Jefferson (at Different Stages of his Life) on Priestley & Price (with some J. Adams Too)

Arguably, the two most notable British Unitarians who influenced the American Founding were the Socinian Joseph Priestley and Arian Richard Price.

Thomas Jefferson, self proclaimed unitarian, militantly so, professed great admiration for both (theologically he was closer to Priestley; though arguably Jefferson was even more heterodox than Priestley. I'm assuming that Socinianism is more heterodox than Arianism).

Some controversy ensues over whether Jefferson was heterodox before 1813. Every serious Jefferson scholar thinks he was. See Warren Throckmorton's ongoing case, all the details of which admittedly, I haven't memorized.

I know Throckmorton invokes a 1788 letter by Jefferson on refusal to be a Godfather because TJ didn't want to affirm the Trinity. There Jefferson notes a lifelong "difficulty" with that doctrine. Throckmorton offers other evidence too, noting:

Jefferson also confided to a Unitarian friend that he attended Priestley’s Unitarian church before 1800, while he was Vice President. In Jefferson’s 1803 Syllabus, he laid out his belief that Jesus was not part of the Godhead. [The] attempt to make Jefferson seem orthodox during the active part of his political engagement is contradicted by Jefferson’ own words.

Throckmorton may have included perhaps (?) what I disclose below. But I want to re-fresh the record.

Let's start backwards with where Jefferson ended. On February 27, 1821, writing to Timothy Pickering, Jefferson stated:

I do not know that you and I may think alike on all points. as the Creator has made no two faces alike, so no two minds, and probably no two creeds. we well know that among Unitarians themselves there are strong shades of difference, as between Doctors Price and Priestley for example. so there may be peculiarities in your creed and in mine. they are honestly formed without doubt. I do not wish to trouble the world with mine, nor to be troubled for them. these accounts are to be settled only with him who made us; and to him we leave it, with charity for all others, of whom also he is the only rightful and competent judge. I have little doubt that the whole of our country will soon be rallied to the Unity of the Creator, and, I hope, to the pure doctrines of Jesus also.

The context of this letter has Jefferson railing against "the incomprehensible jargon of the Trinitarian arithmetic, that three are one, and one is three," while granting latitude towards the Arianism and Socinianism of Price and Priestley.

It's hard for anyone to dispute Jefferson from 1813 onward held to such a heterodox unitarian position. 1813 seemed a watershed year for both Jefferson AND J. Adams where they bitterly rejected and mocked the Trinity. That was the year Great Britain finally got the law off its books making it a crime to publicly deny the doctrine. When reading their correspondence, skip to 1813. That year is practically all about their rejection of the Trinity and orthodox Christian doctrine.

So then let's go to the beginning. The earliest I trace Jefferson's connection to Priestley and Price is the mid 1780s, after the Declaration of Independence, but before the Constitution was ratified and Jefferson's subsequent service in the newly formed Federal government.

Jerry Newcombe and Mark A. Beliles have a new book out which explores the current controversy (and examines the arguments of among others, David Barton, Gregg Frazer, Throckmorton and his co-author Michael Coulter). Though known to sympathize with the "Christian America" view of history, the timeline they give on page 380 seems accurate enough (to my eyes). I would stress, though, there is not sufficient evidence that Jefferson's turn towards explicit unitarianism at that time -- 1785-86 -- came from the orthodox Trinitarian direction as opposed to one more deistic and less self consciously "Christian" than where Jefferson's beliefs terminated.

Newcombe and Beliles document how John Adams, meeting with Jefferson in England in 1786 took him to a Unitarian Church with a service led by Richard Price.  Jefferson penned a letter to Price in 1785 praising Price's Observations on the American Revolution which Price earlier sent a copy. Price also sent a copy to among others, George Washington who similarly praised the tract. Price's addresses is explicitly pro-unitarian.

In their ensuing correspondence, Price further discusses religion with Jefferson. As Price wrote him on October 26, 1788:

I am now reading Mr. Necker’s book on the importance of religious opinions. ...  He should have defined it, and taken care to distinguish the religion he means from the Superstitions that go under the name of religion, and which have done unspeakable harm in the world. What he Says is true only of a rational and liberal religion; that is of a religion which enforces the obligations of morality by motives drawn from the authority of a righteous and benevolent Deity and a future retribution. But he Seems never to have consider’d that there has been in almost all religions a melancholy Separation of religion from morality. Popery teaches a method of pleasing God without forsaking vice, and of getting to heaven by penances, bodily mortifications, pilgrimages, saying masses, believing mysterious doctrines, burning heretics, aggrandizing Priests &c. Mahometans expect a paradise of Sensual pleasures. Pagans worship’d lewd, revengeful and cruel Deities, and thus Sanctify’d to themselves1 Some of the worst passions. The religion likewise of many Protestants is little better than a compromise with the Deity for wrong practises by fastings, Sacraments hearing the word &c. Would not Society be better without Such religions? Is Atheism less pernicious than Demonism? And what is the religion of many persons but a kind of demonism that delights in human Sacrifices and causes them to look with horror on the greatest part of mankind? Plutarch, it is well known, has observd very justly that it is better not to believe in a God than to believe him to be a capricious and malevolent being. These reflexions have Struck me very forcibly in reading Mr. Necker’s book. They shew how incumbent it is on all who wish the happiness of the world to endeavour to propagate just notions of the Deity and of religion. I can reflect with Some Satisfaction that this has been one of the Studies and labours of my life.

Jefferson's response, dated January 8 of that year, affirms Price's sentiment while connecting their shared enlightened heterodox theological zeitgeist to the US Constitution.

I was favored with your letter of October 26th[;] ... its subjects ... were to me, as everything which comes from you, pleasing and instructive. I concur with you strictly in your opinion of the comparative merits of atheism and demonism, and really see nothing but the latter in the being worshipped by many who think themselves Christians. Your opinions and writings will have effect in bringing others to reason on this subject. Our new Constitution, of which you speak also, has succeeded beyond what I apprehended it would have done.

Then in a letter written on July 12, 1789, Jefferson asks Price the following:

Is there any thing good on the subject of the Socinian doctrine, levelled to a mind not habituated to abstract reasoning? I would thank you to recommend such a work to me. Or have you written any thing of that kind? That is what I should like best, as none are so easy to be understood as those who understand themselves.

Price replies, August 3, 1789 introducing Jefferson to Joseph Priestley's Socinian writings:

In consequence of your desire that I would convey to you some tracts on the Socinian doctrine, I desire your acceptance of the volume of Sermons and the pamphlets that accompany this letter. The first part of Dr. Priestley’s letters I cannot immediately get; but it shall be sent to you by the first opportunity. The pamphlet entitled Two Schemes of a Trinity &c. is reckoned by the Socinians one of the best of all the publications in favour of their doctrine. You will see that Dr. Priestley and I differ much, but we do it with perfect respect for one another. He is a materialist and fatalist and we published some years ago a correspondence on these Subjects. ...

Jefferson then develops a fascination with Joseph Priestley's writings. It's evident that from 1813 onward Priestley had become Jefferson's favorite theologian. Jefferson corresponded with Priestley in the window between when Price introduces Jefferson to Priestley's writings and 1813. In a later post I may detail more on Jefferson's pre-1813 correspondence with Priestley.

Rather, let's examine how Jefferson invokes both Price and Priestley in the year 1800. Writing to an ideological confidant, Bishop James Madison, on January 31, 1800, Jefferson praises Adam Weishaupt of the Illuminated Freemasonry legend. Before we see what Jefferson wrote, I note I don't see this as part of any kind of nefarious conspiracy. Freemasonry at the time was theistic, virtue orientated and religiously ecumenical in a way that was in principle universalistic. Hence it "fit" with their enlightenment zeitgeist.

The Illuminated Masonry of Weishaupt came to be known as the stuff of conspiracy and legend. But the context of Jefferson's letter, as I see it, has Jefferson trying to shoehorn Weishaupt's theology into his projected ideal of the works oriented unitarian theologies of Price and Priestley.

Wishaupt seems to be an enthusiastic Philanthropist. he is among those (as you know the excellent Price and Priestly also are) who believe in the indefinite perfectibility of man. he thinks he may in time be rendered so perfect that he will be able to govern himself in every circumstance so as to injure none, to do all the good he can, to leave government no occasion to exercise their powers over him, & of course to render political government useless. this, you know is Godwin’s doctrine, and this is what Robinson, Barruel & Morse have called a conspiracy against all government. Wishaupt believes that to promote this perfection of the human character was the object of Jesus Christ. that his intention was simply to reinstate natural religion, & by diffusing the light of his morality, to teach us to govern ourselves. his precepts are the love of god & love of our neighbor. and by teaching innocence of conduct, he expected to place men in their natural state of liberty & equality. he says, no one ever laid a surer foundation for liberty than our grand master, Jesus of Nazareth. he believes the Freemasons were originally possessed of the true principles & object of Christianity, and have still preserved some of them by tradition, but much disfigured. the means he proposes to effect this improvement of human nature are ‘to enlighten men, to correct their morals & inspire them with benevolence. secure of our success, sais he, we abstain from violent commotions. to have foreseen the happiness of posterity & to have prepared it by irreproacheable means, suffices for our felicity. this tranquility of our consciences is not troubled by the reproach of aiming at the ruin or overthrow of states or thrones.’ as Wishaupt lived under the tyranny of a despot & priests, he knew that caution was necessary even in spreading information, and the principles of pure morality. he proposed therefore to lead the Freemasons to adopt this object, and to make the objects of their institution, the diffusion of1 science & virtue. he proposed to initiate new members into this body by gradations proportioned to his fears of the thunderbolts of tyranny. this has given an air of mystery to his views, was the foundation of his banishment & the subversion of the Masonic order, and is the colour for the ravings against him of Robinson, Barruel & Morse, whose real fears are that the craft would be endangered by the spreading of information reason & natural morality among men.—this subject being new to me, I have imagined that if it be so to you also, you may recieve the same satisfaction in seeing, which I have had in forming the Analysis of it: and I believe you will think with me that if Wishaupt had written here, where no secrecy is necessary in our endeavors to render men wise & virtuous, he would not have thought of any secret machinery for that purpose: as Godwin, if he had written in Germany, might probably also have thought secrecy & mystycism prudent.

Now, this letter was written in 1800, just before Jefferson became President of the United States. Though not railing against the Trinity, he seems pretty clearly in Price and Priestley's unitarian theological camp, expositing heterodox political theology.

One final thing for now. It's my contention that the self consciously "unitarian" "Christianity" of the 1813 Jefferson onward was arrived at NOT from an orthodox Trinitarian direction, but rather the other side. From a place more deistic and less self consciously "Christian."

As I have noted before, I think Jefferson's chief theological influence before encountering Price, Priestley (and Conyers Middleton, who also cut up a Bible and was a source TJ named in 1813 with Priestley), was the more deistic Lord Viscount Bolingbroke. 

If Jefferson were coming from an orthodox Trinitarian direction towards his ultimate destination, why didn't he apparently stop at Price's Arianism for a short while? What I observe is Jefferson becoming familiar with and praising Price's works oriented unitarianism in 1785 and by 1789 asking about Socinianism and consequently being introduced to Priestley to whom Jefferson seems immediately to appreciate.

Likewise, the place where Jefferson from 1813 onward ends up is MORE heterodox than Priestley's Socinianism. As I have noted before, Priestley never (as far as I know) like Jefferson did, cut out large portions of the Bible -- like everything St. Paul "revealed" -- as false. And Priestley unlike Jefferson affirms Jesus' resurrection.  

Below is how I envision a theological spectrum from most orthodox to most heterodox:

1. Christian orthodoxy; 2. Arianism; 3. Socinianism; 4. Deism; 5. Atheism. 

I know reality can be more complicated and not so easily boxed. I don't think Jefferson was ever an atheist. And the "Deism" of 4 doesn't necessarily equate with cold "strict deism." But looking at the larger picture I see Jefferson, in his adult life moving from Bolingbroke's Deism towards Priestley's Socinianism. But remaining stuck in the middle. 

In short, I'd rate Jefferson a 3.5. (Likewise, since "Deism" is a broader category than what we may previously have thought, the cold, strict, deist whose God neither reveals nor intervenes is not a 4, but a 4.5).

James Madison on Defining Christianity

Or, to put it another way. He doesn't. Rather, he asks (very good) questions that he doesn't answer. 

I've reproduced this before; but it calls for a rerun because the question is so important. Madison didn't believe civil governments could take "cognizance" of religion. He wrote about such in the context of remonstrating against a bill that would support Christianity generally.

He thought government taking cognizance of Christianity in particular would lead to arguments over what's Christian and what's not. That wasn't part of civil government's just powers.

It's interesting that James Madison doesn't provide an answer to the question here or elsewhere. Madison had a commitment to theism generally, and a perhaps very broad understanding of Christianity generally that would accept all of the differences we see him writing about below.

But we don't see commitments along the lines of, "I believe the Roman Catholic Church is the true one, but if not, you have to at minimum believe in X to be a 'real Christian.'" Or "I believe the atonement is limited; but folks could disagree and still be 'good Christians.' But no true Christian could countenance Y."

Here is a link to the original.

3. What is Xnty? Courts of law to Judge.

4. What edition: Hebrew, Septuagint, or Vulgate? What copy what translation?

5. What books canonical, what apocryphal? the papists holding to be the former what protestants the latter, the Lutherans the latter what the protestants & papists ye former.

6. In what light are they to be viewed, as dictated every letter by inspiration, or the essential parts only? Or the matter in general not the words?

7. What sense the true one for if some doctrines be essential to Xnty those who reject these, whatever name they take are no Xn Society?

8. Is it Trinitarianism, Arianism, Socinianism? Is it salvation by faith or works also, by free grace or by will, &c., &c.

9. What clue is to guide [a] Judge thro' this labyrinth when ye question comes before them whether any particular society is a Xn society?

10. Ends in what is orthodoxy, what heresy.
Dishonors Christianity.

panegyric on it, on our side.
Decl. Rights."

And George Washington Called Providence "She" and "It"

This is an interesting article -- an op-ed, which by their nature are slanted -- from the NYT on the gender of the God of Abraham. Quoted below is what the piece concludes:

Counter to everything we grew up believing, the God of Israel — the God of the three monotheistic, Abrahamic religions to which fully half the people on the planet today belong — was understood by its earliest worshipers to be a dual-gendered deity.

Along the way the rabbi who authored the piece uses original Hebrew to make his case. I don't read Hebrew. If any readers do, I wonder, are his translations accurate?

Frazer on Green's Latest

At the Claremont Review of Books, Gregg Frazer reviews Steven K. Green's "Inventing a Christian America: The Myth of the Religious Founding."

A taste:

The book’s treatment of the early colonial period is quite informative and well supported, emphasizing the “melding [of] theological and Enlightenment concepts” as “Puritan-Calvinist patterns and ideas informed revolutionary and constitutional ideology.” His discussion of the founders’ own religious beliefs starts with the same balance and nuance, arguing that the “portrayal of the founders as religion-despising deists is as inaccurate as the claim that they were all born-again Christians.” He even employs the term I use in The Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders (2012), “theistic rationalism,” and occasionally strengthens the “theism” element by making it the noun rather than the modifier. Green soon abandons any notion, however, that religious influence “melded” with Enlightenment thought or that Christianity “informed” the founders’ views. Suddenly, it’s all rationalism and no theism, with any reference to divine Providence—even in private writings—dismissed as political rhetoric. How does Green know the founders’ motives and intent? Is there a reason to doubt their sincerity? He gives none. Even if we are skeptical of public pronouncements, why wouldn’t private correspondence, diaries, and memoranda reliably convey a person’s beliefs? After warning against simply taking religious statements at face value and against isolating favorable quotes, Green does that very thing in support of his own position.

Journal of the American Revolution: "The Public Universal Friend: Jemima Wilkinson and Religious Enthusiasm in Revolutionary America"

By Michael Tuosto here. A taste:

The Public Universal Friend is an exploration of the development, culture, and tenants of the sect, so aside from the occasional repetition, the lack of a chronological order is appropriate. The sect was born in 1776. Jemima Wilkinson was living in Cumberland, Rhode Island in 1776 and she contracted typhus, which was introduced into the area by a Continental ship. When she recovered she claimed the Holy Spirit had descended into her body and she assumed the role of the Public Universal Friend. After this transition “the person” recognized “itself” as a “he” because of the presence of the holy-spirit. The author illustrates the confusion felt by contemporaries over this supposed change in sex by interchanging the pronouns, ...  

Jemima Wilkinson the prophet began preaching throughout New England, including Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. Throughout the 1780s a sect known as the Society of the Universal Friends began to develop. The excessive number of funerals and executions resulting from the Revolution fostered a widespread demand for salvation and created the opportunity for the Public Universal Friend to succeed in forming a new religious sect. Deaths of spouses and sons in battle, diseases spread by armies, and a pacifist sentimentality among former Quakers and New Light evangelicals were some reasons the Public Universal Friend was able to establish a unique American religion.  

The sect was heavily influenced by Quakerism and New Light evangelical beliefs and characteristics. ... They eschewed traditional doctrine espoused by elitist professional clerics, traditional denominational institutions and rituals, the concept of original sin, and the puritan concept of predestination. They embraced spirit-driven preaching by charismatic leaders, universal salvation, and free will. Furthermore, the Public Universal Friend encouraged celibacy, prohibited lust, discouraged marriage, and opposed slavery. It is unclear whether the Public Universal Friend had a messianic complex, but the devastation imposed by the Revolution did provide a fertile landscape for fears of Armageddon and the need for salvation before the final judgment.  

The Public Universal Friend is emblematic of a distinctly American religious culture. The turn away from theological arguments and educated clerics can be viewed as anti-intellectual and while there might be some truth to that, I prefer to think about it as just another expression of American’s aversion to the shackles of authority. Moyer explains that “… the forces of popular religion reshaped American spiritual life as control over faith shifted away from the established clergy and orthodox theology and toward lay folk who favored more … liberating creeds …The Public Universal Friend’s emphasis on universal salvation and stress on the individual believer’s relationship with the divine … served to ease, if not erase, hierarchies of class, race, and sex.” The Public Universal Friend embodied the strengthening democratic ideals in Revolutionary America.

Journal of the American Revolution: "The Great Awakening and the American Revolution"

By Daniel N. Gullotta here. A taste:

In conclusion, while I would agree that it would be an overstatement to claim that without the Awakening there would have been no Revolution, the Awakening is a historical reality that more historians need to grapple with in understanding the Revolution’s origins. After the First Great Awakening, the so-called preordained order of society was completely tuned upside down. It was during the revivals that the colonists began to view themselves as capable of interpreting the will of God for themselves. While John Winthrop may have promised that the Massachusetts Bay Colony would be like “a city upon a hill,” it was the First Great Awakening that truly provided the ground for the American colonists to begin to see themselves as a chosen people. They believed that God was working within the American colonies in a special way. Not only this, but the Awakening provided the means by which colonists could communicate this revolutionary ideology. The First Great Awakening was not the American Revolution, but it was an American revolution.

Tom Krannawitter on David Barton on George Washington's Faith

On Facebook, Tom Krannawitter who used to lead the Claremont Institute made an apt comment on David Barton's Wallbuilders' video on George Washington's "Christian" faith.

TK wrote:

It's difficult for me to understand why so many people find these sorts of things so interesting -- whether they be cheerleaders for or academic opponents of David Barton.

Many of his contemporaries stated that George Washington was a Christian. Sure. That's easy to believe.

(What George Washington actually believed, and whether his personal beliefs were the same as his statements to the pious Christian public around him, is something only George Washington knows. Perhaps God too. But certainly no other human beings knows with certainty what was in the depths of the mind of George Washington or any other human being. Ever.)

And many of Barack Obama's contemporaries state that he's a Christian.

And many of Donald Trump's contemporaries state that he's a Christian.

And King Charlemagne was a Christian -- who persecuted and lopped off more heads than historians can count.

Many communist and socialist revolutionaries in third world countries over the past century have been Christians -- as they gunned down the "bourgeoisie" with Soviet or Chinese machine guns.

American "Social Gospel," socialist preachers were Christians -- who not only advocated for socialism, they advocated for socialism from the pulpits of Christian churches.

The guru godfather of American progressive-style socialism, Woodrow Wilson, was deeply Christian.

And, of course, King George III, against whom George Washington led a violent revolution, was a Christian, as many of his contemporaries attested.

So which is more interesting: The religion common to the people identified above? Or how those people differ in their words and actions, their opinions and arguments and efforts?

Richard Price, Bayes’ theorem, and God

Check it out here. A taste from the introduction:

Bayes’ theorem is 250 years old this year. But did the Rev. Thomas Bayes actually devise it? Martyn Hooper presents the case for the extraordinary Richard Price, friend of US presidents, mentor, pamphleteer, economist, and above all preacher. And did Price develop Bayes’ theorem in order to prove the existence of God?

Joseph Priestley Explains His Socinianism

I may well have posted this before (I can't remember). Thomas Jefferson loved Joseph Priestley. And John Adams had many positive (and some negative) things to say about him. I think, though, whatever political and personal differences they had, Priestley's creed may have been closer to Adams' than Jefferson's.

Priestley believed Jesus 100% man, not at all divine in his nature. But he also apparently believed in the virgin birth and the resurrection, two things Jefferson rejected. Priestley's Jesus was a "Savior." A second Adam to correct the errors of the first.

From his "Three Tracts":

If you ask who, then, is Jesus Christ, if he be not God; I answer, in the words of Peter, addressed to the Jews, after his resurrection and ascension, that Jesus of Nazareth was a man approved of God by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him. Acts ii. 22. If you ask what is meant by man, in this place; I answer, that man, if the word be used with any kind of propriety, must mean the same kind of being with yourselves. I say, moreover, with the author of the epistle to the Hebrews, that it became him by whom are all things, and for whom are all things, to make this great captain of our salvation in all respects, like unto us his brethren, that he might be made perfect through sufferings, Heb. ii. 10. 1J. and that he might have a feeling of all our infirmities, iv. 13. For this, reason it was that our Saviour and deliverer was not made of the nature of an angel, or like any super-angelic being, but was of the seed as Abraham., ii. 16. that is (exclusive of the divinity of the Father, which resided in him, and acted by him) a mere man, as other Jews, and as we ourselves also are.

Christ being made by the immediate hand of God, and not born in the usual course of generation, is no reason for his not being considered as a man. For then Adam must not have been a man. But in the ideas of Paul, both the first and second Adam (as Christ, on this account, is sometimes called) were equally men: By man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead, 1 Cor. xv. 21. And, certainly, in the resurrection of a man, that is, of a person in all respects like ourselves, we have a more lively hope of our own resurrection; that of Christ being both a proof and a pattern of ours. We can, therefore, more firmly believe, that because he livest we who are the same that he was, and who shall undergo the same change by death that he did, shall live also. John xiv. 19.

Priestley doesn't see the virgin birth as a unique sign that points towards a divine nature. He analogizes it to the first Adam's creation. Adam didn't have a virgin birth, because he was not birthed of a woman. Rather both Adam and Jesus were "not born in the usual course of generation" and both were equally 100% human, not divine. Jesus perfected the divine mission of man from which Adam strayed.

Jefferson Bible? Was it the "Miraculous" that's the issue?

Once again Warren Throckmorton is pounding David Barton's understanding of the Jefferson Bible. There were two different efforts of Jefferson. One in 1804, the other around 1820. The 1804 book is not available to read in its entirety. The 1820 version is. That's "the Jefferson Bible" we have.

The dates are important for Barton's thesis, which is this: Apparently Thomas Jefferson was some kind of orthodox Trinitarian Christian until around 1813 when he fell away.

There is a kernel of truth to this flawed thesis: Jefferson starts to offer far more smoking gun quotations on his heterodoxy around 1813. But as Throckmorton and others have demonstrated, there is evidence Jefferson was heterodox before that time period. In fact, I suspect that Jefferson was less orthodox and more deistic until around the early 19th Century when he began familiarizing himself with Joseph Priestley's Socinian "Christianity."

Priestley may have made Jefferson more comfortable with a "Christian" identity. Before that, I think Jefferson may have been closer the deist Bolingbroke, though even he, if you read what he wrote about Jesus, isn't quite the "strict deist"; but he's arguably less Christian than Priestley. Allen Jayne makes an impressive circumstantial case for Bolingbroke's influence on Jefferson. But Priestley and Conyers Middleton (who also cut up a Bible) were explicitly NAMED in Jefferson's post 1813 period (Priestley far more than Middleton).

Jefferson may have never shaken off the influence of Bolingbroke. In fact, arguably, one might conclude the final "unitarian" position Jefferson endorsed was some kind of hybrid between the creeds of Bolingbroke and Priestley.

There were two things Bolingbroke posited that Jefferson late in life believed in that, arguably make them less "Christian" than Joseph Priestley. I'm no Priestley expert. I do know Priestley a Socinian, believing Jesus 100% man, not at all divine in His nature, but on a divine mission, taught 1. Original Sin; 2. the Trinity; 3. the Incarnation; 4. Atonement; and 5. the Plenary Inspiration of Scripture were "corruptions" of Christianity.

But Priestley did believe in "special revelation" in a God speaking to man sense. Bolingbroke may have too believed in special revelation of a more limited variety. But I don't think Priestley messed with the canon like Bolingbroke and later Jefferson did.

Firstly, Bolingbroke and later Jefferson (probably under his influence) disbelieved in the divine inspiration of the Book of Revelation, criticizing it in harsh terms. Priestley not only believed in the divine inspiration of that book, but wrote many words trying to interpret its prophesies.

Secondly, Bolingbroke and then again, later Jefferson wrote off everything St. Paul stated as fake and not divinely inspired. I'm going to have to plead ignorance on Priestley's position on St. Paul. But I don't believe Priestley's disbelief in the plenary inspiration of the Bible led him to razor blade everything Paul said as bullshit like Bolingbroke and Jefferson did.

(I documented Bolingbroke's influence here.)

Now, David Barton, in his book, concedes Jefferson post 1813 as unorthodox. AND his book, from what I remember (I didn't read the whole thing) concedes Jefferson's late in life letter dismissing the Book of Revelation as the ravings of a delusional manic. I can't remember if Barton dealt with Jefferson's similar dismissing of Paul's writings.

But if the Jefferson of 1820 who compiled the version of his canon that we have available was, as Barton might concede, willing to dismiss the Book of Revelation and everything St. Paul wrote as fake (in addition to the Trinity and every other doctrine of orthodoxy), why does Barton have a hard time with the notion that Jefferson constructed a "Bible" of his own where he cut out from the canon that which he didn't believe?

Is it the notion that Jefferson cut out "all" of the miracles? I think he cut out most of them. Perhaps not all.

Likewise, believers can dicker over the exact books which belong in the canon (see the debates among Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox and Protestants over the deuterocanonicals) and quibble over passages of verses and chapters, but what kind of "Christianity" dismisses not just the Trinity and every other orthodox doctrine, the Book of Revelation (a hard book, which I understand even Martin Luther doubted) but also everything St. Paul said?

This is the Jefferson of the 1820s who compiled his own Bible around that time period.

Newcombe on "Hillary Clinton, Saul Alinsky, Ben Carson and Lucifer"

From Jerry Newcombe at World Net Daily here. I'm writing about this because the author finds a way to connect the piece to his Christian nationalist assertions for which he is known. 

Saul Alinsky was a very interesting and intelligent character whose ideas deserve to be studied and taken seriously. No less than William F. Buckley said Alinsky was "very close to being an organizational genius."

Alinsky was not religious; that is he was either an atheist or agnostic. Yes, indeed he did say:

Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history … the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom—Lucifer.

I think he has a point. You don't have to be a devil worshipper to appreciate it. In fact Alinsky said as between the Heaven and Hell in which he didn't believe, he'd choose Hell because that's where the have nots are and he'd like to organize it.

Alinsky's point is more akin to that made by Professor Jennings in Animal House that Satan was the most "intriguing" character in John Milton's "Paradise Lost."

But somehow Jerry Newcombe finds a way to make the following point in his article:

The original Trinity – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit – is worthy of our worship and fidelity. The vast majority of the Founding Fathers held this view.

For example, when Ben Franklin, John Jay, Henry Laurens and John Adams negotiated the official peace treaty between the United States and Great Britain in 1783 – the Treaty of Paris – it opened this way: “[I]n the name of the most holy and undivided Trinity.”

I think Newcombe shoots too far if he thinks he can speak for the "vast majority" of the Founding Fathers. It's apparent though, from his listed figures, the "key Founders" didn't tend to believe in the Trinity. I usually see Franklin, J. Adams, and Jay credited for the "Treaty of Paris." I know little about Laurens' religious views. I would concede Jay as "orthodox Trinitarian," though even he flirted with the anti-creedalism present in the air that often led to rejection of that doctrine. 

John Adams was a militant anti-Trinitarian. And Ben Franklin, while not so militant, associated himself with the unitarians, called them "honest" and was present at, supported, and lauded the grand opening of the first officially Unitarian Church in England.  And at the very end of his life claimed he "doubted" Jesus' divinity, never studying or taking seriously the issue. 

So we end up with Newcombe's assertion that the "vast majority" of the Founding Fathers believed in the Trinity, but with the cited authoritative figures constituting maybe 50% (2/4) endorsement of the doctrine. 

What about the language cited from the Treaty? Arguably it's because Great Britain, and not America, was the "Christian nation," as it had an officially established Anglican Church that endorsed the Trinity. 

It was language to placate them. 

Maybe. Maybe not. But this is the same argument Christian nationalists use to try to explain away the Treaty of Tripoli which states:

As the government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian Religion,-as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion or tranquility of Musselmen,-and as the said States never have entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mehomitan nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.

 You can't have it both ways. 

Levinson on the Republican Party Platform & Misunderstanding the Declaration

At Balkinization, law professor Sandy Levinson dissects the Republican Party platform in a critical way. He writes:

I assume that Michael Pence, or for that matter Ted Cruz, has no trouble embracing this part of the Republican Party platform, which clearly subordinates any laws passed by legislatures or any other governmental institution to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."  We could, of course, get into long debates about the difference between the "laws of nature," which could be Aristotelian, and non-dependent on any belief in God, in contrast to subordination to "Nature's God," which sound more in Revelation and divine sovereignty than in Reason.  In any event, we have a clear hierarchy of norms, with Divine commands at the top and everything else beneath.

We might compare the Republican platform, in this respect, to the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran: ...

I think the Christian nationalists who helped write this part of the platform might agree with what Professor Levinson wrote in the first quoted paragraph (not the comparison to Iran). However, the analysis is wrong. As I wrote in the comments section, the term "Nature's God" DOES NOT ground belief in special revelation. That's what the Christian nationalists revisionists argue.

The point Levinson makes on the laws of nature and Aristotle is correct. As the term was used, "nature" defines as discoverable by reason unaided by special revelation. As it were "Nature's God" is God insofar as we can discover and understand Him through our reason unaided by revelation. "Laws of Nature and of Nature's God" is a double invocation of reason.

I think they added God because, as America's Founders understood the natural law, they needed a God of some sort to make it binding in an "ought" sense. The quotation below by John Adams perfectly sums up this point of view.

To him who believes in the Existence and Attributes physical and moral of a God, there can be no obscurity or perplexity in defining the Law of Nature to be his wise benign and all powerful Will, discovered by Reason.

– John Adams to Thomas Boylston Adams, March 19, 1794. Adams Papers (microfilm), reel 377, Library of Congress. Seen in James H. Hutson’s, “The Founders on Religion,” p. 132.

Warren Throckmorton has more on Metaxas & Barton

Here and here. Here is a taste from the first link:

You remember 2012 right? American University prof and author Jay Richards recruited 10 Christian historians to read David Barton’s book on Thomas Jefferson (The Jefferson Lies, the one just recommended by Metaxas) and then read my book with Michael Coulter Getting Jefferson Right which was a response to Barton’s. Richards asked those scholars to render a verdict about the accuracy of the books and our book came out on top. Do you recall that Thomas Nelson heard from critics of Barton’s book and did their own review? Then after the review by the 10 scholars and the publisher, Thomas Nelson announced that it was pulling the book from the shelves due to historical inaccuracies. Remember that historian Thomas Kidd documented all of this for World magazine? All of that happened.

Jay Richards, I don't believe works for American University, but Catholic University. Daniel Dreisbach works for American University.

That's a minor note of correction. The above passage is important. Most of these historians and right leaning and want to challenge the view in law, history and politics that limits the expression of religion in public life.

Barton is making that side look bad and hurting their credibility.

Beck & Metaxas Made a Huge Mistake

Throwing their hat in with David Barton. And others should learn from their example. This is why I feature the criticisms on my blogs. 

Yet again John Fea and Warren Throckmorton have posts criticizing Eric Metaxas' new book, but this time connecting him to, you guessed it, David Barton. From Fea's:

1.  Metaxas’s view of Winthrop’s use of the phrase “city on a hill” IS taken out of context.  I encourage you to take David Barton’s advice and read the original source– “A Modell on Christian Charity.”  You should also read Hillsdale College professor David Gamble’s  In Search of the City on a Hill: The Making and Unmaking of an American Myth. And don’t forget the post by Tracy McKenzie, chair of the history department at evangelical Wheaton College. 
2.  I am sure I have addressed this before, but it needs to be said again.  For years Barton has been telling the ordinary evangelicals who follow him that he is right about American history because he owns a lot of documents.  He claims that he reads the original documents and suggests that professional historians do not.  This is a completely absurd claim.  ALL professional historians read and interpret primary sources.  This is what we do.  Doing history–especially the history of political ideas– has very little to do with whether or not someone one can hold an original document in their hands.  For example, if Barton had a copy of the Declaration of Independence would he be in a better position to interpret the ideas in the document than someone who was merely reading the Declaration of Independence online or in a textbook?  I have never been to Wallbuilders or seen David Barton’s collection of documents, but I am pretty certain that most of the documents he possesses are easily accessible for historians in online and print collections.  Unless one is writing a history about these books, letter, and manuscripts as physical objects or pieces of material culture (which is not how Barton uses the documents–he peddles in ideas), the fact that Barton owns these documents ... does not make his interpretations of history any more right or wrong.

Yes, Barton's point that he "has" the documents is snake oil worse than the Afrocentric claim that Western Civilization "stole" documents and therefore the ideas from Africa, to the exclusion of Africa having those ideas.  As though cultures steal from one another like people steal cars (where the original possessor no longer has the actual object itself and its benefits).

In the modern age, almost any historical document a party physically owns can be viewed in some kind of copy. The same isn't true of antiquity.

While Fea and Throckmorton may be (?) Left leaning, I don't see either of them as hard Left. And another critic, Dr. Gregg Frazer is not a man of the Left in any sense. Likewise a number of other prominent Right leaning Christian intellectuals have criticized Barton.

I am a libertarian and will be voting for Gary Johnson this term. I don't consider myself either a man of the Left or the Right. And this may surprise some folks: I actually like both Glenn Beck and Eric Metaxas. Beck is going to be voting for Gary Johnson just like I am. Beck is not a scholar. He is an entertaining media presence. But when he picks scholars to endorse, he should pick good ones.

Metaxas has more intellectual credibility than Beck. And likewise he should throw his hat in with scholars with more credibility than David Barton. (And arguably, because of his intellectual background, should know better than Beck).

Sandefur: "The Greeks and The Founding Fathers" Part III

Check out Timothy Sandefur's post here. A taste:

Yesterday, I delivered (live) the third and final talk in my three-part series for the Politismos Museum of Greek History on the influence of the Greeks on America's Founding Fathers. If you missed it, hold on--they'll be posting the finished video in a while. But if you'd rather listen to them, you can download all three talks in mp3 format here: ...

Fea & Throckmorton on Metaxas Blowing Off Criticisms

Check out Drs. John Fea and Warren Throckmorton on Eric Metaxas' disregard for criticisms of his new book. This is a link to the audio-clip of Metaxas. A taste of Metaxas' words:

There are errors in my book and people have written ESSAYS–I’m not even kidding.  People have attacked my book so much. This never happened to me before. They take a sentence that I could just change that sentence and everything would be okay.  They have written ESSAYS about this sentence.  I said something about freedom in our early days, implying that it was universal, which of course it was not (we had a lot of problems with religious freedom) ....

Is Rebellion in America's Blood?

A passage in Dr. Gregg Frazer's very thoughtful piece arguing that the American Revolution was not a just war brought something to mind. Below is the passage from pages 12-13 of the PDF. Again I added paragraph breaks but did not reproduce Frazer's added emphasis:

Unfortunately, American colonists during the Revolutionary era were far more likely to be subject to propaganda designed to stir up rebellion than to have impartial or fair accounts of events. The prime mover in this propaganda effort was Samuel Adams.1 Pauline Maier, one of the most respected historians of the period, characterizes Adams as a man who ‘evaded truth and mishandled the facts so glaringly that almost everything he wrote is a demand for refutation’ (Maier 1980: 10). Another said that Adams ‘preached hate to a degree without rival’ (Maier 1980: 11). Yet another scholar titled his Adams biography Sam Adams: Pioneer in Propaganda (Miller 1966). In that work, 15 pages are devoted to the account of Adams’s propaganda efforts regarding the so-called Boston Massacre alone (Miller 1966: 178–192).

Labeling the accidental killing of five people a ‘massacre’ was an ingenious propaganda stroke to begin with. But the key to his efforts was to depict the event as a purposeful massacre – as a ‘deliberate plot by the British soldiers to murder innocent Whigs’ (Miller 1943: 297). That was necessary and effective for achieving Adams’s ultimate goal of increasing militancy; ‘to prove the necessity of fighting British troops before they had opportunity to gain a foothold in the country’ (Miller 1966: 190–191). ...

The fact that the soldiers involved were acquitted by a jury of Bostonians and the fact that with his dying breath, one of the ‘victims’ testified that the colonists were armed (Miller 1966: 189), baiting the soldiers, assaulting them with chunks of ice, and other inconvenient facts were lost in the barrage of propaganda promoting the conspiracy theory that the radicals needed the people to believe. The paranoia created by the ‘deliberate plot’ story contributed greatly to the citizens of Massachusetts arming themselves and drilling as militia in expectation of future British assaults. That led directly to the confrontation at Lexington.

Largely because of the blatantly false information and clever misinformation spread at every juncture from the Boston Massacre to the Boston Tea Party, to wild rumors of random killings of Americans in September of 1774, thousands of colonists formed illegal militia units and stockpiled weapons. ...

And S. Adams was one of the "orthodox Christian" ones. 

The tenor of Dr. Frazer's article tends to portray the sentiments of the American Revolution as driven by lawless hooliganism. The thought that came to my mind when reading these passages was Australia. Another former English colony. Sam Adams, as portrayed, reminds me of a veritable Bon Scott. Whereas the Brits can seem rather stuffy, the Australians have more of a wild streak to them. And that could be explained because they were founded as a penal colony, as I learned in K-12 school.

Something I didn't learn in K-12: In researching that thought further, I discovered, though America didn't serve exclusively as a penal colony, it was in fact a dumping ground for British convicts and scoundrels.  If I understand the history right, the reason for Australia's needed existence as a such a dumping ground was because after 1783 Great Britain could no longer use America for that purpose.

Hence the "Australian Solution."

As Bon Scott sings, "all in the name of liberty."

Frazer on the AR as a Just War with a Focus on Lesser Magistrates

Last year we noted Dr. Gregg Frazer's article in The Journal of Military Ethics on whether the American Revolution was a just war. We didn't get to analyze the article in depth because although it was initially downloadable, it was soon put behind a paywall. It looks like it's now free to the public again (but you never know how these journals and their algorithms will behave).

Even though Frazer argues the American Revolution was not a just war, other points of view are also represented there (so check that out too).

I want to focus on a particular part of Frazer's article. In his book, he discusses at length Romans 13's prohibition on rebellion and John Calvin's writings on lesser magistrates being able to lawfully restrain tyrannical rulers. But he subsequently received criticism that his book did not adequately deal with the Calvinistic line of thought on interposition from figures like Samuel Rutherford's "Lex Rex"  and the anonymous "Vindiciae, contra Tyrannos."

Frazer answers such criticism beginning on page 15 of the PDF. I am going to reproduce a section that starts on page 16: [I added paragraph breaks but didn't reproduce all of the emphasis added.]

Some readers might expect a discussion of appeals to the so-called ‘lesser magistrate’ or ‘interposition’ argument attributed to Calvin; that view says that lesser magistrates are similarly endowed by God with authority, that they may rebel against a higher magistrate (the King), and that the common people may then choose whether to support the higher or the lower magistrate. Such a discussion is not relevant, however, because neither Calvin nor the patriot preachers made such an argument. In my own study of dozens of the patriot sermons between 1750 and 1780, I could not find any that employed this argument (see Frazer 2012:69–106); and James Byrd (2013) makes no reference to it in his comprehensive look at the patriot sermons, either. Calvin himself did not make the ‘lesser magistrate’ argument; it was developed later by some of his disciples and their work had a degree of influence in Reformed circles.

There is not space here to fully demonstrate that Calvin would not have approved of it, but the distinction between Calvin’s statements and the ‘lesser magistrate’ notion can be briefly explained. Calvin does not say anything about ‘lesser’ magistrates in general, but addresses a particular type of magistrate (‘populares’) with legal authority to restrain the higher magistrate. The term ‘populares’ is ‘a term quite different in connotation from “inferior” or “lesser”’ (Skinner 1978: II: 230–234). The emphasis is not on the magistrate’s inferior or lesser position, but on the reason for its existence–its function in the political system. There are lesser magistrates in every political system, but Calvin specifies that his scheme only applies if this particular type of magistrate exists within a given political system. In those circumstances, Calvin urges the special ‘popular’ magistrates to act ‘in accordance with their duty’ to exercise lawful, systemic authority to veto or block executive actions (Institutes, IV: 20: XXXI, in Höpfl 1991: 82).

An American parallel would be the power of Congress to impeach and remove a president. But there is no mention or implication or hint of rebellion or revolution or extra-constitutional action or of people choosing sides between magistrates in Calvin’s scheme. Calvin stresses that ‘the punishment of unbridled tyranny is the Lord’s vengeance’ (Institutes, IV: 20: XXVI in Höpfl 1991: 82, emphasis added), but that the people ‘are not to imagine that it is we ourselves who have been called upon to inflict it’ (Institutes, IV: 20: XXVI in Höpfl 1991 :82). He further admonishes the people that ‘all that has been assigned to us is to obey and suffer’ (Institutes, IV: 20: XXVI in Höpfl 1991: 82).

The notion of suffering is lost in the many interpretations of Calvin that promote rebellion. He actually provides three specific historical examples to try to ensure that his position would not be misunderstood– but to no avail. 2 Calvin did not cite examples of revolutions to overthrow tyrants; he cited offices and officers given legal authority within their regimes to restrain the ‘licentiousness and frenzy of kings’ (Institutes, IV: 20: XXXI, in Höpfl 1991:82–83). Although some scholars and commentators interpret Calvin in such a way as to make him support rebellion or revolution by lesser magistrates, one must add to or change Calvin’s words in order to produce that result.

For those literate in political theory, one place that the ‘lesser magistrate’ argument could be found was in Vindiciae, contra Tyrannos, an anonymous sixteenth-century Huguenot essay. At least one of the Revolutionary leaders, John Adams, read it and called it influential. Vindiciae makes the King the creature of the people, makes the people the proper judge of the King, and presents the lesser magistrate option as a cure for tyranny (O’Donovan & O’Donovan1999: 714–722). Some of the patriots found the arguments of the Vindiciae useful.

The primary theoretical source for preachers and for politicians seeking to justify the Revolution was, of course, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government. Locke similarly makes the King the creature of the people and makes the people the judge of the King, but his solution to the King’s tyranny was even more attractive and valuable for the American revolutionaries because it allowed them to deny that they were revolutionaries. Locke famously argues that whoever uses force without right violates the social contract and becomes a ‘rebel’ to the community; if the King is a tyrant using unlawful force, he becomes a rebel and the people who seek to depose him are merely defending themselves (Second Treatise of Government, par. 226–243, in Locke 1988: 398–428). This scheme allows one to engage in revolution, but not suffer the label ‘revolutionary’.

The American people were fed Lockean thought and were heavily influenced by it because the patriot ministers preached it from the pulpits (Frazer 2012: 85–106). Jonathan Mayhew was particularly important in converting to the Revolutionary cause congregations raised on Calvin’s and the Bible’s teaching concerning submission and non-resistance. Mayhew (1750) turned the teaching of Romans 13 on its head and made it into an argument for revolution in his ‘Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers’. It was invaluable in convincing people raised in Calvinism to support rebellion. This sermon was so influential that it has been described as the ‘morning gun of the Revolution’ (Thornton 1860: 43). John Adams said that if anyone wants to understand ‘the principles and feelings which produced the Revolution, they ought to study ... Dr. Mayhew’s sermon’ (letter to William Tudor, 5 April 1818, in Adams 1856: 301); and he further remarked that it was ‘read by everybody’ (letter to H. Niles, 13 February 1818, in Adams 1856: 288). Subsequent preachers such as Samuel West followed Mayhew’s lead and Locke’s principles infiltrated the populace via the Revolutionary pulpit.

It has been established that the American leaders at the time the war began (and even after) were, by their own admission, under the authority of Great Britain and were English subjects. Consequently, they were not sovereign authorities, they had a superior, and they were not properly authorized in their charters or anywhere else in British law to declare war. Locke provided a theoretical justification dependent on a fictitious base (state of nature and social contract). If Locke’s theory is correct – and if the British government was in fact tyrannical – then the American people had the right to create a new legislature with authority to use force to defend them. The American Revolution fails the ‘just war’ test by the first standard unless one considers revolutionaries to be legitimate authorities.

My thoughts: Frazer does make an important concession that John Adams, among others, was influenced by "Vindiciae, contra Tyrannos," but still argues -- correctly as far as I can tell -- it was Locke who was much more important.

Elsewhere we have observed there is no connection we are aware of between Locke on the one hand and Samuel Rutherford and the other Calvinist "resisters" on the other. Frazer also points out the sermons with which he is familiar cited Locke and not the Calvinist resisters.

A problem exists in that era in that they didn't tend to credit their sources like academics do today. We know Thomas Jefferson cribbed parts of Locke's 2nd Treatise when writing the Declaration of Independence; but he doesn't cite him.

So one could argue, in the absence of a citation like "as Mr. Locke argues" or "in Lex Rex ...," where the ideas came from is debatable. Daniel Dreisbach noted to me, off the record, Jonathan Mayhew doesn't cite or name his influences in his sermon, so it's debatable where he got the ideas from.

Locke and the Calvinist resisters, though they had similar ideas, still had meaningful differences both conceptually and linguistically. If you hear a preacher talking about "state of nature" and "contract and rights," it's Locke, not the Calvinist resisters. The most famous Presbyterian American Revolutionary was John Witherspoon. And I know that he was influenced by Locke as he used the aforementioned Lockean terms.

Was he influenced by the Calvinist resisters? Where is the evidence? Can we find it here in Dr. Jeffrey Morrison's piece on the man? What about the other Presbyterian and Calvinist preachers in America? Did they cite the Calvinist resisters?

Throckmorton: "Eric Metaxas Says His History of Religious Liberty Has Been Misrepresented"

Check it out here. A taste:

I’d like to know how his position has been misrepresented. Please, Mr. Metaxas enlighten us with passages from your book.  John Fea from Messiah College, Tracy McKenzie from Wheaton College and Greg Frazer from The Master’s College all represented you via passages from your book. Here are the passages we relied on.

Fea: "My Review Series on Metaxas’s 'If You Can Keep It': A Wrap-Up"

Check it out here. A taste:

Unfortunately, Metaxas does a very poor job of using American history to answer these questions. He manipulates the past to make it serve his political agenda. His entire argument is based on a weak and faulty intellectual foundation. He searches for continuity between Colonial America and the present that, for the most part, doesn’t exist. “If You Can Keep It” is an example of how not to use the past to make an argument in the present.

Fea: "Review of Eric Metaxas, 'If You Can Keep It: Part 6"

From Dr. Fea here. A taste:

It is worth noting that Metaxas has made the common mistake of taking Winthrop’s words, which were addressed to the inhabitants of one British-American colony, and applying them to the United States writ-large.  Winthrop, of course, was not applying his “city upon a hill” metaphor to the already-existing colonies of Virginia, Plymouth, and the Dutch colony of New Netherland (which became New York thirty-four years later).  Yet these colonies and several others–colonies in which the “city upon a hill” metaphor was not part of their founding ideal–would also be part of the United States of America in 1776.  Metaxas is in good company here.  John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, both fans of the “city upon a hill” metaphor, also made this mistake. (More on Reagan below).

Fea: "Review of Eric Metaxas, 'If You Can Keep It': Part 5"

From Dr. John Fea here. A taste:

.. The reason why so many historians tread lightly when connecting the evangelicalism of the Great Awakening to the American Revolution is because there is limited concrete evidence that the founding fathers, or the people for that matter, were specifically drawing upon evangelicalism as they articulated their political resistance to England.

Metaxas is basically trying to argue for the evangelical origins of the American Revolution. The New Birth, he suggests, melted away all other forms of identity–ethnic identities, local political identities, religious identities–into a unique and exceptional “American” identity.  He offers a Whig interpretation of the American Revolution on steroids.  It fails to explain the persistence of ethnic identity in the decades following the Revolution.  It fails to explain the states-rights and local orientation of the Articles of Confederation.  It fails to explain denominationalism as it developed in the decades between the Revolution and the Civil War.  And it highly exaggerates the influence of Whitefield, evangelicalism, and the Great Awakening on colonial life.  Metaxas fails to realize that religious belief was not particularly strong at the time of the American Revolution.

Finally, let’s remember that the First Great Awakening was a transatlantic spiritual movement.  Whatever unity among evangelicals that Whitefield helped to create was not unique to the British-American colonies.  Whitefield preached the same gospel message in England, Wales, and Scotland.  The people in the British-American colonies who embraced the New Birth saw themselves as part of a movement that was transatlantic in nature.  In other words, the Great Awakening made the religious and cultural relationship between Great Britain and the American colonies stronger, not weaker.

Yeah it's fairly ridiculous to single Whitefield out and try to credit him as Metaxas does. One thing America was at the time of the Revolution and Founding was diverse in a sectarian sense. The kind of Christianity that Whitefield preached by no means spoke for the viable theologies at that time in America in general and those that drove the Revolution in particular.

It did not predominate. 

Indeed, arguably the direct enemies of Whitefield's theological movement drove the revolutionary sentiment more so than Whitefield's faith did. Revs. Jonathan Mayhew and Charles Chauncy were not orthodox evangelical types. They were proto-unitarian and universalist and quite theologically liberal for their time, which was the era of "classical liberalism."

I'm not in the business of saying who is a "real Christian." I do know that sectarian division often leads to finger pointing of the lines of "I'm a Christian and you are not."

So even conceding that Mayhew and Chauncy are "Christians" as they identified (though with questionable orthodoxy), there was as much difference, if not more so, between their faiths and Whitefield's than as between Billy Graham's and Bishop Fulton Sheen's.

I use the latter two for a particular reason. The sectarian diversity and consequent religious liberty that the American Founders worked hard to establish permitted us to live in an age where Graham and Sheen in their heyday of the 1950s could vie for the role of "America's Popular Preacher" of their age.

Yes, Whitefield was popular. Ben Franklin liked him; they were friends. But when they spoke to one another, they talked like they believed in two different theologies. How to define Franklin's personal creed is debatable. If he can be called a "Christian," his creed was much closer to Mayhew's or Chauncy's than to Whitefield's. Though, Franklin was arguably less identifiably Christian than Mayhew or Chauncy.

Fea: "Review of Eric Metaxas, 'If You Can Keep It': Part 4"

From Dr. John Fea, here. A taste:

As my students of colonial America are well aware, the so-called “13 Colonies” were very British at the time of the American Revolution.  In fact, much of what the colonists had learned about liberty and freedom stemmed from the fact that they were British subjects. Ironically, it was the British who taught the colonists how to rebel.  The British were the most liberty-loving people in the eighteenth-century world and they were proud of it. Their monarch was held in check by the people through Parliament, making them unlike nearly all other nation-states.  From the perspective of many of the founding fathers, the American Revolution was the correct and consistent application of British liberty to the imperial crisis over taxation.

But in order for Metaxas’s argument about American exceptionalism to work (we will discuss this in a later post), he must make a clear contrast between England and their rebellious colonies. For example, on p.19-20 Metaxas claims, in reference to the United States, that “back in 1776 and in the decades after, this nation was all alone” in embodying the idea of liberty and its “uniqueness at that time can hardly be overstated.”

On p. 9 Metaxas suggests that the role of “the people” in monarchical government would be “nonexistent.”  This may have been the case for France, Russia, or some other eighteenth-century European country, but it was definitely not true for England. Though the colonists portrayed the English government as tyrannical, it is way over-the-top to compare the eighteenth-century English monarchy to a “strongman dictator” like Saddam Hussein (p.18).

Throckmorton's Daily Caller Article on Metaxas' New Book

From the good Dr. Warren Throckmorton here. A taste:

An error which permeates the book is Metaxas’ claim that the Pilgrims and Puritans advocated religious freedom for all. Just one example represents many such statements: He writes, “Since the Pilgrims came to our shores in 1620, religious freedom and religious tolerance have been the single most important principle of American life.” He claims that the principle of religious freedom, so important for most of the founders, was derived from the example of the Pilgrims and Puritans. This is false. 

Quakers and Catholics and other dissenters were banished or imprisoned in Massachusetts during that era. Some were killed for their dissent from orthodoxy. Roger Williams who Metaxas also cites was banished from Massachusetts and founded Rhode Island as an alternative bastion of religious toleration. Despite these facts, Metaxas upholds the Pilgrims and Puritans as worthy of emulation.  

What makes a book like this troubling is that Metaxas writes so well he lulls the reader into complacency. Readers who don’t know their history can’t evaluate what they don’t know. After reading the book, they feel confident but are ill equipped to defend the important principles of liberty. Metaxas has a much higher responsibility to get the facts right and should take responsibility for these errors by publicly correcting them.

Endorsement of Eric Metaxas' Work

My sites are going to be featuring much critical commentary of Eric Metaxas' new book. His work is not entirely without merit. In fact, I think his show Socrates in the City is quite good and something I enthusiastically endorse.

I've embedded below my favorite episode featuring the legendary Dick Cavett.

Fea: "Review of Eric Metaxas, 'If You Can Keep It': Part 3"

Check it out here.

On p. 72, Metaxas praises Roger Williams as a champion of religious liberty.  This is correct.  Indeed, Rhode Island, the colony Williams helped found, was a place where religious freedom flourished.  Yet later in the book, Metaxas sings the praises of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” as a model of American exceptionalism (more on that in a later post).  In the process, he completely ignores the fact that Williams was thrown out of Massachusetts Bay largely because of religious differences with the government. (So were a bunch of other people, including Anne Hutchinson).  So much for religious freedom. Metaxas can’t have it both ways.

In fact, there were only a few places in British-America where religious freedom “was paramount.”  The colonies of Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and parts of New York celebrated religious freedom.

In New England, the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth (before its merger with Massachusetts in 1691), and Connecticut all had state churches in which Congregationalism was the “established” religion.  In some cases, these established churches were “manifestly monstrous and destructive to individual freedom.” Mary Dyer, for example, was one of four Quakers executed for their faith by the champions of John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill.”

Fea: "Review of Eric Metaxas, 'If You Can Keep It': Part 2

From Dr. John Fea. Check it out here. A taste:

First, the founders did believe that religious people made good citizens because they knew how to sacrifice their own interests for something greater, namely their god. But the founders did not believe that religion, or particularly Christianity, was the only source of virtue.  Metaxas is wrong when he says that “virtue and morality divorced from religion was unthinkable” to the founders (p.60).  Most of the founders, including John Witherspoon, the evangelical Presbyterian clergyman who was the only minister who signed the Declaration of Independence, believed that virtue could stem from the conscience or the “moral sense.”  Granted, many of them–whether Christian, Deist, or something in-between–believed that the conscience or moral sense was instilled in human beings by God, but they did not believe that a religious experience, the practice of a a specific faith, or the imbibing of particular religious doctrines was necessary to live a virtuous life. 

....

On p.66. Metaxas states that the “religion” that the founders thought was inseparable to a virtuous republic was not the religion of the “clockmaker God of Deist imagination,” but the religion of the Bible. (He quotes the Massachusetts statesman Daniel Webster on the importance of the Bible in creating citizens). Metaxas implies that “Deism” was not a religion that the founders thought could contribute to a virtuous republic because it did not adhere to the teachings of the Bible. But while Deists did not believe that the Bible was inspired, they did believe that the ethical teachings of the Bible could serve as a guide–one of several–to a virtuous life.  In other words, Deism was certainly one of the so-called “religious” beliefs that the founders believed could contribute to the greater good of the republic.

Three thoughts from me:

1. Yes it's true that America's Founders thought that non-religious people could live the life of virtue necessary to sustain a republic, but thought such people tended to be rare; thus a "religious" citizenry would be preferred to a non-religious one.

2. Yes it's true that when America's Founders invoked "religion" necessary to sustain republics, they didn't necessarily mean "Christianity" of any kind (orthodox, unorthodox, deistic). Rather they believed a generally deistic or theistic minimum of the existence of a divine Providence and future state of rewards and punishments necessary. Hence the generic monotheism of America' Declaration of Independence.

Such could be found in Judaism, Islam, the various sects of "Christianity" (orthodox or not), pagan religions like Hinduism and Greco-Romanism and even non-Christian cold Deism (an absentee landlord God could, theoretically, so perfectly and tightly wind up His natural law clock, embedded in the release of which would reward virtue and punish vice both in this world and beyond).

3. Even though virtually all religions, Christian and non, were "valid" in this sense, Christianity still had the comparative advantage of containing Jesus' explicit moral teachings which were like shortcuts ordinary people who didn't have as George Washington put it, "the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure," to a perfected morality, the only thing about "religion" which civil republics were to be concerned. (Post John Locke government would no longer be in the business of "soulcraft," or caring about which religions could save men's souls.) 

Throckmorton: "Eric Metaxas, You Know the Constitutional Convention Didn’t Have Daily Prayers, Right?"

From Dr. Warren Throckmorton. A taste:

The problem with Metaxas’ narrative is that no formal prayers were offered. He makes it seem like the Convention acted favorably on Franklin’s motion which led to “compromises on all issues struck.” Not so. ...

In short order, two motions hit the floor. Franklin moved for daily prayers with a second by Roger Sherman. Then Edmund Randolph suggested a sermon followed by prayers. Franklin seconded that motion. Neither motion was voted on and the Convention adjourned. In fact, Franklin later noted that “The Convention, except three or four persons, thought Prayers unnecessary.” I am sure many of the founders took God seriously, but this story isn’t a good one to offer as evidence.

If the Convention though prayers unnecessary, then what is Metaxas referring to?

TGC: Frazer on Metaxas' Latest

I missed this when it came out last month. From Dr. Gregg Frazer. A taste:

One of the more egregious historical errors is the claim that the “very first settlers on American shores” came “precisely” to gain religious freedom, along with the equally false claim that “in America the idea of religious freedom was paramount,” and that there was “a complete tolerance of all denominations and religions” from the beginning (34–35).

The first settlers to the American shores (that would become the United States) settled at Jamestown in 1607 and came seeking profits, not prophets. Like many on the Christian Right, Metaxas skips Jamestown altogether. He says: “Since the Pilgrims came to our shores in 1620, religious freedom and religious tolerance have been the single most important principle of American life” (70). The Pilgrims and Puritans did come seeking religious freedom, but only for themselves. They didn’t value or allow religious freedom for others.

In fact, the Rhode Island colony was founded by dissidents forced out of Massachusetts Bay because of religious nonconformity. Far from guaranteeing “complete tolerance,” all the way through the Founding era non-Christian religious groups and some Christian denominations were discriminated against in most of the colonies/states, and even persecuted in some. That persecution was, for example, what motivated James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to push for religious tolerance legislation.

Metaxas seems to make the common error of determining religious belief by denominational affiliation. He declares John Adams to have been “a committed and theologically orthodox Christian” (56). But Adams vehemently rejected the deity of Christ, the atonement, the Trinity, and eternal punishment in hell. Adams said that placing all religion “in grace, and its offspring, faith” is “anti-Christianity.” He believed the best source for “orthodox” theology was the Hindu Shastra, that philosophy was at least equivalent in authority to the Bible, and that pagans who became “virtuous” went to heaven. Adams outrageously said he wouldn’t believe in the Trinity even if God himself told him on Mt. Sinai that it was true.

Having decided that Plymouth was the first colony, Metaxas (like many on the Christian Right) proceeds as if the Pilgrims and Puritans founded America rather than simply Massachusetts (189). It’s worth mentioning that roughly 150 years passed between Plymouth and the founding of the United States. He proceeds as if John Winthrop’s “city on a hill” pronouncement was meant for—and applies to—all of America for all time and not simply to the colony the Puritans were establishing in pursuit of God’s will (234). It’s important to note that seven of the twelve other colonies were not founded for religious reasons. ... Similarly, because he approves of its guarantee of religious freedom, Metaxas claims that the charter of Rhode Island speaks for all of America (72). This is particularly ironic since the Rhode Island colony was founded by castoffs seeking the religious freedom denied them by the Puritans.

TGC: "America as a Christian Nation: A Conversation with Mark Noll and George Marsden"

Check it out from The Gospel Coalition. I've embedded Calvin College's YouTube video below:

Fea on Metaxas' new "Christian Nation" book.

See John Fea on Eric Metaxas' venture into this territory here. A taste:

Metaxas’s concern for his country is admirable.  If You Can Keep It raises important questions.  What kind of republic did the founders want to create?  What role does history play in the preservation of the American republic today?  How should we understand patriotism in a world that includes a growing number of critics who are disillusioned with some of the directions our country has taken?

Again, these are all good questions.  Unfortunately, Metaxas does a very poor job of using American history to answer them.  This book is filled with historical errors of both fact and interpretation.  It also has serious theological problems, particularly in the way it conflates American history and the kingdom of God.  Frankly, this book is an intellectual mess.  Metaxas’s entire argument about the current state of the American republic is based on an incredibly weak and faulty historical and theological foundation.  It is an example of how not to use the past to make an argument in the present and serves as yet another example of what historian Mark Noll has described as the “scandal of the evangelical mind.”

Over the course of the next several days I will offer my thoughts on this book here at The Way of Improvement Leads Home.  Stay tuned for additional posts.

Praying to the Same God during the Revolutionary War

Every July 4th many articles appear attempting to tell us what the Declaration of Independence and American Revolution stood for. Christian nationalist sites will tend to offer explanations that support their thesis. See for instance, this one by Matt Barber which features a lively commentary section.

One of the commenters aptly noted that:

The British believed in the same god and went to the same churches the colonists did. Both sides prayed to the same god with the same prayers and rituals and expected the same god to be on their side. Whether British or colonial born, the burial rituals for the dead - civilian or military - were the same and with the same expectations of heaven for the just. The same can be said of their marriage rituals, as well.

This is true. It foreshadows President Lincoln's observation that the men who fought on opposite sides of the Civil War believed in and prayed to the same God.

The Declaration of Independence is not a Christian document. It's a generically theistic document. It mentions a God of some sort in 4 different places. It doesn't mention Jesus, the Trinity, or quote verses and chapters of scripture for its authority.

Yet the masses in both Great Britain and America at the time accurately are described as "Christian." As the previous article Tom Van Dyke discussed argued, God was invoked in America's DOI for reasons of necessity (I'm not arguing the beliefs were insincere).

Lino Graglia, in a somewhat cynical sense, described the necessity:

What [the Declaration] is, of course, is a document meant to justify revolution -- that is, illegal action. Having no human law to rely on -- being in defiance of authority -- revolutionaries necessarily come to rely on the law of God, who, happily, rarely issues a protest.

Even if we do not concede the unlawfulness of the American Revolution, it's hard to argue with the notion that when you go to war, especially against a greater power, it helps to have or think you have God on your side. It's not that there are no atheists in foxholes. It's that there aren't that many of them.

A Marxist like political movement fueled by sincerely held liberation theology, in my opinion, will be fought at the ground level with more motivation than an atheistic fueled Marxism. (Most perhaps the vast majority of communist soldiers were not atheists regardless of what their governments' official creed posited.)

Christians have fought wars on behalf of Christianity and against other religions. That's not what was going on in the American Revolution (obviously). Christians have also fought sectarian wars against one another. Like the Catholics and Protestants fighting in Ireland. That's not applicable to the American Revolution either.

Great Britain was (and still in a sense is) a more "officially" Christian nation than American in that it had (has) an established Anglican Church. But the American Revolution could hardly be seen as a war against Anglicanism in that, ironically, so many of America's revolutionary figures were themselves Anglicans. George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Patrick Henry, John Jay and others.

[Perhaps it was a war against a particular kind of Anglicanism: doctrinaire high church Anglicanism which basically taught Toryism as a political theology. But that Church in both Great Britain and America, thanks to its latitudinarianism, contained a great deal of members who didn't believe in such. Otherwise all of those above mentioned revolutionary figures would have fought for the other side.]

Both Great Britain and America had a plurality of Christian sects. GB handled it by privileging Anglicanism but tolerating the others. America handled it at the state level.

Thus, the American Revolution was not about Christianity or religion, one way or the other.