Founding Father John Quincy Adams

Much has been said about the faith of John Q. Adams, whom the Father of our Country called "our greatest diplomat." Adams' faith was much like mine, and most every other Orthodox Christian; even his view on the Trinity:

The last was from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, dated the 7th instant, and announced the very sudden decease there, on the evening of the 6th, of Mr. Robert Little, the minister of the Unitarian church at Washington. He died, after an illness of little more than twenty-four hours, of an inflammation of the brain, after having preached morning and evening at Harrisburg, on Sunday, the 5th, the day before his death. This is an event deeply to be lamented by his congregation, of whom I was one. I had constantly attended on his ministration for the last seven years, though I had never formally joined his society. I did not subscribe to many of his doctrines, particularly not to the fundamental one of his Unitarian creed. I believe in one God, but His nature is incomprehensible to me, and of the question between the Unitarians and Trinitarians I have no precise belief, because no definite understanding.

-John Q. Adams, 6th President of the United States, Secretary of State, U.S. Senator 1803-1808, Minister to Holland, Russia, Portugal, Prussia, and Minister to Great Britain where he was Chief Negotiator for the Treaty of Ghent to end the War of 1812. Wrote the Monroe Doctrine. Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his diary ..., Volume 7. Aug. 13, 1827 [bold face mine]

His thoughts are not different from fundamentalist Christians today. Thinking about the Tri-unity of God can drive you nuts. It is no use to try and figure it out. This understanding is beyond our comprehension; as Adams fully attested. It is the rejection of that doctrine that is important. Much to my delight, Adams believed in Christ's Deity:

In the evening I attended again, at Mr. Little's, and heard him from Acts xvii. 11: "And searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so." He digressed from the historical narrative of the rise and progress of Christianity to discuss the question whether the doctrine of the Trinity had any warrant in Scripture. He chiefly considered Matthew xxviii. 19, and the first chapter of St. John's Gospel. But neither this, 1 See vol. iii. p. 370, note. nor any other argument that I ever heard, can satisfy my judgment that the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ is not countenanced by the New Testament. As little can I say that it is clearly revealed. It is often obscurely intimated; sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly, asserted; but left, on the whole, in a debatable state, never to be either demonstrated or refuted till another revelation shall clear it up.

-Memoirs of John Quincy Adams, comprising portions of his diary ..., Volume 7. Feb. 18, 1827. P. 228-229. [bold face mine]

From these comments, Adams was an Orthodox Christian, not a Unitarian. If he had no trouble with Christ's Deity, neither should he have of the Atonement. Without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sin. The Last Supper is in three of the four Gospels, with the atonement doctrine started by Abraham then Moses, although only a "covering". Besides Jesus claiming Deity, can someone without sin not be God and thus pay the penalty for violating God's Laws? Only a sinless man could be a sin-bearer. If blood does not atone for sin, what does? Works? The Founding Fathers believed "Merits" of a mediator cleansed man from sin. Did Calvinist Samuel Adams refer to works that took away our sin?

Merits must then refer to the Crucifixion.

Founding Father George Read

George Read (1733-1798) is one of our greatest men. He was one of only six men to sign both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. He was elected a U.S. Senator from 1789-1793. Read was the President of the Delaware State Constitutional Convention, where he wrote the rough draft of the State Constitution in 1776. A High-Federalist, Read wanted a strong central government, with a Constitution that strictly protected States' Rights. Once the Constitution granted his requests, his state was the first to ratify. Read was an Orthodox Christian, who died three days after his 65th birthday, and was buried at Immanuel Episcopal Churchyard.

Among Mr. Read's papers I find a document in his handwriting, indorsed "Original Draft of the System of Government of the Delaware State, with Amendments," which makes it certain that he framed this first Constitution of Delaware. These amendments are four in number, one of them being the paragraph of Article 22, requiring all officers, before entering on the execution of their offices, to make and subscribe a declaration of their faith in the doctrines of the trinity in unity, and the divine inspiration of the Holy Scriptures.  

-Life and Correspondence of George Read : A Signer of the Declaration of Independence; with notices of some of his contemporaries / by his grandson, William Thompson Read. P. 186-187. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1870.

65% of Doctors Surveyed Believe Healthcare Bill Bad

Would the Founding Fathers approve of mandating Americans to purchase health insurance? There is much pressure on changing the healthcare bill, however the Tea Party is determined to scrap it:

NEW YORK, NY and DARIEN, CT--(Marketwire - January 18, 2011) - The newly released 2011 Thomson Reuters - HCPlexus National Physicians Survey (NPS) links doctors' fears that their pay will go down under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called Healthcare Reform Act (HCRA), with their concerns that the quality of care will also deteriorate. The study includes responses from 2,958 doctors of varying specialties and practice types, from all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.

The NPS is the most comprehensive survey of physicians surrounding their thoughts on the future of healthcare, including ideas on the PPACA, Electronic Medical Records (EMR), and Accountable Care Organizations (ACO). Lower Pay Means Lower Quality Care. The NPS data show doctors' fear that the quality of care will deteriorate under PPACA and that their reimbursements (pay) will go down as well. When asked about the quality of healthcare in the U.S. over the next five years, 65 percent of the doctors believed it would deteriorate with only 18 percent predicting it would improve. Interestingly, consumer perception is far more optimistic, with close to 30 percent of consumers believing care will improve under PPACA.

Was Baron Von Steuben a Christian?

I read a history about Von Steuben, then stumbled across a quote I have never seen before concerning Timothy Pickering. Pickering was a unitarian, and Von Steuben is falsely linked to him. The author of this post did not invent this quote, but it is making the rounds.

Timothy Pickering, began to doubt his Puritan theology when he heard General von Steuben say that he would sooner believe in an absurdity than in the Trinity.

This quote is from:
http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&source=hp&q=von%20steuben%20pickering%20the%20trinity%20absurdity&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wp

It doesn't give any source, but I found the real quote from the Works of Pickering, Vol I. Here, is the actual quote absolving Von Steuben:

At that time the Trinitarian controversy had npt engaged the attention of Mr. Pickering. He had been brought up in the belief of the doctrine of the Trinity, and never heard the truth of it called in question until after he had joined the army in 1777; when one day he was startled by the remark of the late Peter S. Du Ponceau, on some questionable statement, that " he would as soon believe the doctrine of the Trinity." This induced Mr. Pickering to read on the subject and he thereupon became, and continued through life, a Unitarian. Without bigotry, he was a reverent believer in Christianity, never trifling with things sacred.

Just what was the faith of the Baron?

Philip Livingston: Excellence In Dignity

The Elegant Livingston

Philip Livingston (15 Jan. 1716-12 June 1778), was born into wealth and privilege by Calvinist parents, "the son of Philip Livingston, a merchant and proprietor of "Livingston Manor," and Catrina Van Brugh." Like his brothers, Livingston was a conservative whig, who feared chaos as a result from rebelling against Great Britain. He was:

An elder and a deacon of the Dutch Reformed church, Livingston was also a benefactor of New York's Anglican King's College and of the city's Presbyterian and Methodist congregations.

-Cynthia A. Kierner, Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675-1790 (1992)

The Livingston's supported Calvinism:

Cadwalader Colden was not the only Tory politician to observe with some asperity that all the popular leaders of his day were both lawyers and Presbyterians. That supreme conception of law and justice which is inherent in the creed of Calvin was the mainspring of the whole popular party in New York, just as it was the mainspring of the whole polity in New England. Without this leaven, New York colonial politics would have lacked form and direction and would have been little more than a puerile scramble of petty oligarchies..In ecclesiastical matters, the Livingstons and their comrades were sturdy Calvinists.

-Levermore, Charles H. The Whigs of Colonial New York American Historical Review 1 (January 1896): 238-50

It makes perfect sense, as pre-eminent 19th Century secular historian, George Bancroft declared, "Calvin founded America." Government in New York or anywhere, without the ideals promoted by Puritan Republicanism, could have squelched the Revolution. Calvin brought about: written constitutions, separation of powers, regular elections, the secret ballot, the federalist principle, religious toleration and separation of church and state.

He signed the Declaration of Independence, yet, did not live to see a free United States.

The First Amendment: A Christian Document on American Creation

American Creation blog did a post, unlike the majority of their posts, that reject the Founding Fathers were Orthodox Christian fundamentalists for heterodox men of the Enlightenment. Below, are some remarks from the post.

In fact, John Locke and James Madison even say that an atheist has no right to religious freedom, because he doesn't believe in the God who granted that freedom in the first place.

This is not an exaggeration, since no other religion gives religious freedom. This is a very important point secularist's fail to recognize. For the first 150 years, State courts were the authority in cases regarding the Bill of Rights. This is because the Bill of Rights were never applied to the States except starting in the mid-twentieth century. It follows there are few Federal court cases regarding the Bill of Rights. And when the feds ruled on a case they were quick to cite State courts. For instance, Updegraph v The Commonwealth (1824) Supreme Court of Pennsylvania was the first case cited in Holy Trinity:

In this the Constitution of the United States has made no alteration nor in the great body of the laws which was an incorporation of the common-law doctrine of Christianity. No free government now exists in the world unless where Christianity is acknowledged and is the religion of the country...Its foundations are broad and strong and deep...it is the purest system of morality, the firmest auxiliary, and only stable support of all human laws.

The author of the post's interpretation is correct. Even the morality of the nation was strictly Christian, as the courts proclaimed.

If the First Amendment enshrines religious liberty (which is doubtful, as I show above, regarding states v. the federal government), then the First Amendment is itself a Christian document.

The Father of the Bill of Rights tells us the context of the First Amendment:

[A]ll men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion, according to the dictates of conscience; and that no particular sect or society of Christians ought to be favored or established by law in preference to others.

-Col. George Mason. Kate Mason Rowland, The Life of George Mason (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1892, Vol. I, p.28.

The States already have control of establishment, and Christianity was the established religion:

In the minds of many, therefore, the purpose of the First Amendment was not to protect Jews or Muslims, but rather, to protect Protestants, by allowing them to continue to retain the power they already had on the state level, and to prevent any Protestant sects from competing for control of the national government's power over religion, which is to say, to equalize them all on the national level, but not on the state level.

The context then for the First Amendment must be Christianity, as Joseph Story explained, because no religion other than Christianity could have gained establishment. Quoting the Romans, or Greeks, does not diminish the influence of Christianity, rather, the framers believed Cicero, Aristotle, et al. aligned with Christianity. The framers did not included Roman or Greek philosophy in any part of the founding:

Sparta, Rome, and Carthage...These examples, though as unfit for the imitation, as they are repugnant to the genius, of America, are, notwithstanding, when compared with the fugitive and turbulent existence of other ancient republics, very instructive proofs of the necessity of some institution that will blend stability with liberty. I am not unaware of the circumstances which distinguish the American from other popular governments, as well ancient as modern; and which render extreme circumspection necessary, in reasoning from the one case to the other.

-James Madison, Federalist #63

Below, the author cites is eliminating God from the equation:

The Protestants could not limit themselves purely to social contract, because they refused to totally distance themselves from a view that all laws and morality come from God. They did not want to be pure legal positivists, that whatever the state says, goes. Over time, they grew to accept people who were not of the covenant, but they could never hold a purely secular view of social contract, that entirely divorces God altogether. Even Madison cited Martin Luther.

Was Gouverneur Morris A Rationalist?

Much has been said about the debauchery of Founding Father Gouverneur Morris. Until, his retirement, he did not live like a Christian, yet he called himself one:

As a good Christian I pray not to be led into it...

-The diary and letters of Gouverneur Morris, Minister of the United States to France. Vol II.

Morris was not shy to give his true beliefs for the Enlightenment's exaltation of man's reason:

Those who slaughtered their prince and made havoc of each other; those who endeavored to dethrone the King of Heaven and establish the worship of human reason, who placed, as representative on the altar which piety had dedicated to the holy virgin, and fell down and paid to her their adoration, were, at length, compelled to see and to feel, and, in agony, to own that there is a God. I cannot proceed. My heart sickens at the recollection of those horrors which desolated France. [bold face mine]

-An oration, delivered on Wednesday, June 29, 1814, at the request of a number of citizens of New-York : in celebration of the recent deliverance of Europe from the yoke of military despotism.

Morris believed in the Virgin Birth, with Reason subservient to the King of Heaven.

Here, is another quote I found from Morris, that shows his religion is beyond the scope of reason:

 ..Mr. Henry is most warm and powerful in Declamation being perfectly master of action Utterance and the Power of Speech to stir Men's Blood yet the Weight of Argument is so strong on the Side of Truth as wholly to destroy even on weak Minds the effects of his Eloquence but there are as you well know certain dark Modes of operating on the Minds of Members which like contagious Diseases are only known by their Effects on the Frame and unfortunately our moral like our ph[y]sical Doctors are often mistaken in their Judgment from Diagnostics..My Religion steps in where my Understanding falters and I feel Faith as I lose confidence. [Italics Mine]

-To Hamilton, June 13, 1788.     

A more closer look at this quote reveals his understanding the mind is flawed, and his religion begins where his reason cannot attain. The Enlightenment proclaimed reason and understanding over faith. The Gospel is for men like Morris, where works cannot accomplish, God gave Grace, through faith.

I am not aware of any proclamation in his later years affirming Christ. He obviously believed in the supernatural aspects of Christianity. However, did his head knowledge lead to faith and a virtuous life? How does his Last Will and Testament read?

More Deceit From Chris Rodda and Dispatches From The Culture Wars

Chris Rodda is at it again! She re-hashes the same "lies" about David Barton, oblivious to the fact, she is guilty of spreading the same junk. Here is a post she did June 7, 2010.  In this diatribe on Barton and the Christian Nationalists, she misses the trees for the forest. As I will show, Congress supported "a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools."

On January 21, 1781, Robert Aitken presented a "memorial" [petition] to Congress offering to print "a neat Edition of the Holy Scriptures for the use of schools."

Here is what Rodda writes:

There are many versions of this story floating around, all worded to mislead that Congress either requested the printing of the Bibles, granted Aitken permission to print them, contracted him to print them, paid for the printing, or had Bibles printed for the use of schools. Congress did none of these things. All they did was grant one of several requests made by Aitken by having their chaplains examine his work, and allowing him to publish their resolution stating that, based on the chaplains' report, they were satisfied that his edition was accurate.

On the contrary, Congress recommended Aitken's Bible to ALL the people, thus, the Congress is not promoting any religion, but specifically Christianity, as well as indirectly promoting the Bible's use in schools.

Here, is what the Congress wrote:

Honble James Duane, Esq. Chairman, and the other Honble Gentlemen of the Committee of Congress on
Mr. Aitken's Memorial."

Whereupon,

RESOLVED,

THAT the United States in Congress assembled highly approve the pious and laudable undertaking of Mr. Aitken, as subservient to the interest of religion, as well as an instance of the progress of arts in this country, and being satisfied from the above report of his care and accuracy in the execution of the work, they recommend this edition of the Bible to the inhabitants of the United States, and hereby authorize him to publish this Recommendation in the manner he shall think proper. [italics mine]

CHA. THOMSON, Sec'ry.

Yet, Evangelical Christians buy-in to Rodda's revisionism. Could you imagine today's Congress forming a committee to check spelling for a Bible translation? That is what Bible Societies do! Remember, unless specifically enumerated, religion always refers to Christianity. Was Congress referring to Buddhism to Christians?

Also, besides at home, "progression of the arts" was done at Schools. Reading, writing, literature, architecture, painting, music, etc. Bible reading was not taken out of schools until 1963. Can the Congress not approve the Bible for schools, when the Arts are practiced at schools? Maybe someone could give their idea of "progress of arts?"

Glenn Becks Claims The God Of The Declaration Is Not Jesus Christ

Glenn Beck, who, quite often has Evangelical David Barton on his program, most likely believes Mormonism is Christianity. Despite how blasphemous that association is, Beck obviously rejects Jesus Christ as the God of the Declaration of Independence. Here, Beck promotes the same distortion regarding our Founding as anyone on the secular left:

"It's not religion..to make sure it wasn't the Christian God, or Jesus, or Moses, or anybody else. It was nature's god and nature's law..to make it as broad as you could..it has nothing to do with faith, God, or anything else." 

Beck is just as deceived as the other elites. The God of the DOI is not the universal god of George Bush (There is one mediator between God and men; the man Christ Jesus. I Tim 2:5). Then he makes the arrogant statement, "Look all of this up..please I beg you..know it to be true" It is you, Glenn Beck, who need to look this up. History, and the framers' writings refute what you and secularism believe:

From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration..They were bound by all the beneficent laws and institutions, which their forefathers had brought with them from their mother country, not as servitudes but as rights..[T]he same Congress which issued the Declaration..recommended to the several states to form civil governments for themselves..The states organized their governments, all in republican forms, all on the principles of the Declaration. The confederation was unanimously accepted by the thirteen states: and treaties of commerce were concluded with France and the Netherlands, in which, for the first time, the same just and magnanimous principles, consigned in the Declaration of Independence, were, so far as they could be applicable to the intercourse between nation and nation, solemnly recognized..In the progress of forty years since the acknowledgment of our Independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations. But never, never for a moment have the great principles, consecrated by the Declaration of this day, been renounced or abandoned.

-John Q. Adams, 6th President of the United States, The Hellhound of Slavery, Founder of our Foreign Policy, Our Greatest Diplomat. An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence.
 
The God (Supreme Being) of the Christians, the Continental Congress declared, was the Redeemer; Jesus Christ, in a clear Calvinist context, with Christ in complete sovereignty of earth history. The Congress clearly proclaim unalienable rights are granted by the Redeemer, Jesus Christ. Congress agreed to the following Proclamation:

The goodness of the Supreme Being to all his rational creatures, demands their acknowledgments of gratitude and love; his absolute government of this world dictates, that it is the interest of every nation and people ardently to supplicate his mercy favor and implore his protection.When the lust of dominion or lawless ambition excites arbitrary power to invade the rights, or endeavor to wrench wrest from a people their sacred and unalienable invaluable privileges, and compels them, in defence of the same, to encounter all the horrors and calamities of a bloody and vindictive war; then is that people loudly called upon to fly unto that God for protection..that He would incline the hearts of all men to peace, and fill them with universal charity and benevolence, and that the religion of our Divine Redeemer, with all its benign influences, may cover the earth as the waters cover the seas .

-Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1782

Our unalienable rights, as mentioned above, is strictly from the Bible:

II. The Rights of the Colonists as Christians..
These may be best understood by reading and carefully studying the institutes of the great Law Giver and Head of the Christian Church, which are to be found clearly written and promulgated in the New Testament

-Samuel Adams, The Report of the Committee of Correspondence to the Boston Town Meeting. November 20, 1772.

It is the Christian religion only, that secures unalienable rights; not Deism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Mohammedism, et al:

[T]he Christian religion is the most important and one of the first things in which all children under a free government ought to be instructed. No truth is more evident than that the Christian religion must be the basis of any government intended to secure the rights and privileges of a free people.

-Noah Webster, REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIER; JUDGE; LEGISLATOR; EDUCATOR; “SCHOOLMASTER TO AMERICA” A Collection of Papers on Political, Literary, and Moral Subjects (New York: Webster and Clark, 1843), p. 291, from his “Reply to a Letter of David McClure on the Subject of the Proper Course of Study in the Girard College, Philadelphia. New Haven, October 25, 1836.”

Beck believes as George Bush mistakenly does; that God is the same god in all religions, and not the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob. This makes sense, given that Beck is not a Christian, but a Mormon.

"Civil Religion" by Robert N. Bellah

Mr.Bellah is one of the most famous expositors of the Founding and Religion. He invented the term "Civil Religion." However, he is not without his errors with respect to the Founding. Here is one of many:

And yet at the beginning of our history we were that mutually exclusive thing, a Christian Republic. (Samuel Adams even called us a Christian Sparta.) Or were we? Christianity was never our state religion, nor did we have in Rousseau’s strict sense a civil religion, a simple set of religious dogmas to which every citizen must subscribe on pain of exile.

Did not the State Constitutions proclaim Christianity? Was not the penalty for violating the Ten Commandments prison time, and a fine? Bellah claims the Christian Constitutions evaporated by the early 18th century. What kind of revisionism is this? The State Constitutions were Christian the entire 18th century, and into the 19th and 20th centuries:

Even more to the point, the New England colonies in the seventeenth century were Christian republics in a comparable sense. In Massachusetts, for example, only Christians could be citizens, though the church did not control the state and both church and state were governed by their members. Even though the reality of this experiment had evaporated by the early eighteenth century, the memory was still strong in the minds of the founders of the republic.

In spite of his errors above, he does understand James Madison was a Calvinist. Below, Bellah highlights Madison's duty to the sovereignty of God before he can be a member of civil society, illustrating his Calvinism:

In the early republic religion had two vital locations: in the superstructure and in the infrastructure of the new political regime. It is to the superstructural location of religion that the Declaration of Independence points. By superstructural I mean a locus of sovereignty taken to be above the sovereignty of the state. Perhaps the most striking recognition of this superordinate sovereignty comes from the hand of Madison in 1785 during the debate on the bill establishing religious freedom in Virginia: "It such only, as he believes to be acceptable to him. This duty is precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society. Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governor of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the general authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign."

Below, Bellah explains who is the God of the Declaration of Independence, and debunking the Deists:

The Declaration of Independence points to the sovereignty of God over the collective political society itself when it refers in its opening lines to "the laws of nature and of nature’s God" that stand above and judge the laws of men. It is often asserted that the God of nature is specifically not the God of the Bible. That raises problems of the relation of natural religion to biblical religion in eighteenth-century thought that I do not want to get into here, but Jefferson goes on to say, "We hold these truths to be self evident, 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 abolish it." We have here a distinctly biblical God who is much more than a first principle of nature, who creates individual human beings and endows them with equality and fundamental rights.

It was Christianity, through Calvin's Republicanism, from the Reformation, that most clearly spurred the American Revolution; by rejecting Divine Right of Kings, etc. yet Bellah appears to ignore or divorce the principles of the Declaration with those of the Constitution, giving the latter a liberal foundation, as though the colonists set aside Divine Law for the French Revolution's Enlightenment rationalism; something he coined "liberal constitutional regime." His theory divorcing the principles of the DOI with the Constitution has been debunked by many, including John Q. Adams:

From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration..They were bound by all the beneficent laws and institutions, which their forefathers had brought with them from their mother country, not as servitudes but as rights..[T]he same Congress which issued the Declaration..recommended to the several states to form civil governments for themselves; with guarded and cautious deliberation they matured a confederation for the whole Union; and they prepared treaties of commerce, to be offered to the principal maritime nations of the world. All these objects were in a great degree accomplished amid the din of arms, and while every quarter of our country was ransacked by the fury of invasion. The states organized their governments, all in republican forms, all on the principles of the Declaration. The confederation was unanimously accepted by the thirteen states: and treaties of commerce were concluded with France and the Netherlands, in which, for the first time, the same just and magnanimous principles, consigned in the Declaration of Independence, were, so far as they could be applicable to the intercourse between nation and nation, solemnly recognized..In the progress of forty years since the acknowledgment of our Independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations. But never, never for a moment have the great principles, consecrated by the Declaration of this day, been renounced or abandoned.

-Adams, An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence. [bold face mine]

Yet, Bellah says our civil religion is founded on the religion of the Revolution, that wasn't Christianity. Ultimately, Bellah claims our "Civil Religion" was unitarianism:

The God of the civil religion is not only rather "unitarian," he is also on the austere side, much more related to order, law, and right than to salvation and love. Even though he is somewhat deist in cast, he is by no means simply a watchmaker God. He is actively interested and involved in history, with a special concern for America. Here the analogy has much less to do with natural law than with ancient Israel; the equation of America with Israel in the idea of the "American Israel" is not infrequent.

Bellah considers the civil religion a combination of theories:

The remarkable coherence of the American revolutionary movement and its successful conclusion in the constitution of a new civil order are due in considerable part to the convergence of the Puritan covenant pattern and the Montesquieuan republican pattern. The former was represented above all by New England, the latter by Virginia, but both were widely diffused in the consciousness of the colonial population. Both patterns saw society resting on the deep inner commitment of its members, the former through conversion, the latter through republican virtue..When Jefferson evoked at the beginning of the Declaration of Independence the "laws of nature and of nature’s God" he was able to fuse the ultimate legitimating principles of both traditions. And when in concluding it he wrote, "And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor," he was not only invoking a republican formula for the establishment of a civil compact but echoing the formula of the Puritan covenant. Only the confluence of these two patterns can help us understand the fusion of passion and reason that, with such consistency, seems to have motivated the major actors in the revolutionary drama.

This blog has clearly refuted unitarianism as the civil religion of the Revolution. A cursory examination of fast and prayer proclamations show the colonists were clearly Trinitarian Christians. What a contradiction to claim the DOI founded on Puritan Covenant Theology, and the same time, claim He is a unitarian God. The Puritans were Trinitarian. Should not these principles be consistent with one another? How could the Puritans claim their God was unitarian?

Did The Founding Fathers Execute Homosexuals?

What a paradox it would be if the framers executed homosexuals, given that today, the people want to legalize it. I have no doubt our people would persecute Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and the other framers for their views on homosexual sin. The answer is yes, the framers did execute at least one person for homosexuality. It was done in Pennsylvania, December, 1785. Guess who was President of Pennsylvania? Benjamin Franklin. Although Franklin wasn't present that day, his VP, Charles Biddell and Founding Father Peter Muhlenburg were there, and offered no pardon.

This narrative must start at the definition of terms; buggery, sodomy, and rape. All three terms were used in 18th century America. All three are defined by Webster's 1828, yet, buggery and sodomy were interchangable terms, and buggery included bestiality. Yet Sodomy and Buggery clearly referred to man on man, while rape referred to a woman.

Regarding this subject, expert John Murrin indicates Bestiality was basically non-existent due to the horror of the crime. Bestiality was synonimous to witchcraft, especially among women. Prior to the Revolution, no one was executed for bestiality in New England, mainly from lack of evidence. Bestiality is clearly from the 17th century, and not part of the founding milieu.

The Founding Fathers did execute one man for bestiality; Connecticut hanged Gideon Washburn the third friday, in January, 1800.

As to States, the Framers in Virginia, kept the Death Penalty for Buggery:

That if any do commit the detestable and abominable vice of Buggery, with man or beast, he or she so offending, shall be adjudged a felon, and shall suffer death, in the case of felony, without the benefit of Clergy.

-A Collection of All Acts of the General Assembly of Virginia 1802, (Richmond:Pleasance and Price, 1803), page 179, ch. C [50], enacted Dec. 10, 1792.

The other states emphasized the Biblical laws contained in the Common Law of England:

The first reported sodomy case in Maryland also was the first known reported case in the United States. In 1810, the Court of Appeals decided Davis v. State. By a vote of 4-1, the Court upheld an indictment that charged that Davis, "not having the fear of God before his eyes, but being moved and seduced by the instigation of the Devil, on &c. with forms and arms at, &c. in and upon one W C, a youth of the age of 19 years, in the peace of God, and the state of Maryland, then and there being, did make an assault, and him the said W C, then and there did beat, would, and ill-treat, with an intent that most horrid and detestable crime (among christians not to be named,) called Sodomy, with him the said W C, and against the order of nature, then and there feloniously, wickedly and devilishly, to commit and do, to the great displeasure of Almighty God, contrary to the act of assembly in such case made and provided, and against the peace, government, and dignity of the state." [Emphasis the Court’s].

The word Buggery was eventually forgotten, "sodomy" took its place, evidence that the issue of buggery in the 18th century, unless specifically enumerated, was homosexuality. Furthermore, besides Gideon Washburn, there were no bestiality crimes in the founding generation, thus the execution of Joseph Ross of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, had to be for homosexuality, approved by Benamin Franklin. The history of buggery sentences show the other partner was also punished; usually whipped.

Cracking the American Civil Religion

I did it in a comment at FirstThings.com here. I wrote:

"Joseph,

Our civil religion may be watered-down Christianity, but it wasn’t in 1790. Liberal elite Robert N. Bellah of Berkeley, claims Puritanism is our “Civil Religion” which is Trinitarianism.

The vast majority of Founding Fathers, including James Madison, were Trinitarian, who made it clear Christianity was the only true religion for salvation:

"Because the Bill implies either that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth; or that he may employ Religion as an engine of Civil policy. The first is an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world: the second an unhallowed perversion of the means of salvation..Because the policy of the Bill is adverse to the diffusion of the light of Christianity. The first wish of those who enjoy this precious gift ought to be that it may be imparted to the whole race of mankind. Compare the number of those who have as yet received it with the number still remaining under the dominion of false Religions; and how small is the former! Does the policy of the Bill tend to lessen the disproportion? No; it at once discourages those who are strangers to the light of revelation from coming into the Region of it; and countenances by example the nations who continue in darkness, in shutting out those who might convey it to them."

-Memorial and Remonstrance, June 20, 1785.

Madison made it very clear to succeeding generations, salvation was only in faith in Christ. He believed other religions had some validity for other aspects of life, as he implied in 1833, but not for salvation. JM affirmed the Trinity.

The Congress used Trinitarian language:

"The goodness of the Supreme Being to all his rational creatures, demands their acknowledgments of gratitude and love; his absolute government of this world dictates, that it is the interest of every nation and people ardently to supplicate his mercy favor and implore his protection.When the lust of dominion or lawless ambition excites arbitrary power to invade the rights, or endeavor to wrench wrest from a people their sacred and unalienable invaluable privileges, and compels them, in defence of the same, to encounter all the horrors and calamities of a bloody and vindictive war; then is that people loudly called upon to fly unto that God for protection..that He would incline the hearts of all men to peace, and fill them with universal charity and benevolence, and that the religion of our Divine Redeemer, with all its benign influences, may cover the earth as the waters cover the seas."

-Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1782

Is Jesus Christ In the Declaration of Independence?

Liberal secularists, and nearly every historian alive, would never, for a minute, claim Jesus Christ is in the Declaration of Independence. The vast majority of Founding Fathers, and citizens of the new nation, would disagree with that assertion. I came across a quote from John Quincy Adams explaining who our God is. It is not how secularists would like it, but, written in a way citizens of the 18th century understood; in classical terms. The Laws of Nature and of Nature's God, written in the Declaration of Independence, is the contraction for, The Laws of Nature and The Law's of Nature's God. Adams, who, was one of the most important Founding Fathers, whom, George Washington called, "our best diplomat" clarify's who this God is, previously enumerated by the framers. However, in this quote, Speaking of the DOI, Adams shortens the exact phrase. LONANG is not a repetition of the same thing:

That committee reported on the twelfth of July, eight days after the Declaration of Independence had been issued..There was thus no congeniality of principle between the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. The foundation of the former was a superintending Providence-the rights of man, and the constituent revolutionary power of the people. That of the latter was the sovereignty of organized power, and the independence of the separate or dis-united States. The fabric of the Declaration and that of the Confederation were each consistent with its own foundation, but they could not form one consistent, symmetrical edifice. They were the productions of different minds and of adverse passions; one, ascending for the foundation of human government to the laws of nature and of God...

-The Jubilee of the Constitution, delivered at New York, April 30, 1839, before the New York Historical Society. [bold face mine]

Adams differentiates LONANG; one is Natural Law, God's Law in the heart of man, then God Himself. Who did the vast majority of Colonists believe was God? Jesus Christ:

Contrary to publicized orthodox opinion, the great majority of Jeffersonians were in fact Trinitarian Protestants.

-Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy. Anchron Books, 1974, p.150

Unitarians were limited to the Boston area:

Unitarians, who are principally confined to Boston and its vicinity.

-Boston Patriot, May 13, 1815. [A Jeffersonian publication in a Federalist Stronghold, predisposed against the politics of Unitarians]

Pelagianism was grounded by Timothy Dwight and the New Divinity Calvinists:

By the 1830's, evangelicals had successfully contained Unitarianism within the Boston area and the West had become the new battleground for Orthodoxy.

-Stephen E. Berk, Calvinism Versus Democracy. Anchron Books, 1974, p. 199.

Adams goes so far as to affirm what the other Founding Fathers understood and David Barton promotes; that the principles in the Declaration are carried out in the Constitution, and were to be carried out in the Articles of Confederation, but failed. The DOI is Organic Law of this Republic, and legal foundation for any Constitution:

Its incurable disease [Articles of Confederation] was an apostasy from the principles of the Declaration of Independence..The Constitution [Articles] of the United States was the work of this Convention. But in its construction the Convention immediately perceived that they must retrace their steps, and fall back from a league of friendship between sovereign States to the constituent sovereignty of the people; from power to right--from the irresponsible despotism of State sovereignty to the self-evident truths of the Declaration of Independence..The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States are parts of one consistent whole, founded upon one and the same theory of government.

-The Jubilee of the Constitution

Adams was a staunch conservative among conservatives, who did not flinch to confront the "so called" philosophers of the day. Now he speaks to secularists of today. "There are yet, even at this day, many speculative objections to this theory. Even in our own country there are still philosophers who deny the principles asserted in the Declaration, as self-evident truths."

He was excellent at distinguishing "State sovereignty against the constituent sovereignty of the people." He made other statements affirming we were founded a Christian Nation, that Puritanism interspersed throughout the Colonies, and the Declaration founded on the Gospel, and the Laws of Nature's God. Adams also reiterates that of his cousin Samuel Adams; that the Articles of Confederation ratified the Declaration of Independence:

From the day of the Declaration, the people of the North American union, and of its constituent states, were associated bodies of civilized men and christians, in a state of nature, but not of anarchy. They were bound by the laws of God, which they all, and by the laws of the gospel, which they nearly all, acknowledged as the rules of their conduct. They were bound by the principles which they themselves had proclaimed in the declaration..They were bound by all the beneficent laws and institutions, which their forefathers had brought with them from their mother country, not as servitudes but as rights..[T]he same Congress which issued the Declaration..recommended to the several states to form civil governments for themselves; with guarded and cautious deliberation they matured a confederation for the whole Union; and they prepared treaties of commerce, to be offered to the principal maritime nations of the world. All these objects were in a great degree accomplished amid the din of arms, and while every quarter of our country was ransacked by the fury of invasion. The states organized their governments, all in republican forms, all on the principles of the Declaration. The confederation was unanimously accepted by the thirteen states: and treaties of commerce were concluded with France and the Netherlands, in which, for the first time, the same just and magnanimous principles, consigned in the Declaration of Independence, were, so far as they could be applicable to the intercourse between nation and nation, solemnly recognized..In the progress of forty years since the acknowledgment of our Independence, we have gone through many modifications of internal government, and through all the vicissitudes of peace and war, with other mighty nations. But never, never for a moment have the great principles, consecrated by the Declaration of this day, been renounced or abandoned.

-Adams, An address, delivered at the request of the committee of arrangements for celebrating the anniversary of Independence, at the City of Washington on the Fourth of July 1821 upon the occasion of reading The Declaration of Independence. [bold face mine]

App Store Pulls Manhattan Declaration

Apple's iTunes App Store has removed a program for the Manhattan Declaration after critics decried the declaration as "anti-gay" and "anti-woman."

Observers have long puzzled over Apple's criteria for accepting and rejecting apps; in fact many people accused Apple of a double standard when they rejected a number of apps designed specifically for the gay community. The company said they rejected the apps for objectionable content, though many say that the cited content was no worse than that available in apps the company has accepted (like the one promoting the recent movie Bruno).

Many Christians are decrying the union of Roman Catholics and Evangelicals for the Manhattan Declaration. Despite the difference in theology, I believe there is strength in numbers, as this is an evangelical document.

The Greatest Influence to Thomas Jefferson

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson claimed Francis Bacon was the greatest man that ever lived. It is ironic TJ put Bacon at the top of a circled Trinity with Locke and Newton beneath him, in view of the fact TJ was a unitarian and Bacon a Trinitarian. Bacon was a devout Anglican, who, it would appear, believed in all the fundamentals of Christianity. His rejection of Aristotle's philosophy for empiricism, and Locke's blank slate theory, for the more correct Original Sin doctrine, by man's erroneous understanding of initial information is refreshing, given Bacon had such an effect on the primary draughtsman of the Declaration of Independence.

The most influential man the world has ever known according to the rationalist Thomas Jefferson, was an Orthodox Christian. How poetic.

What Is The Foundation Of The Declaration of Independence And Constitution? Part Deux

The Westminster Assembly

I find myself agreeing more and more with Catholic theologians when referring to many aspects of the origins of our Republic. That Puritan Covenant Theology is our "Civil Religion" and foundation of the Declaration of Independence is understood by author Donald J. D'Elia, Professor of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Don D'Elia is also Co-Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Society of Catholic Social Scientists and a member of the Advisory Board of the Catholic Educator's Resource Center.

D'Elia and myself, appear in agreement with the false exhaltation of Enlightenment philosophy into our founding:

It is anachronistic to think.. that the founding generation did not believe that government must submit to divine positive law. Here the author confuses the Enlightenment minimalistic natural law views of Thomas Jefferson and a relatively small group of Founders with the consensus of the overwhelming majority of the American people in 1776 and 1789 that the state indeed has an obligation to worship God or perish. The Declaration of Independence and the Federal Constitution, as well as the state constitutions, however they may be celebrated and interpreted in liberal historiography today, were seen at the time as having meaning only within the much larger “oral constitution” of what was a Christian culture-not an Enlightenment culture.

Signer of the DOI, Benjamin Rush, is another man who rejected the notion of Lockean Enlightenment Philosophy into the document adhered to by Thomas Jefferson and his miniscule minority:

Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) of Philadelphia signed the Declaration of Independence, but his understanding of its meaning as an evangelical Protestant was very different from that of his secular minded friend, Thomas Jefferson. The “unalienable Rights” of the Declaration, Rush believed with many, many other Americans, were bestowed on man not immediately by some abstraction called nature in the Jeffersonian and Lockean sense, but directly and immediately by the living God. This was no dogmatic individualism! “Self-existence” he protested against the eighteenth century spirit of presumption that would culminate in the French Revolution, “belongs only to God.” The 'language” of American independence, Rush wrote in 1783 to his English Quaker friend, Granville Sharp,has for many years appeared to me to be the same as that of the heavenly host that announced the birth of the Saviour of mankind. It proclaims “glory to God in the highest — on earth peace — good will to man..How foolish it was, how presumptuous it was, to think that some autonomous Jeffersonian man had brought this about, relying only on natural reason! Fulton J. Sheen was much closer to the truth about the meaning of the Declaration of Independence to the American people at the nation's Founding. While no friend of Catholicism, such as he understood it, Dr. Rush would have agreed with the Bishop's characterization of the Declaration of Independence as also a Declaration of Dependence. “The Declaration of Independence” Sheen had the historical insight to realize, “asserts a double dependence: dependence on God, and dependence on law as derived from God... .”

Dependence on God is implicit in the DOI, making God the foundation of the covenant as D'Elia notes:

Read the Declaration of Independence and there find the answer: [I might add to the nature of the “American idea”] “We hold these truths to be self-evident, 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.” Notice these words: The Creator has endowed men with rights and liberties; men got them from God! In other words, we are dependent on God, and that initial dependence is the foundation of our independence.

The Constitution was founded on the principles of the DOI, not the personal viewpoints of Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine:

Everyone in the country in 1776, except for a decided minority of men like Jefferson and Thomas Paine who mocked revealed religion, understood the Declaration and the constitution of the United States, including the Federal charter, in this way. Rush believed that the hand of God was to be seen in the Federal Constitution, as much as it had been in His dividing the Red Sea to give a passage to the children of Israel. [1] The divine character of the new government of the United States was professed from a thousand pulpits, and one did not have to look far to see this confirmed in newspapers and magazines.

All the State Constitutions, Fast Day Proclamations by the Congress, were part of Puritan Covenant Theology that imbedded the entire nation:

What John Henry Newman called the “goodly framework of society which is the creating of Christianity” was still in place in the period of the nation's Founding. [2] Religion was the “bond of society,” and real law of the land, not, what was often ridiculed as `parchment” constitutionalism. Tocqueville was right to say, and many years had passed from the creating of the Republic when he said it, that the Christian religion was “the foremost of the political institutions of the United States (my italics)..In 1776, though, Dr. Benjamin Rush was representative of the great majority of Americans in giving explicit Christian and biblical meaning to the Declaration of Independence and all the other national and state charters that were to follow. They were covenants, having a solemn religious character as among the ancient Hebrews, no mere secular contracts or Lockean compacts. Their model, whether consciously realized or not, was that of the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620 applying ideas of church government to civil government. Only the Anglicans to some extent, were exempted from what Perry Miller has called the “Federal or Covenant Theology,” the American people's intense awareness of their being “a chosen race, entered into specific covenant with God, by the terms of which they would be proportionately punished for their sins.” [3]

The over-exaggeration of John Locke's influence, by missing the forest for the trees, is a smoke-screen for modern liberal secularists, to twist the Declaration and Constitution into whatever they will:

The symbols of the covenant an jeremiad,” that popular recital of the Chosen People's sins, were what mattered. Even “British liberties” and the social and political philosophy of John Locke made sense only within this Gestalt [4].

The Covenant structure was always in Orthodox Trinitarian language, not of the unitarian minority within the Boston area, or the infidel musings of TJ and Thomas Paine. Notice, Congress AGREED to this distinctly PURITAN proclamation:

On a report of a committee, consisting of Mr. [Joseph] Montgomery, Mr. [Oliver] Wolcott, and Mr. [John Morin] Scott, appointed to prepare a recommendation to the several states, to set apart a day of humiliation, fasting, and prayer Congress agreed to the following Proclamation:

The goodness of the Supreme Being to all his rational creatures, demands their acknowledgments of gratitude and love; his absolute government of this world dictates, that it is the interest of every nation and people ardently to supplicate his mercy favor and implore his protection.When the lust of dominion or lawless ambition excites arbitrary power to invade the rights, or endeavor to wrench wrest from a people their sacred and unalienable invaluable privileges, and compels them, in defence of the same, to encounter all the horrors and calamities of a bloody and vindictive war; then is that people loudly called upon to fly unto that God for protection, who hears the eries of the distressed, and will not turn a deaf ear to the supplication of the oppressed. Great Britain, hitherto left to infatuated councils, and to pursue measures repugnant to their her own interest, and distressing to this country, still persists in the chimerical idea design of subjugating these United States; which will compel us into another active and perhaps bloody campaign.The United States in Congress assembled, therefore, taking into consideration our present situation, our multiplied transgressions of the holy laws of our God, and his past acts of kindness and goodness exercised towards us, which we would ought to record with the liveliest gratitude, think it their indispensable duty to call upon the different several states, to set apart the last Thursday in April next, as a day of fasting, humiliation and prayer, that our joint supplications may then ascend to the throne of the Ruler of the Universe, beseeching Him that he would to diffuse a spirit of universal reformation among all ranks and degrees of our citizens; and make us a holy, that so we may be an happy people; that it would please Him to impart wisdom, integrity and unanimity to our counsellors; to bless and prosper the reign of our illustrious ally, and give success to his arms employed in the defence of the rights of human nature; that He would smile upon our military arrangements by land and sea; administer comfort and consolation to our prisoners in a cruel captivity; that he would protect the health and life of our Commander in Chief; give grant us victory over our enemies; establish peace in all our borders, and give happiness to all our inhabitants; that he would prosper the labor of the husbandman, making the earth yield its increase in abundance, and give a proper season for the in gathering of the fruits thereof; that He would grant success to all engaged in lawful trade and commerce, and take under his guardianship all schools and seminaries of learning, and make them nurseries of virtue and piety; that He would incline the hearts of all men to peace, and fill them with universal charity and benevolence, and that the religion of our Divine Redeemer, with all its benign influences, may cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

 -Journals of the Continental Congress, 1774-1789 TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 1782.




Notes


1.  Quoted in D.J. D'Elia, Benjamin Rush: Philosopher of the American Revolution (Philadelphia, 1974), p.56. On Jefferson, see idem., The Spirits of `76: A Catholic Inquiry (Front Royal, Va., 1983), ch. 1, pp. 9-23; idem., “The Real Bicentennial: the Continual Quest for a Therapy of Order,” Faith and Reason 13, No. 4 (1986), pp. 353-362.
2.  Quoted in Christopher Dawson, “The Trend to Secularism,” in James Oliver and Christina Scott, eds., Religion and World History: A Selection from the Works of Christopher Dawson (Garden City, N.Y., 1975), p.290.
3.  “From the Covenant to the Revival,” in James Ward Smith and A. Leland Jamison, eds., The Shaping of American Religion , vol. I of Religion in American Life (4 vols.: Princeton, New Jersey, 1961), pp.325, 339.
4.  Ibid., 328, “Our mental image of the religious patriot,” Perry Miller observed of the orations of the day, “is distorted because modern accounts do treat the political paragraphs as a series of theoretical expositions of Locke, separated from what precedes and follows. When these orations are read as wholes, they immediately reveal that the sociological sections are structural parts of a rhetorical pattern. Embedded in their contexts, these are not abstractions but inherent parts of a theology. It was for this reason that they had so energizing an effect upon their religious auditors,” ibid., p. 342.

What Is The Foundation Of The Declaration of Independence And Constitution?

According to many historians, including Daniel Judah Elazar (1934–1999), past professor of political science at Bar Ilan University (Israel), Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and the founder and president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs; Federalism is a Puritan invention. Fernando Rey Martinez, Professor of Constitutional Law at Valladolid Law School, in Valladolid, Spain, quotes Elazar that, "American Federalism rests on the reading the Puritans gave to federal theology in the covenant of the Old Testament"1. The word "Federalism" was not yet created when Federal Systems of government were formed in New England, however, the concept of federal liberty was 2. Martinez writes, "The word "federal" comes from "foedus," the latin word for "covenant." "Federal liberty" was a comprehensive relationship, not a contract based on written duties, but similiar to a marriage found in Judeo-Christian tradition 3. Even Lincoln described the DOI as "a regular marriage" 4, and to Puritans it was a "Federal" relationship with God that carried over into the civil arena 5.

In our founding documents, no other foundation but Covenantal Puritanism was the predominant theory. Here, the noted former Emeritus Professor at Columbia:

From the Bay Colony came the great intellectual leaders, the theologians who became the leaders … in the establishment of New England colonies… Nor was its influence restricted to New England, for its ideals and aspirations… became the dominant influence in the development of the United States.

 -Joseph Dorfman, The Economic Mind in American Civilization, vol. 1, ch.3

Prominent 19th Century historian Alex d'Tocqueville did not give Enlightenment Rationalism the influence modern historians do, but understood Puritan Covenant Theology the main impetus for social theology that spread throughout the new nation:  

In was in the English colonies… better known as the states of New England, that the two or three main principles now forming the basic social theory of the United States were combined. New England principles spread first to the neighboring states and then…to those more distant, finally penetrating everywhere… Their influence now extends beyond its limits over the whole American world…”

-Alex d’Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, ch. 2.

Is it no less a surprise that the political leader of the Revolution was a Puritan; speaking for the new nation? The Declaration of Independence is a Puritan compact:

The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact. Here no man proclaims his birth or wealth as a title to honorable distinction, or to sanctify ignorance and vice with the name of hereditary authority. He who has most zeal and ability to promote public felicity, let him be the servant of the public. This is the only line of distinction drawn by nature.

-Samuel Adams, An ORATION Delivered at the State-House, In PHILADELPHIA, To A Very Numerous AUDIENCE; On THURSDAY the 1st of AUGUST 1776.

As Robert N. Bellah notes, Puritanism was the foundation for our constitutionalism, what he coined, our "civil religion" 7. Thus, our civil religion is a form of Puritan Christianity, established on biblical promises. True, Puritan Congregationalism may not be the only factor of our Constitutional Compact, but, it is the context from which the other aspects flow.

Included in Puritan Theology was Millenialism; the idea that human history is divinely ordained and will lead to a period of heavenly perfection on earth. Puritan Whigs that were to make up the future Hamiltonian Federalist Party in 1790, believed in this "Covenant Theology." Some may have discarded theological points within Calvinism, but milennialism was not one of them. These men believed in a "New Jerusalem" and that place was America. Just as God had led the Israelites out of Egypt into Canaan, God had sovereignly delivered the Colonists from England, to bring in a righteous kingdom, led by righteous rulers, ultimately to establish Christ's millenial reign. As long as there were "righteous rulers" God's Blessings endured.

Important to note, this belief was not limited to New England Puritans, but was taught in Reformed Churches throughout the colonies, evidenced by beliefs from middle states Founding Fathers: John Witherspoon, Thomas McKean, George Clymer, Benjamin Rush, and Southern Congregationalists: Button Gwinnett, and Lyman Hall. Other millenialist Whigs included: Roger Sherman, Samuel Adams, Richard Stockton, Josiah Bartlett, Oliver Ellsworth, John Hancock, Oliver Wolcott, Alexander Hamilton, and yes, John Adams. Whatever Adams may have wrote after he retired; in 1776, he believed as the others: 

But We should always remember, that a free Constitution of civil Government cannot be purchased at too dear a Rate; as there is nothing on this Side of the new Jesusalem, [Jerusalem] of equal Importance to Mankind.

-John Adams to Archibald Bulloch July 1, 1776

The idea to separate the fundamental beliefs of Whigs (Colonists that rejected Monarchial rule, and the Divine Right of Kings), with Puritan Covenant ideology is revisionism. Whigs and Puritans agreed that God was on our side, to help us in our cause:

To be sure, the wide support of Whig thought may have had something to do with America's religious heritage, for a number of Real Whig themes resembled cherished Puritan themes, at least in form. First, Puritans and Whigs shared a pessimistic view of human nature. Puritans believed that natural depravity predisposed individuals to sin; Whigs held that political power brought out the worst in leaders. Both emphasized that freedom meant liberation from something. For Puritans it was freedom from sin; for Whigs it was freedom from political oppression. Both also linked freedom and virtue. Puritans held that sinful behavior led to spiritual and other forms of tyranny; Whigs felt that tyrannical behavior grew from corruption and, in turn, nourished it. Finally, Puritans and Whigs both regarded history in similar terms. It was the struggle of evil against good, dark against light, whether for the Puritan (Antichrist versus Christ) or the Whig (tyranny versus freedom). This similarity in form between Whig political ideas and the traditional theology of some Americans made it easier for many to blur the distinction between a political struggle for rights and a spiritual conflict for the kingdom.

 (Mark A. Noll, Nathan O. Hatch, George M. Marsden, David F. Wells, and John D. Woodbridge, editors, Eerdmans' Handbook to Christianity in America [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1983], pp. 134-135).

This point reinforces the idea John Locke, or enlightenment philosophy, had any fundamental position in the DOI. The Scriptures (1 Cor 11:14, "Doth not even nature itself teach you" and Rom 2:14-15), espoused by English Divine Richard Hooker, John Calvin, and Reformed ideology, had years earlier, enumerated Natural Law subservient to Revelation. Natural Law, advocated by Thomas Aquinas, preceded the Scottish Enlightenment by almost four-hundred years. What did the Enlightenment teach? Reject the supernatural, and question the Bible. Did the Colonists adhere to those tenants? No. Why then do historians: Donald S. Lutz, B. Bailyn, G. Wills, Gordon Wood et al. promote this false idea? It is historical revisionism to ignore the concepts laid down from the Protestant Reformation and Francisco Suarez and The School of Salamanca, to say nothing of Christendom from the Church Fathers to the Renaissance.

It has been noted by many historians, that Locke's influence has been exaggerated prior to 1776. Professor and British historian Jack Richon Pole:

It isn't surprising to claim the idea of popular sovereignty and representative government by the Colonists of the 1760's was not influenced, as is generally believed, by the political theology of John Locke..Very little evidence exists to suggest that Locke exerted any effective influence on the political thought of the Colonists until Thomas Jefferson came to draft the Declaration of Independence.

-Political representation in England and the origins of the American Republic (Macmillan 1966). H. Trevor Colborum, Thomas Jefferson's Use of the Past, "William and Mary Quarterly" Jan. 1958, 56-70.

If the Enlightenment was to touch on morality, economics, jurisprudence, consent of the governed, life, liberty, property, etc. they were way late to the game, which says volumes about the historians who promote it. Or if the Founding Fathers had questioned the Scriptures in favor of reason, it would be fair to include Enlightenment thought in the DOI, however, the personal preferences of: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Paine, do not represent the Southern, Middle, or New England Colonies.


Notes
1) See generally DANIEL J. ELAZAR, EXPLORING FEDERALISM 127 (1987). The concept of federalism appeared in almost all versions of Calvinism. In the Dutch version, it partially inspired the federation of the United Provinces at the end of the 16th century (keeping this federal style until Napoleon's invasion). Calvinist federalism also showed up in the Helvetica and German Confederations. Even the French term for its Protestants was "Hugerenot." meaning "oath-based" association or "federation."
2) Martinez, The Religious Character of the American Constitution: Puritanism and Constitutionalism in the United States. p.477. "This expression comes from John Winthrop and Elazar, describing 'namely the liberty of the partners to act in accordance with the moral principals embodied in God's covenant with humanity (as in biblical Israel and colonial New England)." See CORWIN ON THE CONSTITUTION 79 (Richard Loss ed., 1981).
3)Id at 478
4)Id 478
5) Id 478
6)Id 480. See also Robert N. Bellah Civil Religion in America, Daedalus 96 (1967). See also John T. Watts, Robert N. Bellah's Theory of America's Eschatological Hope. 22 J. OF CHURCH AND STATE 5, (1980).
7)Spencer Welles McBrideThe Courtship of Providence and Patriotism p. 7. See Ruth H. Bloch, Visionary Republic: Millenial Themes in American Thought, 1756-1800 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), xi.

15 Out of 20 So-Called Pro-Life Representatives Fired, Including Bart Supak

The Pro-life movement in America is strong. Bart Stupak of Michigan lost his seat on Tuesday. He claimed to be pro-life, yet signed Obama's Health Bill. Marilyn Musgrave, Director of Votes Have Consequences, showed her clout as a leader in the Pro-Life Movement; gives an interview about the election, and Stupak's defeat. Sad to note, the people of Colorado hammered their pro-life bill.

News Real Blog Has It Correct About "Psycho Talk" Commentator Ed Shultz

Here is Ed Shultz:

[M]ost of these Founding Fathers that you think so highly of were actually slave owners themselves, and the ones that didn’t own slaves weren’t exactly abolitionists…[C]omparing progressives to slave owners while idolizing actual slave owners — that’s “Psycho Talk.

He attacked Samuel Adams, and also derided the Framers for the 3/5 provision in the Declaration of Independence, revealing his familiarity with the Federalist Papers. As author Ben Johnson notes:

There are three problems for Big Ed: He’s wrong about Sam Adams; he’s wrong about the Founding Fathers; and he’s wrong about the three-fifths compromise.

Do The Founders Agree On Natural Rights?

You bet. There had to be consensus on this fundamental issue. Unalienable Rights are one of the building blocks of our country. The author of this post on American Creation raises an important point not to be ignored.  All the framers agreed that Natural Law was to be identical to Divine Law, but, if the former diverted in the only possible way it could; by a written law, the Scriptures were to be, in the words of Founding Father James Wilson; Superauthentick. Also, by using standard logic, evidenced by the fact the men quoted in the Constitutional Convention: Sir William Blackstone, Baron Montesquieu, Puffendorf, Richard Hooker, John Locke, and the below quoted Hugo Grotius, believed as they did:

The very meaning of the words divine voluntary right, shows that it springs from the divine will, by which it is distinguished from natural law, which, it has already been observed, is called divine also. … Now this law was given either to mankind in general, or to one particular people. We find three periods, at which it was given by God to the human race, the first of which was immediately after the creation of man, the second upon the restoration of mankind after the flood, and the third upon that more glorious restoration through Jesus Christ. These three laws undoubtedly bind all men, as soon, as they come to a sufficient knowledge of them.

Above, Grotius is affirming the Scriptures superior to Nature. Furthermore, "All Human Laws are null and void if contrary to the Divine Law" was adhered to by all. Natural Law can only be relevant if made into Human Law. In lock-step with the Unitarians of the day, John Adams understood Natural Law was subserviant to Revelation:

 I say RIGHTS, for such they have, undoubtedly, antecedent to all earthly government, — Rights, that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws — Rights, derived from the great Legislator of the universe.

-A dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law, 1765

That Orthodox Christians: George Mason, Samuel Adams, and Alexander Hamilton, spoke largely of unalienable rights in terms of Natural Law, reinforces the fact they viewed the Scriptures superior. What then of this comment?

"If this is true, neither man's covenants nor God's can change this fact."

However, the Founding Fathers believed God's Word was superior. Is this a contradiction? God's promises are not inferior to man's ideas. Parts of the Bible not repeated in the New Testament; many I might add, are for a different dispensation; for instance, dietary laws. This is the key concept in this narrative, one brought to light by Montesquieu's fundamental "principles that do not change." Early American Law Books taught that government was free to set its own policy only if God had not ruled in an area. For example, Blackstone's Commentaries:

To instance in the case of murder: this is expressly forbidden by the Divine...If any human law should allow or enjoin us to commit it, we are bound to transgress that human law...But, with regard to matters that are...not commanded or forbidden by those superior laws such, for instance, as exporting of wool into foreign countries; here the...legislature has scope and opportunity to interpose.

In summation, the Founding Fathers appealed to Heaven as their authority, not Natural Law.