Ironies
Jonathan Rowe on Jan 28th 2007
When Bishops, a generation after Hobbes’s death, almost naturally spoke the language of the state of nature, contract and rights, it was clear that he had defeated the ecclesiastical authorities, who were no longer able to understand themselves as they once had.
– Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, pp. 141-42
Jay Rogers, the Christian Reconstructionist from my previous posts, and I have been cordially exchanging emails. His info seems to confirm what I already knew: except for Gary North, all of the other major figures in that movement argue that “theonomy” is completely in line with Founding principles and they otherwise swallow hard the “Christian America” thesis.
I find this ironic because I always considered CRs to be the most “literal” of the fundamentalists who argue for the “purest” reading of the Bible, even willing to defend those “scary” verses that other evangelicals argue are no longer relevant in today’s day and age. (And yes, I know I have conservative evangelical and Catholic readers who think the CRs’ reading of the Bible to be unsound).
As I’ve learned in the email exchange, their embrace of the “Christian Nation” thesis arguably has diluted the “purity” of their reading of the Bible. Mark Noll, the premier evangelical scholar once noted, similar to the above quotation by Bloom, “In 1700 religion had been an ‘exporter’ of ideas and behavior patterns to American society; by 1800 it was an ‘importer.’”
Reconstructionists and Christian America advocates argue that even men of the Enlightenment like Jefferson and Franklin were influenced by the “Biblical worldview.” And while that is true to some qualified extent, the converse, suggested by Bloom and Noll, is likewise true: that even “men of the Bible” — the orthodox Christians — were influenced by “Enlightenment” ideas. Contra the claim that it was the “Great Awakening” that sparked off the American Revolution, the leading clergy preaching “patriotic” sermons — Mayhew, Chauncey, Gay, and West — were theological opponents of Edwards and his Great Awakening. Arguably, as theological unitarians, they weren’t “Christians” at all. By 1776 unitarianism, universalism, and Arminianism were already firmly entrenched in the New England Clergy. And Calvin’s influence had begun to wane. These “enlightened” preachers, like our key Founders, elevated man’s reason over revelation and otherwise took a cafeteria approach to the Bible, especially when they argued, contra Romans 13, for a right to revolt.
One orthodox Christian committed to defending the notion that a right to revolt is “Biblical” told me that even if Mayhew et al. weren’t “Biblical” in their unitarianism, their sermons on the right to revolt were (hence, Mayhew and company were “Biblical” in their worldview). I argued, again, we could view the issue conversely. Calvinism and Christian orthodoxy, though on the wane in New England by 1776, certainly weren’t dead. And some/many notable patriotic Whig preachers were traditional orthodox Christians and Calvinists. Ezra Stiles comes to mind. Samuel Langdon (I’m still reading up on him) was also a notable patriotic preacher and I think an orthodox Christian. Yet, Stiles and Langdon likewise “imported” Enlightenment philosophy not only into their patriotic preaching but into their readings of the Bible itself.
Mr. Rogers, while attempting to argue that the Founders modeled our government on Biblical principles, seems to endorse wholesale the contents of Samuel Langdon’s sermon entitled THE REPUBLIC OF THE ISRAELITES AN EXAMPLE TO THE AMERICAN STATES. From the title alone we should see a problem with the soundness of Langdon’s sermon as the Ancient Israelites did not have a Republic. This sermon, while sounding very nice, constitutes a mythic account of the Ancient Iraelites, not at all supported by the text of the Bible. In short, even orthodox Christians could, like the unitarians whose specialty was an unorthodox/cafeteria biblical hermeneutic, play “fast and loose” with biblical texts to fit their Whig-republican propaganda. Nothing in the Bible suggests that the Israelites as “a people” consented to the Kings or elders that God unilaterally put in charge to rule over them. Though, this is exactly what patriotic preachers like Langdon argued.
As I noted to Mr. Rogers, of course, in a nation with many orthodox Christians and where the Bible was important, and given the natural religious impulse in man, the revolutionaries would argue that God/the Bible was on their side. The anti-revolutionary Tories also had preachers on their side and without question their “literal” interpretation of the Bible was as sound if not sounder than the Whig/republican interpretation.
Arguably, this importing of “a-Biblical” Enlightenment philosophy into the Bible constituted an “abuse” of the Bible. And one would think that Christians devoted to a “pure” reading of the Bible would reject it.
Filed in The Belfry, The Bench, The Bureau
Hi Jon,
I’m a regular over at Dispatches. Thanks for this post. I watched the Philips 4 of 4 YouTube video but couldn’t post my rather lengthy comment at YouTube; I did post the below on Roger’s blog, though posts are screened there first, so here is what I wrote:
Hello Mr. Rogers,
I found your channel by way of the Positive Liberty Blog, which I occasionally read. I am a regular reader of Ed Brayton’s blogs, all of which can be found at scienceblog.com’s “Dispatches from the Culture War”. Thank-you for putting these videos up on YouTube, there has been a dearth of CR content available to study so it is much appreciated by me, though I must admit that as a secular libertarian (emphasis on small l), you folks scare me.
Howard Philips 4 of 4 video was quite surprising to me in regards to your cause’s objectives regarding the delegation of federal enumerated powers via our federal constitution and his claimed support of strictly limiting those powers. It was my understanding that CRs want to implement their understanding of God’s law in American society as a matter of law and policy. Mr. Philips’ points in this particular video could have been made by a Christian Libertarian, even going so far as stating, “This is not moral imperialism; this is liberty”. Mr. Philips claims appear to be contradictory to my assumptions regarding CR’s objectives in general.
For example, how do I reconcile Mr. Philip’s claim “We want the federal government to be limited to its delegated enumerated powers” with, for example, your cause’s professed desire to use government power to deny gay people their individual, equal rights? I’m particularly concerned about the government denying gays the right to exercise their liberty and contract/property rights in terms both with their spouse and with their spouse’s children, along with their childrens’ equal protection rights.
My understanding of the founding American ideal of liberty is that “the people” reserved our rights with the exception of strictly enumerated powers we delegated to government upon ratification of the Constitution, mainly to leverage the power of government to protect individual rights. We further protect these rights by way of a very unwieldy constitutional amendment process and the creation of a judicial branch which Hamilton and Madison structured primarily to protect Americans’ individual rights from the temptation of tyranny from both the executive branch (imperialism) and the democratic legislative branch (Madison in fact believed tyranny of the majority was a equal threat to monarchial temptations by the executive and why he architected a republic). I’ve found that an excellent source for describing the original meaning of these founding ideals are best explained in libertarian constitutional scholar and author Randy Barnett’s The Lost Constitution; Barnett also argued Raich v. Ashcroft in front of SCOTUS. Of course notes on the constitutional debates, the 1st Congress records, and The Federalist are the primary source material; Barnett does the work of finding them.
It was my understanding that CRs did not support equal rights for gays or their children for religious reasons; particularly in the areas contract, liberty, and property rights . Mr. Philips’ words appear to contradict my assumption on your cause’s position. Which is correct?
Nothing in the Bible suggests that the Israelites as “a people” consented to the Kings or elders that God unilaterally put in charge to rule over them.
Let’s not be too harsh on the OT God. The Biblical account is that he favored a sort of informal rule in which great men rose to the occasion and then (apparently) faded into the background. It was the Israelites who asked for a king, and God who (in an almost libertarian fashion) warned them of all the abuses they would suffer as a result.
There are a number of good, scholarly works differentiating the “American” Enlightenment and the “European/British” Enlightenment traditions from Adrienne Koch’s work onward, and I don’t feel the need to point out the many differences in the framing of the “American” Enlightenment, Jonathan, save that many of the important influences ranging from the regicides, escaping from the clutches of the Stuart anger following the collapse of the Cromwell regime, the antiauthoritarian nature of the numerous smugglers coves and nascent black-market economy along the Atlantic coast, the religion of the various indian cultures, and the constant tide of immigrants from different parts of Britain and Europe escaping the Old Order, often adding their own variants on the Christian meme to the American stew, not even counting the possible “Masonic” notions as discussed in Margaret Jacob’s “Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe” (1991).
With all of the ripples and confluences in American thought, it is unlikely that one can point to solely one leading explanation, certainly not in the strict Christian Fundamentalist/Deist (or as you prefer, Orthodox Christian/Rational Theist) debate. One needs to look elsewhere.
Best to you,
Just a thought.
Just Ken
kgregglv@cox.net
http://classicalliberalism.blogspot.com
Thanks Ken.
Always appreciate your thoughts. And yes, I realize there is still much for me to study!
Jon - please check out Rogers’ reply to me. He’s already having to backtrack on the CR-lite swill they’re selling on YouTube. Here is the link:
https://www2.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=21682372&postID=4590337588651046501