Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Nick Miller
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000368A
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00:26 Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
00:28 This is a program bringing you news, views, discussion, 00:30 and up-to-date information on religious liberty 00:34 in the US and around the world. 00:35 My name is Lincoln Steed, Editor of Liberty Magazine. 00:39 And my guest on this program is Dr. Nicholas Miller, 00:43 author of a book 00:44 that we really want to make of you as aware of. 00:47 500 Years of Protest and Liberty 00:50 from Martin Luther to Modern Civil Rights. 00:52 2017 is the 500th anniversary celebration, 00:56 not of the whole Protestant Reformation 00:59 but as it's defined by Luther's protest. 01:01 That's right. 01:02 Well actually... 01:03 Or when he put up... 01:05 We call it his protest 01:06 but we were talking earlier about the larger protest 01:07 but that singular act of the '95 thesis on the door, 01:11 that really got things going. That's right. 01:12 You can find it at Liberty500.com 01:17 and you get a free subscription 01:19 or you get a year's subscription 01:21 to Liberty Magazine, 01:22 you know, if you get one there so... 01:24 Well, it's a pretty good deal. 01:26 I think it's a great book for this year. 01:28 The Liberty subscription is $8 or so, $9. 01:31 And so you'll get a book 01:33 and Liberty subscription for $25. 01:36 So it's well worth considering. 01:37 They have a hard cover 01:39 more than the physical weight of this. 01:41 This is a term in the true essence 01:44 because it's a collection 01:46 that explains all of those years on religious liberty 01:49 from Luther down to the present. 01:50 Five hundred years of Protestant history 01:52 and what we've been doing is the series of programs 01:54 where we take one program looking at each century. 01:56 We started with Martin Luther 01:58 and his priesthood of believers, 02:00 ran the story through the 16th century 02:02 to the Anabaptists, the British Baptists, 02:04 Milton, Locke, 02:05 and then on to Madison and Jefferson. 02:07 We did the 18th century 02:09 and now we're into the 19th century. 02:11 And in the 19th century, 02:13 the century opens 02:14 with, many Americans have a concept 02:17 of the First Amendment came, 02:19 and religious freedom was here, 02:20 and church and state were separated. 02:22 But it's not as simple as that. No. 02:24 The First Amendment 02:25 by its language only applied to the Congress. 02:29 Congress shall make no law... 02:31 With the federal government. 02:33 Respecting the US Congress. 02:34 Right, the federal government make no law respecting 02:37 an establishment of religion 02:39 or prohibiting the free exercise thereof 02:41 which allow the states 02:43 to continue to establish religions or not 02:45 as they might like. 02:47 Well, yeah, continues the work 02:49 because they already had establishment. 02:50 Well, and so some historians make too much of this fact 02:53 and say, "Oh, it was anticipated 02:55 that the states would promote and support religion." 02:58 The reality is that many of the founders, 03:01 if not most of them wanted this principle 03:03 that was in the federal constitution, 03:05 also to be applied at the state level. 03:08 Madison himself said as much, 03:09 he said, "You states that have constitutions 03:12 which bring church and state together, 03:15 you need to purify your codes and get rid of that." 03:18 Interestingly, most of the states eventually did. 03:21 We talked about New England, 03:22 the Puritans, they combined church and state, 03:26 they believed, they kept it separate 03:28 because they had the magistrates 03:30 who didn't lead the churches, 03:32 they had the pastors and the elders who did, 03:34 but they worked together 03:35 and the magistrates would enforce 03:37 the rules of heresy and orthodoxy 03:39 that the ministers came up with. 03:41 Well, this continued into the 19th century, 03:44 in the 1800s 03:45 but slowly even those states 03:48 'cause from Massachusetts in south, 03:51 the middle states, 03:52 and even Virginia had separated the two. 03:55 But in the, even in the New England states, 03:58 in the 1800s began to get rid of separation. 04:01 I think Connecticut in 1819, the longest holdout... 04:04 Need to get rid of establishment. 04:05 Get rid of establishment and separated church and state 04:07 so there was no formal endorsement 04:10 by the state of a particular church system. 04:13 And Massachusetts was the longest holdout, 04:15 that was the bastion of Puritanism 04:17 and they disestablished the church there in 1833. 04:21 Now do you know why they disestablished the church then? 04:24 No, you tell me. 04:25 Well, this is a very interesting story 04:28 and I think it's very relevant for today. 04:30 Today, people say religion 04:32 and religious freedom is being threatened, 04:34 therefore we need the government to help support, 04:36 maybe even promote it 04:38 but what happened in New England, 04:40 as the states supported and promoted religion, 04:44 it became more liberal 04:46 because people wanted to be members of the church, 04:48 because it gave them influence in society 04:51 but they didn't wanted really onerous religious restrictions, 04:55 so the churches in New England became liberalized. 04:58 And you've heard of Unitarianism, 05:00 many of the churches went over 05:02 to believing that Christ was only a human teacher 05:05 and wasn't divine. 05:06 And in those cities 05:08 where those churches became the majority, 05:11 they had the right to send tax moneys to themselves. 05:14 Actually as you're saying this, 05:15 it sounds like echoes of our time, 05:18 one of the recent archbishops of Canterbury 05:20 was quoted as saying, 05:21 he didn't believe in the virgin birth 05:23 or miracles or anything. 05:24 Well, this is often what you find 05:26 in an established church 05:27 is that it becomes liberalized, 05:29 it moves away from the orthodox teachings 05:31 and practices of scripture, 05:33 and so the traditional Presbyterians 05:36 and Congregationalists in New England 05:37 suddenly saw that their tax moneys 05:40 were going to be used to promote beliefs 05:42 they didn't accept. 05:43 Yeah, it's well proven that state supportive religion 05:45 tends to weaken it in the long run, 05:48 whether that weakening always means liberalization 05:51 but that's an interesting commentary on it. 05:54 Ironically, and I think they are connected 05:57 with the separating of church and state, 06:00 first at the federal level 06:01 when the constitution was passed 06:03 but then in the two or three following decades 06:05 at the state levels, 06:07 you had an outbreak 06:08 of what we know as a Second Great Awakening, right? 06:10 And so it proves that to have a religious revival, 06:14 you don't need government enforcement. 06:16 And in fact, the government getting out 06:18 of the business of religion 06:20 opened the pathway for this tremendous outbreak 06:23 of religious fervor and reliable. 06:25 Well, Alexis de Tocqueville was in that century, 06:28 it's very plain. 06:29 He asked everybody 06:31 and they all attributed the strength of religion, 06:32 he said, I'm paraphrasing him slightly, 06:35 to the separation of church and state. 06:37 So this religious revival happens 06:40 and it's a revival 06:42 that's not rooted in Presbyterianism, 06:44 it's rooted more in the Methodism 06:47 that has been brought over by, 06:49 well, Wesley visits America but goes back to England 06:52 but Francis Asbury is a Methodist bishop 06:56 here in America. 06:58 And Methodism goes from being over 5% of the population 07:01 to being more like 35% or 40%. 07:04 And as I understand that the Second Great Awakening 07:07 depended a lot on camp meetings. 07:09 That's where the camp meetings... 07:11 Yeah, lot, I know when I was, your church and my church, 07:14 Seventh-day Adventist Churches continued that, not too many. 07:17 Well, I've met some of the Baptists, 07:18 I think they'd still do that. 07:20 But that was definitely a phenomenal, 07:22 large gatherings of people for revival, and training, 07:26 and as you say, the method of then moving out 07:29 and spreading the word. 07:30 And there's a belief in human freewill 07:32 in the capacity of humans awakened by God's grace 07:37 to choose Christ. 07:39 Everyone can do it, you don't have to be an elect, 07:41 it can be anyone, Christ died for all. 07:44 Now this sounds deeply spiritual and it is, 07:47 and it's important, and it's profoundly moving 07:49 but it also impacts the way people treat 07:51 the society around them. 07:53 Because if people have this freedom of choice, 07:55 of moral choice, 07:57 then people can better themselves 07:58 and they can better the conditions 08:00 of those around them morally. 08:01 Yeah. 08:03 So out of the Second Great Awakening, 08:04 you have a flood of political movements 08:09 to improve society. 08:11 Now probably what amended the prohibition movement 08:14 came out of it. 08:16 We're going to outlaw alcohol because alcohol, 08:20 by the use of alcohol by men disrupts families, 08:23 causes them to beat their wives, 08:25 take money away from their children, 08:27 and bring evil in society essentially. 08:29 And the evidence is very strong, 08:31 it was a very dissolute time in the public morals. 08:37 Then the other thing that we know with Adventism, 08:39 but it was not confined to Adventism 08:41 was the sense of millennial expectations. 08:45 Fervor, second coming of Christ, 08:47 Christ would return. 08:50 And I think it planted more than ever in the US 08:53 the idea that this is a nation on the move, 08:55 God's purpose is being worked out through it. 08:58 But there was a sense, it's very interesting, 09:00 usually, sometimes we think of believers 09:02 in the second coming as escapists, right? 09:04 We have to purify ourselves spiritually 09:06 so can God can take us out from this mess. 09:09 But these religious people, 09:11 they had a sense that God had called them 09:14 to prepare His kingdom on the earth, 09:17 so that it could be ready to be taken into heaven. 09:20 And that even our own pioneers, 09:23 the Seventh-day Adventists were abolitionists. 09:26 Our first General Conference President 09:29 held and operated a stop on the underground railway 09:32 helping slaves escape to the North, John Byington. 09:36 So it was a sense that this government of God, 09:39 the moral government of God 09:41 should cause us to treat each other morally 09:44 and to fight for things, like the abolition of slavery, 09:46 the outlawing of alcohol. 09:48 And also out of this grew 09:50 the suffragette movement for women. 09:52 I need to throw a little historical thing here. 09:55 I was reading the life story of George Washington, 09:58 and for some of the time he was up in Philadelphia, 10:02 and then up in New York, 10:03 and he took slaves with him. 10:05 But the law there was that they would be free 10:09 if they lived there for longer than, 10:10 I think six months. 10:12 So he made very sure every... 10:14 Five and a half months. 10:15 He rotated them back on some little flimsy excuse 10:18 to see their relative or some... 10:21 So the games that people used to play 10:24 to keep up with that, 10:25 yet he was a morally upright man. 10:28 Well, I believe that he at least freed his slaves 10:30 upon his death. 10:32 No. 10:33 Oh, did not, did Washington not do that? 10:35 Was it Jefferson? 10:37 On his death, he freed them, 10:38 they would be free when his wife died. 10:40 Oh, I see, when his wife died... 10:41 Which was actually a very dangerous move 10:43 if you think about it. 10:45 His wife could not rest easy. 10:48 Right. Yeah. 10:51 She'd much been hurried all over. 10:52 Right, yeah, that doesn't sound what was going there. 10:53 But no, there's no question that the antislavery movement 10:57 was strengthened by the Second Great Awakening. 11:00 So we're leading up to... 11:02 Which led directly into the Civil War. 11:04 We're leading up to the period of the Civil War 11:05 and I'm gonna give you a date 11:07 that our Seventh-day Adventist listeners will, 11:11 viewers will know about. 11:12 1844 is the year 11:16 when the two biggest Christian churches in America... 11:20 Was the year of Charles Darwin, wasn't it? 11:22 Well, he wrote the first edition 11:24 of the Origin of the Species 11:28 but it was also the year 11:29 when the Methodist church in America 11:31 and the Baptist church in America 11:32 which represented 70% of American Christians 11:35 split over the issue of slavery, 11:37 north and south 11:38 that's where the Southern Baptists originated. 11:40 There was a Southern Methodist convention... 11:42 I'd forgotten that. 11:43 And what it shows is many historians say 11:47 that was the point 11:49 at which the Civil War became inevitable. 11:51 Because of the largest churches in America 11:54 couldn't deal with the issue morally and scripturally, 11:57 then the only way to deal with it 11:59 was through force of arms. 12:01 And it became a question 12:03 of what kind of freedom did we have in America. 12:06 Did we have a freedom for local groups 12:09 to impose their own values 12:11 whether it be about property or religion 12:14 in their localities? 12:15 Or did we have a nation 12:17 where the Bill of Rights protected 12:19 the fundamental liberties of all our citizens? 12:22 And this becomes what the Civil War is about. 12:27 Are we a one nation made up of states 12:33 that are subject to the central government 12:35 or are we really kind of multiple nations held together. 12:38 I'm glad you put out that way because I think it's... 12:41 You can look at all sorts of causes 12:43 and there's no question 12:44 that slavery was a hugely emotional thing 12:48 and became a central issue as the Civil War, 12:51 well, essentially precipitated. 12:54 But I think the real underlying issue 12:56 was the shift in federalism versus states 13:01 or the sovereigns. 13:03 Sovereign countries when they covenanted together, 13:07 they saw themselves as 13 sovereign states. 13:11 Well, that was the view of the southerners anyway 13:14 who wanted to keep slavery alive. 13:15 They said, "Freedom means, 13:17 we have the freedom to decide 13:18 who gets freedom in our neck of the woods." 13:21 But those in the north... That is very immoral. 13:23 But on a constitutional level, 13:26 I don't think it's ever been truly reconciled correctly 13:31 whether sovereign states covenanting together 13:35 for trade between them 13:37 and for mutual defense can be forced into the hall. 13:42 Well, Lincoln won that argument in the Civil War. 13:45 By force of arms. 13:47 We'll be back after a short break 13:50 to get into some really serious topics. 13:52 Stay with us. |
Revised 2017-07-14