Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Christian Influence on the American Revolution


            The Revolution is, in fact, an important starting point when learning American history. However, many of the building blocks that led to the birth of a new nation do not focus on the war itself, but rather the hearts and minds of the people leading up to and long after the war. Why Christianity had influenced the American Revolution is a controversial topic in today’s world of conflicting religions and secular humanist education, but the American Founders gleaned from a variety of sources, and the understanding of law was birthed in the mindset of a Creator God who fashioned the origin of Natural Law. Everything in life stems from an origin point, especially the subjects of truth and morality. The Americans of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries built upon the Bible’s understanding of mankind and shaped the American way of life and whose people have enjoyed so many liberties and benefits even today. Yet, human liberty was one of the most basic grievances of the American Revolution and why liberty is birthed out of a biblical mindset in the West is crucial in understanding the birth of the Revolution.
            Historians Gregory Nobles and William McLoughlin chronicled how the Great Awakening, of the early to mid-eighteenth century, influenced the American communities to take more active roles in religious and political affairs. While studying the sermons of the time, McLoughlin came to the conclusion that the Great Awakening had actually fostered the birth of the Revolution simply because the cry for freedom was a natural response to being biblically enlightened in this religious movement (Mangalwadi, 2011, p.380). The cause for freedom and the advancement of liberty after the Revolution gave way to the opportunities for further freedoms, as more evangelicals began to denounce, for example, slavery. The British revival led to their own ending of the slave trade with political help by Christian men such as William Wilberforce. The Second Great Awakening planted the seeds for ending American slavery under the tutelage of antislavery preachers such as Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney. Beecher’s daughter Harriet was the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Mangalwadi, 2011, p.267, 380).
            According to Vishal Mangalwadi, the very idea of human dignity in the West was discovered during the Renaissance. However, it was not the secular promotion of Greek and Latin classics that promoted liberty. This was uniquely a biblical concept (Mangalwadi, 2011, p.59-60). Religion writer Robert J. Hutchinson expounded upon this secular revisionism by pointing to Plato’s The Republic. Plato’s philosophy of the gods creating superior humans to rule inferior ones is in stark contrast to what Hutchinson refers to as human equality “derived from the basic theocentric values of the Hebrew scriptures and intensified in the teachings and deeds of the carpenter of Nazareth” (Hutchinson, 2007, p.183). Any philosophy where the superior humans rule any inferiors is simply the survival-of-the-fittest mentality, but it cannot be categorized as biblical and therefore has little to no bearing on the philosophical influences of the Founders, but it does have influence on the Enlightenment philosophers in Europe. Whereas Jesus called to everyone of every class (John 6:24), secular philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Friedrich Engels promoted the Platonic mindset by referring to Christianity as being made up of “slaves and uneducated persons” (Hutchinson, 2007, p.190), which the New Testament alone can verify as false, with Luke in Colossians 4:14 and Paul in Philippians 3:5, if one focuses on learned men of stature.
            However, this atheistic mindset, which does not reflect the New Testament verses referenced above, is contradicted by the educated American Founders who not only gleaned from many philosophers such as Marcus Tullius Cicero, Sir William Blackstone, Adam Smith, and John Locke, as well as “Greek, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, European, and English history” (Skousen, 1981, p.31-32), but they heavily sourced the Bible which had an undeniable influence on state constitutions. One example is that of Reverend Thomas Hooker. He wrote the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut, which he based upon Deuteronomy 1. This was the first modern constitutional charter, which was adopted in 1639. His work was not the only one, which drew from the Bible, but the Founders discovered how similar the ancient Israelites records were to that of the Anglo-Saxons’ laws (Skousen, 1981, p.15).  The American principles that took 180 years to build, from 1607 to 1787, were not perfect. It was flawed men who shaped them. Yet, independence was not what the Founders were initially striving for. Many of the Founders felt that America was a transfer of the seat of Empire or rather, an extension (Crocker, 2011, p. 32). However, as philosopher John Locke explains, “…Despotical power is an absolute, arbitrary power one man has over another, to take away his life whenever he pleases” (Locke, 2003, p.177). Hutchinson’s work in Chapters 10 & 11 of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Bible focuses on slavery and inalienable rights. The fact - that it was the British multi-denominational ministers who sought to purge slavery in Europe and European colonies - is proven by their biblical renunciation and proof that the Bible never endorsed anything the Southern colonists used to endorse slavery from the Scriptures (Hutchinson, 2007, 175-177). The year 1783 saw the Quakers present Parliament with the first anti-slavery petition and in the years that followed, Britain began to make her own changes in regard to the immoral act by focusing on Americans still holding slaves. This tactic, which was to draw people to “liberated” British soil, actually helped the abolition progress of men like the aforementioned William Wilberforce (Colley, 1992, p.352, 354).
 Author Stephen McDowell confirms the biblical understanding laid down in the Old Testament that “When slaves (indentured servants) were acquired under the law, it was their labor that was purchased, not their person, and the price took into account the year of freedom” (Lev. 25:44-55; Ex. 21:2; Deut. 15:12-13) (McDowell, 2003). This writer’s view is that some historians’ arguments to discredit the Founders on slavery are largely due to some of the Founders owning slaves themselves. However, the idea that they were all cruel in their treatment is inherently false. If all white slave owners of the era were inherently cruel and they all wished to own slaves, how did white, colonial Christians ever have a voice? Many of them were born into families that already owned slaves. In 1769, Jefferson tried to emancipate the slaves, as did some of the other colonies, but the Crown had passed a law in 1766 that denied any such action (McDowell, 2003). Here is an example of a moral quandary. Romans 13:1 states, “Let every soul be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.” However, as the Apostle Peter said, ““We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). If such a law was biblically immoral, how were a people that recognized such a “legal” law to proceed?
The belief in natural law was prevalent within a biblical society such as colonial America. Cicero was highly influential on the Founders’ formation of governmental principles. To him, Natural Law was simply an understanding that within the universal laws defined by a Supreme Creator, one must identify that there were “right rules of conduct.” This Supreme Creator gave the reasoning process to humanity and thus mankind shares, with the Creator, this rational process of identifying what the Declaration of Independence calls “the laws of nature and of Nature’s God” (Skousen, 1981, p.39). Since Cicero understood natural law to be true law, this is the conflict with the Enlightenment philosophers who espoused an atheistic approach to rationality. By confusing men with the notion that God does not exist, the natural belief in truth itself is important because mankind inherently seeks truth. The search for truth, in law, was prevalent in the Founders’ grievances written down in the Declaration. From a more deistic approach, Thomas Paine could not recall anywhere the apostles were to have recorded what God is (Paine, 2010, p.49). His earlier work of a more biblically grounded sense, the republican-supported Common Sense, can be ideologically contrasted with the deistic mindset prevalent in Age of Reason. Deism confuses the truth issue by leaving out the revelation standpoint of the entire Bible and denying the Trinity. Alexis de Tocqueville even pondered whether or not he could believe that God just made man, intent on leaving him in intellectual confusion and without answers (Tocqueville, 2003, p.22).
According to an actual Founding Father, Elias Boudinot, even from a standpoint of reason, the Bible indicates that fresh revelation based upon scripture is possible. In his rebuttal to Paine’s Age of Reason, Boudinot chronicles Tertullian and Lactantius’ explanation that “God created all things by his co-omnipotent Son: and the Christian Greeks emphatically call Christ the Logos, meaning both speech and reason, because he is the voice and wisdom of God” (Boudinot, 1801, p.53). Boudinot elaborates upon their research, in which even the philosophers of that era understood the word, logos, to mean the Creator of the world, which also meant Fate and God (Boudinot, 1801, p.53). So the apostles’ understanding of what God was is really explained by the Apostle John’s written word in John 1:1, “In the beginning was the word [logos], and the word was with God, and the word was God.” No moral issue, not slavery or anything else that is deemed morally incomprehensible, can be adequately explained without an understanding of truth, which the Founders gleaned, from a variety of sources that benefited from biblical knowledge & origin.
This understanding of truth coupled with the idea of the three branches of government segues into America’s influential philosophies birthing her segregation from Great Britain. The Greek political writer Polybius was the first known author to consider the strengths of each type of government: The monarchy with its strength to direct government administration, the aristocracy with wealth and interests in national development, and democracy with mass interest for which the other two could not exist (Skousen, 1981, p.194). However, Polybius never saw the three as able to come to equal fruition in what he proposed was a “mixed” constitution. No one is known to have resurrected this idea until the Baron Charles de Montesquieu. After he wrote The Spirit of Laws, it became clear that the Founders gleaned from him, but took his ideas, under the English law, even further. The result of executive, legislative, and judicial powers was represented in America’s three-headed eagle, yet it was fashioned by the Founders, such as John Adams, with the separation of powers in mind (Skousen, 1981, p.194-199). This separation became known as the three branches of government. According to Rosalie Slater, the Founders referenced Isaiah 33:22 which states, “For the Lord is our Judge, the Lord is our Lawgiver, the Lord is our King; he will save us.” Since the origin of natural law is biblically synonymous as originating with God, the New Testament stance that Jesus is recognized as Judge and King also made God the Lawgiver. This is one explanation as to why America was founded as a constitutional republic and not as a democracy (Slater, 1965, p.242).
These sources do not give lenience to the woes done by Americans to others, in times past or present, under the guise of a nation founded upon Christian principles. De Tocqueville found on his arrival in the early nineteenth century, far too many American fathers who neglected and abused their families. Yet it was under the Christian influence of men like Albert Finney in which another revival had begun to take place in America, turning the hearts of the fathers back toward their children (Mangalwadi, 2011, p.293).  This again returns to the subjects of truth & morality during the time of the Founders. The origin of each, which were considered so important to the people of the Founding & Revolutionary era, must be explained within a biblical context as the Enlightenment cannot adequately explain them. In regard to the Declaration and Constitution, the two documents actually compliment each other. In the charges listed against King George III in the Declaration, he violated three aspects found in the Constitution, which would be derived later.  According to Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn, representation, separation of powers, and limited government are all three arranged within the U.S. Constitution and they were the very grievances that were listed against the British king in the Declaration (Arnn, 2011, p.2-3).
            The interesting concept of revelation is found in Jesus’ words. Not only did he say that the reason he came to the earth was to testify to the truth (John 18:37), but also that he did what he saw the Father doing (John 5:19). This is a revelational concept based out of both the Old & New Testaments. Religion at the time of the Founders was unequivocally a plethora of Christian denominations. The revealed law that God established “takes precedence over man’s useful but flawed reason,” according to Sir William Blackstone, one of the most influential writers on English law that later shaped American law. Blackstone understood that faith and reason were interwoven through practical, legal, and political terms (Stacey, 2008, p.58, 61). When man comes to understand that natural law points to a Creator who fashioned its very conceptual existence, then biblically speaking, man realizes that regardless of governmental authority, all answer to God. This was something the Founders understood, as well as tried to establish, which resulted in revolutionizing the American colonies.
            The American Founders gleaned from a variety of sources, but the understanding of Law was birthed in the mindset of a Creator God who fashioned the origin of Natural Law. As it became increasingly clear that separation from Great Britain was going to be the only course of action, it was because King George III had violated the principles [as well as sent armed troops against his own subjects] that Americans knew were all of mankind’s divine right. As Declaration signer John Witherspoon stated, “On the part of America, there was not the most distant thought of subverting the government or of hurting the interest of the people of Great Britain; but of defending their own privileges from unjust encroachment; there was not the least desire of withdrawing their allegiance from the common sovereign [King George III] till it became absolutely necessary – and indeed, was his own choice” (Barton, 2008, p.93-94). When one reconciles the Christian faith with the basic concepts of liberty, if one is honest in searching for historical truth, one must assess whether or not the early American generations, up to and including the Founders, were right in their own assessment that Jesus is the Son of God and whether their claim to separation from Great Britain was biblically, morally, and truthfully grounded. According to this assessment, the Christian faith sparked the Revolution to begin revealing to mankind, once again, the notion of biblical freedom.

References
Arnn, L.P. (2011). The unity and beauty of the declaration and constitution. Imprimis, 40(12), 1-7.
Barton, D. (2008). Original intent: the courts, the constitution, and religion. Aledo, TX: Wallbuilders, Inc.
Boudinot, E. (1801). The age of revelation or the age of reason shewen to be an age of infidelity. Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision, Inc.
Colly, L. (1992). Britons: forging the nation 1707-1787. Great Britain, The Bath Press.
Crocker III, H.W. (2011). The politically incorrect guide to the British Empire. United States: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
De Tocqueville, A. (2003). Democracy in America and two essays on America. New York, NY: Penguin Group Publishing.
Hutchinson, R.J. (2007). The politically incorrect guide to the bible. United States: Regnery Publishing, Inc.
Locke, J. & Shapiro, I. (2003). Two treatises of government and a letter concerning toleration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. [Ashford University Library]
Mangalwadi, V. (2011). The book that made your world: how the bible created the soul of western civilization. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, Inc.
McDowell, S. (2003). The bible, slavery, and America’s founders. Retrieved on October 28, 2012, from http://www.wallbuilders.com/libissuesarticles.asp?id=120
Paine, T. (2010). The age of reason. United States: Watchmaker Publishing.
Skousen, W.C. (1981). The 5000 year leap. United States: National Center for Constitutional Studies.
Slater, R.J. (1965). Teaching and learning America’s christian history. New York, NY: Foundation for American Christian Education.
Stacey, R. D. (2008). Sir William Blackstone & the common law. Powder Springs, GA: The American Vision, Inc. 

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