A study of history reveals that religion and patriotism have been the chief moral influences which have subjected men. The separate modifications and mutual interaction of these two agents may almost be said to constitute the moral history of mankind. For some centuries before the introduction of Christianity, patriotism was in most countries the presiding moral principle, and religion occupied an entirely subordinate position. Almost all those examples of heroic self-sacrifice, of passionate devotion to an unselfish aim which antiquity affords, were produced by the spirit of patriotism. Decius and Regulus, Leonidas and Hermodius are the pagan parallels to the Christian martyrs. The first develop· ment of sculpture in Rome appears to have been patriotic rather than religious -the objects of representation being not the gods, but the true national ideals -the heroes of Rome. Nor was it only in the great crises of national history that this spirit was evoked. The pride of patriotism, the sense of dignity which it inspires, the close bond of sympathy produced by a common aim, the energy and courage of character which are the parents of great enterprises, were manifested habitually in the leading nations of the ancient world. The spirit of patriotism pervaded all classes. It formed a distinct type of character and was the origin of both many virtues and many vices.
Some Virtues of Patriotism
On the one hand pagan patriotism encouraged fortitude in the face of adversity. It produced habits of self-reliance which enabled men to confront danger with a calm intrepidity. Patriotism provided a capacity for united action, for self-sacrifice, a sense of honor, and a stern simplicity of habits. In the best days of the Roman Republic the passions of men were as habitually under control, national tastes were as simple and chastened, and acts of heroism were as frequent and as grand, as in the noblest periods of subsequent history. All this was produced among nations that were notoriously de6cient in religious feeling, and had indeed degraded their religion into a mere function of the State. As Rushdoony points out in The Christian Idea of the State, “The state was the religious ordering of society, and as a result, each state was one church, holding a common faith, and no religious cults could flourish in a state without the permission of the state and without recognizing the state or its ruler as the mediator and divine lord….Legge was right in stating that the Christian’s refusal to recognize the sovereign and mediatorial role of the emperor and the City of Rome was looked upon as ‘a political offense.’ To deny the religious priority of the state was an act of treason. To have other gods meant to be in conspiracy for the overthrow of the body politic, of the visible god of that area, the state and its ruler” (p. viii). In other words patriotism functioned as the pagan religion of Rome and provided Romans with “the unifying bond of their existence.” If pagan Home exhibited to a very high degree the sterner virtues, it was pre-eminently deficient in the gentler ones. Rarely has a nation shown such cruelty towards the slave, the captive, the sick, the helpless who were all treated with cold indifference or merciless ferocity. An almost absolute destruction of the finer sensibilities was the consequence of the universal worship of force. Ancient Rome knew not the love of Christ and therefore demanded the sacrifice of the individual to the community.
Christian Response to Pagan
Patriotism when Christians withdrew openly from participation in the rites of the official religion of Rome, as they were bound to do, they ceased to be members of the pagan community in any real sense, and the old ties of political and social relationships were broken. As Dr. F. W. Beare points out in his Commentary on First Peter: “Negatively, those who became Christians had no more part in the race or nation of their birth; and positively, they formed new ties, and were united in a new community which was less a private brotherhood like those of the mystery religions, than the unifying bond of all existence which we find in the nation or state” (page 103).
It is quite obvious that the blessed apostles Peter and Paul who died for their faith in the sovereignty of the Holy Trinity rather than bow down to worship the pagan Roman emperor would find great difficulty in discovering any members of the “Third Race” in America or Britain today. Most Christians today think of themselves first as Americans or Britons or Canadians, then only secondly as Christians. For them the Blessed Gospel of Christ crucified and risen is no longer “the unifying bond of all existence” but merely an optional religious frill to the more serious business and political affairs of life. Such Christians regard the God of the Bible as having been made for America rather than America, or Canada or Holland for God. When the chips are down such “pietists” seem quite prepared to bow down before the new pagan gods and idols of the twentieth century, the worship of the almighty dollar or of the Leviathan Welfare state, of big business, big labor and big government. What a terrible betrayal of both the New Testament and of Reformation Christianity. For such Christians God is dead as far as politics are concerned.
Christianity Hostile to Pagan Patriotism
The Calvinist idea of the state limited, by God’s sovereignty was from the beginning hostile to the pagan Roman idea of sovereignty both in church and state. Calvinism affirmed the doctrine of limited power to the civil order. God alone is sovereign in this universe. He alone has delegated sufficient authority to each sphere of life, including that of the state, for it to carry out its own work. This meant a division of powers which implied and achieved a multiplicity of powers in the course of the English and American Revolutions. The first Reformed thinker to put forward such a pluralist conception of society was the Dutch jurist J. Althusius who built up a rounded political system uniting popular sovereignty with the Christian principles of the inherent and inalienable natural rights of the various communities within the state.
In terms of this Reformed political philosophy the claim of the earthly state to men’s complete allegiance was an alien concept in the American colonies. “The Americans,” according to A. F. Pollar in Factors in American History “may be defined as that part of the English speaking world which has instinctively revolted against the doctrine of the sovereignty of the State…. It is this denial of all sovereignty which gives its profound and permanent interest to the American Revolution. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed the Atlantic to escape from sovereign power: Washington called it a ‘monster’” (page 31ff).
The Secularization of America
With the secularization of the American Republic it is not surprising to find the State in America be· coming once more the religious order of society, We find the Federal Government claiming the total allegiance of its citizens and denying to Christians their historic right to put God first in their lives, The Federal Government and the Supreme Court have so far broken away from the Constitution that they are now claiming for themselves to be both the total order of society (the whole of which all other associations and communities are only the parts) and the ultimate sovereign over all Americans. Such a claim no Christian worth “his salt” can accept, since a state which claims to be sovereign is a state that is really claiming to be god. For the Justices of the Supreme Court the political-legal order in America has become the ultimate and defining order of man. As Rushdoony points out “The modern state, by its emphatic re-assertion of the ‘pagan totality-idea,’ is making clear its claim to sovereignty and total jurisdiction. The modern state therefore seeks total control: its goal is to replace the predestination of man, to substitute for God’s eternal decree the state’s temporal decree… The secular state is that state which denies any transcendental claim upon itself. The secular state insists on the priority of the temporal as against the eternal…. The secular state is thus of necessity the absolute and total state, and it is the religious order because it has explicitly or implicitly denied transcendence. If God is acknowledged it is only as an impotent God, no longer capable of determination…Because of these things, the conflict of the modern state with Biblical Christianity is inescapable.”
The Christian Response
No Christian who takes his stand on the Word of God as the ordering principle of all his activities can compromise with such :l godless, apostate secular state. With Peter he will answer the claim of the Federal bureaucrats to exercise a totalitarian claim over his life, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:30). His love of America will always be qualified by his greater love of his Sovereign God. He will strive with might and main to bring his country back to the principles upon which America was founded. He will show his true Christian patriotism by outspoken criticism of all those evil forces in the land which are seeking to make America the servant of satan, especially the military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation. The true patriot will not engage in revolutionary activities to overthrow these United States but he will pray, work and witness for the reformation of the land of his birth or adoption. He will stand up for God’s standards of justice in the law courts, in industrial and labor relations, in the nation’s mass media as well as in its family and married life.
The true Christian patriot will not keep his mouth shut when he sees evil men trying to destroy what soever is good, true and beautiful in America’s life. He will rise up in wrath against the present campaign being waged to corrupt the nation’s youth by means of pornography and drugs. He will demand that criminals be justly punished for their offences, especially for their resort to violence and mayhem. He will make his objections known to the appalling fraud of the fractional reserve banking system and the Government’s use of federal bonds to bolster up its nefarious financial system whose only result is to inflate the nation’s currency and drive us all into debt slavery. As Junius said in the Spectator “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” Above all he will object loud and long to the present campaign to drive God out of the nation’s courts, schools, businesses, cinemas, book trade and military services. In standing up for Cod’s best such a Christian patriot knows he is also standing up for what is best for America. In thus witnessing for God’s righteousness and glory he will remind his fellow patriots of the radical distinction between the American and Jacobin traditions of government.
The United States has had, and still has, its share of agnostics and unbelievers. But it has never been an organized militant atheism until the end of the second World War. Up till now most Americans have rightly rejected parties and theories which erect atheism into a political principle. President Lincoln on May 30th, 1863 echoed the Great Tradition of American Calvinist Democracy when he proclaimed:
Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and nations, has by a resolution requesting the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and trespasses in humble sorrow, yet with the assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.
The authentic Christian voice of America speaks in these great words of one of the grandest statesmen who ever graced this globe with his statesmanship. And it is a testimony to the enduring vitality of this. basic principle of American government -the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness of men -that President Eisenhower in June, 1952 quoted these words in a proclamation of similar intent. Let all Christians who love America begin a great campaign of national repentance for our nation’s sins and work for her reformation. Only those who truly love these United States will weep for America, pray for America to be saved from the terrible judgments of the Lord now descending upon her, and above all work for America’s reformation and renewal. May God bless and save America in her great hour of need! May God cleanse us all of our sins and heal all our infirmities and weaknesses! Only then can we honestly pray “God bless America” and use her mightily in the extension of Christ’s Kingdom upon earth. Let America first serve the cause of God’s Kingdom and all other things will be added unto her.
Rev. Stacey Hebden Taylor, M.A. (Cantab), professor of economics and sociology at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa.
Some Virtues of Patriotism
On the one hand pagan patriotism encouraged fortitude in the face of adversity. It produced habits of self-reliance which enabled men to confront danger with a calm intrepidity. Patriotism provided a capacity for united action, for self-sacrifice, a sense of honor, and a stern simplicity of habits. In the best days of the Roman Republic the passions of men were as habitually under control, national tastes were as simple and chastened, and acts of heroism were as frequent and as grand, as in the noblest periods of subsequent history. All this was produced among nations that were notoriously de6cient in religious feeling, and had indeed degraded their religion into a mere function of the State. As Rushdoony points out in The Christian Idea of the State, “The state was the religious ordering of society, and as a result, each state was one church, holding a common faith, and no religious cults could flourish in a state without the permission of the state and without recognizing the state or its ruler as the mediator and divine lord….Legge was right in stating that the Christian’s refusal to recognize the sovereign and mediatorial role of the emperor and the City of Rome was looked upon as ‘a political offense.’ To deny the religious priority of the state was an act of treason. To have other gods meant to be in conspiracy for the overthrow of the body politic, of the visible god of that area, the state and its ruler” (p. viii). In other words patriotism functioned as the pagan religion of Rome and provided Romans with “the unifying bond of their existence.” If pagan Home exhibited to a very high degree the sterner virtues, it was pre-eminently deficient in the gentler ones. Rarely has a nation shown such cruelty towards the slave, the captive, the sick, the helpless who were all treated with cold indifference or merciless ferocity. An almost absolute destruction of the finer sensibilities was the consequence of the universal worship of force. Ancient Rome knew not the love of Christ and therefore demanded the sacrifice of the individual to the community.
Christian Response to Pagan
Patriotism when Christians withdrew openly from participation in the rites of the official religion of Rome, as they were bound to do, they ceased to be members of the pagan community in any real sense, and the old ties of political and social relationships were broken. As Dr. F. W. Beare points out in his Commentary on First Peter: “Negatively, those who became Christians had no more part in the race or nation of their birth; and positively, they formed new ties, and were united in a new community which was less a private brotherhood like those of the mystery religions, than the unifying bond of all existence which we find in the nation or state” (page 103).
It is quite obvious that the blessed apostles Peter and Paul who died for their faith in the sovereignty of the Holy Trinity rather than bow down to worship the pagan Roman emperor would find great difficulty in discovering any members of the “Third Race” in America or Britain today. Most Christians today think of themselves first as Americans or Britons or Canadians, then only secondly as Christians. For them the Blessed Gospel of Christ crucified and risen is no longer “the unifying bond of all existence” but merely an optional religious frill to the more serious business and political affairs of life. Such Christians regard the God of the Bible as having been made for America rather than America, or Canada or Holland for God. When the chips are down such “pietists” seem quite prepared to bow down before the new pagan gods and idols of the twentieth century, the worship of the almighty dollar or of the Leviathan Welfare state, of big business, big labor and big government. What a terrible betrayal of both the New Testament and of Reformation Christianity. For such Christians God is dead as far as politics are concerned.
Christianity Hostile to Pagan Patriotism
The Calvinist idea of the state limited, by God’s sovereignty was from the beginning hostile to the pagan Roman idea of sovereignty both in church and state. Calvinism affirmed the doctrine of limited power to the civil order. God alone is sovereign in this universe. He alone has delegated sufficient authority to each sphere of life, including that of the state, for it to carry out its own work. This meant a division of powers which implied and achieved a multiplicity of powers in the course of the English and American Revolutions. The first Reformed thinker to put forward such a pluralist conception of society was the Dutch jurist J. Althusius who built up a rounded political system uniting popular sovereignty with the Christian principles of the inherent and inalienable natural rights of the various communities within the state.
In terms of this Reformed political philosophy the claim of the earthly state to men’s complete allegiance was an alien concept in the American colonies. “The Americans,” according to A. F. Pollar in Factors in American History “may be defined as that part of the English speaking world which has instinctively revolted against the doctrine of the sovereignty of the State…. It is this denial of all sovereignty which gives its profound and permanent interest to the American Revolution. The Pilgrim Fathers crossed the Atlantic to escape from sovereign power: Washington called it a ‘monster’” (page 31ff).
The Secularization of America
With the secularization of the American Republic it is not surprising to find the State in America be· coming once more the religious order of society, We find the Federal Government claiming the total allegiance of its citizens and denying to Christians their historic right to put God first in their lives, The Federal Government and the Supreme Court have so far broken away from the Constitution that they are now claiming for themselves to be both the total order of society (the whole of which all other associations and communities are only the parts) and the ultimate sovereign over all Americans. Such a claim no Christian worth “his salt” can accept, since a state which claims to be sovereign is a state that is really claiming to be god. For the Justices of the Supreme Court the political-legal order in America has become the ultimate and defining order of man. As Rushdoony points out “The modern state, by its emphatic re-assertion of the ‘pagan totality-idea,’ is making clear its claim to sovereignty and total jurisdiction. The modern state therefore seeks total control: its goal is to replace the predestination of man, to substitute for God’s eternal decree the state’s temporal decree… The secular state is that state which denies any transcendental claim upon itself. The secular state insists on the priority of the temporal as against the eternal…. The secular state is thus of necessity the absolute and total state, and it is the religious order because it has explicitly or implicitly denied transcendence. If God is acknowledged it is only as an impotent God, no longer capable of determination…Because of these things, the conflict of the modern state with Biblical Christianity is inescapable.”
The Christian Response
No Christian who takes his stand on the Word of God as the ordering principle of all his activities can compromise with such :l godless, apostate secular state. With Peter he will answer the claim of the Federal bureaucrats to exercise a totalitarian claim over his life, “We must obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:30). His love of America will always be qualified by his greater love of his Sovereign God. He will strive with might and main to bring his country back to the principles upon which America was founded. He will show his true Christian patriotism by outspoken criticism of all those evil forces in the land which are seeking to make America the servant of satan, especially the military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned in his farewell address to the nation. The true patriot will not engage in revolutionary activities to overthrow these United States but he will pray, work and witness for the reformation of the land of his birth or adoption. He will stand up for God’s standards of justice in the law courts, in industrial and labor relations, in the nation’s mass media as well as in its family and married life.
The true Christian patriot will not keep his mouth shut when he sees evil men trying to destroy what soever is good, true and beautiful in America’s life. He will rise up in wrath against the present campaign being waged to corrupt the nation’s youth by means of pornography and drugs. He will demand that criminals be justly punished for their offences, especially for their resort to violence and mayhem. He will make his objections known to the appalling fraud of the fractional reserve banking system and the Government’s use of federal bonds to bolster up its nefarious financial system whose only result is to inflate the nation’s currency and drive us all into debt slavery. As Junius said in the Spectator “The subject who is truly loyal to the Chief Magistrate will neither advise nor submit to arbitrary measures.” Above all he will object loud and long to the present campaign to drive God out of the nation’s courts, schools, businesses, cinemas, book trade and military services. In standing up for Cod’s best such a Christian patriot knows he is also standing up for what is best for America. In thus witnessing for God’s righteousness and glory he will remind his fellow patriots of the radical distinction between the American and Jacobin traditions of government.
The United States has had, and still has, its share of agnostics and unbelievers. But it has never been an organized militant atheism until the end of the second World War. Up till now most Americans have rightly rejected parties and theories which erect atheism into a political principle. President Lincoln on May 30th, 1863 echoed the Great Tradition of American Calvinist Democracy when he proclaimed:
Whereas the Senate of the United States, devoutly recognizing the supreme authority and just government of Almighty God in all the affairs of men and nations, has by a resolution requesting the President to designate and set apart a day for national prayer and humiliation; And whereas it is the duty of nations as well as men to own their dependence upon the overruling power of God, to confess their sins and trespasses in humble sorrow, yet with the assured hope that genuine repentance will lead to mercy and pardon.
The authentic Christian voice of America speaks in these great words of one of the grandest statesmen who ever graced this globe with his statesmanship. And it is a testimony to the enduring vitality of this. basic principle of American government -the sovereignty of God and the sinfulness of men -that President Eisenhower in June, 1952 quoted these words in a proclamation of similar intent. Let all Christians who love America begin a great campaign of national repentance for our nation’s sins and work for her reformation. Only those who truly love these United States will weep for America, pray for America to be saved from the terrible judgments of the Lord now descending upon her, and above all work for America’s reformation and renewal. May God bless and save America in her great hour of need! May God cleanse us all of our sins and heal all our infirmities and weaknesses! Only then can we honestly pray “God bless America” and use her mightily in the extension of Christ’s Kingdom upon earth. Let America first serve the cause of God’s Kingdom and all other things will be added unto her.
Rev. Stacey Hebden Taylor, M.A. (Cantab), professor of economics and sociology at Dordt College, Sioux Center, Iowa.