As We Enter Our Own 1776 Moment, Christian Leaders Must Make a Stand

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” — John Adams

The French and American revolutions happened within a dozen years of one another, yet they centered on two very different concepts of individual liberty.

For the French, the goal was to ensure political equality. For the Americans, it was personal independence. This distinction helps shed light on what made the outcomes of the two revolutions so different.

To understand the American Revolution, we have to go back to the period between 1730 and 1750 when a religious revival spread across the colonies.

It began with Johnathon Edwards, John and Charles Wesley and an amazing evangelist by the name of George Whitfield. Whitfield delivered 18,000 sermons, and it has been estimated that over 80 percent of the colonists heard him preach. Many historians admit that there would not have been a revolution without this “Great Awakening.”

We think of the Boston Tea Party and slogans like “no taxation without representation” as the key rallying cries of the American Revolution. Although they spoke to the issues, these were not the root causes.

Pastors had begun preaching about individual liberty, rights granted by God and natural law. In fact, you can find phrases in our Declaration of Independence taken directly from sermons given during that period.

The British called these pastors the “Black Regiment” (later known as the Black Robe Regiment) and knew they were the enemy. They were not organized but were united in preaching religious liberty….







read more at: https://www.westernjournal.com/op-ed-enter-1776-moment-christian-leaders-must-make-stand/




This is a great article comparing and contrasting the American and French Revolutions and why they turned out so differently. The differences between the people involved, the goals of each, and the methods were quite profound. There are important lessons for us today as our country faces similar choices. A great read for those who like or care about history.

 

A big difference was that in one Revolution God was front and center in and in the other He was the enemy of revolutionaries who sought to eliminate religious belief altogether.

 

If you want to understand the American Revolution you have to go back much further than the Great Awakening.

Many of the principles and ideas expressed by the Founders, and that includes preachers like Jonathan Mayhew, were expressed by their revolutionary forebears in England who brought down Charles I during the English Civil War and later James II during the Glorious Revolution. In the case of the former we're talking about the Levelers (not to be confused with the True Levellers or Diggers) and men like John Lilburne and Algernon Sydney, and in the case of the latter philosophers such as John Locke.

But if you really want to understand it, you need to go back even further than that. To fully understand the American Revolution you have to go back to the Middle Ages, back to the teachings of Jesus and back even further to Archaic Greece. In other words, you have to track the entire trajectory and evolution of the struggle for individual freedom that spans thousands of years. You should learn who Solon and Cleisthenes were. You should learn what the civil jurists and canon lawyers were doing at the University of Bologna in the 11th and 12th Centuries. You should learn the history behind the charters granted to Medieval Europe's communes and boroughs. You should learn who William of Ockham and the School of Salamanca were, etc.. The American Revolution is the culmination of that long struggle which continues to this day.

As for the French Revolution, it was interested in far more than the political equality that the Levelers in England were seeking:

Francois-Noel Babeuf: The Marxist Before Marx
https://fee.org/articles/francois-noel-babeuf-the-marxist-before-marx/

 

What you had in America was the synthesis of Classical and Christian thought, while in France there was a futile effort to separate the two, which is impossible. Western liberal notions of natural equality and reciprocity are derived from Christianity, and are a reaction against the assumption and acceptance of natural inequality that prevailed in Ancient Greece and Rome.

 

There were plenty of teachings of natural equality and reciprocity in ancient Greece, just as there are plenty of attacks against it in the Bible (see Thomas Paine's Age of Reason).

 

In every country and in every age, the priest has been hostile to liberty. He is always in alliance with the despot, abetting his abuses in return for protection to his own.

Thomas Jefferson

Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.

Thomas Jefferson

Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the 'wall of separation between church and state,' therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

Thomas Jefferson

 

So what's your plan for the non-Christians or lip service Christians in this country? On the one hand you talk about individual liberty while on
the other you espouse Christian laws as the basis of society. How can a person be an "individual" if he has to send his kids to a school that only teaches
Christian history?

 

I wonder if that is Jefferson's ignorance or bigotry talking?

I guess the so-called Sage of Monticello would be surprised to find that churchmen asserted what he expressed in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence centuries before he was even born.

 

Cut the nonsense Daniel, Christians would be quite satisfied if only Truth were being taught. We should teach the evils of racist slavery and the time it prevailed in our culture as well as the Noble actions and sufferings of White Christians that stood against it and finally prevailed. Problem with that?

 

His wisdom.

 

And pretend they weren't fighting against white Christians on the other side? Nor pretend that bigotry and discrimination didn't continue among white
Americans Christians for the next 100 years? "White wash" indeed.

 

The ideas of God were different in the two countries because of how religion was part of society. In the colonies, religion was not part of the state and there was already an era of enlightenment after the revolutions and rebellions in England over the issue, in France religion was part of the state imposing a mandatory ten percent tax as a tithe on the people and adjoining the king to impose the rule of the state whether it was beneficial or abusive.

 

Is that why the Mormons were driven from existing states and their leader was killed for preaching a different story about Christianity?

 

Ignorance of history is ignorance, not wisdom.

For example:

School of Salamanca
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_of_Salamanca

Whether Jefferson's ignorance was the innocent ignorance of the uniformed or the deliberate ignorance of the bigot is the question.

 

Blah blah blah blah.... Tear Down a statue of General Grant, a man who did far more to the improvement of black lives not only in war but in reconstruction. I know what you stand for! It's down with America as we currently know it!

 

I'll come right back with "Meadow Mountain Massacre".

 

I'm not a Christian or of any religious faith, how exactly is the Constitution "inadequate" for me? Do you believe that a person can be of high ethics and morals if they have some type of religious faith?

 

Were these attacks the result of a moment of Christian suppression?

 

You can view it anyway you want to....but I do know one thing, Moonglow....there seems to be quite a number of you out there that take special pleasure in disparaging anything Christian or American. You are just one on my list I am compiling. The thing about Christianity that secular humanism ignores is the basic understanding of human nature, good and evil which we all are privy to both. There has to be a uniting power (and there is) to restrain evil. Your humanist version just thinks that we will evolve into a unicorn kumbaya and all just get along! Convince Che of that!

 

Why were the revolutions different?

simple- France had no to little experience with democracy prior to the revolution. US did. It’s a hard sell to say that “god” was the motivating factor when we realize the Canadians refused to join up with the US, over religious differences because the British of all people were going to treat the Catholics better than the Americans (who didn’t have religious tolerance)

 

There is no plan. We have freedom to worship and believe or not, now just like in the beginning of the republic. The issue is the preservation of our original republic and constitution, not trying to create some imaginary theocracy. Christians are simply seeking to preserve what we’ve had since day one as Americans and prevent a secular progressive French Revolution style regime from taking its place.
No one I know of is advocating “Christian” law to replace that which our founding fathers gave us. We have no desire to limit the choice of parents in regards to their kids education. If you want public schools, charter schools, private schools, or home schooling, it should be our choice. Our original 1776 history is not Christian history, it’s American history.

 

I agree that the role of religion is overstated in the OP but I disagree that the difference was as simple as experience with democracy. Certainly, that was an important factor, but there are many more to consider and the bitter warfare and mass murder in the Vendée illustrate the important role ideology played in each revolution.

The American Revolution was, in many respects, a conservative "revolution", where the Founders sought to uphold and preserve their ancient rights as Englishmen. It wasn't a nihilistic project that sought to destroy the existing society and replace it with a brand new one, which is what produced such violent resistance in the more conservative countryside and ultimately the Thermidorian Reaction that put an end to the excesses of the extremist Montagnards, Jacobins and sans-culottes. You didn't see Americans undertake a dechristianization program that sought to destroy religious life and create a Cult of Reason in its place. You didn't see ridiculous measures such as changing the calendar and creating 10-day weeks. You didn't see our Founders embrace the ideology of proto-Marxists such as François-Noël Babeuf, who declared "Nature has given to every man the right to the enjoyment of an equal share in all property". No, the Founders considered private property ownership a fundamental right, and you need look no further than my signature to see what they thought about Babeuf & Co.'s ideas.

I could go on, but that would be belaboring the point. There is no simple difference between the two revolutions, be it religion or experience with democracy. There are a multitude of differences, simple and complex.

 

Boy that is deep and to the point. Don't know if Daniel or Moonlight can grasp any of that though. At times, I just don't believe they want to!

 

I have a feeling if leaders from islam or asatru or something equally silly started monging about in politics things would look even worse than they are. how about those people who have whatever flavor religion they choose do their thing without pushing it on everyone else?

 

Really? Care to post anything I have said about being a Christian or an American that is disparaging? Christianity is not the only religion in the world or the USA why do you refuse to accept the same?