Participants: Lincoln Steed (Host), Nick Miller
Series Code: LI
Program Code: LI000368B
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00:04 Welcome back to the Liberty Insider.
00:07 Before the break, 00:08 yes, we were talking about this book. 00:09 We were talking about 00:11 this 500 Years of Protest and Liberty 00:12 and we're in the 19th century. 00:14 Nineteenth century and getting into some serious discussions 00:18 of our states rights and federalism and so on. 00:21 But the 14th Amendments, 00:23 if you, we were just listening before the break, 00:24 the 14th Amendment 00:26 makes all of that moot 00:27 and of course, made it easier to insist 00:30 on separation of church and state really nationally. 00:32 That's right. 00:33 So all of this can be a bit arcane, 00:35 federalism, states rights, 00:37 the 14th Amendment 00:38 but to make it practical and important 00:42 there was no national religious freedom 00:45 in the early part of the 19th century. 00:47 Religious freedom depended on your state constitution 00:50 and they could take it away, 00:51 they could establish religion or churches, 00:53 they could force you to go to church. 00:55 Now most of them didn't 00:57 but the fact was 00:59 there was no federal national religious freedom 01:03 or separation of church and state. 01:05 And we've been talking a bit about slavery 01:07 and the revival that led into the... 01:11 The Second Great Awakening. 01:13 The Second Great Awakening, the Civil War. 01:15 And what happens in the Civil War 01:16 is the context over what kind of nation we are. 01:18 Are we 13, well, 01:20 at that point it was more states, 01:22 you know, where we 20 something sovereign states, 01:25 or we're one sovereign nation with some subdivisions. 01:28 And the south believed that 01:30 they were sovereign individual states. 01:33 The northerners, 01:34 those that opposed slavery said, 01:36 "No, the Bill of Rights should be the Magna Carta, 01:39 should be the protection for all citizens." 01:41 And there should be freedom, 01:42 and equality, and religious freedom. 01:46 And if war was fought over this 01:48 and Lincoln in the north won the war, 01:51 so they won the argument by force of arms. 01:53 But the reason that Gettysburg Address 01:56 is such an important document in our history 01:59 is George Will put this very well, 02:01 he has a book by this name, 02:02 "The Words That Remade America", 02:04 and he argues in there 02:06 that Lincoln in talking about the formation of America 02:10 and what happened to Gettysburg 02:12 is that he recreates the country 02:14 as a single sovereign unit that is committed 02:17 to the fundamental freedoms of all of its citizens. 02:19 Yeah, it's true. 02:20 And we now have a nation that a few decades later, 02:25 and there's some historical explanations for that, 02:27 begins to enforce religious freedom 02:30 and the separation of church and state 02:31 everywhere for everyone. 02:33 But that wouldn't have happened without the Civil War, 02:36 without the 14th Amendment which ultimately 02:40 and in the end applies these Bills of Rights 02:42 and freedoms to all of the states. 02:45 I agree with you 02:47 but there's a little gap in between. 02:48 All right. 02:50 And is a period of reconstruction 02:51 when bad things happen, 02:52 the year of the Ku Klux Klan... 02:54 All right. 02:55 There's the... 02:56 And then it's... 02:58 It's not a straight pathway. 02:59 In the '50s Justice Black reinstating 03:00 the separation of church and state 03:02 but you're right, it's onward and upward. 03:03 Onward and upward I think, 03:05 but there's an important lesson here 03:07 in that the slavery was horrible 03:10 and the discrimination, 03:12 Jim Crow continues to be horrible. 03:15 But in repressing the black race, 03:20 Americans also repress liberties more generally. 03:24 I don't think it's a coincidence 03:26 that it's only as racial freedom 03:27 begins to come about in America, 03:30 that religious and other freedoms 03:31 are also protected and broaden that. 03:33 I have a feeling, 03:34 I want to save most of this for another program. 03:36 Well, 20th century we'll talk about. 03:38 I think, yes, that's why, next... 03:39 Yeah. 03:40 But that has been the strength, 03:42 I think of the series of articles 03:43 that you've recently read that were in Liberty. 03:47 Bringing the reformation not so much full circle, 03:49 but full force from 500 years ago 03:52 as expressed really in the underlying push 03:56 for civil rights 03:57 during the civil rights movement, 03:59 Martin Luther King. 04:00 Yes, yes, and that's to jump ahead 04:01 to the 20th century... 04:03 Yeah. 04:04 But to stay in the 19th for a moment, 04:06 I want to broaden the horizon. 04:09 I should play the Doctor Who theme here. 04:12 We're time travelers. Time travelers. 04:14 Time lords. 04:15 To stay in the 19th century for a moment 04:18 and to broaden our lens from America to the world 04:23 more broadly, 04:24 is there an argument to be made 04:26 that this dissenting Protestant outlook 04:28 impacted not only 04:29 in the American First Amendment and the Civil War 04:32 and the spread of freedom in America, 04:34 but what about freedom in democracy globally? 04:37 Well, I think, you know, and I discussed this. 04:41 I think it's self-evident. 04:46 How much of it's through American imperialism, 04:50 I don't know because the British Empire 04:52 continued up till at least World War I 04:55 and World War II, 04:57 the aftermath of World War II, we know was over. 04:59 But the great missionary, 05:00 Protestant missionary fervor 05:05 was toward the end of the 1800s. 05:07 So... 05:09 I think it did end and I'll give you... 05:10 In the 19th century as well. Yes. 05:12 It begins in the late 1800s and into the... 05:15 And I have a contemporary illustration 05:18 of how effective this can be in a negative sense. 05:21 In recent years, 05:23 some of the more politically active, 05:26 more conservative religious right in the US 05:29 have gone to several African countries 05:32 and had evangelistic campaigns 05:35 and linked with their political leadership 05:36 and political movements, 05:38 and the immediate result 05:40 have been some draconian anti-gay laws, 05:42 death penalties, and so on. 05:44 Right. 05:45 And the line is bright and direct, 05:47 so... 05:49 In a negative sense. 05:50 Yes, but when knowing that a religious viewpoint 05:53 taken in this missionary zeal way 05:55 to other countries, in this case Africa, 05:58 still has this effect 05:59 and you know that 06:01 during the height of the British Empire 06:02 and then as America moved out globally, 06:04 same thing happened. 06:05 Well, Robert Woodberry is a political scientist, 06:08 has his PhD in Political Science 06:12 and wrote a very influential article 06:14 just a couple of years ago, 06:16 in the American Political Science Journal 06:19 about the impact of missions and missionaries 06:22 on the growth of global democracy. 06:24 Now it had been conventional wisdom 06:26 among historians that missionaries 06:29 were part of the imperialistic, 06:31 hegemonic agenda of the western powers 06:33 and were sort of repressive colonial forces 06:36 bringing the people underneath 06:38 the oversight of their colonial overlords. 06:41 Well, that's not entirely without some truth. 06:44 Many of the nations, 06:47 Catholic settlements of South America 06:50 would probably fall in that category. 06:53 Jesuit advisors in China and other places definitely. 06:56 But in some instances, 06:58 the Jesuits defended local native groups 07:01 from the predations of the political masters, 07:04 and there is this amazing correlation 07:06 that Robert Woodberry 07:08 in his groundbreaking article has shown 07:10 that dissenting Protestants, free church Protestants, 07:13 the Protestants that weren't established 07:17 by government 07:18 but worked on their own 07:20 actually are strongly correlated 07:22 with the growth of democracy in these countries. 07:25 And he points out 07:26 much as I argue in our book here 07:28 that the priesthood of believers 07:30 caused these dissenting Protestants 07:32 to seek to educate broadly everyone. 07:34 If you were... 07:35 Now you got the key, 07:37 that's what I was going to say. 07:38 Now the Jesuits 07:40 in some of the colonial adventures tended to advice 07:43 the rulers and so on. 07:44 Right. 07:46 But I think as Protestant evangelization moved out, 07:48 it is most effective. 07:49 They were running schools 07:51 where they were training 07:52 the leadership level of the country 07:54 and that's definitely, 07:56 even to this day 07:57 where they indoctrinate in the best sense, 08:03 the new leadership would come that are imbued 08:05 with perhaps not directly Christianity 08:09 but an understanding of it. 08:10 But certainly these libertarian freedom principles... 08:14 They created literacy. Literacy reformation. 08:16 They created printing opportunities. 08:17 They put in an educational system, 08:19 and a belief in the importance of social involvement 08:24 by people in their communities. 08:27 Woodberry has shown and correlated 08:29 the growth of democracy 08:31 with these dissenting Protestant groups 08:33 in more than a 100 countries worldwide. 08:35 And it upholds a notion that not all religion 08:40 but certain kinds of religion 08:42 delivered in a certain kind of way 08:44 can be and in fact did effectively promote 08:47 the growth of democracy in democratic ideal. 08:50 It's a very, I mean, I think it's an easily proven 08:53 in a very positive aspect of religious activity. 08:57 This is not to say there weren't abuses, and problems, 09:00 and imperialism, and all the rest of it. 09:01 This is in the full throttle defense of that, 09:04 but it is to say that when you have a religion 09:06 that respects the human dignity of all 09:10 that you don't just educate the elites, 09:12 but you say everyone must have access 09:14 to this knowledge 09:16 and then you follow through on that 09:18 the conditions of democracy and freedom 09:23 can grow and develop. 09:24 And there's one story that comes to mind 09:26 and it sort of the sublime to the ridiculous. 09:28 You know, Anna and The King of Siam... 09:31 Okay. 09:32 That's basically telling that same thing. 09:34 Okay, yeah. 09:35 In the musical, it downplays the Christian mission aspect 09:38 but it's definitely in the original story. 09:40 So we come to the end. 09:41 And they didn't make Christians advertise, 09:43 but I believe that Western Christian freedom values 09:47 were inculcated very successfully 09:49 into this Southeast Asian country. 09:53 So we've got a minute to talk about 09:54 the end of the 19th century. 09:56 Yeah, well, go for it, go for it. 09:57 And so civil war happens, people are freed, 10:00 the nation falls into a long period 10:02 of reconstruction and Jim Crow, 10:05 much to its discredit. 10:07 There is the rise of secularism in America, 10:09 you've mentioned Darwin's Origin of the Species 10:12 and that book impacts public thought about the races. 10:17 If Darwin is right about the blacks 10:22 then they can be kept lower on the totem pole 10:25 because it's survival of the fittest. 10:28 And freedom, religious freedom, 10:30 racial freedom gets put to the side for a few decades 10:33 and we have to pick up our story 10:35 in the 20th century. 10:37 And you can of course read about it here 10:39 in our 500 years of Liberty and Protest at Liberty500.com 10:44 The story of religious liberty in the United States 10:48 cannot be told apart 10:49 from the two great religious revivals, 10:52 one of around 1740 10:55 and another around 1840, 1850. 10:59 The second one took place, 11:02 if you think about history 11:03 between the traumatic experience of the war of 1812 11:08 where a weak United States, 11:10 barely a country faced off against England 11:13 again in a formal war 11:15 and between that and the civil war, 11:19 only 10, 20 years after the Great Awakening. 11:23 It cannot be separated against from both 11:27 because there was a national trauma, 11:30 a sense of lack of place 11:32 that spiritual commitment filled, 11:35 that Great Awakening, that Second Great Awakening 11:38 gave an apocalyptic purpose to Christian life 11:43 in the United states 11:44 and unfortunately sowed both the seeds 11:47 to continued religious energy and dynamism 11:51 and the seeds to American exceptionalism, 11:54 and the sense of destiny devoid of responsibility. 11:58 We are inheriting both today. 12:03 For Liberty Insider, this is Lincoln Steed. |
Revised 2017-07-14