Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program bringing
you news, views, discussion,
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and up-to-date
information on religious liberty
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in the US and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
Editor of Liberty Magazine.
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And my guest on this
program is Dr. Nicholas Miller,
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author of a book
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that we really want to
make of you as aware of.
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500 Years of Protest and Liberty
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from Martin Luther
to Modern Civil Rights.
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2017 is the 500th
anniversary celebration,
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not of the whole
Protestant Reformation
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but as it's defined
by Luther's protest.
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That's right.
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Well actually...
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Or when he put up...
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We call it his protest
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but we were talking
earlier about the larger protest
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but that singular act of
the '95 thesis on the door,
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that really got
things going. That's right.
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You can find it
at Liberty500.com
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and you get a free subscription
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or you get a year's subscription
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to Liberty Magazine,
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you know, if you
get one there so...
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Well, it's a pretty good deal.
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I think it's a
great book for this year.
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The Liberty
subscription is $8 or so, $9.
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And so you'll get a book
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and Liberty
subscription for $25.
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So it's well worth considering.
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They have a hard cover
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more than the
physical weight of this.
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This is a term
in the true essence
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because it's a collection
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that explains all of
those years on religious liberty
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from Luther down to the present.
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Five hundred years
of Protestant history
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and what we've been
doing is the series of programs
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where we take one
program looking at each century.
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We started with Martin Luther
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and his priesthood of believers,
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ran the story
through the 16th century
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to the Anabaptists,
the British Baptists,
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Milton, Locke,
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and then on to
Madison and Jefferson.
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We did the 18th century
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and now we're
into the 19th century.
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And in the 19th century,
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the century opens
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with, many
Americans have a concept
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of the First Amendment came,
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and religious freedom was here,
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and church and
state were separated.
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But it's not as
simple as that. No.
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The First Amendment
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by its language only
applied to the Congress.
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Congress shall make no law...
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With the federal government.
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Respecting the US Congress.
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Right, the federal government
make no law respecting
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an establishment of religion
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or prohibiting the
free exercise thereof
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which allow the states
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to continue to
establish religions or not
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as they might like.
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Well, yeah, continues the work
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because they
already had establishment.
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Well, and so some historians
make too much of this fact
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and say, "Oh, it was anticipated
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that the states would
promote and support religion."
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The reality is that
many of the founders,
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if not most of them
wanted this principle
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that was in the
federal constitution,
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also to be applied
at the state level.
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Madison himself said as much,
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he said, "You states
that have constitutions
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which bring church
and state together,
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you need to purify your
codes and get rid of that."
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Interestingly, most of
the states eventually did.
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We talked about New England,
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the Puritans, they
combined church and state,
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they believed,
they kept it separate
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because they had the magistrates
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who didn't lead the churches,
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they had the pastors
and the elders who did,
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but they worked together
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and the
magistrates would enforce
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the rules of
heresy and orthodoxy
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that the ministers came up with.
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Well, this continued
into the 19th century,
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in the 1800s
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but slowly even those states
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'cause from
Massachusetts in south,
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the middle states,
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and even Virginia
had separated the two.
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But in the, even in
the New England states,
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in the 1800s began to
get rid of separation.
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I think Connecticut in
1819, the longest holdout...
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Need to get rid
of establishment.
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Get rid of establishment
and separated church and state
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so there was no
formal endorsement
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by the state of a
particular church system.
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And Massachusetts
was the longest holdout,
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that was the
bastion of Puritanism
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and they disestablished
the church there in 1833.
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Now do you know why they
disestablished the church then?
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No, you tell me.
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Well, this is a
very interesting story
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and I think it's
very relevant for today.
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Today, people say religion
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and religious
freedom is being threatened,
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therefore we need the
government to help support,
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maybe even promote it
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but what
happened in New England,
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as the states
supported and promoted religion,
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it became more liberal
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because people wanted to
be members of the church,
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because it gave
them influence in society
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but they didn't wanted really
onerous religious restrictions,
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so the churches in New
England became liberalized.
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And you've
heard of Unitarianism,
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many of the churches went over
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to believing that
Christ was only a human teacher
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and wasn't divine.
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And in those cities
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where those
churches became the majority,
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they had the right to
send tax moneys to themselves.
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Actually as you're saying this,
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it sounds like
echoes of our time,
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one of the recent
archbishops of Canterbury
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was quoted as saying,
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he didn't believe
in the virgin birth
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or miracles or anything.
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Well, this is
often what you find
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in an established church
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is that it becomes liberalized,
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it moves away from
the orthodox teachings
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and practices of scripture,
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and so the
traditional Presbyterians
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and Congregationalists
in New England
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suddenly saw
that their tax moneys
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were going to be
used to promote beliefs
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they didn't accept.
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Yeah, it's well proven
that state supportive religion
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tends to weaken
it in the long run,
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whether that weakening
always means liberalization
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but that's an
interesting commentary on it.
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Ironically, and I
think they are connected
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with the separating
of church and state,
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first at the federal level
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when the constitution was passed
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but then in the two or
three following decades
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at the state levels,
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you had an outbreak
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of what we know as a
Second Great Awakening, right?
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And so it proves that to
have a religious revival,
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you don't need
government enforcement.
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And in fact, the
government getting out
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of the business of religion
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opened the pathway for
this tremendous outbreak
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of religious
fervor and reliable.
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Well, Alexis de
Tocqueville was in that century,
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it's very plain.
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He asked everybody
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and they all attributed
the strength of religion,
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he said, I'm
paraphrasing him slightly,
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to the separation
of church and state.
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So this
religious revival happens
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and it's a revival
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that's not rooted
in Presbyterianism,
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it's rooted
more in the Methodism
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that has been brought over by,
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well, Wesley visits
America but goes back to England
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but Francis Asbury
is a Methodist bishop
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here in America.
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And Methodism goes from
being over 5% of the population
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to being more like 35% or 40%.
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And as I understand that
the Second Great Awakening
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depended a lot on camp meetings.
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That's where
the camp meetings...
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Yeah, lot, I know when I
was, your church and my church,
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Seventh-day Adventist Churches
continued that, not too many.
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Well, I've met
some of the Baptists,
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I think they'd still do that.
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But that was
definitely a phenomenal,
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large gatherings of people
for revival, and training,
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and as you say, the
method of then moving out
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and spreading the word.
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And there's a
belief in human freewill
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in the capacity of
humans awakened by God's grace
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to choose Christ.
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Everyone can do it, you
don't have to be an elect,
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it can be anyone,
Christ died for all.
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Now this sounds
deeply spiritual and it is,
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and it's important,
and it's profoundly moving
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but it also impacts
the way people treat
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the society around them.
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Because if people have
this freedom of choice,
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of moral choice,
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then people can
better themselves
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and they can
better the conditions
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of those around them morally.
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Yeah.
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So out of the
Second Great Awakening,
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you have a flood
of political movements
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to improve society.
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Now probably what
amended the prohibition movement
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came out of it.
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We're going to outlaw
alcohol because alcohol,
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by the use of alcohol
by men disrupts families,
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causes them to beat their wives,
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take money away
from their children,
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and bring evil in
society essentially.
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And the evidence is very strong,
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it was a very dissolute
time in the public morals.
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Then the other thing
that we know with Adventism,
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but it was not
confined to Adventism
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was the sense of
millennial expectations.
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Fervor, second coming of Christ,
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Christ would return.
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And I think it planted
more than ever in the US
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the idea that this
is a nation on the move,
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God's purpose is
being worked out through it.
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But there was a
sense, it's very interesting,
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usually, sometimes
we think of believers
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in the second
coming as escapists, right?
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We have to purify
ourselves spiritually
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so can God can take
us out from this mess.
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But these religious people,
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they had a sense
that God had called them
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to prepare His
kingdom on the earth,
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so that it could be
ready to be taken into heaven.
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And that even our own pioneers,
00:09:20.69\00:09:23.02
the Seventh-day
Adventists were abolitionists.
00:09:23.06\00:09:26.90
Our first General
Conference President
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held and operated a stop
on the underground railway
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helping slaves escape to
the North, John Byington.
00:09:32.87\00:09:36.27
So it was a sense that
this government of God,
00:09:36.30\00:09:39.77
the moral government of God
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should cause us to
treat each other morally
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and to fight for things,
like the abolition of slavery,
00:09:44.38\00:09:46.92
the outlawing of alcohol.
00:09:46.95\00:09:48.35
And also out of this grew
00:09:48.38\00:09:50.65
the suffragette
movement for women.
00:09:50.69\00:09:52.65
I need to throw a
little historical thing here.
00:09:52.69\00:09:55.16
I was reading the life
story of George Washington,
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and for some of the time
he was up in Philadelphia,
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and then up in New York,
00:10:02.10\00:10:03.87
and he took slaves with him.
00:10:03.90\00:10:05.60
But the law there was
that they would be free
00:10:05.63\00:10:09.00
if they lived
there for longer than,
00:10:09.04\00:10:10.41
I think six months.
00:10:10.44\00:10:12.04
So he made very sure every...
00:10:12.07\00:10:14.51
Five and a half months.
00:10:14.54\00:10:15.88
He rotated them back on
some little flimsy excuse
00:10:15.91\00:10:18.71
to see their relative or some...
00:10:18.75\00:10:21.95
So the games that
people used to play
00:10:21.98\00:10:24.39
to keep up with that,
00:10:24.42\00:10:25.89
yet he was a
morally upright man.
00:10:25.92\00:10:28.02
Well, I believe that he
at least freed his slaves
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upon his death.
00:10:30.66\00:10:32.29
No.
00:10:32.33\00:10:33.66
Oh, did not, did
Washington not do that?
00:10:33.70\00:10:35.06
Was it Jefferson?
00:10:35.10\00:10:37.10
On his death, he freed them,
00:10:37.13\00:10:38.73
they would be free
when his wife died.
00:10:38.77\00:10:40.10
Oh, I see, when his wife died...
00:10:40.14\00:10:41.47
Which was actually
a very dangerous move
00:10:41.50\00:10:43.44
if you think about it.
00:10:43.47\00:10:45.44
His wife could not rest easy.
00:10:45.47\00:10:48.04
Right. Yeah.
00:10:48.08\00:10:51.08
She'd much been
hurried all over.
00:10:51.11\00:10:52.45
Right, yeah, that doesn't
sound what was going there.
00:10:52.48\00:10:53.82
But no, there's no question
that the antislavery movement
00:10:53.85\00:10:57.45
was strengthened by
the Second Great Awakening.
00:10:57.49\00:11:00.46
So we're leading up to...
00:11:00.49\00:11:02.22
Which led directly
into the Civil War.
00:11:02.26\00:11:03.99
We're leading up to
the period of the Civil War
00:11:04.03\00:11:05.89
and I'm gonna give you a date
00:11:05.93\00:11:07.26
that our Seventh-day
Adventist listeners will,
00:11:07.30\00:11:11.23
viewers will know about.
00:11:11.27\00:11:12.83
1844 is the year
00:11:12.87\00:11:16.94
when the two biggest
Christian churches in America...
00:11:16.97\00:11:20.18
Was the year of
Charles Darwin, wasn't it?
00:11:20.21\00:11:22.34
Well, he wrote the first edition
00:11:22.38\00:11:24.55
of the Origin of the Species
00:11:24.58\00:11:28.25
but it was also the year
00:11:28.28\00:11:29.62
when the
Methodist church in America
00:11:29.65\00:11:31.25
and the Baptist
church in America
00:11:31.29\00:11:32.65
which represented 70%
of American Christians
00:11:32.69\00:11:35.59
split over the issue of slavery,
00:11:35.62\00:11:37.43
north and south
00:11:37.46\00:11:38.79
that's where the
Southern Baptists originated.
00:11:38.83\00:11:40.66
There was a Southern
Methodist convention...
00:11:40.70\00:11:42.56
I'd forgotten that.
00:11:42.60\00:11:43.93
And what it shows
is many historians say
00:11:43.97\00:11:47.74
that was the point
00:11:47.77\00:11:49.10
at which the Civil
War became inevitable.
00:11:49.14\00:11:51.21
Because of the
largest churches in America
00:11:51.24\00:11:54.08
couldn't deal with the
issue morally and scripturally,
00:11:54.11\00:11:57.71
then the only
way to deal with it
00:11:57.75\00:11:59.55
was through force of arms.
00:11:59.58\00:12:01.52
And it became a question
00:12:01.55\00:12:03.28
of what kind of
freedom did we have in America.
00:12:03.32\00:12:06.86
Did we have a
freedom for local groups
00:12:06.89\00:12:09.22
to impose their own values
00:12:09.26\00:12:11.26
whether it be about
property or religion
00:12:11.29\00:12:13.96
in their localities?
00:12:14.00\00:12:15.63
Or did we have a nation
00:12:15.66\00:12:17.00
where the Bill
of Rights protected
00:12:17.03\00:12:19.20
the fundamental
liberties of all our citizens?
00:12:19.23\00:12:22.70
And this becomes what
the Civil War is about.
00:12:22.74\00:12:27.28
Are we a one
nation made up of states
00:12:27.31\00:12:33.08
that are subject to
the central government
00:12:33.11\00:12:35.08
or are we really kind of
multiple nations held together.
00:12:35.12\00:12:38.82
I'm glad you put out that
way because I think it's...
00:12:38.85\00:12:41.92
You can look at
all sorts of causes
00:12:41.96\00:12:43.46
and there's no question
00:12:43.49\00:12:44.83
that slavery was a
hugely emotional thing
00:12:44.86\00:12:48.06
and became a central
issue as the Civil War,
00:12:48.10\00:12:51.23
well, essentially precipitated.
00:12:51.27\00:12:54.00
But I think the
real underlying issue
00:12:54.04\00:12:56.94
was the shift in
federalism versus states
00:12:56.97\00:13:01.81
or the sovereigns.
00:13:01.84\00:13:03.18
Sovereign countries when
they covenanted together,
00:13:03.21\00:13:07.42
they saw themselves
as 13 sovereign states.
00:13:07.45\00:13:11.32
Well, that was the view
of the southerners anyway
00:13:11.35\00:13:14.06
who wanted to
keep slavery alive.
00:13:14.09\00:13:15.62
They said, "Freedom means,
00:13:15.66\00:13:17.29
we have the freedom to decide
00:13:17.33\00:13:18.83
who gets freedom in
our neck of the woods."
00:13:18.86\00:13:21.76
But those in the
north... That is very immoral.
00:13:21.80\00:13:23.83
But on a constitutional level,
00:13:23.87\00:13:26.03
I don't think it's ever
been truly reconciled correctly
00:13:26.07\00:13:31.31
whether sovereign
states covenanting together
00:13:31.34\00:13:35.14
for trade between them
00:13:35.18\00:13:36.98
and for mutual defense
can be forced into the hall.
00:13:37.01\00:13:42.82
Well, Lincoln won that
argument in the Civil War.
00:13:42.85\00:13:45.22
By force of arms.
00:13:45.25\00:13:47.12
We'll be back
after a short break
00:13:47.16\00:13:50.09
to get into some
really serious topics.
00:13:50.13\00:13:52.29
Stay with us.
00:13:52.33\00:13:53.66