial churchgoer would have listened to some 7,000 sermons in his or her lifetime totaling nearly 10,000 hours of concentrated listening. This is the number of classroom hours it would take to receive ten separate undergraduate degrees in a modern university, without even repeating the same course!”

Outside of New England Calvinism was less dominant, but by 1776 Reformed congregations accounted for 51% and 58% of the churches in the middle and southern colonies respectively. Particularly noteworthy in these regions were Scottish and Scotch-Irish immigrants, most of whom were Presbyterian. In Pennsylvania, for instance, Presbyterians accounted for 30% of the population by 1790 and held 44% of the seats in the state legislature by the late-1770s. In the south most political elites were Anglicans, but in the late-eighteenth century Presbyterianism was the fastest growing faith in the region and its adherents were rapidly becoming a significant factor in state politics. J.C.C. Clark points out that well over a majority of the leaders of North Carolina’s militia were Presbyterian elders, and that Presbyterians dominated the proceedings that produced the famous Mecklenburg Resolves which reportedly declared that “all Laws and Commissions confirmed by, or derived from the Authority of the King or Parliament, are annulled and vacated” more than a year before the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress.

Notes:

44. William Warren Sweet, “The American Colonial Environment and Religious Liberty,” Church History 4 (March 1935), 43-56. Sidney E. Mead offered a similar figure in “From Coercion to Persuasion: Another Look at the Rise of Religious Liberty and the Emergence of Denominationalism,” Church History 25 (1956), 317-37. However, both of these estimates are simply based upon conjecture. Finke and Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990, 15, 27. Isaac Kramnick and R. Laurence Moore, The Godless Constitution: The Case Against Religious Correctness (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1996), 17.

45. James Hutson, “The Christian Nation Question,” in James Hutson, Forgotten Features of the Founding: The Recovery of Religious Themes in the Early American Republic (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2003), 111-32. Scholars who argue for a lack of religiosity among Americans in the founding era are often led astray by laments about the lack of denominational commitments among Americans or jeremiads decrying what was perceived to be insufficient attention to religious and moral concerns. The point applies with equal force to claims by Calvinists that other ministers, university professors, or parishioners were embracing “Arminianism” or “Arianism.” Of course some of these laments were accurate, but often they were overstated. For further discussion of these issues and an excellent overview of Christianity in eighteenth century America see Bonomi, Under the Cope of Heaven, 1-127.

46. Hutson, “The Christian Nation Question,” 118. Hutson also provides an excellent critique of historian Jon Butler’s work, which purports to build upon and offer additional evidence for Finke and Stark’s figures (120-25). See Jon Butler, “Why Revolutionary America Wasn’t a ‘Christian Nation,’” in James H. Hutson, ed., Religion and the New Republic (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 187-202 and Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American People (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990).

47. Patricia U. Bonomi and Peter R. Eisenstadt, “Church Adherence in the Eighteenth Century British Colonies,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser. 39 (April 1982), 275.

48. Finke and Stark, Churching of America, 29; Bruce C. Daniels, The Connecticut Town: Growth and Development, 1635-1790 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1979), 104 and passim.

49. Finke and Stark, Churching of America, 45; Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Lancaster: Society of the Descendants of the Colonial Clergy, 1936); Mary Latimer Gambrell, Ministerial Training in Eighteenth-Century New England (New York: Columbia University Press, 1937); Stout, “Preaching the Insurrection,” 12.

50. Finke and Stark, Churching of America, 29; David Hackett Fisher, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 431, 606, 608; Howard Miller, “The Grammar of Liberty: Presbyterians and the First American Constitutions,” Journal of Presbyterian History 54 (1976), 151-52; Clark, The Language of Liberty, 351-63; Tiedemann, “Presbyterianism and the American Revolution.” There is some dispute about the authenticity of the text of the Mecklenburg Resolves.

An Anglican minister wrote to London that “after a strict inquiry” he could find no Presbyterian minister “who did not, by preaching and every effort in their power, promote all the measures of the Congress, however extravagant.” Quoted in Adrian C. Leiby, The Revolutionary War in the Hackensack Valley: The Jersey Dutch and the Neutral Ground, 1775-1783 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1962), 228. However, some southern Presbyterians may have been exceptions to this rule as indicated by the July 10, 1775 letter from four Presbyterian ministers in Philadelphia (Francis Alison, James Sprout, George Duffield, and Robert Davidson) to their co-religionists in North Carolina urging them to join the Patriot cause. Clark, The Language of Liberty, 123.

Does the Constitution Incorporate the Declaration of Independence? Why Does It Matter?

This is a little piece I worked on but never published. I have written very similar blog posts. I just posted this to my other new group blog.

Cool Cal Coolidge on the Declaration

In what today would be a minority view, contra "Whig Theory" or "The Harvard Narrative," Calvin Coolidge, July 5, 1926, on the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence:

"It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

...

The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.

But if these truths to which the declaration refers have not before been adopted in their combined entirety by national authority, it is a fact that they had been long pondered and often expressed in political speculation. It is generally assumed that French thought had some effect upon our public mind during Revolutionary days. This may have been true. But the principles of our declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker of Connecticut as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that:

"The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people

The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God's own allowance."

This doctrine found wide acceptance among the nonconformist clergy who later made up the Congregational Church. The great apostle of this movement was the Rev. John Wise, of Massachusetts. He was one of the leaders of the revolt against the royal governor Andros in 1687, for which he suffered imprisonment. He was a liberal in ecclesiastical controversies. He appears to have been familiar with the writings of the political scientist, Samuel Pufendorf, who was born in Saxony in 1632. Wise published a treatise, entitled "The Church's Quarrel Espoused," in 1710 which was amplified in another publication in 1717. In it he dealt with the principles of civil government. His works were reprinted in 1772 and have been declared to have been nothing less than a textbook of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers.

While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise, It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his "best ideas of democracy" had been secured at church meetings.

That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that "All men are created equally free and independent". It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, "Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man". Again, "The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth . . . ." And again, "For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine". And still again, "Democracy is Christ's government in church and state". Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.


When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature's God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say "The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven."

No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past.

But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit..."

Full text here.

[HT: Rick Garnett @ Mirror of Justice.]

Mark David Hall: The Influence of the Reformed Tradition on the American Founding, Part IV

By Mark David Hall

What about John Locke?

Tracing intellectual influence is difficult, and it is certainly possible that even if late-eighteenth century Calvinists remained committed to their faith that their political views were shaped by other traditions. A variety of political ideas were competing for attention in mid-to-late-eighteenth century America, but it does not follow that all ideas were equally influential. An important argument of this essay is that the political theory of many founders is best understood as being heavily influenced by Reformed political thinking. Yet many scholars argue that the founders were influenced by a version of John Locke’s political philosophy that is sharply at odds with this tradition.

In his 1922 book on the Declaration of Independence, Carl L. Becker famously remarked that most Revolutionary Era Americans “had absorbed Locke’s works as a kind of political gospel.” Almost seventy years later Isaac Kramnick echoed Becker’s conclusion that “Locke lurks behind its [the Declaration’s] every phrase.” More recently, Scott Gerber has argued that the primary purpose of the U.S. Constitution is to protect a Lockean understanding of natural rights, and Barbara McGraw has asserted that “Lockean fundamentals . . . shaped the conscience of the American founders” with respect to the role of religion in public life. Numerous scholars, writers, and activists have made similar arguments.

In many instance, academics making claims about Locke’s influence simply attribute any reference by the founders to individual rights, government by consent, and/or the right to resist tyrannical authority to Locke, apparently unaware that Reformed thinkers had embraced these concepts long before Locke wrote his Second Treatise. In doing so, they ignore the possibility that Locke’s political philosophy is best understood as a logical extension of Protestant resistance literature rather than as a radical departure from it. Obviously if this interpretation is correct (and I am very sympathetic to it), any amount of influence Locke had on America’s founders would be unproblematic for the thesis of this essay. Locke’s influence would be cooperative with the influence of the Reformed tradition rather than competing with it.

However, a number of prominent scholars have argued that Locke is a secular political thinker who attempted to ground his theory of politics on the natural rights of individuals. In the context of the American founding, for instance, Michael Zuckert has contended that key documents like the Declaration of Independence must be understood in light of this secularized Lockean liberalism. In The Natural Rights Republic he supports this position by showing that Jefferson’s political ideas were very different from those held by the Puritans. In doing so, he virtually ignores the development of ideas concerning consent, natural rights, religious toleration, and resistance within the Reformed tradition. As well, it is not self-evident that the Declaration of Independence should be understood solely in light of Jefferson’s views, particularly as Jefferson claimed that he was “[n]ot to find out new principles, or new arguments” but that all “its authority rests on the harmonizing sentiments of the day.”

Zuckert may be correct in his observation that Jefferson, in the Declaration, traced “rights to the creator, that is, nature.” However, there is little reason to think that most Americans thought the Declaration’s “Creator” was anything other than the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And they certainly did not think they were signing a document that “mandates” a “secular politics.” As Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia remarked in a different context, the Constitution cannot be interpreted according to “secret or technical meanings that would not have been known to ordinary citizens in the founding generation.”

Assuming for the sake of argument that there is a significant difference between Reformed political theory and Locke’s political ideas, the question remains as to how influential Locke was in early America. With very few exceptions, Locke’s works were not even available in America until 1714 when a bulky three volume edition of his writings began appearing in university libraries. Even then, American elites were primarily interested in his Essay on Human Understanding, and there is no evidence that Locke’s Second Treatise was a part of any college curriculum until the War for Independence. The first American edition of one of Locke’s works was published by the senior class at Yale in 1742. This group of seventeen men, ten of whom went on to become ministers in Reformed churches, apparently hoped publication of A Letter Concerning Toleration would encourage Connecticut’s General Assembly to be more accepting of New Light Calvinists (who were theologically more conservative than the Old Lights).

By the 1760s and 1770s, American Patriots appealed to Locke with some regularity as an authority to support American resistance to Great Britain. Yet, as Donald S. Lutz has shown, the Bible was referenced in political essays far more often than Locke’s works—indeed, more often than the works of all Enlightenment thinkers combined (34% to 22%). Moreover, only 2.9% of the citations to individual authors between 1760-1805 were to Locke (by contrast, 8.3% were to Montesquieu and 7.9% were to Blackstone). That Americans’ interest in Locke was not boundless is suggested as well by the fact that the Second Treatise was not published in America until 1773, and that it was not republished in the United States until 1937.

If Locke’s works were late to arrive on America’s shores, the Bible was virtually omnipresent in New England from the first days of the Puritan settlements. As Daniel L. Dreisbach has demonstrated, the Bible retained its cultural dominance well into the founding era. Many founders continued to look for the Bible for moral guidance, and virtually all of them referenced it regularly in their public and private speeches and writings. This reality is often overlooked because founders assumed a familiarity with Scripture and so did not include textual citations. As Benjamin Franklin explained to Samuel Cooper in 1781,

It was not necessary in New England, where every body reads the Bible, and is acquainted with Scripture phrases, that you should note the texts from which you took them; but I have observed in England as well as in France, that verses and expressions taken from the sacred writings, and not known to be such, appear very strange and awkward to some readers; and I shall therefore in my edition take the liberty of marking the quoted texts in the margin.

In addition to the Bible, books containing the essential elements of Reformed political thought were accessible to political and ecclesiastical elites from the colonies’ inception. A thorough and systematic study of which Reformed books were available at what time has yet to be attempted, but Herbert D. Foster has documented the availability of classic texts by John Calvin, John Knox, Theodore Beza, Stephanus Junius Brutus, Peter Martyr, and others. The respect Puritan leaders had for their European predecessors is reflected well by John Cotton’s statement that “I have read the fathers and the school-men, and Calvin too; but I find that he that has Calvin has them all.” Yet, as Perry Miller pointed out, “”[i]f we were to measure by the number of times a writer is cited and the degrees of familiarity shown with his works, Beza exerted more influence than Calvin, and David Pareus still more than Beza.” This is significant for our purposes because the latter two thinkers had significantly more radical theories of resistance than did John Calvin.

Moving to the founding era, political leaders generally, but particularly those from New England, often owned or referred to Reformed literature. It is not surprising that Princeton President John Witherspoon owned Calvin’s Institutes, Beza’s Rights of Magistrates (1757) and Buchanan’s The Law of Scottish Kingship (1579). More intriguing is that the Unitarian-leaning John Adams declared that John Poynet’s Short Treatise on Politike Power (1556) contains “all the essential principles of liberty, which were afterwards dilated on by Sidney and Locke.” He also noted the significance of Vindiciae, Contra Tyrannos and works by James Harrington and John Milton. Similarly, late in life Adams wrote that “I love and revere the memories of Huss Wickliff Luther Calvin Zwinglius Melancton and all the other reformers how muchsoever I may differ from them all in many theological metaphysical & philosophical points. As you justly observe, without their great exertions & severe sufferings, the USA had never existed.” It is noteworthy as well that George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni: or the due right of Government was reprinted in Philadelphia in 1766—the same year Parliament passed the Declaratory Act.

Educated American leaders were generally familiar with Locke by the 1760s, and few thought his political philosophy was at odds with traditional Christian or Calvinist political ideas. This is indicated by the willingness of Reformed clergy to appeal to him as an authority in sermons and pamphlets. For example, in his 1776 election day sermon to the Connecticut General Assembly, Judah Champion urged state leaders to resist British oppression. The vast majority of his sermon relied on Biblical and theological arguments, such as when he contended that “liberty and freedom” belong “to us, not merely as men, originally created in God’s image, holding a distinguished rank in his creation, but also as christians redeemed by the Blood of CHRIST.” Yet this indisputably orthodox Congregationalist did not hesitate to cite Locke’s Second Treatise on the origin of government.

Michael Zuckert suggests that the clergy’s use of Locke is evidence of “a Lockean conquest, or at least assimilation, of Puritan political thought.” However, if one recognizes that Calvinists had long advocated political ideas similar to those later articulated by Locke, and that most New England ministers were by any measure orthodox Christians, it is more plausible to conclude that these ministers viewed Locke as an ally to be cited to defend concepts well within the bounds of Reformed Christianity. Most Reformed ministers in this era were well-educated and sensitive (perhaps too sensitive) to any hint of theological heterodoxy. If Lockean and Reformed political theory are really as different as Zuckert suggests, is it not odd that virtually no Reformed minister objected to the use of Locke by his fellow Calvinists?

By comparing Lockean and Reformed political theory I do not mean to suggest that these are the only intellectual traditions present in the founding era. I make the comparison because a secularized version of Locke’s ideas is most obviously at odds with Reformed political theory. Many aspects of Whig, classical republican, and Scottish Enlightenment thought, to name just three other widely discussed intellectual influences on the founders, seem informed by or compatible with Reformed thought. For instance, Robert Middlekauff has suggested that “Radical Whig perceptions of politics attracted widespread support in America because they revived the traditional concerns of a Protestant culture that had always verged on Puritanism.” Similarly, many concerns often attributed to the classical republican tradition, such as fear or corruption and concentrated powers and the belief that the state should promote virtue, seem to be more readily explained by Christian commitments.

This is not the place to provide a full critique of the many works arguing for different intellectual influences on America’s founders. My central concern here is to provide a sketch of an intellectual tradition that has been too often ignored by students of American political thought. If nothing else, I hope to have shown that simplistically assigning all references to natural rights, consent, limited government, and a right to rebel to the influence of John Locke is problematic. Given the political culture of eighteenth century America (especially New England), there is a strong prima facie case that such appeals were based on Reformed political theory. To be sure, it is unlikely that many citizens read Reformed political thinkers directly, but neither did they read Locke, Rousseau, or Blackstone. However, many of them attended churches where they at least occasionally heard Reformed political ideas from their well-educated ministers. Moreover, political leaders in New England, many of whom graduated from the Reformed colleges of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, heard annual election day sermons from Congregationalist clergy which contained significant political content.

Notes:

26. Carl Becker, The Declaration of Independence: A Study in the History of Political Ideas (1922; New York: Vintage Books, 1942) 27; Isaac Kramnick, Republicanism and Bourgeois Radicalism: Political Ideology in Late Eighteenth-Century England and America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 293; Scott Douglas Gerber, To Secure These Rights: The Declaration of Independence and Constitutional Interpretation (New York: New York University Press, 1995), 199-200; Barbara A. McGraw, Rediscovering America’s Sacred Ground: Public Religion and Pursuit of the Good in a Pluralistic America (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), xv, 23-24, 61-66. See also Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1955), passim and Michael Zuckert, Natural Rights and the New Republicanism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994) 15-27. Barry Shain argues persuasively that political scientists and law professors are especially prone to view the American founding in profoundly individualistic terms in Myth of American Individualism, 3-18.

27. See, for instance, Jeremy Waldron, God, Locke, and Equality: Christian Foundations in Locke’s Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002) and John Dunn, The Political Thought of John Locke: An Historical Account of the Argument of the ‘Two Treatises of Government’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 256. There are indisputably tensions between Locke’s theological views and Calvinist theology.

28. See, for instance, Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958); C.B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism (London: Oxford University Press, 1962); Michael Zuckert, Launching Liberalism: On Lockean Political Philosophy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2002).

29. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, passim. Zuckert also offers a close reading of the text of the Declaration, and on occasion he refers to a few other founders, but he focuses disproportionately on the sage of Monticello. Thomas S. Engeman and Michael Zuckert, eds., Protestantism and the American Founding (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) contains a restatement of Zuckert’s thesis, essays responding to it, and a rejoinder by Zuckert.

30. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 1-89; Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825, in Adrienne Koch and William Peden, ed., The Life and Selected Writings of Thomas Jefferson (1944, reprint, New York: Random House, 1993), 656-57.

31. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 76, 141. District of Columbia v. Heller, 128 S.Ct. 645 (2008), at 648.

32. John Dunn, “The politics of Locke in England and America in the eighteenth century,” in John Locke: Problems and Perspectives: A collection of new essays, ed. John Yolton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 45-80, see esp. 69-71. Dunn concludes with respect to the American Revolution, “[f]or the American population at large the revolution may have been about many things, but in a very few cases can it possibly have been thought to have been in any sense about the Two Treatises of Government of John Locke” (80).

33. Clinton Rossiter, Seedtime of the Republic: The Origin of the American Tradition of Political Liberty (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1953), 491, note 111; John Locke, A Letter on Toleration 3rd (Boston: Rogers and Fowle, 1743); M. Louise Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Co., 1905), 121; Franklin Bowditch Dexter, Biographical Sketches of the Graduates of Yale College, October, 1701-May, 1745 (New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1885), 698-722. Of course Lockean ideas could be transmitted through other means, but the relative inaccessibility of his works on politics must be taken into account when assessing his influence.

34. Donald S. Lutz, “The Relative Influence of European Writers on Late Eighteenth-Century American Political Thought,” American Political Science Review 78 (1984), 189-197, esp. 192-193; Clark, Language of Liberty, 26.

35. Dreisbach, “The Bible in the Political Culture of the American Founding,” in Faith and the Founders of the American Republic (mss. in possession of author). Benjamin Franklin to Samuel Cooper, May 15, 1781, in John Bigelow, ed., The Works of Benjamin Franklin (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1904), 423-24. Similarly, Joyce Appleby writes that the “most important source of meaning for eighteenth-century Americans was the Bible.” “The American Heritage—The Heirs and the Disinherited,” The Journal of American History 74 (1987), 809.

36. Herbert D. Foster, Collected Papers of Herbert D. Foster: Historical and Biographical Studies (Privately Printed, 1929), 77-105. See also, Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (1939; reprint, Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 89-108.

37. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana (Hartford: Silas Andrus and Son, 1885), 1: 274; Miller, The New England Mind, 1: 93.

38. Morrison, John Witherspoon, 81; Charles Francis Adams, ed., The Works of John Adams (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1850), 6: 4; John Adams to F.C. Schaeffer, November 25, 1821 in James H. Hutson, The Founders on Religion: A Book of Quotations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 15-16. George Buchanan, De Jure Regnie: or the due right of Government (Philadelphia, 1766). In the Constitutional Convention Luther Martin (who, in spite of his name, was hardly an exemplar of the Protestant Reformation), read passages from “Locke & Vattel, and also Rutherford [presumably Lex, Rex]” to show that states, like people, are equal. Max Farrand, ed., The Records of the Federal Convention of 1787 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1911), 1: 438.

39. Judah Champion, “Christian and Civil Liberties” (Hartford: E. Watson, 1776), 6, 8. One of the earliest and most famous examples of a cleric’s use of Locke is found in Elisha Williams’ sermon, “The Essential Rights and Liberties of Protestants” (1744), in Ellis Sandoz, ed., Political Sermons of the American Founding Era: 1730-1805, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund Press, 1998), 1: 55-65.

40. Zuckert, Natural Rights Republic, 172.

41. Steven M. Dworetz makes a similar point about the American clergy’s use of Locke in The Unvarnished Doctrine: Locke, Liberalism, and the American Revolution, (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 32-34, 135-183. I include the word “virtually” in the last sentence simply because I assume some Reformed minister in the era must have questioned the use of Locke by his co-religionists. However, I have not found such a minister.

42. Robert Middlekauff, The Glorious Cause: The American Revolution: 1763-1789, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 52.

43. James Cooper notes that Congregational “ministers frequently addressed questions of church government in their sermons.” Cooper, The Tenaciousness of the Their Liberties, 31. Election day sermons were attended by civil and ecclesiastical leaders and were often printed and distributed throughout the colonies. Shain, Myth of American Individualism, 7; Martha Louise Counts, The Political Views of the Eighteenth Century New England as Expressed in Their Election Sermons (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1956).