The modern 'scientific' age sometimes lauds itself for its advance over the backward Age of Faith. Indeed the lustre of America in a real sense can be said to be its Freedom of Religion. (As Judge Noonan says.) On the other hand, truth be told, we moderns owe to our medieval (Catholic, etc) predecessors a debt of immense gratitude for, among so many other things, the simple bequest of written treasures, scriptures - and the importance of the ability to read. For barbarian Europe, it was those thousand points of light, the monasteries of the Dark Ages, which kept alive the light of literacy and learning in the midst of prevailing ignorance and hard-scrabble existence. Not only the Bible, but the classics of Roman and Greek learning were faithfully preserved by those faithful scribes and copyists hidden away in Europe's monasteries.
Even when ecclesiastical authorities made unholy alliance with secular power; when the Kings and Popes joined forces to discourage democracy, slow the general spread of literacy and science and popular religion, the preservation of ancient knowledge remained a prime objective of the monasteries. For all their crimes of power (upholders of the status quo), the Authorities of Church and State never withdrew their umbrella of protection over the copyists of the scriptures. At a time when monasteries were islands of relative literacy and prosperity amidst the darkness and economic deprivation of the continent as a whole, the power elites wisely opted to allow them to survive and sometimes to thrive, a precious resource ultimately of more value to coming generations even, than their own.
Charlemagne, himself virtually illiterate, sensed deep within him the high importance of the spiritual treasures of literacy and faith and access to the Past through the writings they have left us. He looked Southward for intellectual sustenance and nourishment from the cultural and spiritual sources of ages past. He loved the Bible, though he could not read it for himself, and earnestly wanted for his people of northern Europe, the blessings which (by comparison) the Mediterranean sages had possession of.
Northern France over time threw out the welcome mat to some of those sages, and the monasteries of Normandy and Brittany often found themselves under the instruction and tutelage, often the administration, too, of learned pious transplants from northern Italy, for example.
After the Norman conquest of England, the Kings of England time and again tapped the monasteries of Normandy and Brittany for high pastoral responsibilities in England. Often these Normans, and Norman-Italians, proved to be men of good judgment, and leaders of conscience and independence, in addition to being scholars and priests. On several occasions they actually served, in a way, to provide checks and balances and thereby moderate the power of the kings.
On the other hand, the stern-ness of the Normans was surely something that the Anglo Saxons were badly in need of. They were by and large an unruly, independent sort. Barely past their rudimentary tribal state, such fetishes of civilization as washing, shaving, bathing, had little attraction to the Anglo-Saxons of that day. The Roman conceptions of law and order seemed an oppresive imposition brought by Normans. As the formerly "free" Anglo-Saxon barbarians found themselves subdued beneath the feudal yoke of the Normans, they began a slow transition from subsistence toward an agriculture-based medieval society, with rising population, urbanization, and nationhood.
When protestant reformers sounded a herald for the modern age, representing in some sense a "second opinion" to the Authority of Rome, they found themselves confronted with yet another independent opinion, still another wave of "protesting" reformation - puritans and Calvinists and their low-church, dissenting version of Protestant Christianity. Many of those groups and voices shared a kind of anti-authoritarianism, a democratic impetus, but they also shared a compassion for the weak, the meek. "We are all in this together," they declared. "We MUST lift those who are struggling. We must not leave behind those who are straggling." GENESIS: our lowly gospel heritage.
Staughton Lynd, in his "Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism," traced the impact of so many of the high ideals of the democratic vision back to those turbulent times of the puritan movement in the Old World. Many of those groups, which we now include under the general umbrella term of "puritan," sprang into being preaching the almost socialist aspirations they found within the pages of the Judeo-Christian Bible. It would not have taken a very long bridge to span the divide between many of those puritan groups, and the Communism that emerged in the 19th century.
While a kind of Left leaning radicalism was one attribute of what we might lump together as the puritan movement, it was not the only one. Dozens of tiny splinter groups and sects emerged out of nothing, as it were. Eventually, so many new "churches" (the State Church in Canterbury labelled them not churches, but Conventicles, without Altar or Sacrament) a kind of rough peace emerged from the chaos. Voltaire remarked: "If one religion alone were allowed in England, the Government would possibly become arbitrary; if there were two, they would be at each others' throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace."
The same anti-elitist fervor permeated radicalism throughout American history. As southerners noted, the abolitionist evangelicalism was the spark leading to Civil War, a war that didn't have to happen. Indeed, the belligerent revivalist mentality was rooted in a kind of mass emotionalism. Once started, it verged on religious hysteria; it was like a prarie fire, raging with "holy hatred" against the plantation South. Slavery was seen as almost a sexual crime.
What is special about this "low-church" or evangelical wing of biblical Christianity
Its shortcomings, of course, are obvious. Take a look at the writings of the "sons" of such biblical or low-church traditions. For example, Tom Paine or Mark Twain or James Baldwin. There is the suspicion of erudition and hatred of elitism. There is the tendency toward radicalism, as well as the proverbial intolerance and often fanaticism. In America, the gospelism of hinterland religion was often emotional, musical, exuberant, and quite frequently there was a promiscuity, in the sense of a blending of differences, a blurring of theology. "There you will find what every man needs, wild religion without any creeds." (Louise Driscoll) For related discussion.
Again and again it has been observed how the grass-roots sort of religion would be characterized by radical aspects, by anti-authoritarian or anti-eltist traits and attitudes. Leaders of society, the stable decision-makers of Church and State (in Europe -- or in America's eastern cities) would react with uneasiness or outright alarm at the promiscuous multitude of burgeoning sects and their wild religion -- their "enthusisam."
William H. McNeill writes: "Men whose ordinary lives involve persistent frustrations easily fall into collective states of excitement. In such circumstances, red-hot religion offers a surrogate for, and yet hovers on the verge of, mass violence." Or. Dubois noted how white gospelism wound up by and large a "plain copy" of the enthusiasm of black revivals. The enthusiasm of either was obviously an outlet. As Dubois describes it, (the shouting or frenzy)"when the Spirit of the Lord passed by, and, seizing the devotee, made him mad with supernatural joy, was the last essential of Negro religion and the one more devoutly believed in than all the rest. It varied in expression from the silent rapt countenance or the low murmur and moan to the mad abandon of physical fervor, --the stamping, shrieking, and shouting, the rushing to and fro and wild waving of arms, the weeping and laughing, the vision and the trance. All this is nothing new in the world, but old as religion, as Delphi and Endor. And so firm a hold did it have on the Negro, that many generations firmly be- lieved that without this visible manifestation of the God there could be no true communion with the Invisible."Yet what about the positive side?
Gabriel Sivan writes: More than any other code or philosophy, past or present, the Bible has urged men and women imbued with a social conscience to tackle the age-old problems of poverty, suffering, and inequality. William Wilberforce fought slavery; Florence Nightengale reformed nursing and Elizabeth Fry prison conditions; Dorothea Lind Dix spotlighted mental health issues; Lord Shaftesbury protected the juvenile laborer; Lewis Gompertz pioneered animal welfare; William Booth's Salvation Army redeemed men from the gutter; Jean Henri Dunant made the Red Cross a delivering angel for the victims of war.
{from "The Bible and Civilization" p 107}
James Ramsay McDonald, later Britain's first Labor prime minister, thus observed that, "whilst the organization of Israel could not withstand the world pressure of its time, its spiritual and moral characteristics have always remained as enticing ideals in the minds of men, and thereby provide not only a proof that they are to find another opportunity of expression in society, but an earnest that the world pressure will change so as to aid rather than stultify that opportunity." (The Socialist Movement, 1911).
Millions of underprivileged persons in country after country have been rescued from squalor and misery thanks to the humanitarian instincts and philanthropic work of great idealists for whom the reforming spirit of the Hebrew Bible was a lasting inspiration. The injunction to love and care for one's fellow man was one of those "enticing ideals" (Ramsay McDonald alluded to) that motivated private charity and social initiative in the past. Whether the State's assumption of what was once the individual's responsibility is to be viewed as a sign of progress is open to dispute. The Bible's use of the term "congregation" to emphasize collective responsibility does not imply that the individual is exempt from the fulfillment of his own duty: man and society must work hand in hand. Thus, State promotion of welfare schemes for all citizen's can be regarded as a long-delayed response to the Hebraic call for "righteousness and justice, lovingkindness and truth" on the part of society as a whole, in order to ensure the widest and fairest distribution of man's common, God-given patrimony.
{The Bible and Civilization, 1973, by Gabriel Sivan.}
The dissenting movement was biblical and almost judaic
Dissenting Christianity was not imposed from above, but rather erupted from below. It has been grouped within the "left wing" of the reformation. Variously labelled as puritan or reformist or "grass-roots," so many expressions were represented that only the rigor of a Cromwell, or a Knox could approach anything like a unifying force. (And such a rigor copied straight out of the state churches they supplanted.) And even then, the true power and energy was highly de-centralized, a spectrum of views, impulses, expressions. And always, always, the Bible's influence could be felt. Always, always, the spirit of the Hebrew gift to mankind.
Henry George in his book Moses wrote that the Hebrew commonwealth as it is presented in the bible was an association of free individuals, "in which none should be condemned to ceaseless toil; in which for even the bond-slave there should be hope; in which for even the beast of burden there should be rest. It is not the protection of property, but the protection of humanity, that is the aim of the Mosaic Code . . . Everywhere, in everything, the dominant idea is that of our homely phrase, 'Live and let live' . . ."
{The Bible and Civilization, p93}
Thomas Huxley, in his Controversial Questions, paid a remarkable tribute to the advanced social thinking to be found in this Book of the Jews. "The Bible has been the Magna Charta of the poor and of the oppressed; down to modern times no State has had a constitution in which the interests of the people are so largely taken into account, in which the duties so much more than the privileges of the rulers are insisted upon, as that drawn up for Israel in Deuteronomy and Leviticus; nowhere is the fundamental truth that the welfare of the State, in the long run, depends on the uprightness of the citizen so strongly laid down."
{The Bible and Civilization, p77}
The ethical message of the "Book" of the Jews is rooted in the respect God commands for the sanctity of human life. Gabriel Sivan notes that "amid the polytheism and sexual depravity of ancient society, the Bible taught that all human beings were equal in the love of God, since He 'created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him; male and female created He them.' (Gen. 1:27)."
{The Bible and Civilization, p5}
America's pluralism and religious tolerance dates back to parallel streams both Judaic and dissenting. Roger Williams was a notable scholar and puritan (dissenter) urging biblically-based respect for religious freedom and the rights of conscience. His attitude echoed the long-standing convictions prevailing among Jews, voiced by "heretics" such as Espinoza, and rooted in the Bible's call for a willing hearted "choice" to serve God. See related webpage My heritage is like a speckled bird surrounded by her enemies.
Puritanism and the stern moralistic code of behavior
Gabriel Sivan states:
The Hebrew Bible's stand on sexual relationships is uniquely clear-cut and severe. Incest, adultery, homosexuality, and bestiality ... are grave crimes in the eyes of Heaven incurring stern penalties; as such, they can never be viewed permissively, as they were in pagan cults, where deities themselves behaved lewdly toward one another. {The Bible and Civilization, p9}
Sivan notes the positive and negative impact of the Hebrew Bible (especially on 'low-church' or evangelical Protestantism):
Sivan credits the power of the Old Testament with infusing martyrs among Scots Covenanters, as well as French Huguenots, with the courage, faith, and stamina to suffer and die for their (biblical) faith. "Indeed the spiritual strength of English Puritans and Quakers, Scots Presbyterians, New England Pioneers, and French and Dutch Calvinists derived in large measure from their reading and interpretation of the Hebrew Bible. So, for that matter, did much of their narrow-mindednes and proverbial intolerance." For discussion on Christian intolerance by Perez Zagorin.
{The Bible and Civilization, p56}
England's Puritan poet, John Milton, declared: "there are no songs comparable to the songs of Zion; no orations equal to those of the prophets; and no politics like those which the Scriptures teach."
Thomas Huxley the biologist and darwinian evolutionist, in his Educational Essays (1874) drew attention to "the great historical fact that for three centuries this Book [the King James Bible] has been woven into the life of all that is best and noblest in English history; that it has become the national epic of Britain, and is familiar to noble and simple, from John o' Groat's to Land's End; that it is written in the noblest and purest English, and abounds in exquisite beauties of a merely literary form . . . By the study of what other book could children be so much humanized, and made to feel that each figure in that vast historical procession fills, like themselves, but a momentary space in the interval between the Eternities; and earns the blessings or curses of all time, according to its effort to do good and hate evil?"
{The Bible and Civilization, p76}
Pierre Proudhon observed (1846) that "the whole Bible is a hymn to Justice -- that is, in the Hebrew style, to charity, to kindness to the weak on the part of the strong, to voluntary renunciation of the privilege of power."
Even Edward Gibbon, that great atheist and world historian, wrote of the Jew Paul (of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee of the Pharisees) that he "has done more to promote the idea of freedom and liberty than any man who set foot on human soul." And that gift to us from the Bible dserves due credit for the Occidental concept of religious freedom.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, an Enlightenment philosophe and rationalist, declared:
Behold the works of our philosophers; with all their pompous diction, how mean and contemptible they are by comparison with the Scriptures! Is it possible that a book at once so simple and sublime should be merely the work of man?"
America's love affair with God
For better or worse, America has been "stuck" with deep roots in the biblical tradition, and an ongoing devotion that has at times bordered on Old Testament fervor. The Europeans noted the hyper-religiosity of the Americans. The image of American folk religion as "enthusiastic" was hardly positive. American populist religion tended toward a biblical fanatacism, at times. This was so even in the beginning. The tone of the American frontier was nothing if not evangelical. Some European divines thought the colonists' style had rubbed off from the Indians. (As later Clergy, even in America, blamed it on African influence.)
One historian estimates that at the time of the Revolution in all 13 colonies fully 75% of the people supporting Independence represented the moral and religious background of Puritanism. (Sidney Ahlstrom). Clearly he includes the huge recent influx of Irish, both Old Light and the New Light (evangelical). Indeed, the British themselves realized this, and the Revolution itself had been called a religious war, the unseen army being the "Black" regiment (The Puritan, Calvinist, and Irish Presbyterian Clergy).
Regarding the American founding, Cecil Roth wrote: "It was Hebrew mortar (to quote a famous phrase) that cemented the foundations of the Republic; and not without reason did the first seal it adopted depict the overthrow of Pharoah in the Red Sea, with the motto: "Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God' . . . "
This seal was designed by Thomas Jefferson. The motto was first used by Oliver Cromwell
G.K. Chesterton's famous remark regarding America (a country with the soul of a church) was noted by Europeans even in our colonial era. The fervor that was our greatest blessing, was often, at times, our greatest curse. Tocqueville credited the Puritan New Englanders with shaping the middle class democracy that represented such hope for the then-mostly-illiterate world.
On the frontier, older theological distinctions tended to blur. Hair-splitting dogmatic niceties were argued over, and often began to overlap. William Lee Miller notes the "emergence of a revivalist and pietist protestantism, permeating the culture, ... [which] generated multitudes of sects, splits, and new religions." [p 76, The First Liberty]
Old Light Calvinists became New Lights (more evangelical); Hard shells became Soft shells; Methodists emerged from a State church (liturgical) framework and became evangelical and enthusiastic. Moravians emerged from another State church framework (Lutheran) and became pietistic. Many of the churches reflected the biases of the frontier, a suspicion of power, elitism, and erudition. It was Jacksonian America, and Eastern banks were the enemy, an enemy cast in the mold of the enemies of Jesus -- smug, arrogant, and potentially oppressive.
Yet the same low-church moralism could quickly turn fanatical, resulting in witch trials, the execution of Quakers (Mary Dyer), the persecution of minorities, and even war. The Civil War in a very real sense was the direct product of the widespread evangelicalism then rampant in the Ohio Valley. Abolition sprang directly from evangelical fervor, and the militant moralistic tone of that hatred of the South was from the start imbued heavily with the religious fanatacism of the gospel movement that spawned it.
Concerning the American colonists quest for Independence, Abraham Isaac Katsh wrote :
"Hebraic idealism had inspired many of the practical considerations which spurred the patriots to challenge monarchy in a decisive manner, and to lay down their lives in the Revolution." Indeed, America's Biblical gospel roots came right out of a humble milieu with a very Hebrew flavor.
{The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy. Ktav, 1977. p133}
"Democracy as a political modus vivendi presupposes a moral basis and background; it is moral before it is political. For a people to rule, there must prevail among them a hunger for justice and righteousness and a thirst for liberty, both for oneself and one's brother; without these fundamental virtues, a people, even if living under a form of democracy, will find itself in fact living under tyrannous masters."
[Katsh, "The Biblical Heritage of American Democracy." Ktav, 1977. p 138] [The author references Louis Witt, Judaism and Democracy.]
Andrew Jackson, our great frontier Irish president, unabashedly declared that the Bible was "that book .... is the rock on which our republic rests."
For more on America's love affair with God = frontier evangelicalism.
Franklin D. Roosevelt alluded to the Scriptural foundations of American democracy when in a 1935 broadcast message: "We cannot read the history of our rise and development as a nation, without reckoning with the place the Bible has occupied in shaping the advances of the Republic . . . where we have been truest and most consistent in obeying its precepts, we have attained the greatest measure of contentment and prosperity ..."
Lincoln's religious beliefs appear to have been unconventional, and we supect could be termed 'heterodox' at the least. He was quite suspicious of theological infighting over doctrine, was aloof to issues and conflicts of dogma, declined to ever be baptised and was the only president to never join a church. He appeared to be embarassed of the biblical distinctiveness of that majestic given name Abraham, an inheritance from his Quaker grandfather. Nevertheless, he was, in the words of biographers James Randall and Richard Current, "a man of more intense religiosity than any other President the United States has ever had." Mark Noll says that "The external Lincoln, casual about religious observance, hid a man of profound morality, an almost unbearable God-consciousness, and a deep belief in the freedom of God to transcend the limited vision of humanity." It was Lincoln who was the first president to use the phrase, "This nation under God." It inspired congressional leaders under President Eisenhower, in 1954, to add the words "one nation under God" to the pledge of allegience (with the powerful alliance of the then highly influential Knights of Columbus).
Abraham Lincoln said of the Bible (1864, upon being presented a special copy of the Bible by a group of free blacks) "In regard to this Great Book, I have but to say, it is the best gift God has given to man. All the good the Saviour gave to the world was communicated through this book. But for it we could not know right from wrong. All things most desirable for man's welfare, here and hereafter, are to be found portrayed in it."
"Here on earth, God's work must truly be our own" --- John F. Kennedy
One of the fathers of humanitarian Socialism, Saint-Simon (who fought with Lafayette in the American War of Independence) tried to alleviate the plight of the underprivileged by advocating the redistribution of wealth and power in the interests of all mankind. Prosper Enfantin and other Saint-Simonians believed that Hebrew monotheism foreshadowed the future unity of humanity and their doctrines attracted Jewish supporters as well, including the exiled poet Heinrich Heine, who wrote that "Moses was such a Socialist, though as a practical man he sought only to remodel existing institutions ... instead of hotheadedly decreeing abolition of property, Moses only strove for its moral reform," particularly through his introduction of the Jubilee Year (when every alienated heritage returned to its original owner). "Moses did not want to abolish property. Rather, he wanted everybody to own some, so that poverty should make no man a serf with servile thoughts. Freedom was always the great emancipator's final idea; it flames and breathes in all his laws on pauperism . . . ."
{The Bible and Civilization, p181. Citing Gestandnisse, 1854}
Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch called the King James Bible "the very greatest" literary achievement in the English language. "All the other translations, great as some of them are, will ever be subordinate to the one which appeared in 1611. Known as the King James Version, from King James I, who interested himself in its beginnings. The translation his scholars produced is widely conceded by competent literary scholars, Christian or otherwise, through the ages since, to be the greatest single piece of English literarature and to be unsurpassed in power and beauty of expression even by Milton and Shakespeare. No book in the history of the world has ever been beloved by so many people as this Authorized Version; none has more profoundly affected the life and literature of the world." [Pilgrim Edition, E. Schuler English, Editor in Chief] For more, King James Bible.
John F. Kennedy, in his inaugural address, invoked God three times, and additionally, referenced two verses from the Bible. He used the King James Bible's phrasing. He called on American's to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, "rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation" (Romans 12:12). And he made an appeal throughout the globe, to heed in all corners of the earth the command of Isaiah (58:6) to "undo the heavy burdens ... and to let the oppressed go free."
Few public families have given so much to America as the Kennedy's. From Joe, Jr., who gave his life for his country when his plane was downed by the Nazi's in World War II. Then "Jack" Kennedy, our beloved President John F. Kennedy, assassinated in Dallas TX, 22 November 1963. Then Robert F. Kennedy, "Bobby" -- a political gut-fighter transformed by sorrow into an idealist and almost a spiritual beacon, a great soul, as they say. Yet out of it added heart-break and sorrow, Rose Kennedy, the great matriarch, only grew in spiritual worth and value. Toward the end of her long life, she was asked by an interviewer if there were but one thing she could bequeath her children what it would be. Marabel Morgan quoted her answer. It wouldn't be wealth or lands or estates or privilege. It would be faith. FAITH!
| "Without vision the people perish." Could anything be more true? A nation will perish if its leaders have not foresight or vision. A church will become a thing of dead and lifeless dogmas if the leaders or head has not vision or continued revelation or direct contact with God. But ... even more. Any individual without vision will perish. [Annalee Skarin] |
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