Joseph Priestley on the Swedenborgs

Another repost to The One Best Way here.

Not Throwing Out the Baby With the Bathwater

This post from my real estate blog does not have much to do with American Creation per se(and it has even less to do with real estate). But it does contain a reminder of the importance of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater(something we have discussed here often) as new ideas begin to take root in a society. History still has a lot to teach us.  This post quotes Lavar Arrington, the former Redskin, as he reminds of this important fact.  It brought tears to this former the eyes of this former coach!

A-Biblical v. Anti-Biblical

Another repost to The One Best Way here.

‘A Light to the Nations’ at MOBIA

    
“I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
(Isaiah 49:6)

The Museum of Biblical Art in New York City will open an exhibit of rare Bibles titled A Light to the Nations on October 15.

The curator explains:

America’s Earliest Bibles (1532-1864). A selection of 29 volumes and historical items drawn from the Rare Bible Collection at MOBIA will be on view beginning October 15. The rich history at the heart of the exhibition includes such developments as Congress’ endorsement of Aitken’s edition of the King James Bible in 1782 (the only instance of such an endorsement); the sale of Bibles in installments and by subscription (1790); and a translation of Luke’s Gospel in Aztec or Nahuatl (1830s). The volumes in this collection are intertwined with some of the most important historical developments to take place in Western history, including Columbus’ discovery of America. Read more here.

“A Curator’s View: A Light to the Nations” – Join Dr. Liana Lupas, Curator, Rare Bible Collection at MOBIA, for a tour of America’s earliest printed Bibles. Thursday, October 28 from 6 to 8 p.m. Space is limited and pre-registration is required. To RSVP please call (212) 408-1251 or e-mail rsvp(at)mobia.org

The exhibit is scheduled to close December 23, 2010.

In defense of John Jay: what makes somebody a "key Founder"?

In his post below on John Jay, Jon states that John Jay was not one of the "key" Founders.  I respectfully disagree on that point.  If one takes even a cursory look at Jay's career, I think he fits the bill.

Just take a look at some of Jay's outstanding and critically important achievements:

• President of the Continental Congress
• Diplomat (both during the Revolution and during the Washington administration -- the Jay Treaty with Britain is named after him)
• Co-author of The Federalist Papers (with Hamilton and Madison)
• First Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court
• Governor of New York
• Key mover behind New York's move for the gradual abolition of slavery in the 1790s

Now, if Jon wants to argue that Jay wasn't key in the same way that Washington was key, I would agree with him.  Nobody was as important as Washington when it came to the success of both the American Revolution and the early American Republic.  However, the Washington standard is one that very few of the Founders -- even the "top tier" Founders -- could meet.  Maybe Jefferson could meet the Washington standard, but even with Jefferson it would be something of a stretch. 

And while Jay may legitimately be excluded from the list of the "top tier" Founders, he still had a key role to play in both the success of the Revolution and the life of the early Republic at both the state and federal level.  And he was a leader in the early effort to acknowledge the full humanity of African-Americans in our country (something that can't be said about several of the "top tier" Founders like Jefferson and Madison).

He was a key Founder.

Magnifying Magna Carta

Part I: The "Great Charter"
in Historical Context and the
Right to Rebel Against Tyrants
Do you remember 9th grade U.S. History? If so, chances are you recall hearing about the Magna Carta of 1215 and how it supposedly set the stage for the legal protection of individual liberties and helped to inspire other documents including the United States Constitution. You probably recall hearing your teacher relate to you the tales of the oppressive and vindictive King John, who, along with fighting his supposed nemesis Robin Hood (another myth for another day) had established a quasi-tyrannical reign over his English subjects. Long story short, the English people became fed up with John and the lack of protected individual liberties and demanded that a charter be created in which the king would recognize certain basic rights to be protected by law. Thus, the Magna Carta was born.

On the surface, this sounds like an inspiring, even patriotic tale, right? It's not hard to see how such a take on history has caught on, especially here in the "land of the free", where the descendants of Christian English settlers (with the obvious exception of the African slaves, Native Americans, and a countless host of other immigrants ) proudly carried the ideas of the Magna Carta to the "New World" and augmented it with a charter of their own: the U.S. Constitution, a.k.a. Magna Carta 2.0.

But alas, as is often the case, pop culture's take on history is usually more the stuff of Robin Hood and invisible Masonic treasure maps on the back of founding documents that it becomes more desirable than the actual truth. It is for this reason that the Magna Carta has become saturated with tales of what we want it to be rather than what it actually was. The truth: Magna Carta did not protect much of anything and was in fact rejected by King John, the Pope and most Englishmen. It was never a binding legal document, nor did it serve to protect indivudual liberties. Despite this fact, Magna Carta did serve one important function: it helped to justify the rebellion to tyranny.

It is true that Magna Carta is one of many important links in the chain that eventually became constitutional law in the Western world. However, it would be a major mistake to make the claim that Magna Carta was the starting point or even the most important component to eventual constitutional rule. For example, the English Charter of Liberties (1100) which preceded Magna Carta by almost 100 years, made some of the same claims, as did many other charters of Medieval Europe.

What is important to remember here, and is often difficult for us in the present day who have lived with guaranteed legal rights to understand, is that these charters were not legislation, but rather a promise from the King that was neither binding in any legal sense nor a requirement of his position. In the Medieval world kings ruled by Divine Right, meaning that God himself had granted them almost complete authority. Individual liberties were nice and certainly people were to be treated with some level of respect, but ultimate authority rested with the king. Defiance to his rule was defiance to God himself. As the Apostle Paul states in Romans chapter 13:

1Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God: the powers that be are ordained of God.

2 Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation.

3 For rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil. Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise of the same:

4 For he is the minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is the minister of God, a revenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.

5 Wherefore ye must needs be subject, not only for wrath, but also for conscience sake.

6 For for this cause pay ye tribute also: for they are God's ministers, attending continually upon this very thing.

7 Render therefore to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honour to whom honour.

Obviously this was a convenient justification for nobility to assert their rights to Divine Right kingship. Clothing authority in the robes of the will of God made resistance to leadership not only illegal but sinful. One could find himself in the dungeons of both earth and hell for defying a king.

With that said, the concept of ultimate authority resting with the king did not mean that rebellion was a thing of the past. Quite the contrary. For example, every English king since William the Conqueror was forced to deal with the threat of rebellion by powerful barons who questioned the king's right to lead. However, these rebellions were usually supported by another noble who laid the same claim to Divine Right authority as the King, thus the nobles were able to justify their actions. One could not be found blameless before God for supporting who he thought to be God's chosen man. During the reign of King John, however, there were no nobles present who could lay claim to the throne of England.

But why did these barons want to rebel at all? What was King John doing that was so terribly offensive? To understand these questions we must first understand the fundamental system of social organization in Medieval Europe: feudalism. In the simplest of terms, feudalism was a system in which land and goods were distributed at the will of the king. The fundamental belief was that the king was the rightful owner of all the land, but he allowed powerful nobles and barons to keep and cultivate certain portions of it. In turn, these barons allowed peasants to till portions of that land and keep a small amount of what they produced for themselves. In essence, it was a quasi-"trickle down" system where the higher your social status, the more the king let you have.

During the reign of King John, England was in an impoverished state. Recent wars with Phillip of France had exhausted the king's coffers and forced him to increase taxation upon the barons of the land, who, in turn, increased taxes on the peasants. As a result, the nobles of England became overrun with taxation to such a level that rebellion became a viable option. The lack of a legitimate royal replacement for John complicated issues, which is why the nobles decided on a charter stating their rights. However, this charter, according to historian Austin Lane Pool, was "mere subterfuge since what they really wanted was to replace the king with their chosen man."

Faced with mounting pressure, King John acquiesced to the desires of the nobles, but did so only as a political move. In reality he had no desire to honor the charter and in fact had already laid the groundwork for its demise. As historian David Carpenter points out:

John sealed Magna Carta at Runnymede on 15 June, 1215 with little intention of keeping to it...sometime in July John asked the pope to annul the charter. When the papal letter arrived in England at the end of September, the country was already at war. The rebels realized that John could never be restrained by Magna Carta. The only solution was his replacement...And with the pope's official rejection of Magna Carta the rebels had little faith in their newfound charter.

The fact that John rejected Magna Carta may be surprising to some but again, we must remember that it was not a legal document. As God's chosen leader on earth, John was not bound to follow any document issued by man. The Pope's agreement in this matter helped to support that very fact. For the barons to even issue such a document was, in the minds of John's supporters, blasphemy to God. As a result, civil war erupted as the nobles chose to not only reject their king but also defy God's biblical admonition to, "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers." In what became known as the First Barons' War, Lord Robert Fitzwalter (who many have associated with the Robin Hood legends) took the reigns of leadership and directed his fellow barons to established a codified set of "guidelines" for the king to follow. In what became known as The Articles of the Barons, Fitzwalter and his fellow barons provided a list of basic rights (an early bill of rights of sorts) which, in their minds, limited the scope of the king's authority and guaranteed certain basic individual rights. Here are a couple examples:

Article six
The king shall not grant any baron the right to take an aid from his free men, except for ransoming his person, for making his eldest son a knight and for once marrying his eldest daughter, and this he shall do by a reasonable aid.

Article twenty-one
That neither the king nor his bailiff shall take another man's timber for castles or other works of his, except with the agreement of him whose timber it is.

Article thirty nine
No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or outlawed or exiled or victimised in any other way, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.

In a very real sense, what Fitzwalter and his fellow barons did became a precursor for Samuel Rutherford's Lex Rex, which argued that the law was superior to the authority of a king. These ideas, and many others, eventually became a part of Magna Carta:

KNOW THAT BEFORE GOD, for the health of our soul and those of our ancestors and heirs, to the honour of God, the exaltation of the holy Church, and the better ordering of our kingdom, at the advice of our reverend fathers Stephen, archbishop of Canterbury, primate of all England, and cardinal of the holy Roman Church, Henry archbishop of Dublin, William bishop of London, Peter bishop of Winchester, Jocelin bishop of Bath and Glastonbury, Hugh bishop of Lincoln, Walter Bishop of Worcester, William bishop of Coventry, Benedict bishop of Rochester, Master Pandulf subdeacon and member of the papal household, Brother Aymeric master of the knighthood of the Temple in England, William Marshal earl of Pembroke, William earl of Salisbury, William earl of Warren, William earl of Arundel, Alan de Galloway constable of Scotland, Warin Fitz Gerald, Peter Fitz Herbert, Hubert de Burgh seneschal of Poitou, Hugh de Neville, Matthew Fitz Herbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip Daubeny, Robert de Roppeley, John Marshal, John Fitz Hugh, and other loyal subjects:

FIRST, THAT WE HAVE GRANTED TO GOD, and by this present charter have confirmed for us and our heirs in perpetuity, that the English Church shall be free, and shall have its rights undiminished, and its liberties unimpaired. That we wish this so to be observed, appears from the fact that of our own free will, before the outbreak of the present dispute between us and our barons, we granted and confirmed by charter the freedom of the Church's elections - a right reckoned to be of the greatest necessity and importance to it - and caused this to be confirmed by Pope Innocent III. This freedom we shall observe ourselves, and desire to be observed in good faith by our heirs in perpetuity.

And though Magna Carta was only intended to protect the rights of the noble baron class (peasants did not receive or expect anything from Magna Carta) it did help to foreshadow the course that later charters would eventually take. Magna Carta, which stood on the shoulders of many other important charters, became a foundation for other documents to build upon. And while Magna Carta was rejected by King John, the Pope and a large number of the nobility, it did endure as an example of humanity's quest for equality, even in the face of secular and religious rebuking of such actions. In short, Magna Carta stands as one of many banners to society's endless quest for liberty.

***Part II: The Predecessors to Magna Carta***

Joe Sobran on Anarchist Orthodox Christian Political Theology

Sobran died the other day. A good writer, but one who alas, had some really wacky mean spirited opinions on certain topics. I'm not an anarchist. But this is NOT what I refer to when I criticize him for being wacky and mean spirited.

From this article:

My fellow Christians have argued that the state’s authority is divinely given. They cite Christ’s injunction “Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s” and St. Paul’s words “The powers that be are ordained of God.” But Christ didn’t say which things — if any — belong to Caesar; his ambiguous words are far from a command to give Caesar whatever he claims. And it’s notable that Christ never told his disciples either to establish a state or to engage in politics. They were to preach the Gospel and, if rejected, to move on. He seems never to have imagined the state as something they could or should enlist on their side.

At first sight, St. Paul seems to be more positive in affirming the authority of the state. But he himself, like the other martyrs, died for defying the state, and we honor him for it; to which we may add that he was on one occasion a jailbreaker as well. Evidently the passage in Romans has been misread. It was probably written during the reign of Nero, not the most edifying of rulers; but then Paul also counseled slaves to obey their masters, and nobody construes this as an endorsement of slavery. He may have meant that the state and slavery were here for the foreseeable future, and that Christians must abide them for the sake of peace. Never does he say that either is here forever.

Democracy in America

If you're reading this,
you're probably ignorant
By Tom Van Dyke

Good friend-of-the-blog John Fea asks "Are Americans Ignorant?."

First off, I'm a little uncomfortable with open-ended questions that float like a fart in the air. I've used that technique meself, I confess, but let's get real.

In the words of that great philosopher Ali G, he who smelt it, dealt it.

"Was George Washington a Satanist?" Well, 999 times out of 1000, you're arguing that he was. [Well, actually, he was, but let's drop that for now.]

So yeah, I think Dr. Fea is saying, yes, Americans are ignorant, even if it's in the form of a question.

This Tea Party thing is about to vote out the current regime in Congress bigtime, and the recent Pew [no pun intended, but I'll take it] polls that Dr. Fea cites about religions and civics knowledge say we Americans don't know squat about squat.

And sort of, we don't. We don't know if Vishnu is the current president of Israel or the latest iPhone app for Argentina. Probably most of us don't know that Bill Clinton's wife is the Secretary of State. How can we trust us to even vote?

But let's just do the math here. Think of how stupid and ignorant the average person is. Well, that pretty much means half the population is even more stupid and ignorant than he is. I mean, it is what it is. You can't fight the math in a democracy. And really, Vishnu will pick you up a couple bucks on a quiz show, but can't tell you the price of Chinese tea at Wal-Mart, OK?


And so on to the Founding:

Everybody knows the Founders were "elitists." Only white male property owners could vote or whatever. Federalists like John Adams were especially good with that. Adams wrote to Jefferson that an idea was floating around Massachusetts to come up with something like a House of Lords.

You know, the elite.

Jefferson replied:

"I think the best remedy is exactly that provided by all our constitutions, to leave to the citizens the free election and separation of the aristoi from the pseudo-aristoi, of the wheat from the chaff. In general they will elect the real good and wise. In some instances, wealth may corrupt, and birth blind them; but not in sufficient degree to endanger the society."

Jefferson trusted the people, and he was sure right in that we had wealth [John Kerry] and birth [Bush 41 & 43, Al Gore]. Still, Carter, Reagan, Clinton and Obama made it through the net, and that's not even going back very far.

And although I'm quite partisan, looking back at it historically, and with a trust of the wisdom of the American people, there's not a single election in the 20th and 21st centuries where I'd say the wrong man won. Ford? Mondale? Dole? Hey, I voted for Michael Dukakis and I'm not ashamed to admit it!

Even if we want to quibble about this guy or that guy, the batting average of the American people is way higher than that of the "elites." "In general," said Jefferson, "they will elect the real good and wise."

I don't think we're stupid or ignorant atall. I trust us, regardless of our knowledge or sophistication or lack of either. Plus, as it turns out, in this here democracy, I really have no choice but to trust my fellow citizens, talk it out, and then each head for the voting booth.

[In fairness to Dr. Fea, more precisely he wrote:

"Kerry's remarks were bad only if we define what is good and bad based upon the ethical system (if we can call it that) of American politics. And if this is the case, as I am afraid it now is, God help us.

Help! I think I am becoming an elitist!!"

As a partisan on the other side of John Kerry, I find his political ethics unacceptable if not invisible. I do think "what is good and bad" can be debated and realized "upon the ethical system (if we can call it that) of American politics."

Again, in the real world, on this earth, America is where the Kingdom of God vs. the City of Man will be debated; nowhere else. But Dr. Fea may be right. Perhaps we can't debate it in America either, but it's the American tradition to try.]

Was John Jay a Christian Hypocrite?

John Jay, not a "key Founder" but a 2nd tier Founder, is generally conceded as an "orthodox Christian." He certainly has a number of quotations that support the "Christian Nation" thesis. From most of what I've read, I'd say the categorization is accurate. Though, I've reproduced before, and will reproduce again quotations from Jay affirming the Bible, but doubting the Trinity.

In a letter to Samuel Miller, Feb. 18, 1822, Jay wrote:

"In forming and settling my belief relative to the doctrines of Christianity, I adopted no articles from creeds, but such only as, on careful examination, I found to be confirmed by the Bible."

To the Sola Scripturaist that sounds good. After all, church doctrine can be tainted with man's doctrines. But, Sola Scriptura without creeds led Jay to doubt the Trinity. From that very letter:

"It appeared to me that the Trinity was a Fact fully revealed and substantiated, but that the quo modo was incomprehensible by human Ingenuity. According to sundry Creeds, the divine Being whom we denominate the second Person in the Trinity had before all worlds been so generated or begotten by the first Person in the Trinity, as to be his coeval, coequal and coeternal Son. For proof of this I searched the Scriptures diligently -- but without Success. I therefore consider the Position of being at least of questionable Orthodoxy."

I want to focus more on Jay's disregard for creeds and how that relates to the political theology of the American Founding.

The late ME Bradford did a study where he "found" 52 out of 55 Founding Fathers in some way connected to churches that adhered to an orthodox creed. Christian Nationalists have run with that figure with a talking point that argues "52 out of 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention were orthodox Christians."

Some Christian Nationalist (not sure if it was Bradford himself) mistakenly claimed the 52/55 figure found "membership" at a time when membership required oaths to official church doctrine.

I've looked into this in detail and the figure does not relate to "membership" but "affiliation." There is NO EVIDENCE that 52/55 took membership oaths (although some/many of them did). Alexander Hamilton, for instance (not one of Bradford's "Deists") had affiliations with both the Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches (the two churches from whom he sought communion on his deathbed) but was never a MEMBER of either or any church during his adult life.

Bradford's figure is worthless. In fact, all 55, even his 3 "Deists" -- Franklin, Wilson, and Williamson -- had affiliations with churches that professed orthodoxy in their creeds.

Therefore, a counter to the Bradford figure that shows the vast majority of FFs connected to orthodox churches is that those affiliations were for social reasons, that, whether official members or unofficial affiliates, it was not uncommon for elites to belong to orthodox churches while disbelieving in what the churches taught as formal doctrine.

The response, I've heard, is that makes them hypocrites. Perhaps. And that's a charge those making the claim have deal with, not us who argue against Christian Nationalism. Keep in mind the Anglican Church preached loyalty to the crown as a political-theological doctrine. And many American Anglicans, most notably George Washington, remained so while rebelling against England. How is that any less hypocritical than disbelieving in the Trinity, even though your church holds to it as an official doctrine and may make you take an oath to it if you want to get involved in leadership positions(which again, many FFs used as a social network)?

But back to John Jay. He too was an Anglican who rebelled against Great Britain. In fact he was (apparently) a warden of this church.

I've seen many Christian Nationalists try to use church affiliation/membership, and especially leadership positions (which did require oaths) as shortcuts to prove the "orthodoxy" of a particular Founder. The shortcut is needed in the absence of quotations supporting the orthodox Christianity of a particular Founder. For instance, George Washington offers little if anything from his own mouth to prove he believed in the Trinity, Atonement, Resurrection of Christ. So Peter Lillback uses his Anglican affiliation as a surrogate.

Likewise with John Jay we could argue, since he was an Anglican, indeed a Church warden required to take oaths to official Anglican doctrine (which were orthodox), and since John Jay offered other quotations which seemed to support orthodox Christian doctrine, we could conclude Jay believed in official orthodox Anglican doctrines.

But no, the above offered quotations refute that. It's true that late 18th Cen. Anglicanism supported the idea of the Bible as divinely inspired in an inerrant, infallible sense (something to which Jay apparently believed). It also made the Trinity central to its creed. AND relied on official creeds like the Athanasian Creed and 39 Articles of Faith to clarify just how they interpreted Word of God. And those, apparently, to Jay at that point in his life, meant little if anything to him.

In that letter to Rev. Samuel Miller, Jay was being a very bad orthodox Anglican from that perspective. If he affirmed the Trinity from Sola Scriptura but disregarded the creeds and 39 Articles of Faith, we could say Jay was being a good orthodox Christian, but not a very good Anglican (that's what evangelicals might wish because, as mostly non-Anglicans, they don't care about Anglican doctrine). But he doesn't even do that. Rather, he sounds more like a quasi-Quaker whose belief in "no creed but the Bible" led them to be wobbly on the Trinity and other orthodox doctrines.

But anyway, the Jay quotes support the notion that many late 18th Cen. American orthodox Churches functioned as social networks and members and affiliates didn't necessarily believe in what their churches held as a matter of official doctrine. The official doctrines of those churches CANNOT be used as shortcuts to determine what the Founders believed.

John Jay: America's First Chief Justice

Today, September 24 marks the 221st anniversary of President George Washington's nomination of John Jay to be the first Chief Justice of the United States. A respected attorney and noted negotiator (he helped with the treaty negotiations that ended the War for Independence), John Jay possessed a brilliant mind and a solid reputation. As co-author of The Federalist, he was a logical choice for the newly established Supreme Court.

Jay's appointment was made possible, when on the same day (September 24, 1789), Congress passed the first Judiciary Act under the new Constitution of the United States, which established six seats on the Supreme Court of the United States and a network of inferior courts to round out the judicial branch of government. President George Washington responded to this by immediately nominating John Jay as Chief Justice and naming John Rutledge, William Cushing, John Blair, Robert Harrison, and James Wilson to be associate justices.

Though Jay was a conscientious and dedicated Chief Justice, his most notable achievement during his years on the Supreme Court had nothing to do with the Court, but rather his role as principal negotiator with the at-the-time hated "Jay Treaty." Jay's efforts, though highly controversial, helped secure a much-needed peace with Great Britain, postponing a war that the nascent United States could ill afford to fight. That peace would last until 1812.

When Jay left the Court, he found himself elected governor of New York, where he fought for penal and judicial reform as well as the abolition of slavery. Jay declined a reappointment to the Supreme Court in 1800, citing the health of his wife. He retired from active politics and died in 1829.

John Jay's contributions to the formation of the United States are noteworthy and deserving of our respect. These words, summing up the legacy of the American Revolution and the cause of popular government in America, echo through the centuries in a way that remain as relevant today as ever before...

"The people are Sovereign. ... at the Revolution, the sovereignty devolved on the people; and they are truly the sovereigns of the country, but they are sovereigns without subjects... with none to govern but themselves; the citizens of America are equal as fellow citizens, and as joint tenants in the sovereignty."

Would the Puritans Have Executed John Adams For His Religious Heresy?

I dunno. But they said they would.

This article by Joseph Farah commits a common error among "Christian Americanists" confusing the "Founding" of America -- the Declaration of Independence -- with the "Planting" -- the Mayflower Compact and establishment of Puritan Massachusetts.

The Mayflower Compact was done under the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, something the American Founding repudiated.

Read the link and see the MC begins:

In the name of God, Amen. We, whose names are underwritten, the Loyal Subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord, King James, by the Grace of God, of England, France and Ireland, King, Defender of the Faith, e&. Having undertaken for the Glory of God, and Advancement of the Christian Faith,...

And ends:

In Witness whereof we have hereunto subscribed our names at Cape Cod the eleventh of November, in the Reign of our Sovereign Lord, King James of England, France and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Domini, 1620.

Exactly what America rebelled against in 1776.

The 1641 Massachusetts Body of Liberties [arguably SIC] details the Christian content of their "Shining City on a Hill." Whatever the validity of the modern analogies between Christian conservatism and the Taliban, this code reads like a true American Taliban.

94. Capitall Laws.

1.

(Deut. 13. 6, 10. Deut. 17. 2, 6. Ex. 22.20)
If any man after legall conviction shall have or worship any other god, but the lord god, he shall be put to death.

2.

(Ex. 22. 18. Lev. 20. 27. Dut. 18. 10.)
If any man or woeman be a witch, (that is hath or consulteth with a familiar spirit,) They shall be put to death.

3.

(Lev. 24. 15,16.)
If any person shall Blaspheme the name of god, the father, Sonne or Holie Ghost, with direct, expresse, presumptuous or high handed blasphemie, or shall curse god in the like manner, he shall be put to death.

[Page 274]

In particular it's the third under which the Puritans would have executed or at least threatened to execute John Adams, arguably the majority of the drafting board of the Declaration of Independence (Jefferson, Franklin, and Adams were all theological unitarians).

As Adams blasphemed:

"The Trinity was carried in a general council by one vote against a quaternity; the Virgin Mary lost an equality with the Father, Son, and Spirit only by a single suffrage."

-- John Adams to Benjamin Rush, June 12, 1812.

"If I understand the Doctrine, it is, that if God the first second or third or all three together are united with or in a Man, the whole Animal becomes a God and his Mother is the Mother of God.

"It grieves me: it shocks me to write in this stile upon a subject the most adorable that any finite Intelligence can contemplate or embrace: but if ever Mankind are to be superior to the Brutes, sacerdotal Impostures must be exposed."

-- John Adams to Francis van der Kemp, October 23, 1816.

George Washington & The French Revolution

Another repost to The One Best Way here.

This post hits on an historical dynamic I've uncovered that I don't think is too well appreciated (why I stress it). One could argue the American Founding was authentically Christian, the French was not. OR, that neither were authentically Christian. OR that BOTH were authentically Christian. But as a matter of what was said, BOTH the French and American revolutions and republics were identified, perhaps crassly so, with "Christianity." Indeed there is rich literature of giants from the era arguing the "Christian" case for the French Revolution. Even if they were right, John Adams and Edmund Burke were the outliers. And it wasn't just the Enlightenment Unitarian Christians Joseph Priestley and Richard Price who argued the "Christian" case for the French Revolution (though they did). It was also orthodox Christians like Ezra Stiles as well.

President Obama Drops "Creator" From The Declaration of Independence

In a speech given to the Congressional Hispanic Caucus at its 33rd annual gala, President Barack Obama cites the preamble to the Declaration of Independence in an effort to cite the values that unite all Americans and make us strong...



Many conservatives have savaged Obama for intentionally dropping "Creator" from the preamble. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. I don't think he misquoted the Declaration of Independence intentionally. As a pastor, I sometimes find myself accidentally mangling a Bible verse or a quote - even at times a passage with which I'm normally very familiar. That kind of thing can happen when you're speaking in public. (We all remember how Chief Justice Roberts mangled the presidential oath, right?) So, I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt. It's also possible there was a mistake with the Teleprompter.

Nevertheless, the mistake is worth acknowledging. It's worth pointing out, because the principle at stake is no small matter. According to the Founding Fathers, people are not "endowed" with "unalienable rights" by happenstance, evolution, majority consent, or the government. According to Thomas Jefferson and the Second Continental Congress, our fundamental rights come from the Creator.

As Jefferson famously asked in his Notes on Virginia: "Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God?"

That a human being's fundamental rights come from a divine, intelligent Creator is a core value central to the nation's founding and one our government and all American Presidents should embrace.

Jefferson’s Syncretism & Adams’ Belief in Biblical Errancy

Another repost to The One Best Way here.

Is the God of the Bible a Heptagon?

This somewhat tangentially relates to what we are trying to study here. So I'll direct you to read it at my other group blog.

Joe Farah Commits The Fundamentalist Fallacy

On "rights & God." I've blogged about this before but think I will mention it again because it's a line of reasoning common among conservative evangelicals who wish to claim the American Founding, especially the Declaration of Independence (and many more sophisticated Christian conservatives reject the DOI for reasons similar to what I'm about to write).

Farah debated a gay conservative leader of GOProud and tried to invoke the American Founding, in particular the DOI. The Founding Fathers did not support gay rights (a concept unknown to them) and, from what I've seen didn't think too much about homosexuality, which remained deep in the closet. Sodomy laws had long been on the books and the FFs didn't give much thought to removing them. Jefferson, apparently, supported making sodomy a non-capital crime in a proposed revision to the VA criminal code, a code that also sought to decriminalize bestiality. You can google what that reduction for sodomy was.

I haven't seen any evidence that one person was executed in post Founding America (I'm not even sure about pre-Founding America) for the crime of sodomy. And the Cato Institute, in their brief submitted in Lawrence v. Texas, argued (unrebutted so far) that sodomy law prosecutions/convictions invariably involved men raping other males, which may explain why Jefferson wanted to decriminalize bestiality, but not sodomy.

Still, the laws did their damage in other ways and are rightly off the books.

Where I think Farah errs is his philosophy of rights/God/the DOI. It goes something like this: 1) Rights come from God; 2) God tells us what is sin in the Bible; 3) therefore there can not be a "right" to do what the Bible forbids. Proof text, proof text, proof text the Bible. That's what Farah argued during the debate.

The problem with this sentiment is manifold. Leaving aside the issues of whether God exists and whether the Bible is true, it's not what the Bible says; it's not what the DOI said; and it's not what the Founders said or did as a matter of principle. And the Founders wisely avoided this method (prooftexting the Bible to find what our unalienable rights are) because it didn't work for them, and in fact was what they were trying to get away from.

First, the Bible doesn't mention the concept of unalienable rights. And many smart evangelical/fundamentalists reject the concept for this very reason. I know you can construct a theological case for unalienable rights based on Imago Dei, in the same way you can construct other theological doctrines that are disputed on Sola Scriptura, and other theological grounds, like original sin or TULIP. But the first step for proof-texting evangelicals is to realize the Bible doesn't specifically mention the concept of unalienable rights.

Second, the DOI says that men have unalienable rights to life, liberty (meaning political liberty) and the pursuit of happiness. But it does not cite verses and chapters of Scripture for that or any proposition and does not identify God as Jehovah or the God of the Bible. The DOI does not say "look it up in the Bible" to determine the special content of our unalienable rights.

Third, the Founding Fathers recognized men had an unalienable right to do wrong in some instances, or at least what many orthodox (and non-orthodox) Christian believed to be wrong. The rights of conscience were the most "unalienable" of liberty rights. And holding that your neighbor has the right to worship God (or not) according to his conscience and to freely speak his mind on why he so does invariably grants men a right to break the first table in the Ten Commandments, most notably the First Commandment itself.

The Founding Fathers believed in granting the right to worship universally, to Christians and non-Christians. That includes Jews, Muslims, Hindus. Most orthodox Christians believe Hindus worshipped false gods (I suppose there is always a potential Acts 17:23 defense for Hindus, seems a stretch though). Many, but not all, orthodox Christians believe Muslims worship a different God. And a few notable orthodox Christian theologians believe Jews worship a different god than Christians because Jews don't worship a Triune God.

Back then, I think more orthodox Christians -- at least the theologians -- would agree Jews and Christians worshipped different gods. And here is where the unitarian controversy which I am so fond of writing about is relevant. The second and third American Presidents were militant unitarians. The first and fourth may well have been unitarians (certainly they never spoke in overtly Trinitarian language) and Ben Franklin politely and gently affirmed unitarian doctrines. Even if their views were "unrepresentative" of the larger era, the fact that played such prominent roles (among other things, they wrote the DOI) means American political-theology had to fully accommodate them.

When reading the theological debates of that era, we see the unitarians and trinitarians accused one other of breaking the First Commandment, of worshipping different gods. The orthodox theologians argued God was Triune in nature, and hence unitarians (and Jews, logically speaking) worshipped different gods. Since God is Triune, their gods (those of any non-Trinitarian) were false.

The unitarians were more generous in recognizing trinitarians worshipped the one true God of the Universe whenever they worshipped God the Father. But worshipping Jesus as God was 100% sinful idolatry (to the more pious unitarian; the more latitudinarian unitarians probably thought worshipping Jesus as God more silly than sinful) and wrongly took rightful worship away from the Father -- the only Person who deserved to be worshipped as God.

So granting religious liberty to unitarians & trinitarians alone necessarily means giving men an unalienable right to sin according to each's respective understanding of the Bible.

Finally, the Founding Fathers, especially when they moralized, rarely cited verses and chapters of scripture as "proofs" to settle things. Rather they preferred speaking in a more general philosophical language of "Nature" as discovered by man's reason. (This is not to say that they didn't speak in biblical metaphor -- they commonly did, even, indeed especially Thomas Paine, when talking politics.) And that's because they knew just how disputed, just how much blood had been shed over sectarian religious squabbles, especially those where the parties disagreed on how to interpret Scripture.

The Founders recognized, contra many of today's conservative evangelicals, it's not just so "easy" to look something up in the Bible to settle things. The Bible is one thick, complicated book that lends itself to multiple interpretations, some more "literal" than others. After Rome lost its monopoly on political theological matters, the Christian West went to war in literal and figurative senses over matters of sectarian biblical interpretation.

For instance, there are powerfully convincing arguments in Christendom that hold Romans 13's prohibition on revolt is absolute, that what the FFs did against Great Britain -- indeed what they said God gave them a right to do -- was as sinful as witchcraft. In this sense, the American Founding was anti-Christian and anti-biblical. The Christians in England and the many (perhaps as many as 1/3!) who remained loyalists in America were sympathetic to this understanding of Scripture which for all we know is the "right" one.

But the Founders had no interest in that method of debate. "Nature" had already determined that men had an unalienable right to revolt against tyrants. So go back and interpret the Bible accordingly, even if, as Rev. Samuel West instructed in 1776, we have to conclude that St. Paul was joking in Romans 13.

The Founders removed revelation from politics; that was the only way to solve the political theological sectarian wars based on how to properly interpret revelation. Government therefore would no longer care whether the Bible really taught original Sin, TULIP, Trinity, eternal damnation. And any political matters that stemmed therefrom was consigned to the realm of private conscience.

The bottom line is, in order to make an "American" argument you have to do better than "the Bible says it's sin, therefore there can be no right to it." No, the American Founders held, as a matter of principle, in certain circumstances, men had an unalienable God given political liberty right to do what the Bible terms sin. The alternative was to continue religious persecution and sectarian bloodshed.

Quote of the day: on education, religion and liberty

"The only foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be laid in religion. Without this there can be no virtue, and without virtue there can be no liberty."

- Benjamin Rush (1746-1814), American founding father. 

Continental Comedy

"Mind your business."


Those Founders really
crack me up.

Happy Independence Day to Mexico

This is slightly off topic, but today is the bicentennial of Mexico's independence from Spain. 

Two hundred years ago, Catholic priest Miguel Hidalgo, inspired by the American and French revolutions, issued "the cry" ("el Grito de Dolores") that began Mexico's struggle to free itself from colonial rule.  Sadly, this year's celebrations have been somewhat subdued given the narco-violence plaguing the country.  While Mexico has its problems, it is heir to a magnificent civilization and can be a great nation, one with a bright future if it can finally deal with the threats to public order and establish the rule of law.

So, on this anniversary of the independence of our fellow republic here in North America, here's hoping that such reforms will come to pass, and that Mexico will continue to rise.  ¡Viva México! ¡Viva Independencia!

"Mr. Jefferson I Know You are a Deist...Right?"

In light of some of the recent discussions on Jefferson I thought this might be an appropriate post. It's based on some earlier stuff that I have written but also includes some new material.

Bill Baker of Colonial Williamsburg is well known for his portrayal of President Thomas Jefferson. As can be expected of any person portraying Jefferson, Baker is well-acquainted with questions regarding Jefferson's religious beliefs. In the following video, Baker (Jefferson) is posed a question by an audience member who asks, "Mr. Jefferson, I know that you are a Deist. I'm wondering if this was the reason for your editing the Bible as we know it into your own version of the Bible?"

Mr. Jefferson's (Baker's) response is quite interesting. See for yourself:

The question is asked at 1:33 seconds.


For the most part, I agree with Bill Baker's depiction of Jefferson. However, I think that he oversimplified things just a bit (probably due to time constraints as he couldn't rant for hours on one single question). For me personally, Jefferson has always been a bit of an enigma. When I first started studying early American history years ago I hated Jefferson. Now he is my favorite founder of them all. And when it comes to his religious beliefs I believe that one cannot understand the man by simply skimming the surface. You must dive deep into the man to truly understand what he was all about.

And when it comes to his religion, I believe that Jefferson can be best understood and appreciated with the following four points:

1.) Jefferson loved Jesus but not Christianity.

2.) Jefferson loved scripture but despised its priestly/pastoral interpretation.

3.) Jefferson believed in reason and not faith.

4.) Jefferson embraced the internal benefits of religious devotion but detested the outward demonstrations of Christian zealots.

In short, I believe that in addition to his Christian and deist leanings, Jefferson was deeply influenced by his belief in CHRISTIAN RESTORATIONISM, which caused Jefferson to accept what he believed were the true doctrines of Christ and to reject the distorted orthodoxy of his day.

Point #1: Jefferson loved Jesus, but not Christianity:
For Jefferson, the religion of Jesus Christ was simple. In its purest form it represented (to Jefferson) the greatest philosphical strategy for acheiving harmony in one's life. However, Jefferson did not believe that organized Christianity was the vehicle by which Christ's teachings were to be taught to the mases. Quite the contrary. In fact, Jefferson believed that organized Christianity had actually distorted and ruined the teachings of Jesus. As he stated in an 1818 letter to Wells and Lilly of the Classical Press:

"I make you my acknowledgement for the sermon on the Unity of God, and am glad to see our countrymen looking that question in the face. it must end in a return to primitive Christianity" [my emphasis].

Jefferson's desire to return to the roots of "primitive Christianity" were the result of his conviction that the Christian religion had strayed from the true doctrine of Jesus Christ. As Jefferson stated on another occasion:

"The religion-builders have so distorted and deformed the doctrines of Jesus, so muffled them in mysticisms, fancies and falsehoods, have caricatured them into forms so monstrous and inconceivable, as to shock reasonable thinkers...Happy in the prospect of a restoration of primitive Christianity, I must leave to younger athletes to encounter and lop off the false branches which have been engrafted into it by the mythologists of the middle and modern ages." [my emphasis]. (Thomas Jefferson, The writings of Thomas Jefferson, vol. 7, H.A. Washington, ed., pp210, 257).

Later in his life, in a letter to Francis van der Kemp, Jefferson stated:

"I trust with you that the genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practised by himself. very soon after his death it became muffled up in mysteries, and has been ever since kept in concealment from the vulgar eye" [my emphasis].

For Jefferson, true Christianity was not to be had in the ceremonial rituals of communion or the Calvinist doctrine of grace. Instead good works and moral behavior were the TRUE doctrine of a Christian:

"My fundamental principle would be the reverse of Calvin's, that we are to be saved by our good works which are within our power, and not by our faith which is not within our power."
(Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Parker, May 15, 1819).

As evidenced above, Jefferson's love for Jesus came not from a pious devotion to orthodoxy, but from a sincere appreciation of his life philosophy. Jefferson believed that Christ's teachings were to be admired and emulated, not wrapped up in ceremonial liturgy. With regards to the morals of Jesus, Jefferson stated:

"It is the innocence of his character, the purity and sublimity of his moral precepts, the eloquences of his inculcations, the beauty of the apologues in which he conveys them, that I so much admire."

It was in his admiration of the example and doctrine of Jesus, not his devotion to pious orthodoxy, that Jefferson developed a love for Jesus. Perhaps Steven Waldman, author of the book, Founding Faith, points to Jefferson's love of Jesus best when he writes:

"Jefferson was driven to edit the Bible the way a parent whose child has been kidnapped is driven to find the culprit. Jefferson loved Jesus and was attempting to rescue him" (Founding Faith, 73).

Point #2: Jefferson loved scripture but despised its priestly/pastoral interpretation:

In my opinion, there can be little doubt that Thomas Jefferson was a supporter of scripture. The simple fact that Jefferson spent so many years tediously dissecting the Bible to fit his personal beliefs is evidence of this fact. While there is no doubt that Jefferson's "tinkering" with the Bible has caused Christians to take an antagonistic stance against Jefferson, it is still worth analyzing the motives behind Jefferson's Bible editing.

As Steven Waldman stated in the quotation noted above, Jefferson's intentions behind altering the Bible were based on his belief that Christianity had strayed from the original teachings of Christ. As Jefferson stated in a letter to Samuel Kercheval in 1810:

"But a short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandizing their oppressors in Church and State: that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves: that rational men, not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do, in fact, constitute the real Anti-Christ."

And to John Adams in 1813, Jefferson wrote:

"It is too late in the day for men of sincerity to pretend they believe in the Platonic mysticisms that three are one, and one is three; and yet that the one is not three, and the three are not one . . . But this constitutes the craft, the power and the profit of the priests. Sweep away their gossamer fabrics of factitious religion, and they would catch no more flies. We should all then, like the Quakers, live without an order of priests, moralize for ourselves, follow the oracle of conscience, and say nothing about what no man can understand, nor therefore believe."

It is clear that the reasons behind Jefferson's desire to "edit" the Bible were motivated out of his distrust for pious Christian leaders and from his sincere belief that Christianity had fallen from its true course.

When it comes to the Jefferson Bible, it is interesting to note just what kind of changes he chose to make. Clearly Jefferson did not intend to write his own version of the Bible, but instead hoped to recover some of the "missing" or "altered" truths that had been lost over time. Again, Jefferson hoped to RESTORE the true nature of Christ's religion as it was once contained in the Bible of old. A good example of Jefferson's passion to "correct" the Bible can be found in his 1823 letter to John Adams, in which he states:

"[A]nd his doctrine of the Cosmogony of the world is very clearly laid down in the 3 first verses of the 1st. chapter of John, in these words, `{en arche en o logos, kai o logos en pros ton Theon kai Theos en o logos. `otos en en arche pros ton Theon. Panta de ayto egeneto, kai choris ayto egeneto ode en, o gegonen}. Which truly translated means `in the beginning God existed, and reason (or mind) was with God, and that mind was God. This was in the beginning with God. All things were created by it, and without it was made not one thing which was made'. Yet this text, so plainly declaring the doctrine of Jesus that the world was created by the supreme, intelligent being, has been perverted by modern Christians to build up a second person of their tritheism by a mistranslation of the word {logos}. One of it's legitimate meanings indeed is `a word.' But, in that sense, it makes an unmeaning jargon: while the other meaning `reason', equally legitimate, explains rationally the eternal preexistence of God, and his creation of the world. Knowing how incomprehensible it was that `a word,' the mere action or articulation of the voice and organs of speech could create a world, they undertake to make of this articulation a second preexisting being, and ascribe to him, and not to God, the creation of the universe."

In addition to pointing out where he believed the original translation of the Bible had gone wrong, Jefferson often took the liberty of changing certain parts of the Bible's text in an effort to make it sound more "Christ-like." For example, instead of keeping the biblical verse found in Matthew 5: 48, which states, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect," Jefferson removed the verse completely and then added what was a twist of Luke 6: 36 when he wrote "Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful." Clearly Jefferson felt that a number of biblical texts had been changed to pollute or subjugate the minds of mankind.

When it comes to the Jefferson Bible, it is also important to note the fact that all of Jesus' miracles -- i.e. raising Lazarus from the dead, turning water into wine, walking on water, etc. -- were removed from Jefferson's final draft. This helps to clearly illustrate the fact that Jefferson, despite his devotion to the example and doctrine of Christ, never acknowledged him as divine or as the savior of mankind. In fact, Jefferson even stated to his friend, John Adams, that:

“The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.” (Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, April 11, 1823).

For all of his praise and devotion to Jesus and his teachings, Jefferson never publicly recognized him as the Son of God.

Point #3: Jefferson believed in reason and not faith:

As one of the quintessential Enlightenment thinkers of early America, it should come as no surprise that Thomas Jefferson favored reason to faith. As mentioned above, Jefferson's removal of all miracles from his draft of the Bible suggests that he put little to no stock in faith-based stories, which he undoubtedly considered to be fables. In addition, Jefferson admonished his family and friends to put their trust in reason, not faith. As he wrote to Peter Carr in 1787:

"Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favour of novelty & singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, & the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears & servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear...Read the bible then, as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy & Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature does not weigh against them. But those facts in the bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from god." [My emphasis].

Point #4: Jefferson embraced the internal benefits of religious devotion but detested the outward demonstrations of Christian zealots:

This final point was perhaps the biggest pet-peeve of all for Thomas Jefferson. For a man that fought for religious freedom and equality, Jefferson could also not help but notice how overly-pious expressions of religion had caused the world a great deal of harm. As he states in his Notes on the State of Virginia:

“Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined, and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.”

For Jefferson, religion best served mankind when it was left to the individual and not the clergy:

"Say nothing of my religion. It is known to God and myself alone. Its evidence before the world is to be sought in my life" (Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, January 11, 1817).

In Jefferson's mind, this was the only true way to be a Christian. As Jesus himself had admonished to, "Take heed that ye do not your alms before men" (Matthew 6:1). With this in mind, it is understandable why Thomas Jefferson would refer to himself as a "true Christian." As he stated in a letter to Benjamin Rush:

"I am a Christian, in the only sense he wished any one to be; sincerely attached to his doctrines, in preference to all others; ascribing to himself every human excellence; & believing he never claimed any other."

In conclusion, Thomas Jefferson's religion was anything but simple. Defining him exclusively as a deist or any other label is both counterproductive and incomplete. Clearly Jefferson was influenced to a degree by deism, Christianity, U(u)nitarianism, etc. With that said, it is essential that we recognize the passionate devotion to RESTORATIONISM that literally guided Jefferson's walk through his personal labyrinth of religious devotion. Jefferson's love and admiration for the doctrines of Jesus, along with his appreciation of scripture, devotion to reason, and his appeal to private communion with God, all helped to shape Jefferson's religious perspective. By advocating a return to the original doctrines of Christ, Jefferson's Christian RESTORATIONISM is as important to his overall religious DNA as were deism and Christianity.