Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Nick Miller
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000366B
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00:04 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:06 Before the break with Nick Miller, 00:09 we were going hammer and tongs on history. 00:11 Yeah, we're talking about 00:12 500 years of protest and liberty. 00:13 Just a backdrop of the discussion. 00:15 We're in the 17th century, Liberty500.org, 00:19 and we've gotten up to talking about John Locke, 00:22 great enlightenment thinker. 00:24 And the precursors to of course the American experiment, 00:29 which even though this is not... 00:31 The United States has never been 00:32 a Christian nation or a protestant nation, 00:35 it was an overwhelmingly protestant society, 00:39 and I think the story of Protestantism played out 00:42 through the American experience big time. 00:44 So a lot of people 00:46 when they hear the name John Locke 00:47 think enlightenment, secular liberal thinker. 00:50 But if you go back and you read about him 00:52 as you can do in our book here, 00:54 it's clear that he's a deeply religious thinker, 00:56 he writes commentaries on the Bible, 00:58 he comes from a puritan background, 01:01 he embeds much of his philosophical thought 01:05 within biblical foundations and roots. 01:08 And he sort of channels dissenting Protestant thought 01:13 about the right of private judgment, 01:14 the priesthood of believers, 01:16 and expresses it in more philosophical language. 01:18 That's a good point. 01:20 I've never really thought of it like that, 01:21 but he did reinterpret Protestantism 01:25 into secular models. 01:27 Well, and to be fair, this needs to be done 01:30 because if you're going to make a rule 01:32 about separating church and state, 01:35 you can't base the rule entirely on scriptural teaching 01:38 or it becomes a self-defeating principle. 01:40 You're using a biblical teaching 01:41 to make a rule 01:43 that there can be no Biblical teachings 01:44 for public policy. 01:46 And it seems to me this is something 01:47 that we need to have an article in Liberty. 01:50 If you go by analogy, 01:52 it's harder to get it from the Bible, 01:54 if you go from principle, 01:55 it's easy to get it in the Bible, 01:57 particularly the New Testament. 01:58 Especially... 01:59 People throw up analogy, 02:01 you know, in the Old Testament, it's not so self-evident. 02:03 The freedom of the individual, 02:05 the freedom of the Christian man, 02:07 but what Locke reminds us 02:09 is some people view him as an intermediate figure, 02:11 perhaps between Protestantism and the enlightenment, 02:17 secular political thought, 02:19 but I think it's better to think of him 02:21 as a middle way. 02:24 And there are two other contrasting positions 02:26 that are also being articulated at the same time. 02:29 We talked earlier about the magisterial protestants, 02:32 Calvin and Luther, 02:33 they don't fall that far away from the Catholic tradition, 02:36 they believed that the priests, 02:38 I mean, that the priests should work with the princes 02:42 and that princes can help oversee the church 02:44 and even punish heresy. 02:46 It's an interesting point that is often not brought out. 02:49 The Lutheran Church as it once existed 02:53 and the Episcopal Church 02:55 really there are some doctrinal differences 02:57 but they kept the whole form and style 03:00 and dynamic of the old Church. 03:01 The Anglican Church was a state church. 03:03 Yeah. Overseen by the king. 03:05 So you had, Protestantism is not just one thing, 03:08 you have at least two branches, the magisterial version 03:12 which there was a thinker by the name of Pufendorf, 03:16 the American puritans continue in this line, right. 03:19 New England is not... 03:21 We think of the pilgrims going to America for freedom, 03:24 but the puritans went there for their own freedom, 03:27 but if the Quakers came through their colonies, 03:30 they would eject them. 03:31 And if they came back, 03:32 they actually hung several Quakers 03:34 on Boston Common. 03:35 So you have this two Protestant views, 03:39 one where the individual is free 03:41 and the church and state are really separate, 03:43 another, which is more like the medieval view. 03:45 But there's a third view 03:47 that we should mention at this point. 03:49 It's a more secularist view 03:50 that wants to say 03:53 we really can't know truths about God, 03:56 about religious doctrine, and therefore, 03:59 we should separate church and state 04:01 because religious people, 04:04 their convictions are too strong 04:06 for the public square. 04:07 And we're going to separate church and state 04:09 not because they are these equal spheres 04:11 that need to be equally respected 04:13 but because religious people are sort of dangerous. 04:16 And this third view, 04:18 there's a fellow called Pierre Bayle, 04:21 you certainly heard, 04:23 listeners have, of Thomas Jefferson. 04:25 Thomas Jefferson 04:26 was very suspicious of organized religion. 04:28 Now, you know, we're jumping into the 18th century 04:30 but wanting to show 04:32 how these ideas in the 17th century. 04:33 I think that, further, 04:34 he was suspicious of all religion. 04:36 All religion, he thought that church and state 04:39 should be separate 04:40 because of the problems 04:42 of religious orthodoxy and zeal. 04:45 And so this is happening in the 17th century. 04:49 There are these three pathways opening up to go forward on. 04:53 And if we look at the 18th century, 04:56 we can see countries 04:57 that alternatively took these pathways. 04:59 So I would argue 05:01 and we'll talk about it more in our next program 05:03 that America takes 05:04 the dissenting protestant pathway, 05:06 whereas European nations continue on the magisterial, 05:10 keep church and state together pathway. 05:12 But places like France, in the French Revolution, 05:17 they jump on to this skeptical enlightenment 05:20 pathway of marginalizing religion, 05:24 keeping it out of the public square 05:26 because it's dangerous. 05:27 Well, the skeptical enlightenment 05:29 preceded the riff of the French Revolution, didn't it? 05:32 Well, that's right. 05:33 The French Revolution is a product of... 05:35 And I think, I've never read this, 05:39 I've never heard anyone say this 05:40 but I think 05:42 after the Thirty Years' War and the Treaty of Westphalia 05:48 which really established 05:50 hodgepodge of Catholic and Protestant countries 05:53 and Catholic France continued on, 05:56 I think the established church overdid itself 05:59 and caused the reformation. 06:02 It's Exhibit A. Yeah. 06:04 And if Luther hadn't come along, 06:06 what might have happened in the rest of Europe. 06:08 That's a worthwhile hypothesis. 06:10 The autocratic tendencies of the church 06:13 were insufferable at that time. 06:16 That was the direct cause of the French Revolution, 06:18 not just the philosophers. 06:21 They laid the groundwork 06:22 for when the reaction against the church came, 06:24 then they went into a secular thing 06:26 rather than a religious dictatorship 06:30 like in England. 06:31 So we'll talk more about the French Revolution 06:32 in the next program on the 18th century. 06:34 Okay, sorry. Not keeping to the situation. 06:36 But we're coming to the last few minutes here 06:38 and I'd like to talk about today, 06:41 can we see... 06:42 Oh, you're even going further. 06:43 Well, can we see these three elements 06:46 today in our world? 06:48 Because usually we break it down to a conflict 06:51 between religion and secularism. 06:53 But if we think in terms of, 06:55 no, there's three sorts of ways of thinking about this, 06:59 do we have those three today? 07:00 And if so, what are they, where can they be seen? 07:02 With different variations. Yeah. 07:04 Well. 07:06 Do we have the magisterial Protestant 07:09 approach being advocated these days? 07:13 You might see it if you look hard enough, 07:15 but I think Protestantism is drifted 07:19 to an anemic version of itself in every way. 07:20 Well, but what about the religious right 07:23 that really does want to gain political power? 07:25 Oh, an attitude. 07:26 I thought you meant a country. 07:28 Well, no. Or a national grouping. 07:29 Trying to do it. Absolutely, yes. 07:32 Trying to take government monies 07:34 into religious efforts. 07:35 Well, as I often say, 07:38 the concerns I share, nearly all of them, 07:41 I think that's something 07:42 that should stir all Christians, 07:43 but they've grasped the poison pill 07:45 or grasped, not that... 07:48 Taken the poison pill and grasp 07:49 the nettle of political path to solve the problem, 07:52 and that's a magisterial approach. 07:53 Well, this is the magisterial approach. 07:55 And then on the secular side, we have no doubt about that 07:57 that there is a secular orthodoxy 08:00 that is trying to suppress traditional sexuality, 08:03 and family, and religious freedom 08:05 in the name of a kind of French Revolution, 08:08 equality, egalitarianism that's very secular in nature. 08:11 Where would you put 08:13 the protestant sensibility of a country 08:15 like Australia or England for that matter? 08:17 Well, you know, all of these countries, 08:19 so England has an established church, 08:22 Australia doesn't, 08:24 and yet most of these countries have been impacted 08:27 by dissenting Protestantism. 08:29 And I would say that Australia 08:32 has a separation of church and state 08:34 that was much like America's, 08:35 which was a product 08:37 of the dissenting Protestant viewpoint 08:39 but is being pushed 08:41 in a secular enlightenment direction. 08:44 So there's an attempt to keep 08:45 religion and religious ideas out of the public square, 08:49 to stop the teaching of creation 08:51 or traditional sexuality in schools. 08:54 It's not so much by law in Australia 08:57 just as by public consensus, 08:59 they don't want to know about them. 09:01 Peer pressure. 09:02 The constitution was directly modeled 09:04 on the US Constitution. 09:05 Right. As far as the separation of church and state. 09:07 Yeah, it's set up well and it functions okay, 09:11 but there's a huge drift away 09:13 from religious commitment of any kind by most people. 09:15 Well, I would propose that really 09:17 to understand today's political framework, 09:20 you have to see these three contestants, 09:24 not just two... 09:26 It's a good point. And I think that's a good tool to use. 09:27 Because otherwise there's no... 09:29 You're forced to choose 09:30 between these extreme religious people 09:32 who you think want to bring in their religion 09:34 and impose it 09:35 or these secularists who are imposing 09:37 this secular sexual worldview on us. 09:41 And I would argue that we often overlook 09:44 this dissenting Protestant view that has a healthy respect 09:46 for the separation of church and state 09:48 but a positive respect for religion. 09:50 A lot of it reminds me of the old Goon Show. 09:53 The Goon Show, wow. 09:55 The comedy show and it says, 09:56 "It's all in the mind, you know." 09:57 And a state of mind in applying these Protestant principles 10:01 makes all the difference when the assumption varies. 10:04 Yeah, yeah, that's right. 10:05 Well, the question of whether 10:09 we will appreciate our dissenting Protestant view 10:12 or allow that view to be obscured 10:14 by the extremes of secularism 10:17 and a resurgent medieval 10:20 sort of Protestant outlook comes to us all, 10:24 and it's a framework I think 10:25 which will help us understand our politics more fully. 10:28 It's a revelation to most people 10:30 to discover that England in the 1600s 10:34 was such a cauldron of religious fervor 10:37 and political divisiveness 10:41 that they actually had a civil war 10:44 that began on political matters 10:45 but ended in a religious civil war 10:48 fought by the Protestant parliamentarians 10:51 against the king and his Catholic allies. 10:54 And indeed when the king was captured, 10:56 and from his captivity, 10:58 connived to bring in a Catholic army 11:01 to relieve his cause, he lost his life. 11:06 And it was on that charge 11:08 that he betrayed a Protestant England. 11:11 Today, in the United States, 11:13 much of what goes on 11:15 I believe harks back to the dynamic of the puritans 11:18 gaining political power in their own right. 11:21 As Christians and as Protestants, 11:23 we need to make sure that this does not happen again. 11:29 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2017-07-06