More From Allan Bloom on Revolutions in Modernity

What we saw last post is Allan Bloom asserting "modernity" began with three revolutions: English, American and French. I want to continue with this section of "The Closing of the American Mind," this time on pages 160-61:

Americans found little to charm them in the ancien regime in France. Its throne and altar were the very reality of, respectively, the unjust inequality and the prejudice that the American regime was intended to replace in the world. America, they believed, would succeed in its project with relative ease because we began here with the equality of conditions. Americans did not have to kill a king, displace an aristocracy that would stay around and cause trouble, or disestablish a church and perhaps abolish it. But the need to do all this, plus the presence of the Parisian mob, which could not accept the rule of law, prevented the French from attaining the reasonable consensus required for orderly democratic government. 

But another view of these events dominated public discussion on the Continent. To some Europeans, the Americans represented an intolerable narrowing of the human horizon, and the price paid for their decent order and prosperity was too high. The French aristocracy had a nobility, brilliance and taste that contrasted sharply with the pettiness and grayness of liberal society's commercial life and motives. The loss of what that aristocracy represented would impoverish the world. More important, the religion that was dismantled could be thought to express the depth and seriousness of life. If the noble and the sacred cannot find serious expression in democracy, its choiceworthiness becomes questionable. These are the arguments, the special pleading of the reactionaries, the disinherited of the ancien regime.

More serious for us are the arguments of the revolutionaries who accepted our principles of freedom and equality. Many believed that we had not thought through these cherished ideals. Can equality really only mean equal opportunity for unequal talents to acquire property? Should shrewdness at acquisition be better rewarded than moral goodness? Can private property and equality sit so easily together when even Plato required communism among equals? Communism or socialism never really made much headway against the respect for private property in the United States. Locke's definition of property suited, and still suits, our tempers perfectly, and Rousseau's critique of it made almost no impression here, although it was and remains very potent in Europe. And freedom for us meant merely acting as one pleases, restricted only by the minimum demands of social existence. We had not adequately understood what really setting laws for ourselves required, nor had we gone beyond the merely negative freedom of satisfying brutish impulsion. As for religion, the domesticated churches in America preserved the superstition of Christianity, overcoming of which was perhaps the key to liberating man. Should a good regime be atheistic, or should it have a civil religion? And, finally, what in the world can we do with the Napoleonic —heroic ambition and military glory—other than ignore or debunk it? 

Such were the questions raised on the slaughter-bench of History by the French Revolution, questions that we were not eager to hear. ...

So we see that "modernity" was brought to the world by means of revolutions fought for similar ideals (though not the exact same and in this case the devil may be in the details), first in Great Britain, then America, then in France. 

I agree with Bloom that America was lucky that it didn't have "to kill a king, displace an aristocracy that would stay around and cause trouble, or disestablish a church and perhaps abolish it" and that was a large part of why America more successfully implemented the principles of liberal democracy than France did.

Though as Gregg Frazer has noted, the Loyalists in America weren't exactly treated with kid gloves. And as I have noted, the Anglican establishment at the state level was defenestrated. By this time, Americans were already highly suspicious of the Anglican establishment across the ocean. We could only imagine what would have occurred if the Church of England was uniformly established in the American colonies at the time of the American revolution. 

Allan Bloom on the Big Three Liberal Revolutions

I strongly recommend Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind" and Leo Strauss' "Natural Right and History," not necessarily because I endorse everything in them; there is much in both books with which to disagree. Sometimes strongly.

Rather it's the way Strauss and his followers, especially Bloom attempt to penetrate the past great thinkers and historical events. The seriousness; the intensity. They truly give you a "grand tour" if you can stick around and follow them until the end.

And the part of the tour which explores the American founding is as contentious as it is illuminating. Below, I'm going to reproduce an excerpt from "The Closing of the American Mind" where Bloom deals with the big three revolutions of liberal democracy: English, American, and French. 

Bloom popularly appealed to a "conservative" (right of center) audience; but I think the book's appeal transcends politics. On the section I will reproduce, instead of writing something that would tickle the ears of the conservatives, where the American revolution was "good" and the French was "bad," etc., he gives us a different honest, interesting, informed take.

Bloom does not see "revolutions" -- any of them -- as either conservative or "Christian"* events. The three revolutions each were unique and could be viewed as sui generis. Or we could view them, as Bloom does, as part a larger connected history.

From pages 158-59:

Modernity is constituted by the political regimes founded on freedom and equality, hence on the consent of the governed, and made possible by a new science of nature that masters and conquers nature, providing prosperity and health. This was a self-conscious philosophical project, the greatest transformation of man's relations with his fellows and with nature ever effected. The American Revolution instituted this system of government for Americans, who in general were satisfied with the result and had a pretty clear view of what they had done. The questions of political principle and of right had been solved once and for all. No further revolution would be necessary, if revolution means changing of the fundamental principles of legitimacy, in accordance with reason and the natural order of things, and requiring armed combat against those who adhere to old orders and their unjust forms of rule. Revolution, a new word in the political vocabulary, which first referred to the Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England, made in the name of very much the same principles as ours, is akin to the movement of the sun from night to day.

The French Revolution, called a new dawn by Kant, was a much greater event than the American Revolution in the eyes of the world at that time because it concerned one of the two great powers in it, the veritable school of Europe, with one of the oldest and most civilized peoples. It was fought and won for freedom and equality, as were the English and American revolutions. It would seem to have completed the irresistible triumph of modern philosophy's project and to give a final proof of the theodicy of liberty and equality. But, unlike its predecessors, it gave birth to a dazzling array of interpretations and set off reactions in all directions that have not yet exhausted the impulse it lent to them. The Right—in its only serious meaning, the party opposed to equality (not economic equality but equality of rights)—at first wanted to undo the Revolution in the name of Throne and Altar, and this reaction probably breathed its last only with Francisco Franco in 1975. Another form of the Right, as it were a progressive Right, wanted to create and impose a new kind of inequality, a new European or German aristocracy, on the world, and it was blasted out of existence in Berlin in 1945. The Left, which intended to complete the Revolution by abolishing private property, is still quite alive but has never succeeded in doing so in those nations, particularly France, most influenced by the French Revolution. It was the Center, the bourgeois solution, which in the long run won out, but after so many regrets and so many disappointed aspirations, in France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Spain and Portugal, as it had in England and the United States. The last really great bourgeois-haters died at about the same time: Sartre, De Gaulle, and Heidegger. (Americans are not sufficiently aware that hatred of the bourgeois is at least as much a thing of the Right as of the Left.) One can expect a certain literary afterglow, since bourgeois-baiting is almost a reflex among writers and is unlearned with great difficulty, as was proved when so many kept at it even though there were Nazis and Communists around who might have merited their attention. In order to keep that flame alive, many literary persons interpreted Hitler as a bourgeois phenomenon, an interpretation that they have made stick by force of repetition.

Bloom has other variations on this theme in other parts of the book which I hope to reproduce and discuss sometime in the future.

*Meaning traditional orthodox Christianity. There are plenty of varieties of Christianity. Bloom would probably argue that what's known as "liberation theology" is the theological heir to revolutions. 

Hall on Rakove at Christianity Today

Mark David Hall has an article out at Christianity Today that reviews the new work by Jack Rakove on religious liberty and the American founding. A taste:

The Boundaries of Toleration

Historically, religious toleration has been the exception rather than the rule. But early modern thinkers such as John Milton and John Locke argued in favor of tolerating dissenters, and in 1689 England’s Parliament passed the Toleration Act, which offered limited protections to non-Anglican Protestants. Rakove states that the act “did not legally bind Americans,” but he suggests that it did “influence their behavior.” However, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Pennsylvania were already doing a superior job protecting religious liberty, and many American colonies soon joined them in surpassing their mother country. (I do not mean to imply that religious liberty was always and everywhere advancing in British North America. For instance, in 1692, following the Glorious Revolution, Maryland repealed its groundbreaking 1649 toleration act.)

In the Anglo-American world, the boundaries of religious toleration were regularly tested by members of the Society of Friends—better known as Quakers. Among other peculiarities, Friends decline to swear oaths, a practice Rakove attributes to the Fourth Commandment. I suspect he means either the Second or Third Commandment’s admonition not to “take the name of the Lord your God in vain” (Ex. 20:7, ESV). (Different traditions number the commandments differently.) But even citing Exodus is incorrect—Quakers refuse to swear oaths because they take literally biblical passages such as Matthew 5:34–37, where Jesus says, “Do not swear an oath at all. … All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (NIV). Furthermore, Quakers are pacifists and so refuse to serve in the military. They were routinely jailed because they acted on these convictions.

In 1696, Parliament passed a law permitting Quakers in England to affirm rather than swear some oaths. However, they were not allowed to be witnesses in criminal cases or hold civic offices—disabilities that remained until 1826 and 1832, respectively. Yet as early as 1647, Rhode Island permitted them to affirm rather than swear. Many American colonies followed this example and, in addition, exempted them from militia duty. The United States Constitution bans religious tests for office and permits anyone to affirm rather than swear oaths, which enabled Quakers to serve in the national government 44 years before they could do so in England. Rakove almost completely ignores these important advances for religious liberty in America.

Hall clearly endorses religious exemptions more so than Rakove does. That's the point of the review. However, figuring out how the founding fathers/First Amendment ought to apply is complex. Like Hall, I tend to generously support religious exemptions. Though I think Justice Scalia in Employment Division v. Smith got it right that the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment doesn't require such. 

That is, to the extent that these exemptions are legitimate, they are as creatures of legislatures and state constitutions. 

Further, scholars such as Marci Hamilton, Philip Hamburger and Phillip Munoz have demonstrated that such is the correct originalist understanding of religious liberty. True, America's founders did support giving exceptions and accommodations from the secular law that might burden religious practice. But did so more as a privilege that could be taken away.

(I understand this point is quite contentious in some scholarly circles; but at the moment I would kick the can to the above mentioned three scholars and can link to some of their arguments in the comment section if any readers so desire.) 

Robert Reilly’s New Book

Robert R. Reilly has written a book -- "America on Trial" -- that seeks to defend the American founding from the perspective of traditional Catholicism. Long story short, some notable traditional Catholics (Patrick Deneen et al.) have argued to the contrary.

I hope to have much more to say on this book in the future; I haven't gotten it yet but am well familiar with what it argues, having read many of Reilly's articles and other commentary about his book, for instance the symposium on Reilly's book at Catholic World Report. It's a great symposium that features analysis that is pro, con and in between.

Daniel J. Mahoney's article is my favorite and it's in the "in between" box. What I see as key from his article:

Still, the Founders bought into what the great southern Catholic novelist Walker Percy called a “mishmash anthropology.” No moral relativists, they nonetheless adopted the idiom of the “state of nature” which was intended by its great proponents to be a substitute account of human origins from the old one, so strikingly provided in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis. Such an account is remarkably “conventionalist,” in that it takes its bearings from solitary or semi-solitary individuals in the state of nature who are in no way political animals by nature. And Locke, a most canny writer, presented arguments in his Second Treatise of Government for human beings being both the product of Divine workmanship and beings who own themselves. Human beings have duties in the state of nature (contra Hobbes) but only when these are not at odds with the overwhelming imperative of self-preservation. For Locke, God and nature are not particularly provident, 9/10, nay 999/1000, Locke says, of what human beings have is the product of human industriousness. In numerous and subtle ways, Locke undermines the multiple reasons why human beings ought to be grateful to a loving and Provident God and a beneficent natural order.

I don't like the term "mishmash" because it suggests incoherence. Rather, I prefer "synthesis." In good faith, America's founders, good Whigs they, attempted to "harmonize" (see Thomas Jefferson to Henry Lee, May 8, 1825).

We can discuss whether Locke's teachings were properly "Christianized"* with tips of the hat to the Anglican Thomist, Richard Hooker. Yes, Locke's ideas were presented, often from pulpits, in a manner that suggested compatibility with traditional Christianity and the natural law (Aristotle-Thomism-Hooker); but also often included the "state of nature/social contracts and rights" speak that is, as Leo Strauss put it, "wholly alien" to not only the Bible but also the traditional natural law.

Allan Bloom, one of Strauss' disciples, has an instructive quotation:

When Bishops, a generation after Hobbes’s death, almost naturally spoke the language of the state of nature, contract and rights, it was clear that he had defeated the ecclesiastical authorities, who were no longer able to understand themselves as they once had. ("The Closing of the American Mind," 41-2). 

Note that it was not Hobbes who was cited from the pulpits, but either Locke explicitly, or Locke's ideas on the state of nature/social contract and rights, without attribution. Bloom, like Strauss before him and Deenen and others, operate under the assumption that Locke was "Hobbesian." We need not operate under this assumption, but rather simply note Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau all shared the common ground of the construct of the "state of nature/social contract and rights," and each had his own particular spin on that construct. It was, for lack of a better term, the "common parlance" among them. This construct was, however, first initiated by Hobbes.

*Meaning the traditional or orthodox practice of the faith.

Hall: "Calvinism and American Independence"

Mark David Hall has a new installment at this month's Cato Unbound. Check it out. A taste:

Professor Allen writes: “Dr. Hall points out that 50-75% of Americans during the founding era were Calvinists … [b]ut once again, ‘the founders’ and ‘the American people’ are not at all the same thing.” It is certainly true that not all founders were Calvinists, but many of them were, and they drew from a tradition of political reflection that encouraged them to actively resist tyrants. 

Let’s begin by considering just one Reformed founder, Connecticut’s Roger Sherman. Sherman was the only statesman to help draft and sign the Declaration and Resolves (1774), the Articles of Association (1774), the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Articles of Confederation (1777, 1778), and the Constitution (1787). He served longer in the Continental and Confederation Congresses than all but four men, and he was regularly appointed to key committees, including those charged with drafting the Declaration of Independence and the Articles of Confederation. At the Constitutional Convention, Sherman often outmaneuvered Madison and, according to David Brian Robertson, the “political synergy between Madison and Sherman … may have been necessary for the Constitution’s adoption.”[i] He was also a representative and senator in the new republic where he played a major role in drafting the Bill of Rights. And unlike many of the more “Enlightened” founders favored by Professor Allen, Sherman never owned a slave, and he co-authored a law that put slavery in Connecticut on the path to extinction.[ii]

American patriots drew from a rich and deep tradition of Calvinist thought concerning when tyrants may be justly resisted. ...

Green: More Than an Academic Debate

In the conversation at this month's Cato Unbound, the following is Steven Green's follow up entitled "More Than an Academic Debate" after his initial response to the interlocutors involved in the discussion. A taste from Professor Green's latest:

I want to step back from this discussion to ask the more fundamental question of why this debate is so important to a segment of the U.S. population. A common response is that professional historians, many of whom have secularist leanings, have given Christianity, and its impact on our nation’s history, a short shrift, either marginalizing it or portraying it in negative terms. As a result, there is a desire to “set the record straight”—as if there is an identifiably “correct” interpretation of history that should then be embedded in perpetuity. That said, Professor Hall and his cohort of like-minded scholars have contributed to the discipline by expanding our understanding of our past and by challenging oversimplified assumptions about the nation’s founders. I chiefly disagree with the conclusions he draws.

Brooke Allen: "The Founders Read the Bible. But They Also Read David Hume"

In the conversation at this month's Cato Unbound, the following is Brooke Allen's response after Mark David Hall's initial response to the interlocutors involved in the discussion. A taste from Professor Allen:

Steven Green writes with great common sense and a refreshing absence of ideology. He makes a very important point: that the founders, like the rest of the American public, were “religiously literate,” steeped in biblical lore and language. The Bible and the stories in it were the common possession of pretty much the entire American public to a degree that is hardly comprehensible today. Biblical analogy was the most obvious method for eighteenth-century politicians to communicate with the people, and as Dr. Green points out, they all did it, even those who had private doubts: thus, George Washington’s fondness for Micah’s image of the vine and the fig tree tells us nothing about Washington’s personal beliefs but a great deal about his ability to communicate in a manner that would move his audience. In today’s culture such a rhetorical reliance on scripture would be impossible, not only because secularists would take exception but because large swathes of the public, including (especially?) highly educated people, have little to no knowledge of the Bible. A modern politician is far more likely to draw analogies from football or baseball, or from some very familiar cultural product like Star Wars or Harry Potter, than from scripture. Insofar as we have a common culture anymore, sports and entertainment are the things that constitute it. 

Dr. Green is also right, I think, when he states that the fact that “religion influenced the founders’ thinking, or that they used common religious terms in their writings, indicates little about their personal devotion or the degree to which they intended to incorporate Christian principles into the organs of government they helped create,” and that “Enlightenment rationalism and secular Whig political ideas” were also highly significant to the founders and their theories of government. And he does well to remind us that it is very, very difficult to “fit” individual founders into any modern religious category, and probably pointless to try.

Steven Green: "The Religious Beliefs of the Founders Don’t Always Fit in Present-Day Categories"

In the conversation at this month's Cato Unbound, the following is Steven Green's response after Mark David Hall's initial response to the interlocutors involved in the discussion. A taste from Professor Green:

I agree with most of Professor Kidd’s observations. As I suggested in my essay, we should resist forcing twenty-first century categorizations about belief onto those leaders of the founding generation who were, by all accounts, complex individuals. The presence of Christianity (Protestantism) in the founding culture was ubiquitous, so commentators should resist attempts to segregate its religious aspects from its secular ones. All of the founders were religiously literate—something that stands in stark contrast to many political leaders today—and were comfortable discussing religious ideas. But they were also synthesizers of Enlightenment rationalism and Whig political theories. Professor Kidd and I agree that “deism” was a broad and ill-defined perspective, at least its American variant. That’s why I prefer—like Professor Kidd—to consider figures like Washington and Jefferson theistic rationalists. But they were not conventional Christians.

Mark David Hall: Responses to the Panel on Deism, Orthodoxy, and the American Founding at Cato

The conversation at this month's Cato Unbound has begun. This is Mark Hall's response. A taste:

Rather than simply state the uncontroversial fact that virtually all late eighteenth century Americans identified themselves as Christians, I chose to address the common assertion that “most” or “many” of America’s founders were deists. Far too many sensible scholars make these or similar claims, including Professor Allen (“The Founding Fathers were … skeptical men of the Enlightenment who questioned each and every received idea they had been taught”) and Professor Green (“Although many of the nation’s elites privately embraced deism, The Age of Reason and other works popularized irreligion among the laboring and working classes”).[1] 

In addition to Professors Allen and Green, academic and popular authors including Gordon Wood, Geoffrey Stone, Richard Hughes, Frank Lambert, Matthew Stewart, R. Lawrence Moore, Isaac Kramnick, Garry Wills, Steven Keillor, Richard Dawkins, and many others have claimed that America’s founders were deists.[2] Because this assertion is so widespread, it seemed worthwhile to set the historical record straight. In my short essay, and in Did America Have a Christian Founding?, I offer excellent reasons for rejecting this error. That Professors Allen and Green do not even attempt to refute my arguments suggest that I have succeeded.

Steven Green's Contribution to Cato Unbound

Here is a link to the Steven Green contribution to the Cato Unbound symposium on the faith of the American founders. A taste:

The incidence of religious language and discourse among leaders of the founding generation more likely tells us something different. As public figures, they understood the power of religious rhetoric to motivate and inspire people. That public speakers used those familiar idioms is unsurprising—everyone did it, including that “filthy little atheist” Tom Paine, as Theodore Roosevelt called him.[6] One must not lose sight of the significant challenges—with the high likelihood of failure—that the founders faced in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Both political and religious figures purposefully drew on Biblical types to legitimize their revolutionary and governing efforts. Political and religious leaders sought to score symbolic points by identifying America’s successes with divine providence; another favorite was to analogize Britain and King George to Egypt and pharaoh and the colonists to the Children of Israel (with George Washington as Moses, leading them to the promised land). This purposeful use of religious imagery served an important political purpose of anointing the struggle with a transcendent purpose. In light of the extraordinary times and the commonality of religious discourse, it would have been remarkable if the founders had not employed biblical terminology in their public statements.[7]  

An undue focus on the religious upbringing of leading Founders, or on the religious discourse during the Founding, also undervalues the significance of Enlightenment rationalism and secular Whig political ideas on the founding generation. By the second half of the century, both strains of thought were significantly impacting the emerging ideas about revolution and republicanism.[8] The writings of figures such as John Locke, Baron Montesquieu, Hugo Grotius, and David Hume not only influenced the thinking of political leaders, they were adapted and integrated into the thought of clergy.[9] ...

Thomas Kidd's Contribution to Cato Unbound

Here is a link to Thomas Kidd's contribution to the Cato Unbound symposium on the faith of the American founders. A taste:

The problem is that people in eighteenth-century Anglo-America did not always use our textbook definition of a deist. Deist could mean a person who denied God’s providence, but it could mean other things as well. Sometimes it referred to a person who was critical of Reformed theology and its emphasis on humankind’s lack of free will. Or someone who did not believe that the whole Bible was the Word of God. Sometimes “deism” meant monotheism. Sometimes the use of deism had no skeptical connotations at all, such as when it was used as an antonym for “atheism.” Franklin and others rarely unpacked all those variant meanings, but it would have surprised few people in Revolutionary America to find that a “deist” also believed in God’s providence. Among the various “Enlightenments” of the era, the French Enlightenment tended to be the most radically skeptical, even producing some atheists. Advocates of the British-American Enlightenment, scholars now understand, were mostly friendly to theism, if not Christianity per se. Often British Enlightenment thinkers had a reformist agenda for institutional Christianity, such as disestablishing the official state churches, ending tests of faith for elected officials, or repudiating Reformed or Calvinist doctrines such as predestination.  

Another reason that the founders’ faiths are elusive is that even the “deistic” founders, such as Jefferson and Franklin, knew the Bible and quoted it liberally. As Hall notes, George Washington, typically quiet about his own faith, loved to quote Micah’s peaceful image of the vine and the fig tree. ...

Allen Responds to Hall

Over at Cato Unbound,  Brook Allen has written her response to Mark David Hall. You can read it here. A taste:

Dr. Hall has put the founding in philosophical context but not the wider historical context, which is all-important. “Enlightenment ideas indisputably had some positive influence,” he allows, “but a more important reason Americans embraced religious liberty was because of their Christian convictions.” No, no, and no! For there were Christians and Christians—though Dr. Hall writes as though the various sects formed a monolithic bloc. In fact, for more than two-and-a-half centuries—ever since Martin Luther posted his 95 theses—Christians had been torturing and slaughtering each other all over Europe. Bitter warfare in France, culminating in the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre of Protestants by Catholics in 1572, endured until the very end of the century, and recommenced, just as brutally, in 1685. It was still going on during deliberations over the American constitution. The Netherlands suffered 80 years of warfare before the Protestant provinces finally succeeded in detaching themselves from Catholic Spain. Germany and other parts of Central Europe were torn apart by the inconceivably savage Thirty Years’ War (1618-48), in which entire regions were devastated and the population of the area was reduced by 30 percent. Britain, closer to home for most American colonists, had seen Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries, Mary I’s persecution of Protestants, and finally the bloody Civil War (1642-51), in which Puritan parliamentarians took on Anglican royalists, divided the nation, and executed the monarch.

This Month's Cato Unbound

I'm happy to see that this month's Cato Unbound is on "the faith of the American Founders," with Mark David Hall providing the lead essay.

This is Dr. Hall's first essay. A taste:

The Liberty Bell is one of the most prominent symbols of American freedom. It is inscribed with the words “proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all inhabitants thereof,” which are taken from Leviticus 25:10. In Did America Have a Christian Founding?, I contend that the connection between the Bible and liberty is no accident. America’s founders drew from their Christian convictions, and ideas developed within the Christian tradition of political reflection, when they created a constitutional order committed to protecting and expanding freedom.[1] 

The book’s argument is, to put it mildly, controversial. Andrew Seidel of the Freedom From Religion Foundation asserts that the Bible and liberty are fundamentally incompatible.[2] Similarly, Matthew Stewart proclaims that the skeptical philosopher Benedict de Spinoza is the “principal architect of the radical political philosophy that achieves its ultimate expression in the American republic … ”[3] Both authors agree that America’s founders were deists who created a godless Constitution and desired the strict separation of church and state. 

Far too many scholars make similar claims. ...  

I will have more to say later. I also look forward to reading the contributions from Steven Green, Thomas Kidd, and Brooke Allen. 

American States of Nature

The book American States of Nature looks informative and relevant to my interdisciplinary interests regarding America's founding. Below is what the latest edition of the American Political Science Association’s Perspectives on Politics journal (published by Cambridge) has to say about it:

In American States of Nature, Mark Somos makes the simple but important argument that the concept of the state of nature is central to the American founding, an idea “comparable to rights, liberty and property” in importance (p. 2). Its centrality, he contends, nevertheless has been largely missed by scholars for the past two centuries. For Somos, the state of nature discourse proceeds through four stages. The first, the buildup to the Revolution from 1761–72, saw the concept of a state of nature invoked as a source of rights that supported the colonists’ grievances against the actions of Parliament. In the second stage,1772–75, the concept was invoked to justify independence, as the colonists increasingly saw themselves as effectively abandoned by England and left on their own. In the third stage, 1775–89, a constitutional framework was built on the basis of this distinctively American state of nature, and in the fourth the concept was adapted to developing the nascent state. In this book, Somos explores the first two stages, leaving the latter two for future work. Following John Adams, Somos finds the beginning of the movement for independence in a speech by James Otis in a court case in 1761. It was Otis, he argues, who first began to transform the concept of a state of nature into a revolutionary idea for the colonists. The idea evolved into “a constitutive sense of American state of nature, in which the colonists formed a natural community” (p. 161). This constitutive meaning, which carries well beyond the works of Otis, formed a basis for colonial arguments for independence, whether partial or total, well before 1776. As early as 1772, and certainly after that, “every side in every colonial constitutional debate ... regarded the state of nature as a crucial component of the intellectual and ideological debates concerning imperial reform and the colonies’ future” (p. 216).

See more here and here.

Frazer on Riots and Resistance

Gregg Frazer sends along the following note on rioting and resistance. His comments are below.

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I’m curious: what is the reaction of you guys (esp. Mark) who believe in a “right of resistance” to the riots in Minneapolis and other cities?  Americans generally celebrate the exercise of rights – so are you cheering the exercise of their “right of resistance” by people who claim to be tyrannized?  I know that you are required to approve of it, I just wonder if you’re enthusiastically supporting it.

Mark is writing a book claiming that the American Revolution was just. The current rebels have probably destroyed as much private property (in terms of value) as those who did the Boston Tea Party (but without the charming Indian outfits).  Should it be revered in future textbooks?  Face masks aren’t nearly as picturesque as feathers and moccasins. But they claim to be resisting tyranny, so are you celebrating their efforts?

We know that people who don’t like duly-passed government policies have a right to use force and violence to impose their will against that of the legal authorities because they have a “right” to do so.  We know that efforts by the legal authorities to enforce the law are themselves tyrannical and that governments do not have a right to maintain order if a particularly noisy portion of the population objects.

Has the bottle- and rock-throwing of these freedom fighters been enough to venerate – even though they couldn’t goad the authorities into a Boston Massacre-type end result?  Is their attempt to do so enough to warrant a Freedom Trail in Minneapolis or outside the White House, or does someone have to die?

Have they looted enough private property (big-screen TVs, etc.) and assaulted enough law enforcement personnel to be celebrated with the hallowed ranks of the mobs who attacked Loyalists, stamp agents, and government officers in the 1770s?

They have fallen somewhat short of the sterling example set by the 1776 “patriots” because they haven’t confiscated the property of those who simply hold a different political view and they haven’t yet imprisoned their political opponents without due process of law.  They’re not even requiring their fellow citizens to sign oaths of allegiance to their cause or threatening the freedom and livelihood of those who refuse – but give them time. They haven’t denied freedom of religion by closing churches, denied freedom of the press by destroying the presses of their opponents and burning their publications, or denied freedom of speech by sending mobs to the homes of those who express a different opinion.  But they’ve made a good start, haven’t they? You can at least hope that some tarring and feathering is in the works.

Apparently, carrying on the honored tradition of the Committees of Correspondence, many of these rioters are organized and shipped in from outside the community. The rabble-rousers of the 1770s (e.g. Sam Adams and John Hancock) would be proud.

Perhaps they’ll achieve the level of rebellion and social disruption of your heroes: the “Patriots” in 1776 and the Southerners in 1861.  After all, the U.S. government today taxes millions of Americans without representation – in Puerto Rico, Guam, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and the nation’s capital: Washington, D.C.  The time to “resist” is long overdue – right?  These “patriots” focused on “systemic injustice” are perhaps the vanguard of a larger movement.  Perhaps they’ll get the support of 1/3 of Americans; we know that level has been established as sufficient to justify war and to cast off the authority of a government.

Frazer Responds to Hall's Article on Reformed Resistance

See the article that Mark David Hall co-wrote with Sarah Morgan Smith here. Gregg Frazer's comments are below.

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In the original set of “comments” on Mr. Hart’s question about Calvin’s views, Mark included the following excerpt from an article he had co-written:

“These events seem to have encouraged Calvin to embrace a more radical approach to resisting tyrants. For instance, in a 1560 sermon on Melchizedek, Calvin contends that Abraham was a private person who received a ‘special vocation’ to pick up the sword to save his people from ungodly rulers. A wave of violence against the Huguenots beginning in 1561 apparently inspired even further movement. In a 1562 sermon, he contended that all citizens—public and private alike—have an obligation to pursue justice and righteousness. ‘We should resist evil as much as we can. And this has been enjoined on all people in general; I tell you, this was said not only to princes, magistrates, and public prosecutors, but also to all private persons.’”

In a previous post, I noted that this was clearly a spiritual command for every individual – no matter their station in life – to be holy and resist evil in that sense (not permission to rebel against authority).  If interested, one can look up the previous discussion to see the Bible verses and arguments I made. I want to return to the first part of the excerpt, though, and Mark’s conclusions from it that Calvin changed his mind about these issues in later years.  In my original response, I noted that Calvin had discussed the role of special avengers sent from God 25 years earlier in the Institutes – this was not a new revelation for him. Given that some do not always report all the relevant information that we need from a quotation’s context, I went back to the 1560 sermon on Melchizedek to which Mark referred.  The following is some of what Calvin says there:

“we must hold this for a general rule. That it is not lawful for any man whatsoever, to take Arms upon him. For it is God alone that must do that.  …  no man may use force and violence, without he receive the same from him [God] to which it belongeth.  And therefore there are none but Kings, Princes, and, Magistrates, that may take Arms upon them, and with whom men may join themselves.  …  God taketh this office of revenge unto himself, if there be any extremity and wrong committed, because it is his office to punish the same  …  he that shall arm himself, robbeth God as I have already said, of the jurisdiction which he giveth to himself for the defense of his. To be short, private persons ought not only to abstain from all kind of violence, but also are to have a quiet and peaceable mind to suffer ….”

 Re Abram:

“Abram is not to be accounted of as the rest, seeing that God himself had testified unto him that he gave him the possession of this land  …  God might for once, give leave and liberty unto his servant Abram, to exercise the force of the sword  …  God giveth oftentimes singular motions unto his servants, which we must not draw unto ourselves to follow. … certain men whom God had stirred up to aide his people, the same are so many testimonies unto us, to show that we should not think, that there is always an assured and certain election [choice], when any one man should be armed, with the sword and with authority.  … all that which is here recited unto us, is not for us to make a general rule thereof. For it were a mockery and a foolish argument for us this to reason.”

 Speaking of other specially chosen deliverers executing God’s judgment:

“they had their particular motions, as if they had been privileged thereunto by a public law. And we are in all things to note, that when God worketh extraordinarily, being grounded upon his word, that privilege is not of us to be usurped.  … if I shall do the like that he doeth which is privileged: I shall join myself with him that would separate himself from the common order. For we must leave the authority of Kings and Magistrates to do whatsoever they know to be best for the commonweal …  so often as we shall see God minded to remember the redemption and deliverance of his Church by such as he hath ordained to be as it were ministers of his own preparing, we must understand, these to be singular acts past from his own hand. And those men to be chosen by him: and armed also by his authority and power.” 

Why?:

“God would thereby show him, that when he intended to put his successors in possession of the land, that it was an easy matter for him [God] to do it  …  when GOD sendeth us any afflictions, although at the first they be ever so hard and grievous, yet for all that, in the end, the issue of them if profitable and beneficial to our good.”  [in other words, God does these deliverances for His glory and, although suffering is a constituent element of Christianity, God works everything together for good to those who love God and are called according to His purpose (Rom. 8:28).

Clearly, there is no movement on the part of Calvin on this issue.  God may remove tyrants – that’s His role and right.  He may use special agents to do so on His behalf for His purposes according to His judgment.  But individuals or groups of people are not to usurp that role from God, take up arms, or presume that they have any right to do so.  The role of the people is to obey and suffer (if necessary).  Calvin says to try to make this into a general approval of rebellion is a “mockery” of God’s rule and a “foolish argument.” These are all the same things Calvin taught 25 years earlier in the Institutes.  In the context, Calvin specifically and pointedly says the opposite of Mark’s conclusion. In general, if one did not know that Calvin wrote 500 years ago and Mark just a few years ago, one might think that Calvin wrote specifically to counter Mark’s claims.

Frazer Responds to Van Dyke III

Tom Van Dyke made three comments (one, two, and three) on 5/28/20. Gregg Frazer responds to them below.

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Mr. Van Dyke: You persist in making claims in my name that I do not make.

I am not arguing that no one else held some of the same views as Locke.  I am arguing about who actually influenced the “patriot” preachers.

Re “Just because Locke was cited does not mean that those ideas and arguments were not already part of the growing body of Christian/Protestant/"Calvinist" political theology”: OK, but I’m not arguing that they didn’t have some of the same ideas – I’m arguing that the “patriot” preachers did not get them from “the growing body of Christian/Protestant/’Calvinist’ political theology,” but from Locke.  I’m arguing the apparently controversial notion that they got the ideas from the source they said they got them from.

You and Mark largely hold the same views.  If someone reads Mark’s book and cites him in support of their own view, is it equally valid to claim that you influenced them?  It makes no difference who they cited for the ideas they’re expressing?

The fact that someone cites Locke and not anyone in the cast of “Reformed” characters does not indicate that they got their ideas from Locke? – irrespective of whether the ideas of others are similar?

It is, of course, not necessary for someone to directly quote from a source that influenced their thought, but to attempt to satisfy Mr. Van Dyke, here’s an example of a “patriot” preacher quoting Locke directly:

“Men in society having property, they have such a right to the goods, which by the law of the community are theirs, that nobody hath a right to take their substance, or any part of it from them, without their own consent: Without this they have no property at all; for I have truly no property in that, which another can by right take from me when he pleases against my consent. Hence it is a mistake to think, that the supreme or legislative power of any commonwealth, can do what it will, and dispose of the estates of the subject arbitrarily, or take any part of them at pleasure.  Lock on civil Government”

-- John Tucker, An Election Sermon, Boston, 1771

Next from you is a demand that Mark supply direct quotes from Beza or another Reformer in a “patriot” sermon – right?  I’ve noticed that “read my book” isn’t OK when I say it, but it’s fine with you when Mark does.

“Almost all” is an important distinction.  I would be interested to see, for example, a 16^th-century “Reformed” writer building his argument on the state of nature. “Social contract” was not a Founding principle?  You might have trouble telling that to Jefferson, Bernard Bailyn, Clinton Rossiter, Pauline Maier, Forrest McDonald, and countless other scholars of the Founding.
 

Frazer Responds to Van Dyke, Part II

Below is the second part of Gregg Frazer's response to Tom Van Dyke's post (The first part is here).

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As I looked up Mayhew’s affirmation of Locke’s influence, I was reminded that Samuel Clarke was perhaps the greatest theological influence on Mayhew (apart from politics).  That, in turn, reminded me of the important gap in Mark’s thesis.  In Roger Sherman and the Creation of the American Republic (in which he makes the lengthiest argument for “Reformed” influence), Mark points out that most preachers of the period were graduates of Harvard or Yale (p 28).  That works against his thesis and in favor of mine. 

As early as 1701, the belief that Harvard had forsaken the fundamentals of the [Reformed] faith was a key factor in the founding of Yale.  Pressure was brought to start a new college because congregations were complaining about the poor quality (in terms of orthodoxy) of ministers Harvard was producing.  Many churches remained orthodox, but the graduates they received from Harvard were humanistic rationalists.  Harvard had a “Satan’s bookshelf” of rationalist authors whose works were an essential part of Harvard’s intellectual milieu as early as 1723.  For 40 years, Harvard’s famed Dudleian lectures taught Harvard students that reason and natural religion were the core of religion. The last such lecture in 1799 was a defense of religion against atheism spawned by rationalism.

Ministerial graduates from Harvard found their alma mater a disadvantage because of its reputation.  According to Josiah Quincy’s History of Harvard University, the “most eminent” of the clergymen who “openly avowed … Arminianism, Arianism, Pelagianism, Socinianism, and Deism” were alumni from Harvard.  Graduates said “the tendency of all classes was to skepticism” and testified of a prevailing “infidel and irreligious spirit.”  The theology professorship was vacant for a time and Harvard came to be regarded as an appropriate training ground only for unitarian pulpits.  In the 1740s, famed evangelist George Whitefield said: “As for the Universities, I believe it may be said, their Light is become Darkness” and he complained of the low state of religion among the clergy at both Harvard and Yale.  When he visited Harvard, Whitefield preached on the text “We are not as many who corrupt the Word of God” and applied its conclusion as a rebuke of the professors and students.  Similar descriptions and remarks were made about Yale from 1714 on by such luminaries as Samuel Johnson, Lyman Beecher, and Timothy Dwight.  When Dwight became president of Yale, he reported that “European rationalistic philosophers were popular and students considered it smart to be called by the name of some infidel.”

I could go on and on with this evidence – and I do in chapter three of The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders – but perhaps most important are the well-documented attacks on Calvinism leading up to the Revolutionary era.

Graduates from Harvard and Yale in the 18^th century were studying Enlightenment rationalist authors, not Calvin or Beza, etc.  That is the reason they didn’t cite Beza or other Reformers; they cited what they knew – writers such as Locke.
 

Frazer Responds to Van Dyke, Part I

Gregg Frazer responds to Tom Van Dyke's post; it's divided up into two posts and this is the first. His comments are below.

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I’m not speculating that Mayhew was influenced by Locke; he says so.  In his sermon “The Snare Broken,” Mayhew specifically says that he was influenced by Locke because he “seemed rational” (which, in Mayhew's mind, is the highest compliment he could bestow).  For the record, I do mention this in my first book, The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders.  Starting with Elisha Williams (who Mark quotes in his most recent book) in 1741, a lot of preachers cited Locke by name – who among them cited Beza?

As for “Lockean,” I am happy to dilate.  In The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders, I lay out basic Lockean principles and demonstrate how the “patriot” preachers followed and promoted those principles.  They are: a state of nature; equality; consent; the law of self-preservation; popular sovereignty; self-determination; the social contract; rulers accountability to the people; the common interest as the purpose of government; natural rights; political liberty; confidence in the majority; republican government; and resistance to tyranny.

These should all sound familiar because of Locke’s influence that virtually everyone recognizes to one degree or another – most to a great degree.

Yes, Mayhew’s sermon was delivered decades before the immediate rebellion-provoking events.  That allowed his ideas to disseminate broadly and to be, as Adams said, “read by everybody.”  Surely Mr. Van Dyke is not suggesting that someone cannot be influenced by a work written many years before.  That would invalidate this entire website.

The fact that Mayhew – and every other – preacher used a passage from the Bible as a springboard for what he wanted to say does not mean that his source authority is Paul or that the premises are theological.  For Mayhew, revelation (the Bible) was secondary to reason and, in fact, reason determined what counted as revelation.  He believed that God Himself was limited by “the everlasting tables of right reason.”  Mayhew was speaking to a congregation who expected him to speak from/about the Bible.  So he said what he wanted irrespective of what the Bible actually said and then claimed that Paul said what Mayhew wanted to say.  In other words, he would have fit in quite well in 21^st-century America.

I did NOT concede that “the prior Reformers ‘influenced’ Locke” and the link doesn’t take one to a place where I supposedly did.

As for Strauss and Straussians, Mr. Van Dyke is much more enthralled with him/them than I.  Truth be told, much too much is made of the singularities of Straussianism.  Either way, I do not identify as a Straussian – and for Mr. Van Dyke and for Mark, self identification is determinative, right?  I listed two Straussians among those who disagree with Mark’s “take” and who’ve had some influence on my views, but I listed FIVE non-Straussians (plus “others”).  My view is not dependent on Strauss or identical with Strauss’s.  In his peer review of my manuscript, Pangle pointed to a couple of things upon which he and I agreed to disagree.

Mr. Van Dyke says: "Gregg doesn't do it [provide argument and evidence somewhere what was uniquely 'Lockean'] here at American Creation among his tens of thousands of words on this topic, and he doesn't do it in his book either. This is the lacuna in his thesis. He may be right about Locke and the Reformed preachers, but he hasn't begun to prove it.”  I actually do prove it with numerous quotes from the “patriot” preachers in chapter three of The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders – including references to whole sections of sermons that are extensive direct quotations from Locke. Some have read the book and could confirm that.  In his much-celebrated Sacred Scripture, Sacred War, James Byrd also concludes that “many” preachers blended “the philosophy of John Locke” with references to the Bible.

Frazer Responds to Hall's Comment on May 25 about John Fea

Gregg Frazer's response to Mark David Hall's comment on May 25 about John Fea is below:

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On a May 25 comment in response to my defense of John Fea, Mark says; “To my way of thinking, if one is interested in Calvin's view of resisting tyrants one should read Calvin, not rely on an unpublished dissertation no matter how good it is. But perhaps that is just me.”

I would point out to those who have not read Fea’s book or the specific part that Mark referenced: Fea quoted four statements of Calvin accurately (though indirectly) before summarizing with a quote from a secondary source (the dissertation in question).  That is four more quotes from Calvin in support of the point he is making than Mark can muster from Calvin calling for armed or violent rebellion/resistance or appealing to “lesser/inferior magistrates.”  As long as the quotes are accurate, why does it matter if they come via another source?

Fea concludes that part of his argument by quoting the author of the dissertation.  We all – Mark included – use secondary quotes that we find pithy to summarize points.  The 12^th footnote in Mark’s most recent book is an “as quoted in.” Starting with footnote #25, he has numerous references to something quoted in secondary sources – most prominently and most often in his own The Sacred Rights of Conscience (which is a fine collection, by the way). Why doesn’t Mark cite the originals?  I don’t know any reason that Fea should be criticized for it – unless only Mark’s secondary work is to be trusted or deemed valuable.