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Historically, American political and religious liberty can neither be divorced from each other nor be understood apart from the struggle between church and state that wracked early modern Europe. The American constitutional tradition of liberty and self-government is rooted in the biblical concept of the covenant. Sixteenth century Reformers used biblical and historical models to carefully develop the idea of covenanted self-government into a pillar of the ecclesiastical and political order, thus giving rise to covenant (or federal) theology and the idea of political federalism. What follows is a lightly edited excerpt from this writer’s Crossed Swords: Entanglements Between Church and State in America (1984), chapter 5, “The American Commonwealth.” It is a sequel to “Engines of Liberty: American Experiments in Self-Government,” The Market for Ideas, 25 (Sept.-Oct. 2020).

Law and liberty

Archie Jones has summarized the connection between early American political thought and biblical doctrine as follows:

What were the teachings of this New England theo-political philosophy? Its starting premise was the Puritan concept of God as sovereign of the universe, who made man a rational creature, put “Law into the very Frame and Constitution of his Soul,” and deals with men on the basis of conditional and obligatory compacts or covenants. This sovereign God is the Lawgiver, who has established perfectly wise, just, and good laws, founded upon the nature and relation of things, which are of universal obligation. This fixed and fundamental law is threefold, including the law of nature, the law of the Old Testament, and the law of Christ. The law of nature is not distinct from the law of God. Rather, it is as legally binding as any other part of the divine law, and gains greater force as a part of God’s law, especially since it is clarified by the binding portion of Old and New Testament law. Since God’s government is founded and limited by law, all human governments must be so founded and limited.[1]

According to the Bible, it is the ministry of civil officers to enforce this law and the ministries of the church and family to teach it (I Pet. 2:13-14; Matt. 28:19-20; Deut. 6:6-7). The final responsibility, however, rests with each individual, who is expected to walk by faith: that is, by the inward desire to obey God. As R. J. Rushdoony comments:

Law is good, proper, and essential in its place, but law can save no man, nor can law remake man and society. The basic function of law is to restrain (Rom. 13:1-4), not to regenerate, and when the function of law is changed from the restraint of evil to the regeneration and reformation of man and society, then law itself breaks down, because an impossible burden is being placed upon it. Today, because too much is expected from law, we get less and less results from law, because law is put to improper uses.[2]

By 1787 the chief presuppositions that were to undergird the American system of government had been carefully articulated. Modern ideas about political and religious liberty are founded upon a Christian understanding of man’s nature and destiny. The two traditions of covenant thought – theological and political – converge in a concept of limited government that begins with the self-governing individual within society and leads to the development of practical institutions for mutual assistance and voluntary cooperation. The reverse side of this same covenantal tradition may be described as separaion of powers, multiple jurisdictions, sphere sovereignty, or subsidiarity. These later political developments are inherent to the Biblical covenant and the federal theology of the Puritans. They represent – as do the documents that gave shape to them – practical outgrowths of the covenantal principle. Together they form the basis of what Verna Hall calls “Christian self-government with union”.[3]

The founding documents

In its rhetorical design, the Declaration of Independence displays a close affinity with the principles of “the New England theo-political philosophy,” along with an attitude of lawful resistance to abuses of power:

In form, the Declaration is a plea at law against the king in Parliament, charging him with failure to uphold his contractual obligations as feudal lord over the colonies. As such, it is a powerful assertion that rulers are under law, that their powers, even though they be a popular or quasi-popular assembly, are limited by fundamental law, and that both George III and Parliament are unjustified in attempting to assert their supposed right to absolute rule.[4]

The principle of limited government pronounced by the Declaration firmly places this document within the higher law tradition of English constitutionalism. Here a case can be made – and has been made – for the influence of Biblical covenantalism long predating the Reformation.[5] The exigencies of frontier life favored a revival of the ancient English custom of local self-government. The relative freedom of the colonists from direct oversight enabled them to put their theology into practice experimentally, although some of their adaptations technically violated their charters, as when the Pilgrims of Plymouth Plantation abandoned communal farming in favor of private ownership.

Furthermore, decentralized political institutions required the existence of healthy social institutions, which included voluntary associations.[6] The mainstays of society in Plymouth Colony were, first, the family, then the church and the town in supporting roles. As John Demos points out, the family combined the attributes of a business, school, vocational institute, church, house of correction, and welfare institution.[7] And so it was to remain for some time after the War for Independence, sometimes supporting a larger charitable outreach.[8]

It is this combination of ingredients that lends a peculiarly libertarian quality to American social institutions. The civil government was regarded as a constituent rather than a constitutive element of society. By 1781, a “perpetual union” was in operation under the Articles of Confederation. The Constitution of 1787 formed “a more perfect union” rather than an entirely new system of government.[9]

One of the great practical advantages of the covenant design is the possibility of reconciling a number of self-governing entities within a larger union or commonwealth, such as family, church, and state. As Daniel J. Elazar notes, “a covenant provides for joint action or obligation to achieve defined ends (limited or comprehensive) under conditions of mutual respect which protect the individual integrities of all parties to it.”[10]

Given the limited character of civil government, the supremacy clause of Article VI is best understood in the context of an already mature constitutional tradition within which the new federal structure was fitted to work cooperatively with existing governments and not force-fitted like a Procrustean bed.[11] It does not simply replace an earlier parliamentary or state sovereignty with another of its own. R. J. Rushdoony emphasizes this distinction:

The Constitution established neither a confederation nor a national state but a federal union. Its conception of power was Christian: power is ministerial, not legislative, i.e., powers in any area, church, state, school or family, are not endowed with ability to create laws apart from the higher law but only to administer fundamental law as man is able to grasp and approximate it. Civil government is thus an administrator rather than a creator of law; it is not sovereign over law but is under law.[12]

The representation of the Constitution as “the supreme law of the land”, like the phrase “law of the land” in the Magna Carta, refers to more than the document itself. It is unnecessary to speculate about the exact intent of the founders when the very language of the Constitution attests to its continuity with and even incorporation of higher law concepts. Indeed, this understanding was affirmed by the founders themselves and has been periodically reaffirmed by members of the judiciary.[13] As Edward S. Corwin contended:

The attribution of supremacy to the Constitution on the ground solely of its rootage in popular will represents, however, a comparatively late outgrowth of American constitutional theory. Earlier the supremacy accorded to constitutions was ascribed less to their putative source than to their supposed content, to their embodiment of an essential and unchanging justice.... There are, it is predicated, certain principles of right and justice which are entitled to prevail of their own intrinsic excellence, all together regardless of the attitude of those who wield the physical resources of the community.[14]

The principles of higher law jurisprudence may be traced to the earliest period of modern western law. For example, Gratian wrote in the twelfth century: “Enactments (constitutiones), whether ecclesiastical or secular, if they are proved to be contrary to natural law, must be totally excluded.”[15]

The new federal union, in sum, has been given the authority to coordinate the political system but not to dominate it. Its overall success depends upon the continued good health of the various social institutions, such as families and churches, which also exercise powers of a governmental nature.[16]

The safeguards built into the constitutional system ultimately depend on the consensus and self-restraint of its component parts. This is a key to properly understanding the relationship between church and state as it was originally envisioned. As James Madison remarked during the ratification debates in Virginia: “There is not a shadow of a right in the general government to intermeddle with religion. Its least interference with it would be a most flagrant usurpation.”[17]

Like the Declaration, the Constitution is based on the premise that the primary purpose of civil government is essentially protective, prohibitory, and punitive rather than tutelary, administrative, or imperial. Since its power is coercive by nature rather than persuasive, the founders believed that civil authority must be constitutionally restrained.

James Madison declared that an accumulation of powers in the same hands “may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”[18] Alexander Hamilton similarly urged that the original grant of powers to Congress was a limited one:

The plan of the convention declares that the power of Congress, or, in other words, of the national legislature, shall extend to certain enumerated cases. This specification of particulars evidently excludes all pretension to a general legislative authority, because an affirmative grant of special powers would be absurd, as well as useless, if a general authority was intended.[19]

Likewise, George Washington in his Farewell Address cautioned against the tendency of governments to usurp power:

If, in the opinion of the People, the distribution or modification of the Constitutional powers be in any particular wrong, let it be corrected by an amendment in the way which the constitution designates.— But let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.—

The precedent must always greatly overbalance in permanent evil any partial or transient benefit which the use can at any time yield.—

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion, and Morality are indispensable supports.— In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens.[20]

But this warning has been largely ignored because the focus of American politics is more generally on the means rather than on commonly conceded ends. Chief Justice John Marshall helped set the stage – and the tone – for many subsequent controversies by adopting a sweeping view of proper constitutional means in McCulloch v. Maryland, 4 Wheat. 316, 421 (1819):

Let the end be legitimate, let it be within the scope of the constitution, and all means which are appropriate, which are plainly adapted to that end, which are https://www.georgewashington.org/farewell-address.jspnot prohibited, but consist with the letter and spirit of the constitution, are constitutional.

One of the great challenges to constitutional liberty has come through a gradual shift of emphasis from prohibition to regulation, from a protective to a beneficent or philanthropic conception of civil power.[21] What Alexis de Tocqueville subsequently wrote about the regulation of manufacturing associations in Europe might be applied with equal validity to the regulation of religious activity:

If once the sovereign had a general right of authorizing associations of all kinds upon certain conditions, he would not be long without claiming the right of superintending and managing them, in order to prevent them from departing from the rules laid down by himself. In this manner the state, after having reduced all who are desirous of forming associations into dependence, would proceed to reduce into the same condition all who belong to associations already formed; that is to say, almost all the men who are now ln existence.[22]

The success of the struggle for political liberty was soon followed by a growth of religious liberty and the collapse of denominational establishments. But, for a time, centralizing tendencies were held in check.

The idea of a Christian republic

A century after the Constitution was ratified, church historian Philip Schaff reviewed the development of religious liberty in America and detected a close connection between the American political and religious traditions.

If we speak of a Christian nation He must take the word in the qualified sense of the prevailing religious sentiment and profession; for in any nation and under any relation of church and state, there are multitudes of unbelievers, misbelievers, and hypocrites. . . .

With this understanding, we may boldly assert that the American nation is as religious and as Christian as any nation on earth, and in some respects even more so, for the very reason that the profession and support of religion are left entirely free. State-churchism is apt to breed hypocrisy and infidelity, while free-churchism favors the growth of religion.[23]

Schaff regarded as distinctively American the easy cooperation between religious and civil institutions, characterized by “a free church in a free state, or a self-supporting and self-governing Christianity in independent but friendly relation to the civil government.”[24] He concluded that the American system of law could not have originated from any other religious soil, adding that “we may say that our laws are all the more Christian because they protect the Jew and the infidel, as well as the Christian of whatever creed, in the enjoyment of the common rights of men and of citizens.”[25]

The nature of the difference between the state church and free church viewpoints may be seen in the different versions of the Westminster Confession of Faith, the most influential of Protestant doctrinal statements used in America. Originally, the twenty-third chapter of the Confession – entitled “Of the Civil Magistrate” – reflected the “national church” concept accepted in England and Scotland, where – even in 1647 – it was somewhat at variance with the congregational establishments of New England. The third section of the original chapter reads:

The civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word and sacraments, or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven: yet he hath authority, and it is his duty, to take order, that unity and peace be preserved in the church, that the truth of God be kept pure and entire, that all blasphemies and heresies be suppressed, all corruptions and abuses in worship and discipline prevented or reformed, and all the ordinances of God duly settled, administered, and observed. For the better effecting whereof, he hath power to call synods, to be present at them, and to provide that whatsoever is transacted in them be according to the mind of God.[26]

Despite a marked break with the pure Erastian view that the church is subject to the state, the assumption of a national establishment that underlay the Confession did not square with either the decentralized establishments of seventeenth century New England or the later voluntary church concept.[27] As early as 1729, the Presbyterian synod of Philadelphia adopted the Westminster standards with modifications. The wording in three of the chapters was formally changed in 1788. The commonly accepted American revision of chapter 23, section three reflects a conception of religious liberty which strongly resembles that of the First Amendment, even though it predated the Amendment by a year:

Civil magistrates may not assume to themselves the administration of the word and sacraments; or the power of the keys of the kingdom of heaven; or, in the least, interfere in matters of faith. Yet, as nursing fathers, it is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the church of our common Lord, without giving the preference to any denomination of Christians above the rest, in such a manner that all ecclesiastical persons whatever shall enjoy the full, free, and unquestioned liberty of discharging every part of their sacred functions, without violence or danger. And, as Jesus Christ hath appointed a regular government and discipline in his church, no law of any commonwealth should interfere with, let, or hinder, the due exercise thereof, among the voluntary members of any denomination of Christians, according to their own profession and belief. It is the duty of civil magistrates to protect the person and good name of all their people, in such an effectual manner as that no person be suffered, either upon pretense of religion or infidelity, to offer any indignity, violence, abuse, or injury to any other person whatsoever: and to take order, that all religious and ecclesiastical assemblies be held without molestation or disturbance.[28]

But the problems of jurisdiction and ultimate authority are not suddenly resolved by the simple expedient of substituting a “neutral state” for a “confessional state.”[29] In fact, this concept of neutrality or disinterestedness has – by its lack of definition –introduced a genuine ambiguity into the relationship between church and state that very likely encouraged not only the proliferation of antagonistic sects but also the creation of public agencies that have duplicated – and sometimes replaced – various church ministries. For the most part, the Christian character of the social order was taken for granted. But it may not have been simply the blithe indifference of churches to the hazards of Erastianism that led them to support a greater role by the state in public education and welfare. Robert Handy explains that “the overtones of religious establishment implicit in much of what they did then was not clear to them because, as they developed new ways, they did not realize how much of the old patterns they carried over the wall of separation into their new vision of Christian civilization.”[30] Well into the present century, historian Edward Humphrey could still write:

The American conception allows for national characteristics that are independent of the state. So we are a Christian nation even though Christianity is not a feature of the American state. The adoption of the American concept of the limited state resulted in the ideal of a free church in a free nation, the present American ideal of religious freedom. As a corollary to this we have the ideal of a state freed from ecclesiastical control.[31]

These words echo the sentiments of earlier and even later commentators, including judges and legal scholars like James Kent, Joseph Story, Thomas Cooley, David Brewer, and William O. Douglas. Yet the general respect for Christianity did little to prevent the now commonly accepted compartmentalization of spiritual and temporal concerns. The divorce of religion from practical life appears to be the result of a dualistic attitude that regards the state as “worldly” and the church as “otherworldly,” diminishing the reputation of both. In this, it resembles the tendency of innumerable church heresies throughout history.[32] Thus religion as a private concern of individuals is separated from politics as the public concern of communities.[33]

The struggle for religious liberty during the last half of the eighteenth century succeeded in discrediting any remaining pretense that the kingdom of God could be established through coercion rather than conversion. John Locke’s view that a church “is a free and voluntary Society” soon prevailed.[34] But with public opinion divided on the nature and extent of this new religious liberty, any consideration of the positive responsibilities of the state with respect to religion was obliged to take a back seat to the fight for disestablishment. As a result, important issues were not fully addressed.

If, according to the Westminster standards, civil magistrates are to be regarded as “nursing fathers” (Isa. 49:22-23), in what way are they obliged to promote the welfare of the church? In what sense is the magistrate “the minister of God” (Rom. 13:4)? Who is responsible to set and uphold the moral standards of the community? Even if the prophetic calling of the church to proclaim the word of God or the ministerial calling of the magistrate to enforce it were not at issue, some manner of involvement by civil officers in religious affairs and by church leaders in civil affairs would be unavoidable. The church does not operate in a political vacuum. Neither does the state operate in a religious vacuum. Indeed, it is a basic premise of Christianity – despite periodic neglect of this principle – that both church and state are ministries under the direct authority of God and must govern their affairs within the framework of God’s revealed law, the Bible. The practical issue is, as it always has been, to harmonize their respective activities.

Conclusion

The single most influential political expression of the covenantal principle in American history is the Constitution of 1787. While it may be criticized as a further secularization of the covenant tradition, it also represents a culmination of sorts. Like its predecessors, it requires the active participation of a citizenry educated in its principles and committed to its preservation. The founders frequently extolled what they called “republican virtue”, which they contrasted with “corruption”. The separation of political powers was meant to guard against corruption by restraining the exercise of power and protecting against even the appearance of impropriety.

For a while the system worked fairly well. But the passing of the founding generation and the diminution of external threats permitted domestic disagreements to loom larger. Regional jealousies and policy differences led after several decades to a civil war that ended, unfortunately, with the victorious side tipping the constitutional balance in favor of central control.[35] The resulting tendency toward centralization, bureaucratization, and the fragmentation of local mediating institutions may be seen in the subsequent history of all sectors of American life.

Today, the idea of liberty is in many ways being abandoned in favor of an equality of enforced fraternity. Particularly troubling is the slide of American churches away from the covenant tradition they helped develop and their unwillingness to effectively challenge the “New Morality” that erases the distinction between “sheep and goats.”[36] As Brownson, Tocqueville, Lieber, and so many early commentators recognized, this is the danger of popular government: that it may slide into “social despotism” “tyranny of the majority”, or “democratic absolutism”, and that liberty may turn into license.

The declining influence of American churches has ramifications that reach into every area of American life. In the absence of political consensus and principled self-restraint, what Edward S. Corwin called the “Constitution of Powers” of a burgeoning Provider State has gradually displaced the old “Constitution of Rights.”[37]

Despite evident setbacks, the Constitution of 1787 and the covenant tradition that led up to it are milestones in the great experiment in self-government that still presses forward. That Constitution has given rise to a great literature of political wisdom, in which the Federalist Papers, John C. Calhoun’s theory of the concurrent majority, and Francis Lieber’s theory of institutional liberty may be included.[38] It is this peculiarly American political tradition that has kept the idea of covenanted liberty and self-government alive to this day in all corners of the world and continues to shake principalities and powers. Perhaps even yet it may develop the capacity to overcome the spoilage of its own fruits.

Photo source: PxHere.com [1] & [2].

[1]Archie P. Jones, “The Christian Roots of the War for Independence,” The Journal of Christian Reconstruction, 3 (Summer 1976): 35.

[2]Rousas John Rushdoony, Law and Liberty (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1977), pp. 4-5.

[3]Verna M. Hall, comp. The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States of America: Christian Self-Government with Union, American Revolution Bicentennial Edition, ed. Joseph Allan Montgomery (San Francisco: Foundation for American Christian Education, 1979) passim. Similarly, M. E. Bradford writes: “Christianity taught of the integrity of the individual soul. In England that translated into liberty under law, in community.” Hall, II, passim. Similarly, M. E. Bradford writes: “Christianity taught of the integrity of the individual soul. In England that translated into liberty under law, in community.” M. E. Bradford, A Better Guide Than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution (LaSalle, IL: Sherwood Sugden, 1979) 210.

[4]Jones, op. cit. 43.

[5]See Helen Silving, “The Origins of the Magna Cartae”, Harvard Journal of Legislation, 3 (1965): 117-31.

[6]Peter F. Drucker, The Future of Industrial Man: A Conservative Approach (New York: John Day, 1942; Mentor Executive Library, 1965) 172-73. See Rousas John Rushdoony, The Nature of the American System (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1978) 5-11 on localism.

[7]John Demos, A Little Commonwealth: Family Life in Plymouth Colony (London: Oxford University Press, 1970) 183-84. The cooperation of churches, families, and local authorities was also characteristic of later efforts to address social needs. See Robert H. Bremner, American Philanthropy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960) 5-19; Walter I. Trattner, From Poor Law to Welfare State: A History of Social Welfare in America (New York: The Free Press, 1974) 25-27.

[8]Rousas John Rushdoony, Revolt Against Maturity: A Biblical Psychology of Man (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1977) 216-24, on Rev. Elias Cornelius and the Salem Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Poor. See also Robert T. Handy, A Christian America: Protestant Hopes and Historical Realities (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971) 42-54. Handy and Rushdoony, however, both note that nativist agitation helped bring discredit upon evangelical organizations.

[9]See the First Inaugural Address (1861) of Abraham Lincoln in The Harvard Classics, vol. 43: American Historical Documents, 1000-1904, ed. Charles W. Eliot (New York: P. F. Collier & Son, 1910 [1865]) 337. This argument was developed earlier by Daniel Webster. But taken alone, the constitutional argument in favor of the perpetuity of the Union is not above criticism. Garry Wills has argued that Abraham Lincoln successfully revised the meaning of the Declaration of Independence in the Gettysburg Address and, in effect, reinvented the founding traditions to support the Northern cause during the Civil War, but his Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992) is only the most recent salvo in a long scholarly debate. See M. E. Bradford, “Lincoln, the Declaration, and Secular Puritanism: A Rhetoric for Continuing Revolution”, op. cit., 185-203; and “The Lincoln Legacy: A Long View,” Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985), 143-56. Francis Lieber and Orestes Brownson appear to be on firmer ground than Webster and Lincoln with their organic view of American nationality and by defending the integrity of the Union on the basis of national integrity. See, for example, Francis Lieber, “On the Rise of the Constitution of the United States,” Miscellaneous Writings, vol. 2: Contributions to Political Science (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1881) 66, 69-74; and Orestes A. Brownson, The American Republic: Its Constitution, Tendencies, and Destiny (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2003) 1-3.

[10]Daniel J. Elazar, “The Political Theory of Covenant: Biblical Origins and Modern Developments,” Publius: The Journal of Federalism, 10 (Fall 1980): 6.

[11]Roscoe Pound, The Development of Constitutional Guarantees of Liberty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1957) 96-97, 101-03, on the meaning of “supreme law of the land,” including a citation of relevant cases. The continuity of the constitutional tradition from 1620-1787 is the thesis of Willmoore Kendall and George W. Carey, The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1970) 30-31, 115-18, 150-52.

[12]Rousas John Rushdoony, This Independent Republic: Studies in the Nature and Meaning of American History (Fairfax, VA: Thoburn Press, 1978) 37.

[13]Edward S. Corwin, The “Higher Law” Background of American Constitutional Law (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1955) 89. See R. Kemp Morton, God in the Constitution (Nashville: Cokesbury Press, 1933) 110-16. M. E. Bradford writes: “According to the Old Whig view of the English Constitution, it was not a contract but a source of identity -- with no author but the nation and its history, with God an implicit party to the process. As covenant qua law it grew out of the interaction of people and princes living out of the nation’s genius, with God’s blessing its confirmation. These assumptions undergird most of the early American political documents.” M. E. Bradford, “And God Defend the Right: The American Revolution and the Limits of Christian Obedience”, Christianity and Civilization, 2 (Winter, 1983): 239. Henry Steele Commager in a 1938 essay cited several affirmations of this sort as expressions of an early higher law tradition in early American jurisprudence. Although Commager claimed that the tradition’s underlying philosophy had been repudiated three-quarters of a century earlier, he still acknowledged its importance in constitutional history: “Americans, having discovered the usefulness of natural law, elaborated it, and having justified its application by success, protected that success by transforming natural into constitutional law: the state and federal constitutions. And in so far as natural law had found refuge in written law, there was little reason to invoke it; it was automatically invoked whenever the constitution was invoked, and this was the logic of Marshall in the Marbury case”. Henry Steele Commager, “Constitutional History and the Higher Law”, in The Constitution Reconsidered, ed. Conyers Read, revised ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1968) 228.

[14]Ibid., p. 4.

[15]Harold J. Berman, “The Origins of Western Legal Science”, Harvard Law Review, 90 (1977): 925.

[16]Edmund Burke, whose sentiments are echoed in the nineteenth century by Lieber, Alexis de Tocqueville, and Robert Winthrop, among others, got right to the heart of the matter in his 1791 “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly” of France: “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Quoted in The Portable Conservative Reader, ed. Russell Kirk (n.p.: Penguin Books, 1982) 48.

[17]Jonathan Elliot, The Debates in the Several State Conventions, on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution, as Recommended by the General Convention at Philadelphia in 1787, 2nd ed., vol. 1 (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1863) 330.

[18]Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist: A Commentary on the Constitution of the United States, ed. Edward Mead Earle (New York: Modern Library, n.d.) 313, quoting Federalist, no. 47. See also Abraham Kuyper, Lectures on Calvinism (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1931; 1978), pp. 96-99, on the practical implications of sphere sovereignty.

[19]Ibid. 541, quoting Federalist, no. 83.

[20]https://www.georgewashington.org/farewell-address.jsp

[21]See Frederick Bastiat, The Law, trans. Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950) 21-29; H. L. “Bill” Richardson, What Makes You Think We Read the Bills? (Ottawa, Ill.: Caroline House Books, 1978) 79-89; T. Robert Ingram, The Two Powers (Houston: St. Thomas Press, 1959) 15.

[22]Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, vol. 2 [Fourth Book, chapter 5], trans. Henry Reeve, ed. Phillips Bradley (New York: Vintage Books, 1945) 330-31. Walter Lippmann regarded it as “an extraordinary paradox” that the intellectual leaders of the 1930s believed such detailed regulation to be necessary. As an illustration, he cited Lewis Mumford: “As industry advances in mechanization, a greater weight of political authority must develop outside than was necessary in the past.” Lewis Mumford, Technics and Civilization (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1934; Harbinger, 1963) 420. Regarding this kind of other-directedness, Lippmann commented: “Is it not truly extraordinary that in the latest phase of the machine technic we are advised that we must return to the political technic – that is, to the sumptuary laws and the forced labor which were the universal practice in the earlier phases of the machine technic? I realize that Mr. Mumford hopes and believes that the omnipotent sovereign power will now be as rational in its purposes and its measures as are the physicists and chemists who have invented alloys and harnessed electricity. But the fact remains that he believes the beneficent promise of modern science can be realized only through the political technology of the pre-scientific ages.” Walter Lippmann, The Good Society (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1943 [1936]) 8-9.

[23]Philip Schaff, Church and State in the United States: or The American Idea of Religious Liberty and Its Practical Effects, Papers of the American Historical Association, val. 2, no. 4 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1888) 54, 55.

[24]Ibid. 9. Capitals deleted.

[25]Ibid. 62.

[26]Ibid. 50.

[27]The Mayflower Compact of 1620 introduced a challenge to the state church tradition. See William Bradford, Bradford’s History “Of Plimoth Plantation.” (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1898) 11-35, 109-110. The pastor of the Pilgrim congregation, John Robinson, was kept from joining his flock later because of anti-Separatist nationalists among the Adventurers who continually troubled the first successful colony in New England. See Leonard Bacon, The Genesis of the New England Churches (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1874) 390-423. An attempt by Robert Child and others to petition Parliament to support a presbyterian establishment in New England and appoint a governor-general was successfully averted in 1647 by the General Court. John Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, or The Puritan Theocracy in Its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930) 188-91; Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony, rev. ed (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958) 244-68.

[28]Schaff, op. cit. 50. For an example of the new attitude, see Gardiner Spring, Obligations of the World to the Bible: A Series of Lectures to Young Men (New York: Taylor & Dodd, 1839) 145-49.

[29]The terms “neutrality of the stat” and “state confessionalism” are used in E. R. Norman, The Conscience of the State in North America (Cambridge: University Press, 1968).

[30]Handy, op. cit. 40

[31]Edward Frank Humphrey, Nationalism and Religion in America, 1774-1789 (Boston: Chipman Law Publishing Company, 1924) 2.

[32]Some of the antecedents of this dualism are examined in a chapter entitled “The Socialism of the Heresies” in Igor Shafarevich, The Socialist Phenomenon, trans. William Tjalsma (New York: Harper & Row, 1980) 18-79.

[33]See Richard E. Morgan, The Politics of Religious Conflict: Church and State in America (New York: Pegasus, 1968), p. 22, who quoted Roger Williams to the effect that the church should be regarded as just another private association: “. . . like unto a Body or College of Physicians in a City; like unto a Corporation, Society or Company of East-Indie or Turkie-Merchants, or any other Society or Company in London; which Companies may hold their Courts, keep their Records; hold disputations; and in matters concerning their Society, may dissent, divide, break into Schisms and Factions, sue and implead each other at the Law, yea, wholly break up into pieces and nothing.”

92

[34]Hall, op. cit. 48, quoting Locke’s “A Letter Concerning Toleration.”

[35]Orestes Brownson recognized as early as 1866 that the “humanitarian democracy” adopted by Northern socialists and abolitionists might triumph following the defeat of what he called the “personal democracy” of the South. See Brownson, op. cit. 221-46 [Chapter 14].

[36]John Dewey appears to have regarded the marginalization, if not the elimination, of “spiritual aristocracy” as one of the chief tasks of democratic education. “I cannot understand how any realization of the democratic ideal in human affairs is possible without surrender of the conception of the basic division [between sheep and goats] to which supernatural Christianity is committed.” John Dewey, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934) 84. Here we have, very succinctly, a formula for the elimination of Christianity from the public sphere, but also for moral confusion. See John O’Sullivan’s preface to Digby Anderson, ed. The Loss of Virtue: Moral Confusion and Social Disorder in Britain and America (n.p., UK: The Social Affairs Unit, 1992) ix-xiv.

[37]Edward S. Corwin, Total War and the Constitution (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1947), pp. 170-72.

[38]In the nineteenth century, Francis Lieber developed a nationalistic theory of “institutional liberty” (hamarchy) in response to Calhoun’s concurrent majority. Francis Lieber, On Civil Liberty and Self-Government, 3rd ed. revised, ed. Theodore D. Woolsey (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1877), pp. 297-373; Manual of Political Ethics, Designed Chiefly for the Use of Colleges and Students at Law, Part I (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1838), pp. 411-14. See C. B. Robson, “Francis Lieber’s Theories of Society, Government, and Liberty”, The Journal of Politics, 4 (1942): 227-49.