Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is a program
bringing you news,
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views, discussion and
up-to-date information
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on religious liberty
developments in the US
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and around the world.
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My name is Lincoln Steed,
editor of Liberty magazine,
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and our guest on the
program is Greg Hamilton,
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president of the Northwest
Religious Liberty Association.
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Nice long title for
an effective program
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that you're running there.
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Welcome on to
the program. Thanks.
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This is not your first time.
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No, no, no.
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And you and I have
worked before quite a bit.
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Let's go to something at hand.
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There is a book that I
just saw for the first time
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a few minutes ago
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that you've been working
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on this for
quite a while, right?
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Yes, I published a book
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called Soul Liberty:
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Celebrating
America's First Freedom.
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And the book covers,
it's a coffee-table book
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that even children can
enjoy as well as adults,
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and the book is
specifically focused
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on America's
constitutional founding,
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specifically on the
origins of religious freedom
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in our country
dating from Roger Williams,
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actually before
that to the Mayflower,
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to Roger Williams, to
the constitutional founders
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and cleared to the
civil rights movement.
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And the book is
intended for thought leaders,
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mainly for
legislators, state legislators,
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judges, attorneys,
and people of faith
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who are interested
in America's founding.
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Well, it's not
intended for Adventist.
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It's a coffee table
book, we don't drink coffee.
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Well...
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I applause you on that one.
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But it should be,
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Adventist should
read this, right?
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Yes, absolutely.
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We want our church members,
all people of faith to know
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in the United States
the constitutional basis
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of their freedoms.
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And it's a beautiful 64 page
full color coffee table book
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that really
highlights what we do
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in terms of
understanding religious freedom
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and let me get to
a, you know, beautiful,
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beautiful photos, that's worth,
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you know, every
bit a person's time.
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This is going to be available
on Amazon.com real soon.
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By the time this
airs, this program airs,
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it will be
available on Amazon.com.
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It will be available at
the Adventist book center
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or Adventist bookstores
and at a very reasonable price,
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so check it out,
you want to get it.
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But the contents of
the book is interesting
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because I tried
to make it so simple
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that a child would want to thumb
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through the pictures
and say, oh, Mom and Dad,
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I remember that
coffee table book
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when I was a kid.
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I want to look at that,
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that's got the
original documents
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of the
Declaration of Independence,
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the Constitution, all
the amendments including
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the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights.
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That's not an amendment,
that's an international,
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corollary for
the US Constitution
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which is, it strengthens
our hand in projecting
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religious liberty legally
throughout the world, right?
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Sure, but it's contained in here
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especially
articles18 and 19 highlighted,
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and the whole purpose is
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to raise the
curiosity of a child
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so when they become an adult,
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it can actually
guide them to think,
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hey, you know, this is something
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I'm supremely interested in.
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It may even direct
the channel, the direction
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they go in terms
of their life work.
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And that's what
I was hoping to do
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as well as help legislators,
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especially, pastors
and clergy to see the light
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regarding America's
Constitutional founding.
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What's your take?
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Do you think intimate
knowledge of the Constitution
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is a common thing nowadays?
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No, no, we get our pompoms out
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and we get our
church leader uniforms on,
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and we think we know
what we're talking about.
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Oh, yeah, we're for a nation,
we're for the Constitution
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but then we're an empty head
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when it comes to actually
knowing anything about it.
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And I read something in
Liberty the other day on this
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and I said, other
than the Second Amendment,
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I don't think
anyone really knows,
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you know, in the
general public sense
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what's in it anymore.
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Most people when they
speak of the Constitution,
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what they really have in mind
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is the
Declaration of Independence.
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Right.
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They have some
inkling of what it says.
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Well, and that's true.
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In fact,
Representative Steve Scalise,
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Republican from Louisiana
just a couple weeks ago
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during the Prayer Breakfast,
National Prayer Breakfast said,
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"Thomas Jefferson
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when he wrote
the Constitution..."
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Well, Thomas Jefferson
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wasn't even at The
Constitutional Convention.
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He was in Paris.
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He wrote the
Declaration of Independence,
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or at least he penned
it and worked with someone.
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And then he went on to say,
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"And our founders intended
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our nation to be a
Christian nation by law,"
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when in fact it's
just actually the opposite.
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Not that we should
be against Christianity
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but that Christianity
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was not to be
formed in a legal sense,
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but to be understood in a
cultural predominant sense
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and in a demographic
sense that most people
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were Christians
they assume that.
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Yeah, and I don't, I
think they would be quite
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startle to see the
diversity that we have today.
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There's no way that
Englishman or Colonialists
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at that era could have imagined
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where we've come
demographically today.
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What's amazing is what
brought all 13 colonies together
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was really the
First Great Awakening.
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First Great
Awakening was fantastic.
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I mean, you think
of Jonathan Edwards,
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you think of the
Dutch field preachers,
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and then comes along
this grand field preacher
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from England
named George Whitefield.
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In fact, his voice so
bloomed wherever he spoke.
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In fact, Benjamin Franklin
used to follow him around.
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And Benjamin Franklin once
said that I went ten blocks away
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and I could still
hear his voice booming
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and echoing down the
streets in Philadelphia.
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Now, that's some kind of voice.
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And they didn't even have
microphones in those days.
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Right, and Benjamin Franklin
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wasn't even
particularly religious.
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He just went
along out of curiosity.
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Exactly.
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And I remember reading,
that he listened to him a bit
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and then he decided,
well, I'll give him some money
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and then he listens it bit more,
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I'll give him some more money,
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so he got to Franklin.
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But the message that
really freed the colonies
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was this idea that Christians
and people of faith could...
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They could have Christ
as their personal savior
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instead of the
king being their savior,
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instead of the government...
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Government formally is
the head of the church.
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Right, and so
it was very freeing
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is this idea.
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Actually righteous by
faith through Christ alone
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is really the message
that galvanized all 13 colonies
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to come together to
think, hey, you know what?
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There's something wrong here,
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you know, and it
actually sowed the seeds
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of independence
and few recognize that
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or understand that.
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I think it's an arguable line.
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Yes, I do think
the religious revival
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played a good part,
not just giving theology
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but it gave a
sense of separateness.
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Remember, not long before
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the Declaration of Independence,
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they were still
fighting in England
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the idea between the high church
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and resurgence of Catholicism
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or at least the form of
high church Catholicism.
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So this revival
here I think created
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a Protestant sensibility
versus sort of the old line
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suspicious Church of England.
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Well, they saw
too much of a church
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and state united and...
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Which it was in
England, it still is.
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Yes, yes.
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A monarchical controlled church
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but a church really in the sense
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that controlled
the state as well,
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sort of mutual
control, mutual competition,
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and yet they work together
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to oppress those
they disagree with.
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And to this day,
I'm sure you'll agree
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the Episcopal Church
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which goes by
that name precisely
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because it was uncomfortable,
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we called the Church
of England is really...
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In other words, not Anglican.
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Yeah, it's really suffered
in America in the new world
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because of its identification
with the English power.
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Thomas Jefferson
came up with this whole,
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I mean the entire
Declaration of Independence
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really was written in a way
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to challenge the
divine right of kings,
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specifically King
George III in England.
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And that was a big deal
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because when you challenged
the divine right of a king,
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even though
Jefferson wasn't a...
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A fundamentalist
Christian per se,
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he nevertheless believed that
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that kings did
not have the authority
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to tell anyone how to worship,
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when to worship,
and where to worship
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and that was his big thing.
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Jefferson sowed
the seeds of separation
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of church and
state in this country
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that is still that people forget
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is the hallmark really
of our country's history
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is this whole idea
that church and state
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should remain separate.
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Well, I think,
yes, I agree with you.
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He was central to it, of course,
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in the election
of what was it...
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When was he elected president?
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Eighteen hundred.
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Eighteen hundred,
I couldn't remember
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it was 1798 or 1800.
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You know, he was
vilified as a secularist,
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and I think in large part
because of this sort of views
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but I have a deeper
take on when the break came.
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Remember it was Oliver Cromwell
in the English civil war,
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that was be a
lifetime before him
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and he was a thinker
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and knew what
was happening there,
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a revolutionary,
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he was a
revolutionary par excellence,
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loved the blood of
the French Revolution,
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but in the English civil war...
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And he was a
protector of the Waldenses
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in Italy and France
and the kingdom of Savoy.
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You're talking
about Cromwell now.
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Yes.
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Yeah, but it's worth remembering
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in lot of your
comments that when the Puritan,
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Cromwellian
forces captured the king
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and put him on trial,
his appeal was exactly
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what you're saying.
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King Charles I.
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Yes, that he had a divine right.
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He was there by
God, God's power,
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and they had no
right to even question him
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and they cut his head off.
00:10:12.37\00:10:13.71
Right.
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So the point had already
00:10:15.11\00:10:16.44
been made for an
English Protestants,
00:10:16.48\00:10:18.55
Puritans, which largely informed
00:10:18.58\00:10:21.22
the thinking in the colonies.
00:10:21.25\00:10:22.98
There was an
inordinate puritanical
00:10:23.02\00:10:25.62
in the best
sense influence here.
00:10:25.65\00:10:28.06
And the Anglican
Church had faded already
00:10:28.09\00:10:31.53
in some influence of Cromwell.
00:10:31.56\00:10:33.29
And what really
informed a Puritan which is,
00:10:33.33\00:10:37.23
and here's the
irony is the Scottish,
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French and English enlightenment
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this idea that somehow
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there has to be
a change in the way
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governments have been
structured in the past.
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We have got to make
a revolutionary change
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for the future.
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And, you know, I'll
even go further back,
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I think this was...
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This came out of the Renaissance
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and in the
secularization of Europe
00:10:59.52\00:11:02.12
and it worked its way out
through religion in England
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and the civil war there
and it hit the fan in France.
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Was it 1798,
that's where the eight is,
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I guess in my mind, 1798
with the French Revolution.
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They didn't
particularly have anything
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more than religious grievances
00:11:18.17\00:11:19.94
but it was not a
religious movement,
00:11:19.97\00:11:21.31
but they cut the
king's head off there
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and got rid of
this the divine right
00:11:23.48\00:11:26.75
through secular rebellion.
00:11:26.78\00:11:29.25
And in England
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they had a nominal
sense of representation
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for the people,
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the people's
representatives in Parliament
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so to speak but
it wasn't in reality.
00:11:36.93\00:11:40.00
In other words, yes, you had a
00:11:40.03\00:11:42.03
so-called
benevolent sovereign king,
00:11:42.06\00:11:44.70
but in fact the people really
felt frustrated in England
00:11:44.73\00:11:48.00
and so in the American colonies
00:11:48.04\00:11:50.17
they wanted to be
completely free of that.
00:11:50.21\00:11:52.31
They figured, hey,
we're an ocean away,
00:11:52.34\00:11:55.44
why can't we
direct our own affairs.
00:11:55.48\00:11:57.11
It wasn't just
about the Great Tea Party
00:11:57.15\00:12:01.78
or authority
overthrowing of the tea,
00:12:01.82\00:12:03.75
the Boston Tea
Party as it's known.
00:12:03.79\00:12:06.32
It wasn't just about that,
it wasn't just about taxation
00:12:06.35\00:12:08.89
without representation,
that was part of it,
00:12:08.92\00:12:11.79
that was an
essential part of it,
00:12:11.83\00:12:14.00
but really close to
the heart was this idea,
00:12:14.03\00:12:18.30
can the church really
direct the affairs of the state?
00:12:18.33\00:12:21.40
Can the state direct
the affairs of our church?
00:12:21.44\00:12:24.01
Can the state
direct our consciences?
00:12:24.04\00:12:27.38
And Jefferson was
saying, "No, they cannot."
00:12:27.41\00:12:29.91
And for this reason
we declared independence.
00:12:29.94\00:12:33.25
Yeah.
00:12:33.28\00:12:34.88
I agree with.
00:12:34.92\00:12:36.25
I love history,
it's multidimensional
00:12:36.28\00:12:38.52
and that was a clear one.
00:12:38.55\00:12:41.82
I have a great burden
that people really see
00:12:41.86\00:12:43.66
more clearly on the
grievances that led to it,
00:12:43.69\00:12:45.99
it wasn't the tea
party thing, it was PR.
00:12:46.03\00:12:49.30
What was really the big
thing that got the ball rolling
00:12:49.33\00:12:52.90
was the English refusal
to allow letters of credit
00:12:52.93\00:12:56.04
and the local currency,
they wanted the English pound
00:12:56.07\00:12:59.77
and therefore financial control.
00:12:59.81\00:13:02.24
And when that was denied,
then things started percolating
00:13:02.28\00:13:05.58
and I believe that's
when the religious viewpoint
00:13:05.61\00:13:08.68
that you can
trace to the awakening,
00:13:08.72\00:13:11.59
that's when it kicked in
00:13:11.62\00:13:12.95
because it was
easy for them to say,
00:13:12.99\00:13:14.72
"Well, he is this
belligerent autocratic
00:13:14.76\00:13:18.86
state church over here
won't let us do our thing.
00:13:18.89\00:13:22.66
We better take a break.
00:13:22.70\00:13:24.53
It's great to get
into the swing of things.
00:13:24.57\00:13:26.70
We're deep in the
history now, so stay with us,
00:13:26.74\00:13:29.30
we'll be right back.
00:13:29.34\00:13:31.27