Welcome to the Liberty Insider.
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This is your
religious liberty program
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bringing up-to-date
news, views, and analyses
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of religious liberty events
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 author Elijah Mvundura.
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Yes. Welcome
back to this program.
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This is not your first time.
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I know you've
read Liberty magazine
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for many, many years even
when you were a young man.
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Yes.
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Not too long ago, on
the back cover of Liberty,
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we had one of our
nice post presentations
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with a power quote,
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and I had the artist
draw a picture of John Locke
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up in the sky, like the sun,
like the Sun King if you like,
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with the rays of sun
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shining down on
the American Republic.
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What do you think of that?
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Is that...
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I mean, figuratively,
that was a picture,
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but is that figuratively wrong?
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It does capture
the origins of America.
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I mean, America is...
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Anybody who
reads American history,
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even in high school,
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they were based on
the ideas of John Locke.
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But a very few people remember
that nowadays, don't they?
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Yes.
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It's very important
for people to know that
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when they were
drafting the constitutions,
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when they were
debating the Federalist Papers
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and the like, their ideas
were informed by John Locke.
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Now who was he?
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John Locke was an
English philosopher
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who lived in the 17th century.
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And he was actually a
friend of John Newton.
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The Isaac Newton, I'm sorry.
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Yes.
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That was John Newton.
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I mean, the...
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Isaac Newton was the him.
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Yeah, Isaac Newton was the him.
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I mean, the scientist
who discovered, you know...
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Well, he described gravity.
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He described gravity.
They were actually friends.
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And why it is
important to understand
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people like John
Locke and the like is that
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those people when they
were designing their theories,
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for example, the
principle of religious liberty
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is taken from the
Locke's book, Toleration.
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But those ideas...
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When you actually
read the book itself,
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he bases the principle
of toleration on the Bible.
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He actually used the Bible
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to build the principle
of religious toleration,
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of religiously liberty,
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and people are
not aware of that.
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Today, we speak about liberty,
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but we cannot understand liberty
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unless we understand that
it is taken from John Locke,
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and from John Locke,
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he based it on
Scriptural foundation
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that you cannot coerce someone.
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Christ did not force anyone.
He did not use the sword.
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So it's important
for us to go to those
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because
liberalism today, or liberty,
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has been reduced to license.
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Yeah. You're right.
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But that was not his initial...
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To underscore what you say,
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both Locke and
Newton were deeply spiritual
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and both of them, as I remember,
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indulge themselves
in prophetic analysis
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at different times.
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And Newton, when he
developed the law of gravity,
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he was really trying
to explain God's ways.
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He believed that
it was God's power
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exercised momentarily.
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He was a bit
disappointed to find
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what appeared to be a
self-perpetuating law.
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Yes.
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Actually, people need to
know that Newton spend more time
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studying the books
of Daniel and Revelation
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than actually working
on his scientific studies.
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And there is the link,
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you cannot actually separate
his theology from his science
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because just as God
had dominion over nature,
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He had also
dominion over human history.
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So these were
interlinked in Newton's studies.
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And another thing
that is very important
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when you look at Newton,
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because of the Aristotle,
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Aristotelian complex
that we're talking about,
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the Greeks had all,
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everything that they
needed to have modern science,
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but they cannot
conceive the idea of change,
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qualitative change
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because tradition weighed
so heavily in the Middle Ages.
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The only way
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that the early
moderns could conceive change,
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that you can actually change
and build a better future,
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it was through their reading
of Daniel and Revelation.
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Francis Bacon who
is actually called
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the father of the
modern scientific method,
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the jacket cover,
on his jacket cover
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is Daniel 12,
knowledge shall what?
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Shall increase.
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Many shall run to and fro
and knowledge shall increase.
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I agree with your point.
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Let me throw
something into that.
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You probably thought of
that but very few people do.
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Yeah, you got
Newton, Locke, and...
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Francis Bacon and Robert Boyle.
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Robert Boyle is
father of modern chemistry.
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The English
philosophers basically were very
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deeply grounded,
personally in theology,
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but their whole
worldview was derivative
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from
Christianity is no question.
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What about the
French philosophers?
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They were not just secular,
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they were
antagonistic to religion.
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I think that's another
branch, and people imagine
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that to this day that the
US is based on the principles
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that ended up with
the French Revolution.
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And I say no. And I
think you would agree.
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It's this English line
which is far more religious
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and basic to our
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Judeo-Christian traditions,
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where the French
Revolution is a blind alley.
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If it's connected to anything,
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it's Marxism and some
of these other things.
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Yes, I would...
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That point is very important
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if you want to
understand our current crisis.
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In fact, people that
use this word enlightenment
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and they use it as one term.
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But there was not
one enlightenment,
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there were several.
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There was the
moderate enlightenment
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of Newton and Locke.
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And they are actually
the guys who inspired French,
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the French philosophers,
and why did the one...
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As you rightly say,
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the French
enlightenment was radical,
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anti-religious,
and anti-Christian.
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Voltaire, the anti-Christian,
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but why were
they anti-Christian?
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Steeply cynical.
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Yes, but why were they that?
People never asked themselves.
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It was because of the
dominance of the Catholic Church
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in France.
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Which was the undercurrent
of the French revolution.
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That was an overreaction
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to the abuses of
the church there.
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Yes, because in England,
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because of the
Glorious Revolution,
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I think you're aware of it,
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the Glorious Revolution in 1688,
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with that, they
enshrined the rule of law,
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the supremacy of parliament
in accordance with the king.
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And because of that,
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you have all these
religiously liberty.
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If I can go back a little,
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because of the
English Civil War...
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Now you're getting
out to buy my hobby horse.
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Yes, it's very, very important
for people to know that
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because there were many
protests and sects in England,
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that's why they ended up
having religious liberty anyway.
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That's how...
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That was the
context that made Locke
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to be able to
separate religion and politics
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because there were
just many churches.
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But in the French side,
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it was hard for them to
conceive religious liberty
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because there
was only one church,
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which was the Catholic Church.
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And so for them, when
they were attacking...
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Which had not, in
the far distant future,
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acted murderously
against Protestant opposition
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and expelled them.
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Yes, so these are
two different things.
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And I think there is one
French thinker, a famous...
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I always have a
problem pronouncing his name,
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Alexis Tocqueville...
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Alexis de Tocqueville,
that's how I say it.
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Yes, he
actually cited the reason
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why people are
anti-religious in France.
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It's not because
they had Christianity
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but because they're attacking
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the church's
involvement in politics.
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This is what made the
French enlightenment radical.
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And this is why the French
Revolution was also radical.
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They were not only attempting
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to change the
political institutions,
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they were also trying to change
the religious institution.
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But it was at a
very theoretical level.
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And so the...
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In America, even
more than Britain,
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Britain was not really able
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to completely
separate religion and politics
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because the Anglican Church
was the established church.
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But in America...
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It is.
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Yes, it's still
the established church,
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but in America, it was different
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as we know, many,
many different sects,
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Protestant sects, the
Presbyterians, the Quakers,
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the Methodists,
they came to America.
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And because of that reality,
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this is why ultimately
they de-established the church.
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And now...
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Everybody feared everybody else.
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Feared everybody else. Yes.
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You know, the idea of
American history is that
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there was this pure
idea from the beginning
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to keep religion
out, I don't think so.
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Even some of the main figures
in the Revolutionary Party,
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and I'm trying
to think of a guy,
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"Give me liberty
or give me death."
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Patrick Henry!
Patrick Henry, yes.
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And he wanted church and
state joined together like this,
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but it couldn't stand
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because there were so
many factions who each feared
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that if the other
got some political power
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that they would persecute it.
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But James Madison, the
father of American Constitution,
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must also remember
that he actually observed
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the radicalism that
religion was bringing in.
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And actually, he...
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When you actually
read most of his writings,
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you can actually see
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that's what influenced
him ultimately to say that,
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"If we're going to have peace
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and maintain the
purity of the gospel,
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we need to
separate these things."
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And a big part
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of his
developing personal position
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was he had seen
Baptist preachers imprisoned
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for illegal preaching.
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He knew in
pre-revolutionary America
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how bad the thing
religious intolerance was.
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Yes.
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And I think it's
important to emphasize that
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because unlike the French,
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it was all at a
philosophical level
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without actually a
practical application.
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In the case of the
American founding fathers,
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they were actually reacting
to concrete historical events.
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And hence, they were
not dreamers as it were.
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They were not
trying to build utopias.
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They actually
analyzed human nature.
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And I think it's
very, very important.
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Many people today, they speak
of the separation of powers.
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But what actually informed
the separation of powers
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was their fear of
ambition and passions.
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They actually knew
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that human beings
are sinful by nature,
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and they were informed by
the theological anthropology
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of Martin Luther and Calvin.
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Within the Protestant tradition,
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the idea is human
beings are sinful.
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Where did they get that?
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They get that from
the story of the fall.
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And it is from that base...
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And most particularly,
they got it from Calvin.
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Yes, they got it from Calvin.
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So basically, when they're...
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You and I have
been talking about that.
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The thread that
most informs American
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political and religious
development is Calvinism,
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not Lutheranism.
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Yes, it's not...
00:11:08.33\00:11:09.66
Yes, it is from
John Calvin. Yes.
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But the whole idea
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that a human being is sinful
is very important actually
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to the founding of
the American Constitution.
00:11:16.07\00:11:18.14
So this whole
separation is to prevent
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this convergence of interest
00:11:20.78\00:11:22.38
of creating an
all powerful state
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that actually
snuffs out human liberty.
00:11:25.31\00:11:28.75
So it's important
for us to know that
00:11:28.78\00:11:30.89
because what is happened,
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I think, in America, is that
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while the
American Founding Fathers
00:11:34.12\00:11:38.56
were influenced by
the moderate enlightenment
00:11:38.59\00:11:40.50
of Newton and Locke,
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that was grounded in religious
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and Calvinist
motives and beliefs.
00:11:44.73\00:11:48.40
The American
intelligentsia academics,
00:11:48.44\00:11:51.47
since the World War II
have actually been influenced
00:11:51.51\00:11:55.74
by the French thinkers
and the German thinkers.
00:11:55.78\00:12:00.05
And so the anti-religiosity,
00:12:00.08\00:12:05.15
the anti-Christian
stance of the American academics
00:12:05.19\00:12:10.13
does not
represent the American...
00:12:10.16\00:12:14.66
The founding...
00:12:14.70\00:12:16.03
So there's been a shift.
00:12:16.06\00:12:17.40
There has been a shift...
00:12:17.43\00:12:18.77
Part of the shift been
in a private discussion,
00:12:18.80\00:12:20.67
you are quoting
German theologians,
00:12:20.70\00:12:25.27
hasn't that been
an additional shift
00:12:25.31\00:12:28.04
to turn religious thought
where early American religious
00:12:28.08\00:12:32.61
thought wasn't overly influenced
00:12:32.65\00:12:34.12
by German
theological development?
00:12:34.15\00:12:35.78
It was not. Yes.
00:12:35.82\00:12:37.15
Not from the
point of Luther until,
00:12:37.19\00:12:38.82
I think, post World War II.
00:12:38.85\00:12:40.29
Yes, maybe to do that,
00:12:40.32\00:12:41.66
maybe we need
to remind ourselves
00:12:41.69\00:12:43.09
of the great
awakening in the 19th century
00:12:43.12\00:12:46.49
because in the 19th century,
America had a great awakening.
00:12:46.53\00:12:50.47
Not only in
America, Britain too.
00:12:50.50\00:12:52.80
Wesley's revival. Of course.
00:12:52.83\00:12:54.17
At the time, when
they were experiencing
00:12:54.20\00:12:55.84
this religious revival,
00:12:55.87\00:12:58.31
that was the very
same time in Germany
00:12:58.34\00:13:00.88
where you had all those
things about Hegel and Marx,
00:13:00.91\00:13:03.38
all these theologies.
00:13:03.41\00:13:04.75
So you can almost
put them side by side.
00:13:04.78\00:13:06.88
Well, and of
course, maybe let me go back
00:13:06.92\00:13:08.75
and gave a context a little bit.
00:13:08.78\00:13:10.12
The context is
the French Revolution.
00:13:10.15\00:13:12.12
The French Revolution people,
00:13:12.15\00:13:13.49
they expected it
to bring liberty,
00:13:13.52\00:13:15.36
but it ended up in terror.
00:13:15.39\00:13:17.89
Well, you know, famously,
00:13:17.93\00:13:19.26
and I like music
as well as history,
00:13:19.29\00:13:21.13
you know, Beethoven was writing
a symphony to honor Napoleon
00:13:21.16\00:13:25.57
who was the hero of the...
00:13:25.60\00:13:26.94
Yes. Yes.
00:13:26.97\00:13:28.30
And he saw,
eventually, the whole world did,
00:13:28.34\00:13:30.74
eventually, by the
Battle of Waterloo,
00:13:30.77\00:13:32.64
he saw that this was
subverting these somewhat,
00:13:32.67\00:13:37.61
you know, idealistic aspirations
00:13:37.65\00:13:39.71
of the French Revolution.
00:13:39.75\00:13:41.18
And so he changed it
to the heroic symphony
00:13:41.22\00:13:43.42
and screwed up his
dedication to Napoleon.
00:13:43.45\00:13:46.62
Yes, but it's important
for us to go back there
00:13:46.65\00:13:49.36
because at the very time
00:13:49.39\00:13:50.73
when America was
having a religious revival,
00:13:50.76\00:13:53.80
you're having a
revival of secular religions
00:13:53.83\00:13:56.16
on this other side.
00:13:56.20\00:13:57.60
And those secular
religions are the ones
00:13:57.63\00:13:59.70
that started influencing America
00:13:59.73\00:14:03.30
since the1960s.
00:14:03.34\00:14:04.67
The radical liberalism,
00:14:04.71\00:14:06.88
the radical individualism
that we experienced...
00:14:06.91\00:14:08.78
True. There's a
direct tract on that.
00:14:08.81\00:14:10.15
Yes. We'll take a break now.
00:14:10.18\00:14:12.45
Stay with us and get
your thinking caps on.
00:14:12.48\00:14:15.85
Here we philosophizing
and history recounting
00:14:15.88\00:14:20.02
and theology, but we need to
be aware of this as we unravel
00:14:20.06\00:14:24.63
today's very
complicated Church-State issues.
00:14:24.66\00:14:27.26